SO, yeh. I'm totally jammin. I realized that I don't have to be Billy anymore. I have no idea how many times I've expressed the sentiment that I felt like the blond kid in Family Circus...or that I WAS the blond kid, wending his way from place to place in order to get from A to B.
Well, I have a line now.
I figured out WHO I was last year and just recently I figured out how to be the WHO that I am.
No, that's not really accurate. I've figured out who I was all this time.
yep. IM Nathan Allan Granner. N.A.G. How I've hated the thought that my name could spell an abhorrent pastime of authority figures throughout the ages. But now, I realize that to go in a straight line, Ya gotta be a NAG sometimes. Not only that, Nagging is only done from love and concern...and from a hope that those biting, boorish words will actually accomplish change for the better.
But, What is a Granner? By blood I'm a Kimbal, or a Gartner... (aside from the spelling).
When my Grandma died, a lot of family came to town to pay their respects to a great lady. My first Cousin, Chris totally laughed at a joke that I have been bombing for years. He totally got it. That's blood. Your family laughs at your jokes.
I love my family. It's such an easy thing. They are all so good, big hearted people who to a person from first cousins to third all try to help their neighbors out. They mainly like to be in the background...except for my mom. A total extrovert, she really did get the anomalous gene. Which is how I am here. Still she's a government employee working to GIVE money and support to people that really need and deserve it. She's just helping, only bigger.
It's an interesting thing being adopted by half your family. The Granner half. The half that had the name. And after the divorce decades ago, here I am. Honestly, just kind of wending my way around the memory. It was a bad time. It could have been worse, but it was a bad time.
That side of the family has no idea. THEIR kin was wronged. And you know, maybe so. I think about my dad from time to time. He really wasn't a bad guy. He was just damaged in the brain, literally. Cancer. And sometimes having a chunk of his brain taken out took its toll on other people.
The poor guy. We were all of us terrified.
The question is, do I have anything to live up to in a family name on the Granner side?WHAT is a Granner? or What IS a Granner? I've really had no clue what a Granner was supposed to do.
But I go back to some of the earliest images I have in my life.
Me, playing underneath the sanctuary pews at the Creston First Presbyterian Church while my dad's voice carried over the choir.
Me looking up and seeing my mom standing behind a music stand as she conducted the kids choir, for a brief time...but just a moment of a memory is all I need.
My mom's pioneering spirit, allowing herself to BE herself at all times. I would not be who I am without her. Having the guts to follow this path...whether it be straight OR windy with a bunch of pitstops... And
Going to the Granner Grandparents house to see my Grandpa play in numerous plays and musicals. The Fantastiks, Harvey and Christmas Carol. I wished like crazy that I could have been in one of Grandpa's plays.
But above it all, I can still hear my dad's voice in my ear when I sing, after all this time.
Three decades.
So, there's the scrap that I've wondered about for so long, that kept me from changing my name to Nathan Singer, or Nathan Verdi, or more rightly to Kimbal or Gertner.
I'm a singer. My dad was a singer and my grandpa was a singer.
I resent the facts that predicate the tragedy of what happened, which tore my simple Iowa family apart. There were no winners there. We were all gasping, grasping victims.
But the really positive thing, the truly magical thing is that the bad memories are almost gone now and I hear you singing again.
All best,
Nathan Allan Granner
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