Great Men: My Grandfather

The more I write for Dethroner, the more I think about the experience of maleness, of manhood. I think about what it means to be a man in the modern age, what lessons we are expected to learn, what ideals we are supposed to deliver intact to the next generation. Naturally, I have spent some time reflecting upon my own heritage, so indulge me while I share some with you.

This is my father’s father, Robert Colby, after whom I am named. He remarried very well—his second wife’s father invented windshield wipers and cleaned up. Ha ha.

They lived in Buffalo, but wintered in Nassau, on the Lyford Cay Club, a private golf course community. This is the island where Thunderball was filmed, and in fact, Sean Connery lived on the other side of the 13th hole. He still does.

I never met this man. Well, once, when I was a baby, but that doesn’t count. He died when I was 12, I think. To this day I don’t know why he wasn’t interested in spending time with my father’s family, but the older I get the more it puzzles me. Never used to bother me as a kid, but it does now. I don’t even know his birthday…it might as well be today, so happy birthday, old boy.

I look at this picture, I study his face, his eyes. I realize that 1/4th of me is this person, but I don’t know him at all. I wonder if behaviour is any part biological, and if so, what aspects of my personality descend from him. What physical characteristics do we share? He had a bum ticker, died from heart complications at 61. My dad was freaked out and never got over it; pop’s a health nut to this day. Meanwhile I eat a lot of rich food and smoke and drink and drug to my wicked heart’s content—I think in part out of spite.