by Caroline Sanders

My grandpa was John Wayne. He wore a big tan cowboy hat with a little colored feather on the side whenever he left the house. He was the tallest man I had ever seen, and when he picked me up “like a sack of potatoes” and swung me over his shoulder causing all the blood to rush to my head, I had never been that far off the ground. His real name was Billy, but due to my older brother’s infantile inability to pronounce words correctly, we called him “Bibby”—the greatest imaginable name for the cowboy that he was. He was old and wrinkly and I could never understand why his toenails were stained yellow, but that stuff didn’t really bother me. Cowboys didn’t have any time to devote to the maintenance of their personal beauty. Despite his rough appearance, however, he was friendly. I remember him driving through town, country western (the old kind with the fiddle and the slow drawing voices) droning lazily from dash, waving at everyone we’d pass. “Good to see ya,” he’d say to a car across from us at a four way stop. “How’s it going?” He’d ask to a young man walking his dog on the sidewalk. They couldn’t hear him, but it didn’t matter; he still just liked to say hello to everybody he saw. And when he’d come home and have nothing else to do, he’d lie on the couch in his undershirt with a can of Planter’s peanuts balanced on his round, old belly as he watched westerns on television. In fact, he liked the ideals and ways of life of the Old West in movies so much that for his last birthday, we gave him a life-size cardboard cutout of the Duke, signed on the back by all the children and grandchildren and placed in the corner of the den for him to look at any time he flipped on one of his movies.

But John Wayne died when I was four years old. All of these surface-skimming childhood images I possessed were all I had of Bibby since I was too young to remember who he actually was. As I’ve grown up, I’ve learned that he wasn’t exactly the man I remember: he wasn’t anywhere near the tallest man I’ve encountered, but instead about five foot ten. He was no hardened cowboy: he had never shot a man in his life and to be honest, I don’t know if he’d ever even ridden a horse. He looked and acted almost nothing like John Wayne. As my memories were beginning to develop, however, those movies he loved, his old cowboy hat we keep in a glass case in my basement, and the cardboard cutout that now sits in my attic at home are the only concrete evidence I had of him. And thus, John Wayne was cast to play the part of my granddad in my memory.

This inability to fully remember and recreate a person who was such a huge part in my life and subsequent casting of celebrities and literary figures to play his part in my mind has manifested itself in other ways as well. Nana, my grandma on my father’s side, is still living; I sit by her every Sunday in church. She likes to tell me stories about her childhood in Norcross, Georgia, and although I know her well in the role she currently plays in my life, I do not know the little girl she used to be. She was a spirited, opinionated child growing up on a farm in the mid-twentieth century. Whenever I think about this far-off time and place (although only about seventy years and fifty miles away), I see her as a young Anne of Green Gables making friends, going to school, contradicting those who disagree with her, and getting through life by relying on her imagination. While Nana plays the part of “grandma” in my recent memories and thoughts, little Anne-with-an-e has been cast to play the part of my talkative, quirky grandmother in her youth.

Anyone who once played a large part in my early life but who I no longer interact with is likely to be cast in my mind by someone else a little like them, but perhaps a bit more famous. My whimsical and silly childhood babysitter is played by Amelia Bedelia. My elderly, well-respected grade school headmaster is played by Albus Dumbledore. These beloved characters come from light-hearted, childish fiction that does not attempt to dig deep into the human soul and reveal man’s shortcomings. Instead, the type of literature that I take these characters from is intended to lift up the human experience, glorify it, tease it, show a few minor faults and failures, but ultimately illustrate what a wonderful experience life can be. All these characters have faults, yet none are abhorrent. All—with the exception of Amelia Bedelia—deal with real-life situations and encounter evil in human nature, but none are scarred by it. Whatever character John Wayne plays will conquer all obstacles with his superior masculinity, dry wit and hardened exterior persona. Anne Shirley will persevere through the challenges of growing up because she has an imaginative and cheery perspective on the world. Amelia Bedelia, as silly as she is, will be loved and Dumbledore will forever be the symbol of goodness and a magnet for admiration.
I could never allow a loved one, no matter how distant, to be compared to a character like Captain Ahab from Herman Melville’s Moby Dick, Hester Prynne from Nathaniel Hawthorne’s The Scarlet Letter, Meursault from Albert Camus’s The Stranger, or Sydney Carton from Charles Dickens’s A Tale of Two Cities. Because I watch my memories like movies, seeing the characters only from the outside and only from my own perspective, I do not imagine their inevitable human struggles. No matter what Bibby or Nana or my babysitter or my headmaster might have done in their private lives or what demons they may have internally fought, to me they will never be a crazed fisherman, an adulteress, an existential murderer, or a pessimistic, self-sacrificing alcoholic lawyer. I’m 99.9% positive that my loved ones were none of these things, but even if they were, they remain idolized in my mind because of the light and cheerful actors and actresses I have assigned to them.
Perhaps this is a naïve perspective. I am running the risk of underestimating their humanity by only relying on light fiction like westerns and children’s literature to mentally paint their portrait. These great people, however, deserve to be memorialized in my mind the same way that John Wayne is memorialized in America’s memory. Although Bibby may not have drunk whiskey in dusty saloons, hunted down and shot outlaws on the run, wooed beautiful women and ridden his horse off into the sunset, he was a great man. Thanks to John Wayne, I can remember him that way.