The Chess Set: Lessons With My Grandfather

When my grandfather died, he left me our Franklin Mint Civil War chess set. To anyone else, it might just look like a collector’s item — pewter and enamel, heavy in the hand, lined up in neat velvet rows.

But to me, it holds something much bigger. It's a piece of my childhood, a slow ritual we built together, two months at a time. Every new piece arrived in the mail — a general, a scout, a cannon, a flag bearer — and we would sit together at the dining room table, unwrapping it like a secret we both already knew.

My grandfather was a police officer, the kind of man built from hard work, thick hands, and a lifetime of grit. He was dyslexic — reading had always been a struggle — but he worked at it harder than most people ever knew. Every time a new piece came, he already knew who it was — Grant, Lee, Stuart, Sherman — the stories lived in him. But it was me who read the pamphlet out loud, fumbling through the historical notes, while he listened, steady and patient. I didn’t understand it then, but those moments were his way of giving me a place at the table, letting me be the one who knew the words, while he gave them weight.

We played chess all the time, mostly after dinner- and most certainly with a different chess set. He never let me win. It wasn’t cruelty — it was respect. He believed you earned what mattered. His style of play was patient, stubborn, almost quietly brutal. I lost for years. I would get frustrated, sometimes even slam my hand against the table, and he would just sit there, calm, wait for me to move. He taught me without saying a word: Stay in it. Keep thinking. Stay steady even when you're losing.

I finally beat him once. Just once. It wasn’t celebrated. He smiled a little, nodded, and set up the pieces again. But I knew. And I think he knew, too.

What I miss now is not just the games. I miss the afternoons at the shooting range, how serious he was about safety, how proud he looked when I did things right. I miss the way he would polish his boots even when nobody would see them. I miss the way he told stories in half-sentences, expecting you to understand the weight behind the words.

I miss — most of all — the chances I didn't take to tell him that I loved him.

Growing up, I worried constantly that my sexuality would be a barrier between us, that somehow I wasn’t enough of the "right kind" of man he would want in a grandson. But the truth is, the only barrier was my own fear. He never gave me any reason to think I wasn't enough. Maybe, in some way, he worried he wasn’t enough for me — because I was the one who could read with ease, who had my head full of ideas and books and theories. We stood on opposite shores of manhood sometimes, staring across the water, each hoping the other understood.

He taught me something about masculinity that I still can't entirely explain — something that feels both foreign and intrinsic, something wordless and stubborn and fiercely tender. It wasn’t about bravado. It wasn’t about dominance. It was about carrying yourself through the world without needing to shout, about working harder than anyone expects, about showing up even when it’s hard.

Today, when I look at that chess set, I feel the weight of everything I didn’t understand as a kid. The battles he fought that I never saw. The tenderness he showed in the only ways he knew how. I miss him more than I can explain. I wish I had spent more time really listening to him, appreciating the stories he didn’t always tell, noticing the quiet ways he taught me what it means to be a man.

We never actually played chess with it. In fact, after all the pieces arrived- about two years of collecting, it vanished. It wasn’t until I inherited it, that I realized he even still had it. I think there is something of a lesson there, a final less. The chess set is beautiful, but it’s more than that. It’s an heirloom of the hours we shared — and a reminder that time, like chess, is something you only learn to value after you've already spent it.