The New Year’s ball has fallen, and we’re past the point where it’s safe to say Happy New Year. Still, I can’t help it. I’ve been thinking about Pop Jones.

I met Pop Jones without his son in the room.

Pop Jones didn’t like that.
Not at first.

He didn’t like the camera.
He had no interest in being recorded.
And he definitely didn’t like surprises.

“Where’s Wali?”

If I had seen as much of life as he had, I would have been wary, too. I would have needed my son there to ground me.

Life was confusing enough for me at half his age.

And there I was, age-struck by Pop Jones. He was a relic to me.

All the while, I was carrying on, pretending to be Barbara Walters.

Who was I kidding? I don’t do cameras. I write stories.

And I was standing there in my father-in-law’s honor. He had died less than two weeks before, and I couldn’t make it to the funeral in Bolivia.

Where’s Papito?

They say time will tell.
Maybe in this case, it was time — and the camera.

Where’s Wali

Pop Jones didn’t react like my fairytale vision of a 106-year-old.

He didn’t want anything to do with being filmed.
He didn’t need his picture taken.

So I had to try something else.

I told him my dad was Wali’s teammate. That Wali would have been here if he could — if the airport hadn’t been shut down because of a flood.

He listened. Not warmly. Not yet.

I explained that we weren’t there to capture his image, but to have him tell his stories.

Underneath that hat, I might have seen a sparkle of interest.

But then he asked, “So where is this thing?”

We had his attention — but nothing was ready.

The cameraman had picked that moment, of all moments, to go back to the truck to get a battery.

So instead of rolling, we waited.

And in that pause — standing there without anything between us — we finally had a chance.

To start over.

You Think I Was Born Yesterday?

Pop Jones forgot his age.

His humor kept showing up in unexpected ways. He had a mind sharper than my own, and he made that very clear when he said, “You think I was born yesterday?”

His aide sat a little behind us and filled in the gaps. She told us how Pop Jones got out of bed every morning before she arrived. How he made his bed and got himself ready. By the time she came, there was often nothing left for her to do.

She told us Pop Jones always wears a hat.

Then Lamont came back.

Pop Jones lit up.

Apparently, he had never seen anything like it before. He leaned toward it, curious and pleased, as if it were something worth meeting on its own terms.

Much later — after the stories had been told — I asked if I could walk him back upstairs to his room.

“Of course not,” he said.

Proving chivalry is not dead.

On The Road Again

Pop Jones loved telling his stories as much as he enjoyed cracking jokes and engaging with us.

Once he began, we didn’t stop — except to change another battery. He talked as if he’d been waiting his whole life for this moment.

There were the stories of his nicknames. Pop Jones. And Two-Phone Jones, because he carried two phones with him at all times.

The joke none of us cracked was that Wali couldn’t get through on either one.

That’s when Wali finally called me. He was worried. Pop Jones was supposed to take a walk every hour. Two hours had passed.

I held the phone out so Pop Jones could hear him.

“Remember, Pop?” Wali said. “You need to walk.”

Pop Jones smiled, a twinkle in his eye. “Sure, son,” he said. “I’m going to tell these people to get out of here so I can get up and walk.”

Wali wanted reassurance from me — that we’d make sure his Pop did what he needed to do.

I promised him we would.

And sure enough, Pop Jones hung up that phone and wanted nothing more than to sit there and keep talking.

But I knew Wali was worried about his Pop — though he shouldn’t have been. Pop Jones could see things just fine.

He could see right through me.

He asked, “So what do you do?”

Wali had warned me, “Pop will start asking you questions. He does that sort of thing.”

I doubted he even knew what a blog was, so I hesitated — just a second. No one else would have noticed — before I said, “I’m a writer.”

“What do you write about?”

“I tell personal stories.”

“Well then,” he said, “now you have mine.”

Pop Jones had a twinkle in his eye.

Defying Wali became the new game — though Wali won in the end.

I got Pop Jones to stand. We found his walker. His aide had already left, and without thinking too much about it, I felt the need to take care of him the way she had.

Before we moved, we took a photo.
The one you saw here.

I was wearing my red jacket — no longer trying to manifest my inner Barbara Walters. She’s so Barbara Walters.

Maybe I was remembering my sweet spot for Charles Kuralt instead. Just me and Pop Jones on the road again — even though he spent his entire life in West Philadelphia. Born and raised. Showing me you don’t have to go anywhere at all.

Except straight to my heart.

He noticed immediately.

He said he liked my sneakers.

You couldn’t slide anything past him.

And that felt like the perfect nod — the end of a perfect day.

Whenever New Year’s Eve comes around, Pop Jones finds his way back to me.

He would have been turning 109. And then 110. And it just keeps going up from there.

He lived almost half the age of our nation. I was half his age when we met.

Sometimes I wonder who left that interview more sure-footed — Pop Jones, or me. Or if we both walked away carrying something a little more valiant than when we arrived.

Pop Jones told me his story.
And now I tell you mine.

---

This is a Muse for Pop Jones