Finding Happy (Stardew Valley OCxStardew Bachlor & Bachlorettes WIP)

Grandpa

So, this is how the story starts, as far as I know. 

His name was Julian. He was 26 when he became a father to a beautiful boy named Christopher, or Chris. Though to me, Chris was dad, and Julian was Grandpa. I never met my grandmother. I don't know exactly what happened to her. I think it hurt both of them too much to talk about it. There are parts I was told, and parts of the puzzle I put together myself. I'm pretty sure she died when my dad was young. He had started school, he told me he found out on the car ride home one day. She had been sick for a while, but was still working. They needed the money, and couldn't afford to get her any sort of treatment. I think she worked in a factory of sorts, I never got any details. She worked until the day she died. 

And it made Grandpa mad. He wouldn't have told me that either, but I remember the way that he talked about it all. The way jobs will work you to death, for money. Big business, it all made him so angry. 

My dad was around 11 when they moved. Lord knows how he heard about the town. But he spent years saving up the money to buy the land in cash. He had no intentions of owing money to some bank. He cut a deal with the town carpenter; he built my grandpa a house, and in exchange my grandpa spent years giving him free lumber as he cleared off the land. 

My dad hated it. It was a small town, with barely any other kids, and it was an hour bus ride away from the nearest city. There was no school, just an older lady who taught all ages of children at a table in the library. The woman had absolutely no education other than a four-inch-thick book of general curriculum. There were a few other people my dad's age in town. He told me so much about all of them since they were his only human connection for years. 

There was Robin, the daughter of the aforementioned town carpenter. My dad talks the most about her. She was his best friend back in the day. She had the entire basement too herself, so their friend group could all hang out there, get some privacy. 

Demetrius, who was a bit younger than the two of them, was always there too. My dad always told me he was kind of annoying. Not his personality, but he just had this big crush on Robin, and she was so oblivious. He's never said, but I think my dad may have had a crush on her too. 

Then there was Ras and Caroline. Ras was this fun quirky dude, and Caroline was a soft-spoken sweetheart. The two were tied at the hip and spent all their time together at the library. Apparently, Ras was super into the occult, and pagan studies, and all that. My dad never knew if Caroline was too, or if she just went along with it. Her mom was so terribly strict, she probably wouldn't have let her so much as be in the same building as Ras if she knew the truth. 

There was one other person the same age as my father, but he never got to know her. She was the daughter of the women who taught them, and she went to 'school' with him for the first maybe 6 months he lived in Pelican Town, then she disappeared. She would have been 12 or 13, and nobody knew what happened. There were theories though. My dad thinks that the pressure her mom put on her to be perfect and to follow the word of Yoba to a T caused her to break and do the exact opposite. Nobody saw her until her mom passed away 5 years later. 

By that time my dad was already 18. He resented my grandpa so much for dragging him to this town that he hated, and for making him help on the farm. The second he turned 18, he packed what he had, and hopped on a bus back to the city. 

I was born 4 years later. And by the time I started remembering things, my dad had more-or-less gotten over his anger to grandpa. Or at least had gotten good enough at hiding it that I was able to have a healthy relationship with my grandfather. And while a small-town farm may not be fun to grow up on, it sure is fun to visit your grandfather in the summers. 

Grandpa kept to himself from what I could tell as a child. He didn't need anything. He grew his own food, owned his house, his land. He didn't have any pets, or anything. When he needed something from the market, he'd put together a bundle of crops and literally barter. They used money, but he didn't need it. He'd grab his milk, eggs, seed, and hand the man a basket of fresh vegetables. We spent most of our time on the farm, other than visits to a few places just outside of town; the beach, the quarry, the forest, and the swimming pool, and a few other spots that were just far enough away that we never saw too many people. 

Anyways...

 Years and years later, I'm 22, and I find out he died. We didn't know he was going to die. The fool didn't own a phone. He wrote a letter to all of us, saying he was sick, he didn't know what was going to happen. He put his will in the letter. By the time it got to us, he'd been dead in his house for a while. I'm not sure how long, I had no interest in knowing. My dad had to call the town's hospital to have them check on him. He also sent a letter to just me, but I wasn't able to bring myself to read it. 

Maybe 6 months later, I was sitting at work, and I just couldn't do it. I lived in the same city my whole life and worked the same sad desk job for the last 3 years, and it was too much. Or rather it was not nearly enough. My soul was empty. I'd moved out from my parents only a year prior, and had just lost my grandpa, and I had never felt so isolated, life felt meaningless. 

So, I read the letter. 

"If you're reading this, you must be in dire need of a change. The same thing happened to me, long ago. I'd lost sight of what mattered most in life... real connections with other people and nature. So, I dropped everything and moved to the place I truly belong."

And that's all it took. I read the letter sitting at work still. And I stood up and gave my notice. I knew the house had been left to me. I had enough money in savings that I knew I'd be able to take it easy at first. I wasn't sure if I was just running away or if I was running to something new. Either way I didn't wait to start planning. 

I remember leaving work that day, normally I hated leaving work. Not that I enjoy my job perse, but I had to walk from the comfy cubicle, surrounded by people, to the bitter cold parking lot. Than my cold junk car, than back to my sad lonely apartment. But on this day I put on my jacket and looked around at all these people, some of whom I'd known for years now, and I felt so sorry. I know how sad and lonely this job is. I know they also get into cold sad cars and go to sad lonely homes. But me, I'm going to pack up my sad lonely home, and move.  

And it will be lonely, but it will not be sad, I thought. 

I walked out to the cold parking lot, and it was snowing. I hated driving home in the snow. Like, would get a hotel room nearby instead if I could. But on that day, when I walked out I experienced Deja vu. I was instantly taken back to a memory. It was one of those memories you don't know you have until your brain decides it's time to remember it. 

I woke up from the floor bed that I stayed on when I stayed at my grandpa's place. It was the first ever time I had been there in winter. My dad was there too, sleeping on the ground with me. And you would have thought that sleeping on some blankets on a hard wood floor, in a wood cabin, in the middle of the woods, in the dead of winter, would suck. But it didn't suck. I woke up and the sun had barely come up. And my dad was still sleeping. I was warm because I was just up against him, and the fire was going. And I looked up at the window and my grandpa was sitting at a chair just in front of it. He was just watching outside. Which was typical. When I was this young I remember thinking it was weird most the time. But on this day, I just felt like I wanted to watch with him. So I stood up and walked over. He held his finger to his mouth, and pointed to my dad. He wanted to let him sleep. I nodded and held my arms out for him to grab me. I think I was too old to do that but it didn't matter to him. He stood up and ran over to his kitchen and poured some hot water from a kettle. I wasn't sure what he was doing at first, but he was making me hot chocolate. Once he finished he came back over and gestured to pick me up. And I just sat on his lap and we watched the sun rise, and it snowed. And I was so happy. Time moved so slow. But for the first time in my life that felt like a good thing. Children so often feel like they need to move so fast all the time. One thing to the next with no time to enjoy the first. I was no exception. But this was the first time in my life I felt serene. 

When I walked out into that snowy parking lot, I felt that way. That serene joy of time moving slow. For years time moved antagonizingly slow. At work, at home, in life. But I knew that once I got my feet on the ground out in the valley, I could enjoy time again.