"My grandfather, Ralph Clark, fought in the Pacific and at Normandy in WWII and came home a different man. The war hardened him and he kept everything he saw a secret from his family until the last years of his life. By then, the church had softened his jagged edges like a stone in a riverbed. His starched white shirtsleeves covered the navy sailor’s tattoos that wrapped around his forearms, and the gentlemanly smell of his aftershave when I kissed his cheek on Sunday morning will stay with me, even when I am an old woman." - Erin
