“Trust me,” he said, arms outstretched. I, 5 years old and just developing my dog-paddle, leaped into the deep end of the pool.

Water closed over my head, filled my nose and mouth while panic tore through me like a wild fire in dry brush. In his own good time, he lifted me to the pool’s edge and laid on his version of the truth of my judgment.

It seemed that if I believed that sort of blather — nonsense salesman talk — I deserved what I got.

About four years later, I lay on my upstairs bed in luxury, reading “The Secret Garden,” caught in the lovely tale of old stone walls and clues to a mystery.

I idly peeled a juicy navel orange and tossed the rinds out on the steep roof.

A voice from the brick courtyard below called my name. I stuck my head out and saw an annoyed face.

He pointed at the cedar shingles beside my dormer window, now bright with orange peels. “Get your slovenly self out there and clean up your mess,” I was told.

The edge of the roof was 15 feet above the ground. I knew I had to obey. Out I went, in a crawling crouch, fearful he’d see my underpants.

I gathered the peels I could reach in my bunched-up skirt and was reaching for a far one when I began to slide.

Dry cedar shingles are corrugated with inches-long splinters and the roof angle was designed to shed leaves, rain and, it seems, little girls.

A splinter went into my thigh, leaving a scar still faintly visible 70 years later. Off I went, landing belly-down on the bricks, his boots six inches from my face. As soon as I could breathe, I began to wail.

“Stop your blubbering,” he said by way of comfort. “Only the good die young.”

It was a quarter of a century later before I wondered if he ever saw the irony of such a statement made by a man in his 60s.

Most of my life, I have tried to figure out if his assessments and advice were accurate predictions of the inevitable made by an acute mind or were pessimistic programming instructions.

There was his favorite analysis of my character, which I have pretty much acted out most of my life: “You were born slap-dash, you’ll live slap-dash and you’ll die slap-dash. The faery hates the incomplete job, the slovenly task. They’ll be laying traps in the sand for you unless you change your ways.”

This last was triggered by my failure to scour out the sink after doing dishes. Another time it was related to having untied shoe laces.

Having learned to curse colorfully from close attendance to his words when displeased, he caught me raging at a cabinet door on which I had banged my head. “Your temper will be the death of you!” Probably in a sloppy tantrum.

At 16, slender, pretty and ripe as a cherry, he looked me over in my new, daring two-piece bathing suit. It was 1945, and that suit had more fabric than a modern bath towel.

He declared I was strong as an ox, almost as smart and should be employed dragging a plow. The man had a way with words.

He — my grandfather — was a magnificently skilled woodworker, cabinet maker and carpenter. His work was meticulous and beautiful. There was grace in the Celtic tangle of vines and tendrils working their way across a mahogany cask.

I got my first (and probably only) compliment from him when I about 3. I was playing with the long wood curls fountaining from his plane onto the shop floor, and I identified pine, mahogany and rosewood by their scent.

Eager to learn and loving wood, I tried to make a box when I was 7. It was declared a womanish mess.

“Womanish” was the adjective applied to any work that was marred, careless or unskilled. It was another 50 years before I learned basketry, a wood craft.

I never tried for perfection, only expression.

He’d have had contempt. But I whipped him with that skill: I no longer believed he knew all there was to know and was as subject to error as myself.

It was a long time coming.

My mother’s evaluation did more harm. She said it was a good thing I was bright because I was so nondescript looking. I knew she loved me and knew Gramps saw me as fodder for faery retribution. So her words mattered most.

What saved me from despair was defiance. Oh, the impact was real, but the reaction was more of an “Oh, yeah?” than “I’m a hopeless loser.”

It was Daddy who gave me the antidote.

He said, “You’re as good as you believe you are. No other opinion counts as much. If you can imagine it, you can reach for it, successfully.”

Peg Elliott Mayo writes from the Coast Range. She invites comment at uncommonideas@rivervoices.com.