Jul 2, 2013

Of Wars and Men

He had strong, carpenter hands that were rough and calloused. From building things and making them sound or fixing something when it was broken. “Pick me up!” I’d squeal, knowing those hands were gentle and affectionate too. He’d oblige and carry me about the yard which was half meadow and half woods.

The air around his house smelled of old pines and sandy soil mingled with the scent of motor oil on his shirt. It drifted from his workshop too. And sometimes he’d walk me through his treasure trove in that outbuilding so I could marvel at all of the old things he’d kept stored away. An antique milk cart that had once required a horse to pull it. A black car that had first seen the road in the 1930’s but no longer had the will to run. An attic full of desks he’d salvaged from a 19th century school house, along with a myriad of other items he’d saved from destruction. I was curious at the stories which these objects had been a part of and I held a deep admiration that my grandfather had kept these pieces of history hidden here. Safe from an ever changing world that did not always appreciate their value.

At the back of that workshop was a small garage where I would often find him and my father bent over the hood of an old Ford restoration together. Except for the sound of clinking tools, their work was quiet and earnest. Hundreds, perhaps thousands of hours were invested into that engine over the course of my growing up years. And when it was all ready for going, I would sit in the rumble seat with my sister and take a ride down the pebbly New Jersey roads, with granddad at the wheel and daddy sitting proudly beside him. Or sometimes, the other way around.

At precisely 12 o’clock my grandmother would holler from the back porch: “Harold!” And granddad would come into the house for his lunch. Together they sat at a checkered tablecloth and ate sandwiches beneath a ticking antique clock, as they had for decades. He kept a stock of pantry items on a long shelf just inside their basement door. There were always extra canned goods and bottles of 7Up ready for another depression should it ever come. Because he could not un-know what he had seen. Somewhere else in that dusty basement was a military issued duffle bag full of yellowed letters that had been written between the years of 1941 and 1945.

At the end of our visits we’d relax on their screened-in porch. My grandfather would sit in the same upholstered chair each time with his large hands hanging off the slip-covered arms, a big panting dog at his side. Keeping watch over him. And we would talk about the weather, or some other simple thing, before we left for home. Every time we pulled away granddad would stand in the driveway and wave until we were out of sight, his face looking longer and more weary as the visits numbered over the years.

Eventually, his body did give out. As all men’s do. But I will never forget how he laid next to grandmom in the bed they had shared for sixty years, with caretakers tending to them. Holding hands. His work shoes sat by his nightstand, retired from duty. A row of weathered shirts hung in his closet.
And like so many of that greatest generation, he went quietly into the night.

There was a long shelf in my father’s basement where stacks of books and volumes of military encyclopedias were stored behind a closet door. Each page of those thousands recalled some detailed memory of the Second World War. Throughout my childhood I had studied those black and white pictures and words, trying to understand the atrocities that took place in Europe and the heroes who fought to end them. But it didn’t occur to me until I was much older that perhaps my father’s purpose had been the same. Only he’d been seeking to know his own father through those pages. Of landing in Normandy on D-Day plus two. Of fighting in the Battle of the Bulge. Of Holland and the tokens of war now hidden away in our family’s safe. These were stories that were hardly mentioned in passing. Perhaps because my grandfather had learned too many hard lessons from grief and he would never speak of things done in darkness. Or perhaps because he meant to keep those memories safe in an ever changing world that doesn’t always appreciate the value of such things. His strength had come with stoic quietness that did not recognize his own contribution to salvaging something so large from destruction.

Or maybe he truly believed that he had done nothing grand. Nothing of importance.

A few years after I was married that old duffle bag from my grandparent’s basement sat in my home. And I poured through the handwritten love notes exchanged between a young bride and her groom, who were oceans apart at the time. On those brittle papers were the simplest words that held the deepest of meaning, which could only be perceived in full by the next generations who would watch these two lovers hold on to each other until the end.
He gave his life to her, all that he had. And that was all we needed to know about him. That he had strong, carpenter hands which were rough and calloused. From building things and making them sound. Or fixing something when it was broken. Maybe, more than anything though, he just wanted us to know that they were gentle and affectionate hands too.

3 comments:

  1. Your beautiful words always bring tears to my eyes. Tears of joy and sorrow. Missing that big, strong Granddad of ours along with you, and also being thankful for Daddy, the son he raised to be as dedicated and hardworking a man as he was. The members of that Greatest Generation knew so much turmoil, but they managed to revel in the simple joys of life too. What an example to all of us!

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  2. Beautifully written, friend!

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