Postcard from the Edge of Inspiration

As my academic career winds down, I have little left other than what I like to refer to as "super electives". These are classes that will have little to do with my professional work, but we are for some reason still required to take. I had intentionally put these classes off and quite frankly missed out on a few that sounded interesting in order to charge through my program. With no time left I made my decision based primarily on time, with some consideration for the level of interest.

This weekend I have "Audio Postcards". I won't bore you with the specifics of the course, but I will tell you that it has renewed my love of putting words on paper (or in this case, computer screen). I spent most of the day yesterday writing and feeling inspired. What follows is a small piece of what was produced.

I know only one story of my grandpa’s time in Europe. It involves him sitting down on a rock to eat his dinner only to find out the rock was a decapitated head. I found this story titillating as a child, I relished in each retelling of it, but in reality I am not even certain it was Grandpa who told it to me. Gram was always the storyteller and Grandpa the keeper of secrets.

Since he passed away six years ago I have devoted a great deal of time thinking about how many stories he never told. How closely he held his cards to his chest. I have longed for one more day, if only to hear one story, be filled with one tiny morsel of a secret. The story I have hungered for more than any other is the one behind the photo album.

Grandpa had this photo album that fascinated me as a child. It was covered in what appeared to be burlap and was small, the perfect size to fit into the pocket of a military uniform. On the cover were two polka dancers, decked out in their leiterhosen, holding hands as they joyfully danced. Inside were tiny pictures of a 20 year old version of my grandpa and my great aunts, my grandpa and ladies that were not my gram, my grandpa standing proudly outside the farmhouse in his uniform. I looked at this album countless times, mesmerized by my grandpa’s handsome features and majestic stature. Intrigued by the scandal of him showing affection towards any woman that was not my gram. But most especially I studied the captions under the pictures, all in German, all words I didn’t understand. Nor did my grandpa, for he had, according to family legend, taken the album off a Nazi solider and made it his own. If I had just one question it would simply be, “Grandpa, who was that man and what happened to his pictures?”