The Photo Album

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 discover the rock was a decapitated head. I found this story thrilling 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 his passing over a decade 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, one tiny morsel of the unknown. The story I have hungered for more than any other is the one kept inside 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 inside the pocket of a military uniform. On the cover were to polka dancers, decked out in their lederhosen, holding hands as they danced joyfully.

Inside were tiny photos of a 20 year old version of my grandpa and his family, my grandpa and ladies that were not my gram, my grandpa standing proudly 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 having been affectionate to 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 soldier and made it his own.

If I had one more day and one more question, it would simply be, “Grandpa, who was that man and what happened to his pictures?”.