Just For Fun: Creative Writing
A Night at Home
Last night I was in my parents' basement looking at some of my mom's old artwork from high school and college. She was a really good artist -- particularly good at drawing, stained glass, clay/canvas sculpting, specifically. Basically anything other than watercolor. Her art was from the 60s and 70s and looked totally psychedelic, despite her disagreeing that the trends of the times subconsciously influenced her artistic visions. "I like surrealism," she said. "Dali is my favorite."
"Okay, I believe you," I said. "But it's still psychedelic."
"Why do you say that?" she asked.
"The colors and the patterns. There are so many. Basically, I can see people on drugs especially loving the intricacies of these." I said. She laughed.
"Maybe," she said.
While looking at her art, I was also going through paintings she owned that she had in storage, trying to haggle and compromise for which of them I could take back with me up to New York. Although she is protective of her art, she is also generous, so we settled on a textured reproduction of a Van Gogh painting and a painted landscape of a waterfall in Hawaii. She said she'd bring them up next time they visited.
While moving paintings out of the way on the table, I came across a glass case containing my grandfather's purple heart, along with a bunch of patches from the war. "What do all of these mean?" I asked.
"Hmm, I don't know. You'll have to ask Dad," my mom said.
I never met my grandfather -- he died before I was born, and before my parents got married. My mom never met him either.
I found it to be timely, looking at that purple heart -- remembering the stories my dad told of his father fighting in the Battle of the Bulge, getting injured, and eventually frostbitten, which led to circulatory problems, and eventually his death years later.
I stood there and wondered what he would think right now -- the state of the country he fought for as an American against the Nazis who murdered his people and many others. He got to experience the victory of the downfall of the Nazis and the postwar economic boom. He had kids, who had kids that he'd never met, after succumbing to the stress that the war left on his body. And even though I'll never know what his voice sounded like, or what his mannerisms looked like, I can picture him looking somewhat like my dad with his feet on the ottoman, watching the news on an old 1950s television with a discontented expression on his face, smoking a cigarette and looking at me saying, "Pathetic."