At the Dinner Table

"No, don't ask him, he doesn't talk about the war. It must have been traumatic for him. Probably best not to bring those memories back, especially now when his memory's so vivid, but his body and mind so frail." I explained this in French, so that no one but our friend Kathleen and my husband could understand.

We were sitting at the supper table at my grandparents', a nook in the kitchen. The dining room was for special occasions, like Sunday dinner, and tonight we had take-out from Dominoes. I had come down to central Pennsylvania, my childhood home, from Quebec City, where I now lived with my husband, Jean-Philippe. We tried to visit my family at least three times a year, especially now that my grandfather's health was deteriorating. On this visit, in June 2008, we had invited Kathleen to come with us since she had always dreamed of visiting Philadelphia and Gettysburg.
Between bites of pepperoni pizza, Jean-Philippe convinced me that Kathleen could ask about the war. "Sarah, she's a guest. It's okay if she asks. If he doesn't want to talk, he won't."
"All right, all right. Go 'head."
Kathleen turned to my grandfather sitting beside her and asked "So, Mr. Keller, Sarah says that you were in the war. Were you on the front?"
"Oh no, no," he answered, "I was a radio operator even then. They'd sent me out to California to relay messages from the Pacific."
My entire perception of my grandfather as a soul troubled by the nightmares of the brutalities he'd seen as a young man crumbled before me. The images of years on the front line in France killing his German "cousins" dissipated. It wasn't that he was traumatized by what he'd experienced at war that kept him from answering my sister's and my questions about it for school projects, but just that he didn't have anything to say. Perhaps it seemed sacrilegious to him to speak of his safe existence in a Californian office while his childhood friends had been killed in action. Maybe he was ashamed of his security in a time of insecurity.
The cloak of silence fell with the curiosity of a stranger.


(Inspired by the Sun's March 2009 Readers Write theme)

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Rap Spherical

I went through a rap phase a couple years ago. The Christian hip-hop forum Sphere of Hip-Hop inspired and motivated me to write a rap myself.

Here it is:

Philosophies and ideologies circle round, "spherical"/ been recycled 2,000 years, threadbare, our rhetoric simply rhetorical.   

Purely analytical, logical seeking evidence from periodicals, all else deemed magical/ Skeptical, cynical, while gazing eyes on the freeing scars, slightly mystical.

Generation to generation the lies multiply, no longer practical, but lifeless liturgical/ Spiritual pride blinds eyes to practices that are borderline comical/Flattered as the big, black crow, the cheese...satirical.

Cock crows three times, yet you deny the one you've seen eye-to-eye/ smells political, like Good Ole King Cole before his pie/ as he slices it open and the crows cry.

Proverbial camel through the needle's eye, Rich Young Ruler like the typical American guy/ Refused to give his all to keep his piece of the pie.



I still admire those that can expertly mix rhythm and rhyme with references to pop culture.

The Fence

Dad built the wooden fence around our yard to keep my brother and I from running out into the street. We were rambunctious toddlers and our yard led directly into a narrow alley downtown, so an inattentive moment could be disastrous for us.

I remember him digging deep holes and pounding the posts into the ground. Then he nailed two rails across the posts.

The screams of the belligerent teenager next door were not considered when constructing the fence. Mom and Dad figured her parents were dealing with a rebellious teen. Even when her little sister would cry and yell and kick when her father would pick her up from playing with me to take her to their cabin, Mom would try to soothe her. "You can come back to play after your trip. You can start where you left off." She didn't realize that the little girl would never be able to start over again.

When Dad read in the newspaper that the neighbour was being investigated for sexual abuse, he and Mom decided to put the house up for sale. The fence had kept us safe from running out into the street, but now seemed too weak to protect us from others getting in.

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Fences

This month's topic at The Sun Magazine is "fences." I've been lucky enough to never live in a home that needed one. Do you have an experience that portrays fences, literally or figuratively?