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My Favorite Veteran
When I’m out in the sticks visiting my mom, I often walk over to the retirement home that my Grandpa lives in around the block and have coffee with him. Coffee is free and I usually need a cup pretty bad since my mom is not a coffee drinker. It’s a perfect time for us to visit.
Sometimes my Grandpa tells stories about the two years he was stationed in England during World War Two—little gems here and there. You never really know what he’s going to share with you.
My Grandpa wasn’t a war hero or anything, in fact he never even really got to serve. He was trained to be an air traffic controller but he was one of three guys ready for the job. The other two guys worked out so his services were never needed. When you ask my Grandpa about being a war veteran he always kind of shrugs sheepishly because he pretty much did nothing but kick around London for two years. Not a bad life for twenty-something-year-old.
Today my Grandpa told me the story of how he got drafted. He was living with his mother and her new husband at the time and he wasn’t really getting along with the new husband. Apparently they had a disagreement over how to build a fire. I know how men can be about building fires. I’ve seen Toby and his brother disagree over the art of fire-building myself and believe me there was some tension in the room.
Anyway, I guess the new husband thought he could build a fire by stacking up newspapers flat and then setting the logs on top. Even I know that won’t work and I’ve never been a girl scout. So when my Grandpa corrected his stepfather I guess things got pretty uncomfortable. It’s hard to imagine my Grandpa being confrontational. He’s not a fighter at all. I’m sure he decided to leave long before they kicked him out.
That day my Grandpa walked down to the Army Recruiters office to see where his name was in the draft. The woman who worked there couldn’t find his file anywhere and told him to go home and count his blessings. That is where my Grandpa says he went wrong. He confides that he got to talking to the woman. She was a good looking girl and I guess things got a little flirtatious. It’s funny to hear my Grandpa tell these stories because my Grandpa isn’t really the flirtatious type. He is charming though. I will say that.
They got to talking and he stayed too long. Eventually she found his file. It had fallen down behind her desk drawer. He was shipped off to England two days later. Funny how things work out.
But I’m glad my Grandpa spent two years in England. He fell in love with my Grandma during those two years. They had only just met right before he shipped out. I think my Grandma was even seeing someone else at the time but they decided to stay in touch with letters anyway. They wrote letters every day. It makes you wonder what might have happened if things had happened differently.
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Undercover Photo-stylist
When we were camping at the end of summer I got this crazy idea that I wanted to take pictures of my Aunt’s old granny square afghan down at the dock near the lake. I brought the afghan with us in the first place because it looked like a cabin blanket to me. It’s old, it’s a little worn, it’s sort of campy in coloring… it just fit.
When we got to the cabin, my old tattered blanket fit even better than I imagined. Since the cabin is just an old broken-down mobile home that is going to be moved off the property someday and replaced with a real wood-sided cabin, everything in it is broken down too. The couches and chairs are cast-offs from the family just used as a stop-gap to make things comfortable until the real cabin is built. No use hauling nice furniture up there if it’s just going to have to get moved etc.. etc..
Anyway the big blue couch in the living room area was pretty ugly… it sort of reminded me of an old college apartment where guys sit around drinking beer and playing video games…which isn’t far from what it is used for at the cabin. But once I spread my old granny square blanket over the top it sort of felt like home. A little.
All week long I looked at that afghan and day dreamed up a photo-shoot I could do with it. Maybe I look at too many Anthropologie catalogues but something about the lake and the rustic coloring of the old blanket inspired me.
On the last day I told Toby about my day dream and how I was really bummed that all week I had not taken a single photo of my old blanket down at the lake. You know what I love about Toby? He totally got it.
He didn’t make fun of me wanting to do something for the photos alone. He didn’t make fun of me taking pictures of myself (which frankly is only because I didn’t have a willing model other than myself). He didn’t volunteer to go with me and take photos of me modeling the blanket (bahumbug) but he did watch Bug so I could. And I’m glad I did. I guess it’s silly just to go stage pictures of yourself… but it was fun. It was like playing for me.
You do what you love, right? There’s always time to do what you love. Maybe someday I’ll get a decent camera (not a point-and-shoot underwater camera that I stash in my purse) and be a photo stylist with real models who don’t have to get their heads chopped off because they have weird profiles and/or double chins.
