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| Center, my grandfather; I'm standing behind my youngest brothers., at the airport. |
After a dingy, cloudy final week of October, November has launched here with bright skies and gusts of snowflakes. It's a season full of energy and daring (at least on the best days), and I'm up for it.
My grandfather Ernest's birthday was November 4, and when I was small, birthday phone calls across the Atlantic were costly and had to be booked in advance with an overseas operator. My grandfather sympathized with my parents' tight finances and would place the call from his end. Mom and Dad only needed to stay home and receive his call.
They reminded each other of the date using a British rhyme about Guy Fawkes Day, when bonfires in England declare vengeance on a long-ago traitor. The rhyme says, "Remember, remember, the fifth of November!" (That was the date of Fawkes's treasonous Gunpowder Plot back in 1605.) Ernest's birthday would be the "other date," the fourth.
One November, my folks recited the poem wrong, accidentally saying "remember the fourth of November" instead -- and assuring each other that Ernest's birthday phone call would thus take place on the fifth. So they cheerfully went out to a local hamburger diner on the fourth, and felt terribly embarrassed to miss my grandfather's important phone call after all.
That makes it easy for me to recall the right date now!
My grandfather Ernest's dual citizenship and cultured awareness enabled him to leave Germany safely before Hitler's "Final Solution" took form. In these days of rising anti-Semitism, it's good to reflect that my father's parents found sufficient haven in England, although I know now that Fascism in London at that time still meant a level of discomfort and fear.
Lucky me: Although I didn't understand my grandfather's life, and I didn't wake up to the questions I could have asked until way too late, I did very much feel his love and support. Now I imagine some conversations we might have had, and they intrigue me.
Cigar Ash on His Tie
Nothing pretty about him at seventy: massive hands,
lower lip drooping and deep, reddened, quiet eyes
watching my efforts. Ernst. Grandfather to nine
smaller family than his own father’s—yet none of us
starving in a brutal camp, or fleeing to South America
not even exiled to Australia (great-uncle Alfred). We
could fit within a single room. Yet Ernst overflowed.
Say “Ernest” in England, banker, explorer, eager lover
of strong women: Some people walk away. Refuse.
With long strides he walked toward. What I seize
(years later) must mesh with my early observations, white
cigar ash on his tie, and on his car dashboard too, thick
soft, scented, no relation to ashes of war. Symphonies,
portraits, books, the riches of late peace. His early winter
promised French cafés, Dutch museums: In November winds
I hear his smoker’s cough, his hawk-fierce whistle, and
welcome my grandfather’s haunting.
