The Entangled Brambles of My Memory and History

When I pulled up to my grandparents’ home in a cramped rented car with my family, I was always welcomed by the rumbling of the tires on the old and uneven brick pavement. My grandmother, hearing the telltale sign of the car, slowly walked over to the front door, leaving my grandfather in his assigned armchair with a remote next to his right hand, and a plethora of candies in a bowl to his left. Our favorite chips were already out on the dining table, coffee on the stove, favorite games laid out in a gallant spread in front of the cupboard. My two siblings and I would rarely stay for more than half an hour, kept sitting only by the juice in our mugs. Soon, my sister and I would be rushing to the river across the street from our grandparents’ house, running across the small, baby blue bridge, painted decades ago, but with fresh flowers anonymously supplied and sustained. In our hands, we held day-old leftover bread to feed to the ducks and ducklings. As the day died down, my little sister and I would begin to tour the home, greeting each corner and curtain. Hello to my cousin’s bunk bed, hello to my father’s collection of figurines, hello to the sailboats twirling over the steps, almost like a collection of toys hanging over a baby’s cradle. Hello to the fading map in the hallway, but then came Garfield. On the second floor window, a black and yellow cat smiled its lazy smile knowing something you probably don’t. Its eyes are closed slightly, teeming with overconfidence in daylight, brimming with malice in the night. Year after year, the house remains unchanged, but the people in it have.

My grandfather doesn’t use his armchair anymore. Nor does he use the remote to his right, or eat the candies to his left. My summertime home full of extended family suddenly felt empty without him admonishing my father for eating the wrong cheese on his bread. I would never again gather with my siblings and cousins on the floor around my grandfather’s chair and feel the bullet still lodged in his arm after the second world war. These stories would be replaced by recountings by my father and grandmother about the man my grandfather used to be. “Every Winter, the river freezes over, always leaving at least one stupid duck stuck. And every Winter, your opa would carve a hole in the ice to retrieve that stupid little duck to put it in a cardboard box under a warm lamp until it’s ready to go back to the river.” My grandfather was a dentist. Until he decided it wasn’t his passion. Then he was a doctor, not just for people, but for all sorts of animals: Hedgehogs, small pigs, tens of cats and their kittens. After he died, the small aquarium in the corner of the room disappeared, and I only discovered the glass shell years later in a cold, dark basement, still littered with my grandfather’s workshop items.

My grandfather passed away when I was in third grade. Even while my summer house in my mind froze in time while I wasn’t there, time ended up moving on. In school, my social studies classes turned into World History, touching on horrific events such as the first and second world wars, and the holocaust. It touched somewhere personal in me, knowing both my grandfather and great-grandfather fought in World War I and II. But it wasn’t a feeling of patriotism that connected me to the veterans of this country, and at first it was confusion, which shifted into inner conflict. Not all memories stride free of shadows. It was Allies versus the Axis, the United States and Germany on opposite sides of a cruel war. Something clicked as I listened to the reserved tone of my father’s stories about my grandfather. The stories my father and grandmother would tell me in German.

My grandfather, whom I referred to as Opa, was part of a group remembered for eternity in infamy. My Opa was a Nazi. He survived against all odds, wreaking death and havoc while staying breathing for my father’s life. For my life. My grandfather’s final battle was the Battle of Berlin. The higher ups knew that this was their last dance. They knew that this would be the place where history brutally extinguishes lives in glory. Begging and hoping for his safe return, my great grandmother sent Opa a care package full of meat and cheese; a luxurious spread in wartime. Seeing Opa with the package must have sparked something in my grandfather’s commanding officer. Taking the package from him, he had ordered something along the lines of, “Now go home to your family.” Soon later, news would spread that the German forces were decimated. Opa was saved by his family’s love, and he would go on to devote the rest of his life to helping others.

My grandfather, my opa, wasn’t on the right side of history. My summer home was sheltered in rural Germany, a five minute walk from the cold and dark North Sea. The bullets in his body were the ramifications of commanding a tank on the war fronts, combating the Allies hand in hand with the very troops I had grown to despise. History tells me Opa was a Nazi– creatures responsible for the deaths of millions. My memory tells me Opa was committed to being helpful. Helping my dad use the “right” cheese on his bread, helping the kids find the candy stash, helping the frozen ducks, and helping patients with toothaches to surgery. As Opa grew old and demented, he would cry out in his bed, sobbing for the deaths he caused as a surgeon, apologizing to the man he thought he saw in the corner of the room. “He died and it was my fault. I killed him!” Opa would beg my father to go back to the hospital, to try one more time, convinced that he had operated just seconds prior when in reality he had retired over 20 years ago.

I still grapple with the identity of Opa. I soothe my questioning by remembering his love for his family and his dirty black boat docked in a rickety wooden harbor, a boat that he would equip with sodas and snacks before taking my cousins and I on a ride through the North Sea, the sea salt wind blanketing us in a cool warmth. The boat hasn’t been sailed in years, bobbing at the end of the walk, slowly deteriorating and growing sullied by time. The same boat is inscribed on Opa’s tombstone; held in pristine memory in a simple sketch for him to sail forevermore, alongside the rose that I threw in right before his casket was covered in mounds and mounds of dirt. How many other roses were there, now decomposing as a tank rusts? History is driven by perspective and written by the victors. I will never know all of Opa’s history, so I choose to view and love him in his humanity. I am the champion of my summer home, gold medalist of my Opa’s love. And for me, that’s enough. We’re all made up of contradictions– his just sail deeper than mine.