my grandfather, the veteran « Letters from Grenada

my grandfather, the veteran

I’ve had my toes in the waters of family history for a while now. I’ve written down stories as I remember them, asked my aunts, uncles, cousins, parents and sibling to share their memories, collected photographs and recipes, and even photographed some jewelry and a century-old pocket watch that my great-grandmother’s father gave her the day she began her career as a teacher.

It’s an overwhelming amount of material if you consider the whole mountain at once, but one piece at a time? Not so much.

The other week I posted this photo:

With this caption:
Definitely my grandfather.
Probably France.
Probably 1945.
Maybe Normandy.
Maybe.
Family history is hard.

A couple of hours later I posted this update: I love the internet. Many thanks to everyone who pointed out that that photo of my grandfather was taken in front of the Manneken Pis in Brussels, Belgium. The first person to tell me this was a lovely French gentleman who lives in Paris, who emailed me this morning just a few minutes after my post. At first I thought he couldn’t be right because I’ve been to Brussels and seen the Mannekin Pis and thought I would have recognized it. But then I remembered that 1) the statue had been moved while I was there so it wasn’t behind that fence, 2) my grandfather was never stationed in Belgium but he did spend one of his military leaves in Brussels.

And then I remembered a conversation we had more than ten years ago. I had just returned from my semester in Paris. We were talking about the traveling I’d done and I mentioned that a friend and I had gone to Brussels and spent an entire day wandering around the city looking for the Manneken Pis and that when we found it I couldn’t believe how small it was. He started chuckling his trademark chuckle at that; told me he knew exactly what I was talking about.

But Grandpa. You’ve never been to Belgium.
Oh, yes I have.
When?
During the war.
Really? But I thought you were stationed in France.
I was, I was. I went to Brussels on leave. For a holiday. Vacation.

By this point he’s moved past his trademark Santiago chuckle and is really laughing. And what you need to know about my grandfather for the purposes of this anecdote is that his laugh had a Puerto Rican accent. Ach. I miss him.

He went on to explain that just like me, he and a friend had wandered the city for hours looking for the fabled Manneken Pis. And that just like me, when he finally saw it he couldn’t believe it was really just a rather small statue of a little boy, peeing. I asked him what he did when he saw it. He explained,

I laughed. I took a picture. And then I went and got another drink.