How I learned to connect with my grandfather

I never met my German grandfather. He passed away long before I was born. And yet, I always felt drawn to him. 

Every Friday, for the past few months, I’ve sat down with my mother asking her questions about his life. I was learning so many interesting details but something was missing. 

Memories of our family members are how we connect with them long after their passing. They are like bridges between the past and the present. But I didn’t have shared memories with my grandfather. In order to truly connect with him, I needed to build other kinds of bridges.

The bridge of place. I always felt at home in New York City. My grandfather moved to New York sixty-six years ago to start a new job at the German consulate. My mother and him would meet in Central Park Zoo by the sea lions pool and go for lunch. This pool is still here today. In the summer, they would spend the day at Jones beach. A couple of years ago, we went back there with my mother. It was an important moment for her, it was one for me too. Just like the sea lions pool, this particular place was a bridge to my grandpa, a physical space where I could connect with him. 

The bridge of thought. How did grandfather make sense of the world? What did he believe in? Recently my mother found a letter he wrote her when she was one year old. “Keep your freedom in the face of the ideas of the masses”, he wrote, “you’ll often feel lonely but this loneliness is as pure and clear as the air in the mountains”. He goes on to talk about the necessity to live in harmony with nature and to reject ideas erecting barriers between people based on race, religion and nationality. These lines that I’ve read again and again are a bridge to my grandfather’s thoughts. They were written in the aftermath of the most destructive war in human History and yet they still ring eerily relevant today. 

The bridge of habit. What was a typical thing for my grandfather to do? When he stumbled upon something he didn’t know, he would reach for his encyclopedia and read the enlightening passage out loud. He loved doing things with his hands. He cooked, ironed his clothes and fixed stuff regularly. He also religiously polished his shoes. I know that because my mother pointed out years ago that I seemed to display the same weird obsession. I’m not sure which one encouraged the other, the habit or the story. All I know is that I’ve always taken great pride in the act of making my shoes shine.