(memory) room

Memory Room

Meta

Friday, February 8, 2008

I remember Meta always wore a wig. Before my mother was born she lost her first born to World War II. Meta was also married once before she married Bill, my grandfather.

Bill was an army cook stationed in Denmark after the war.

Meta’s first husband, the one before Bill, died in the same war as her first born son.

War never seems to have a happy end but Meta married my grandfather seven days after they met. I think they wanted to play a joke on God.

Meta was a spy for the Danish underground--at least that’s what Meta told my mother who then told me after Meta died. And I believed her because Meta was that kind of woman--a Diana Prince in disguise.

Meta said the Nazis sterilized her in the concentration camp after she was captured for spying, which is why she had to adopt my mother years later when she wanted to have another kid and couldn’t. Meta gambled a lot to forget the past and I remember she owed a tidy debt for my grandfather when she passed.

I don’t remember the name of her first husband or her first born son, but I have a photo album with pictures of them. When I thumb through Meta’s photo album I’m aware that if it were not for the war there would be different memories. Possibly her first born son would have passed this album along to his children instead.

The life Meta would have had before she met and married my grandfather is in front of me, a son, a husband, and conversations in another language. I am unimagined in this space, these black and white images tell another story which is also mine in a way.

Meta tried to forget her past when she moved to America but I have the photographs that prove otherwise. He was a gorgeous little boy with a boy’s smile and white locks, as cute as any baby. And her first husband was a handsome man with a Clark Kent physique and black rimmed spectacles. He was Hollywood-esque and reminds me of a silent film era actor.

I look nothing like him.

--Neil de la Flor