|
|
|
|
Articles: Moral Stories | My Father's Gift
- Mr. Kiran Ravuri
| |
“During the first week of walking, it was awkward between us. My father said almost nothing. He wasn’t unfriendly, but he was remote. He wasn’t used to having a son, as I wasn’t used to having a father. He began to ask me questions, to find out who I was. And I think I surprised him, for I’d read a lot.”
Glodek looked at Janet. “You probably don’t know much about Poland, do you?” She shook her head. “Well, we aren’t like Russia. We weren’t a nation of illiterate serfs. Back when the Roman Catholic priests came north, they taught us to read while they were teaching us religion.
“I walked behind my father, and I remember the day that he said to come forward and walk next to him. Of course, I wanted to hear about my family, so he told me about my mother and how he’d met her, this pretty girl from the next town, and how amazed he was that she would marry him, a baker from Nizkowice. And he told me about my grandfather, also a baker, ‘who couldn’t make a loaf without a lecture,’ always talking to my father about God, family, honor, and country. My father said that he knew every speech by heart, but he never minded hearing them, for my grandfather believed every word. And as my father grew up, the words in his head gradually made more sense.
“We walked northwest, to Warsaw. I couldn’t believe that such a place even existed. Such big buildings, and so many people! We followed the Vistula River out of Warsaw, but when it turned north, we continued west, across Poland. We passed battlefields, forests that had been shelled into oblivion, and thousands of graves. I remember one farmer complaining to us that every time he tried to work his field, he just kept plowing up bones.
“It was mid-October when we reached Germany, and colder now. We went south of Berlin, through Leipzig, Kassel, and Köln, and the walking was getting harder on my father. He was coughing a lot, but we didn’t stop. He showed me on the maps where he’d fought and where he’d endured the winters. He told me about the years in the trenches, about the mud and barbed-wire, and always sleeping with his coat over his head because of the rats.
| Be first to comment on this Article!
| |
|
|
|
 |
| Advertisements |
|
|
|
|
| Advertisements |
|
