Close Enough

A faded brown journal that fits in the palm of my hand. Strips of black electrician's tape holding the binding intact. On the cover, inked in neat, black, block letters: PROPERTY OF I. ROTH, SIGNAL CORPS, PHOTO DIV., #709689. Inside, the beautiful script of my grandfather, Isidore Roth. His penmanship is perfect -- gently slanted to the right, every "i" dotted, every "t" crossed. A deliberate, careful writer whose hand reveals none of the impatience or contradictory impulses apparent in my own difficult handwriting. Seventy-one pages and never once does his handwriting convey any fluctuation in mood, not even when he chronicles eleven days on board a ship from New York to France. He writes of seasickness and minimal sleep, warning sirens that sent destroyers out searching for submarines, a fellow soldier that is murdered, two air strikes in Paris. He makes blatant declarations of racism. All of this in his neat even scripts. Was he unflappable? Was he an obsessive/compulsive? Was he insufferably dull?

What I know of my grandfather I know only from bits and pieces my mother has inadvertently dropped over the years, a meagre trail I have followed believing it might lead somewhere important or inspirational. Photos of a small, thin man wearing round glasses. A silent film he produced of his family over a series of summer vacations. A film-developer by trade who supposedly harbored dreams of Hollywood. A copy of his marriage certificate containing names and dates pertinent to his existence. My mother's memory of him sleeping on the couch for most of his marriage. A few letters he wrote to his wife during the war. An inexplicable photo of him naked, reclining on a diving board, with the words "Puerto Rico" written on the back. And this slim journal.

Who was this man who could travel by train all day in France through the most beautiful country he ever imagined existed, and write: "No wonder the Germans are after it"? Who ran to the roof during a nighttime air raid and exalted at the sight of the city, lit up and burning? Who described the girders of a bombed out building "like twisted tissue paper"? Who shrugged off the bayonetting of a fellow soldier with no hint of emotion? Who referred to the black soldiers with language that shames me and makes me secretly glad he died before I was born so that I wasn't influenced by him?

I have read every word in his journal, including the numbered list in the back, detailed descriptions of photographs he shot. (Sign which first marked grave of Lt. Quentin Roosevelt, Chamery, France, 8/9/18. View showing the ruins of St. Remy. German tank captured by the Australians at Monument Woods, July 14th.) I have rifled through the pages so that his name, written on the edge, comes together, an animator's little flip book. I have followed this trail of crumbs to my kitchen in the summer of 1998. Eighty summers since he filled these pages with his fountain pen. He would have been a young man, only 24, full of dreams, his whole life ahead. No wife yet. No child. I tuck the journal away in a drawer where I keep photos and news clippings. Perhaps this is the closest I'll ever get to knowing him. Perhaps this is close enough.
by Roberta L. Sims