National Geographic Magazine, Source https://flickr, Author Jake Jakubowski (PD)
WARNING: Graphic Images
“But whoever causes one of these little ones who believe in Me to sin, it would be better for him if a millstone were hung around his neck, and he were drowned in the depth of the sea” (Matt. 18: 6).
As the superintendent of an apartment building downtown, my grandfather knew a number of well-to-do people.
To anyone who would listen, he spoke of his grandchildren. “Annalein loves books. Our little one loves music.” All the building’s tenants knew that he was the one to seek out, if they were discarding anything his granddaughters might like.
By this means, Grandpa brought home milk glass decanters still smelling faintly of exotic perfumes. He brought home a bright orange dress, just a decade out of date; silk scarves, frayed but still lovely.
Grandpa salvaged an entire set of arts and crafts style crockery from the dustbin. Margaret and I played at “Heidi,” with secondhand furniture my grandfather had procured standing in for the mountains.
National Geographic
Greater than all these treasures were the National Geographic Magazines Grandpa regularly brought home. I lived for these. They disclosed a world of wonders, the photography breathtaking.
Most striking to me were the photos of African women, their lips artificially distended by huge plates. The article described the disfigurement as an avidly sought after, if local, affectation. It failed to mention that this beauty ritual had originated as a desperate effort by local peoples to dissuade slave-traders from carrying off their women.
Self-mutilation as self-defense was an approach I would adopt, as well. While I never actually engaged in “cutting” (self-harm), I did develop weight issues which had the same effect.
I learned in school of other cultures, also. There were, for example, the Vikings. In the sixth grade my grandfather helped me fashion a Viking longship out of cardboard.
It did not occur to me I should delay turning in the project until it was due, so the ship sat forlornly on a school windowsill until the rest of the fleet arrived, a week later.
Behind the Iron Curtain
Many years after he emigrated to the States, my grandfather returned on a visit to Hungary. This took him behind the Iron Curtain, still in place at the time. Standing in an open field, he commented to a relation on the wheat crop. “Shhh,” was the hasty reply. “They may hear you.”
Bigotry
All this information I drank in — forming opinions about equality and freedom, power and the abuse of it, while my father railed against any race or ethnicity different from his own. According to Pop, “they” were responsible for the ills of the world. Continue reading
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