Unproductive Nostalgia

While I was growing up in the house, there was a drawer in the kitchen that was filled with stuff, all sorts of articles that could not find their own place on the planet, besides a drawer full of similar lost and unused orphans.

In there, medals, an eyeglass, an old pocket knife, a cigarette case, an ammeter, ronson lighters with no flints, emery boards, a map of Liverpool, an AA key or two, a magnifying glass, an assorted medley of Yale keys, a padlock without a key, chains and old broken watches, knobs and buttons, lost years and dreams, secret wishes and dashed hopes, smiles tears and heartache, love.

I always found those medals, I think they were my dads, he was in the war you know, well, when I was my age they all were.

In Palestine, my dad probably never thought that one day he would have a medal for driving his half track around the Middle East, a force of British Men far from home and their loved ones, shocked by the hardships and horrors of the preceding seven years of war and the ongoing bombings at hotels full of civilians.

The King David Hotel. July 22nd, 1946.

Those medals, I believe, meant nothing to my dad, he threw them in that drawer, after keeping them in another drawer, in our previous house in Liverpool, a long time after the Ministry sent him his wartime parting gifts along with an ill fiiting demob suit and a cardboard suitcase.

Thanks.

Medals in drawers through time.