Memory Story
Lou Cove
I own just one relic left behind by my Grandpa Wini: the “life story” I made him recite into their Flat-Mic cassette recorder.
I had that tape for ten years. I could never bring myself to listen it.
Until now.
“On my first day of kindergarten,” he began, “I was sent home with a piece of tape across my mouth and a note pinned to my sweater that said, ‘Send him back when he can speak English’ because all I could speak was…Yiddish.”
What I didn’t know was how much I almost never knew. That little piece of tape sealed his true story. Just forty-two words, yet enough to unlock an entirely new understanding of someone I thought I knew.
What’s something you learned from asking your elders?