The air sirens wail like spoiled children as the snowfall beats down from English skies. In the States, Oppenheimer and his constituents are drafting the first of many blueprints of a bomb that will eventually force the Japanese out of World War II. Several thousand miles away, church bells ring for my great-grandfather and his new wife in Italy. Just like Michael Corleone in The Godfather, he is wearing his military uniform.
I pass by their wedding pictures whenever I visit him, lining the cracked wallpaper of his room in a local nursing home. He has Alzheimer’s now, and the majority of his speech consists of horrifying swear words, translated through my grandfather's constantly wincing face. I cannot understand him anymore, not like I used …show more content…
I spent more and more time emulating my grandfather as an oral historian, bombarding my mother with verbose accounts of daily adolescent life. However, as my social life suffered from a lack of interpersonal confidence, I channeled more and more of my imaginative thoughts onto paper.
Rarely did I have the time to compose a fully fleshed-out story; instead, I recalled the poetic beauty of my great-grandfather’s broken English and jotted my thoughts into journals full of lilting stanzas that I shared frequently during Poetry Club at my first high school. Then, at Mission Vista High, I found even more opportunities to flaunt my virtues as an author and storyteller.
During my first year of Speech and Debate, I placed consistently within the top three students competing in an event called Original Prose and Poetry. The topic of my speech? My grandfather and his wife, celebrating their nuptials underneath a warm Tuscan sunset, and all the magic and beauty that accompanied their marriage. I could think of no better way to honor the paragon of literary influence in my life than to immortalize himself within my speech, and as I pursue a career in written media, whether it be for television or print, I will always reflect upon his monumental influence with a teardrop of
I pass by their wedding pictures whenever I visit him, lining the cracked wallpaper of his room in a local nursing home. He has Alzheimer’s now, and the majority of his speech consists of horrifying swear words, translated through my grandfather's constantly wincing face. I cannot understand him anymore, not like I used …show more content…
I spent more and more time emulating my grandfather as an oral historian, bombarding my mother with verbose accounts of daily adolescent life. However, as my social life suffered from a lack of interpersonal confidence, I channeled more and more of my imaginative thoughts onto paper.
Rarely did I have the time to compose a fully fleshed-out story; instead, I recalled the poetic beauty of my great-grandfather’s broken English and jotted my thoughts into journals full of lilting stanzas that I shared frequently during Poetry Club at my first high school. Then, at Mission Vista High, I found even more opportunities to flaunt my virtues as an author and storyteller.
During my first year of Speech and Debate, I placed consistently within the top three students competing in an event called Original Prose and Poetry. The topic of my speech? My grandfather and his wife, celebrating their nuptials underneath a warm Tuscan sunset, and all the magic and beauty that accompanied their marriage. I could think of no better way to honor the paragon of literary influence in my life than to immortalize himself within my speech, and as I pursue a career in written media, whether it be for television or print, I will always reflect upon his monumental influence with a teardrop of