About losing and finding again
I hope I've only misplaced it and not lost it. Did it slip through the torn lining of my jacket? Was it stolen from me? Or did my son, God forbid, auction it off on the internet in a weak moment?
It is the somewhat unconventional wristwatch from the late 1940s that I took over after the death of my Finnish grandfather. A gold-plated, hand-wound men's watch, the leather strap was already brittle and the glass had a strange dullness. The second hand lagged a little, so that you were always late with the time.
My grandfather lost pretty much everything at the front - except his watch.
You could see its age, in a good way, just like older men in black and white photos from the 1940s. I never wore the watch, I was too afraid of looking dressed up with it on my slender wrist. But just the thought of owning it was reassuring.
My grandfather supposedly wore them during the so-called Winter War, when the Soviet Union tried to conquer Finland in a blitzkrieg in the bitterly cold winter of 1939. The Finns, unprepared and ill-equipped, faced the arch-enemy on skis. Right at the front: my grandfather.
The clock in the trench and other memories
As far as I can remember, he had never spoken to us grandchildren about the Second World War. But on the evening of my confirmation, after several glasses of wine and a few cognacs, he stood up and began to tell us: «It was so cold that we dug pits in the frozen ground at the front and the three of us lay on top of each other to keep each other warm. We changed positions every few minutes so that the top man didn't freeze to death - I looked at this wristwatch to keep track of the time. And when the shells flew over us, we sang ...»
(At this point, my grandfather launched into a guttural «Vårt land, vårt land, vårt fosterland» - the national anthem of Finland. Everyone at our table looked agonised, my mother sighed heavily and stamped her feet). I would like to abbreviate my grandfather's speech, which was dripping with war hysteria and nationalism: he lost pretty much everything at the front - except his watch.
I really hope that I have only misplaced it and not lost it. In my search for the watch, I have come to the conclusion that there is a difference between misplacing and losing. There are things that I have irrevocably lost in the course of my life: a laptop, a job, about two years of happy life due to self-pitying heartbreak, my inner voice, a lot of money, all grandfathers.
And then there are things that I thought I had lost but had actually just misplaced. Things that later reappeared as if by magic, at the exact moment I stopped looking for them: my favourite Sublime CD, the will to live, childhood memories of my grandfather. And, perhaps, his watch.
