19th
Your grandfather bought the most expensive insurance policy. A man from the company came over to take pictures. If anything happened, they would be able to rebuild the apartment again exactly as it was. He took a roll of film. He a picture of the floor, a picture of the fireplace, a picture of the bathtub. I never confused what I had with what I was. When the man left, your grandfather took out his own camera and started taking more pictures. What are you doing? I asked him.
Better safe than sorry, he wrote. At the time I thought he was right, but I am not sure anymore.
He took pictures of everything. Of the undersides of the shelves in the closet. Of the backs of the mirrors. Even the broken things. The things you would not want to remember. He could have rebuilt the apartment by taping together the pictures.
And the doorknobs. He took a picture of every doorknob in the apartment. Every one. As if the world and its future depended on each doorknob. As if we would be thinking about doorknobs should we ever actually need to use the pictures of them.
I don’t know why that hurt me so much.
I told him, They are not even nice doorknobs.
He wrote, But they are our doorknobs.
I was his too.
He never took pictures of me, and we didn’t buy life insurance.
