"Wartime"

     JPZ was a man always ready to set up a photoshoot.  This print has no labeling, so we study and infer.

     Is this the downstairs apartment on May Street?  I don't recognize or remember that archway.  Was it the house on St. Louis Street, which I never saw?

     John Zdrojewski, our JPZ, is alone in this photo.  He has posed himself as the only human figure, but not prominent. The objects surrounding him are prominent.  They define and describe his situation.

     He is seated quietly, studying a scrapbook.  He is relaxed in an armchair, yet he is formally dressed and exhibits sober attitude and posture.  So, his situation is a bit formal and sober, even though domestic.  I think I recognize the scrapbook as the one that has come down to us, of his son Eugene's own photos of his Second World War service experience.  The photo portrait on the wall is of Gene in uniform, right there by the Flag.

     The other framed item, a religious print, features light streaming in through the window of a church.  That image is used often in paintings to symbolize the Holy Spirit, the "Light that Shines in the Darkness."

     All that is in the background.  The vast middle ground consists of empty living room.  JPZ is showing us how empty the house is.

     I wish we knew some more dates.  Were there years during which Julia was dead, Gene was at war, and Casey was away at school St. John Kanty's?  Empty living room, indeed.

     The grandfather clock is the star of the foreground, and perhaps of the entire scene.  Time certainly rules this space for this man.  He has to make it through - how much time?  for the war to end, and then - what will life be like then?

     JPZ, cabinetmaker and descendant of cabinetmakers, made that clock.  He was just finishing it up on the kitchen table of the house on St. Louis Street when his firstborn, Eugene, entered the world.  Now he and the clock wait for the return of that child.

     Julie