7th Place Winner: Nadine Zylberberg

Aviators

A pair of sunglasses. Old, worn-out aviators with a rusty frame and loose nails. It was this pair of sunglasses that told me more than anyone or anything else could about my heritage, and, subsequently, about myself.

One December morning, as I rummaged through my grandparents' unused items, I came across a pair of sunglasses: old, but fashionable nonetheless. I asked my grandfather if I could keep them, seeing as how their home for the past decade or so had been the drawer in which I had found them. Unlike his response to the dozens of other objects that I had asked for, he hesitated and finally refused to let me take them home. Somewhat disappointed, I accepted the fact and let the subject alone.

Two days later, however, he approached me, sunglasses in hand, and offered them to me. Knowing that there must have been some sentimental meaning buried within the dusty lenses, I declined the offer. But my grandfather, like many other grandparents, refused to take no for an answer. He took my hand and made sure I accepted what I would soon find to be a very meaningful gift. He turned to me, and, with what looked like a pained expression, told me that those sunglasses, the ones that lay squarely in the palm of my hand, had been given to him by an American soldier at a refugee camp in Germany in 1948, three years after the end of the Holocaust. I knew of the travails he had suffered and everything he had lost during that time, and an unspoken understanding between us indicated the immense discomfort that this subject gave him. So we immediately moved on to discussing my schoolwork.

Two-and-a-half years later, the sunglasses now rest safely on a shelf in my bedroom, no longer the designer-like pair I had longed for years before. Today, they are a collection of symbols: the tinted lenses, a view of the world from a new light; the loose frame, a message that life may not always be stable but that one's hopes must be; the worn-out nose pieces, a tangible connection to the first time those sunglasses were given as a gift, exactly sixty years earlier. Just as those sunglasses had allowed my grandfather to see the world with a newfound hope after a time that left many devoid of optimism, they remind me that hope is ingrained within me. They serve as a constant reminder of why I should always approach the world with open eyes and an open mind.

To this day, the message embedded within my grandfather's sunglasses makes me channel my innate inclination to never give up in the face of adversity. No prejudice against me or my heritage, no intellectual challenge, no emotional circumstance will keep from living with a constant belief in a positive outcome. Any obstacle or burden only makes me stronger because of the way I view the world, which is the way my grandfather viewed the world, through a pair of rusty old aviators.