“It’s a beautiful gift, the ability to express yourself in written form. It lends itself to the ability to think deeply and comprehend complex ideas!” my sister texted me after reading my blog about our grandmother. “This is good therapy for all of us.”

She also sent several corrections, further ‘fact checking, and suggestions to content. I exhaled.

“Perfection is the enemy of progress,” I texted back. I wasn’t trying to be dismissive, but I had enough voices in my own head telling me all the reasons why I shouldn’t write, I didn’t need another reason to doubt myself.

“Yes it is.” She replied.

“I’m far more interested in your heart’s response not your brain’s – does it matter – kings cheese or imperial – imperial is kingly, it doesn’t matter, yet there you got stuck.” I was getting defensive. By the late evenings I’m often exhausted owing to such early mornings. Of late, my energy was lower; these strolls down memory lane, however wonderful, were also terribly painful for me.

“Like I said, for every one write there are a thousand critics.” I added in a second text. I was getting snotty.

“I didn’t get stuck. I find Your writing to be a great gift for the family and I thought it wouldn’t hurt to have my minor input. I hope You are not offended.” She capitalized the “Y” on both ‘Your’ and ‘You’, she was making a point. In Polish, there is the ‘casual you’ and the ‘respectful you’ – I knew she was coming from a good place; I was just too tired to hear this in that moment.

“Can I call You?” she sent another message. Another capital ‘Y’.

I called her on the video chat so we could see each other’s expressions – so much communication is non-verbal. My kids were in bed, I was in bed, it was only after 8 p.m., but like I said before, these eleven days of writing have been a trying journey into the past for me.

Despite the fact that we are 40-ish years old and not petty children, we poked fun at each other and still argued over the most absurd things. I think siblings stay that way for life. It’s kinda great.

Between her and I was always the debate of who got how much attention growing up.  

After giving her a half smile I said “Listen, is this going to be like my therapy, when you tried to come in and talk about your stuff, but it was my therapy. These are my memories, you can write your own memoir.”

We’ve had dozens of laughter-filled conversations about how I was referred to a psychologist in junior high (Remember that my mother was dying and my life was falling apart, I wasn’t coping well) and for one session, she suggested bringing in the whole family to talk about how to support me. In summary, barely a minute into the discussion and my sister launched into what she feeling, how she was or wasn’t coping, what her problems were, why she needed therapy too. No doubt she also needed therapy, but sheeesh, this was my moment. ‘Maybe at the end of the session you ask for your own’, unbelievable. She took over the entire conversation, and this one hour was supposed to be about me. I was the youngest daughter, I was deeply depressed, I couldn’t keep my shit together at school.  

Anyway, siblings, they know how to steal your thunder…

“Why can’t it be our memoir? Why can’t I insert a little bit of my stuff?” She asked / implied.

“You can’t ‘insert’ your stuff into my memories, that doesn’t make any sense. That’s not how it works!”

“Why not, I’ll give you some ideas.” She was trying to sell the co-writing thing, but I wasn’t having any of it.

“You know this is unbelievable,” I was laughing. “How long do you think each blog takes me to write? Let’s start with this, how long does it take you to read it? Ten minutes? Maybe?”

“Yah, eight to ten minutes. I know, I know, I’m sure it takes much longer to write.”

“Oh no, not much longer to write; your ten minutes of reading takes me about six hours of writing, thinking, fact checking, doing background research, looking for pictures to include.”

“Wow, that’s a lot of work; so, that’s why this should be our memoir.” She was being very clever.

“Oh hell no, you are not latching onto my memories. Plus a memoir is one person’s memory, their perspectives, their emotions, their thoughts. You can write your own book.”

I wasn’t being super mature in the moment, but siblings have a way of bringing out the ‘best’ in us. I’m quite certain when we are in eighties we’ll still argue about the stuff we did or didn’t do as kids. The body ages, but the mind, hmmmm, I’m not quite so sure it does. Plus she and I were like two peas in a pod most of our lives, bickering was part of how we showed we loved each other.

“You’re mixing my stories with your own anyway, so it’s my memoir too.” She wasn’t asking anymore. This is how she always gets what she wants, just slides in through the side door.

“I am not. I can remember these things very clearly.” I could, I mean, I was absolutely certain of the things I was certain of. Circular thinking I know.

“Are you gonna write the lion story?” She was getting playfully agitated; this was going to be a fight, a funny one.

“Of course, it’s my story.”

“No, no, no, not the lion story! This is unbelievable, that was me; that is my story.” She was shouting while laughing, almost to the point of happy crying.

“It was not, it was me, it happened to me.” I was losing it too.

“I remember clearly the warm pee,” she was contorting her face.

“I remember the pee and I don’t think it was pee.”

“What was it?”

“Marking liquid,” I said with absolute confidence. That’s the thing about me, when I feel certain of something; I say it like it is fact, indisputable.

“Oh great, so now you’re a lion expert; it wasn’t pee, it was ‘marking liquid’, what does that even mean? Doesn’t matter, that is my story.”

“It is mine; I dropped the ice cream, I cried, grandma laughed. I remember it.”

“I had the ice cream. Damn it, I probably told you my story and now you think it’s your own.”

“I wrote about it university too and I drew an illustration, it is my memory.”

“Just great, grandma is gone, aunty doesn’t remember anything, the other aunty can’t speak, there are no witnesses, where are all the witnesses?” We were laughing so hard I could hardly breathe.

“So it’s down to memory, and that one is mine.” I wasn’t going to give up the lion story, that one is gold. Just wait, it’s coming.

“Uhhh, even when we asked grandma, she couldn’t remember. ‘It was one of you’ that was her answer. No one remembers. Fine, we’ll split it.”

“What, no, you can’t split a memory. It happened to me, it’s my memory.” It was important to lay this issue to rest once and for all.

“It’s like that king and the baby and the two mothers. Fine you can have it.”

“King Solomon from the bible? Oh great, so you’re the mother that gives up the baby which makes you the real mother? I don’t think so.” When the arguments got biblical, we were scraping the bottom of the barrel.

“That’s right, it was my memory but you can have it for your book.” She was being very high and mighty now.

Victory.

“Oh yah, and I bet you’re going to tell me that the story of me vomiting in grandma’s dress on the tram was also yours?”

“What the hell, that was me!!! This is unbelievable. I vomited in grandma’s dress on the bus on the way to Goluchow.” She was in for the fight of her life.

“No, it was me and I vomited on her on the tram, by the theatre bridge, I remember it well.” I asserted.

“Oh the theatre bridge, that’s so poetic, yah, that makes it a real memory! You’re already adding stuff.” She was being so snooty, really immature. Fine, I wasn’t exactly being mature either. We were both falling over in hilarious laughter.

“I remember it, I vomited onto her lap, she was sitting, we had to get off the tram; she was holding her dress scooped up to keep it from dripping everywhere. I was there.”

“Seriously, does a person get motion sick on a tram? No, no they don’t. You can’t get motion sick on a tram. I got motion sick on the bus. People get motion sick on buses and in cars. I vomited on grandma on the bus.”

“What are you the vomiting expert? You can get sick on a tram, why not?” Said expert one to expert two.

“No you can’t. I’m telling you, it happened to me; that is my memory.” Futile, her efforts were futile. I had this one too.

“Why can’t we just agree that we both vomited on grandma?” A reasonable solution I figured.  

“Fine, but just so you know, you’re writing about my life, this is my memoir.”

“I am not! It is not!”

“Oh yes you are, these are my memories, we’re basically one person.” Point taken.

“Maybe, since no one else can tell us who lived what life. I’m also thinking of going through grandma’s letters, to add her bits of wisdom into the stories.” I was moving the conversation along.

“Noooooo, this is my project, I already started it. ‘Grandma’s Life Lessons’.” She had a title; that does not ‘a project make’.

“You can do your own project. I have my own letters from her.” My grandmother wrote to us both; that said, sometimes she would slide carbon paper and we’d get the same letter. I know, I saw her do it. Then she’d individualized the ending, clever woman.  

“I told you about this and now you’re taking it.” My sister was throwing around unsubstantiated accusations.

“No, I told you that I translated mom’s letters and then I would start on grandmas. Have you started translating them?”

“Yes.”

“Okay, so show me.” This was always the way to disprove her, show we what you’ve done.

“So you can steal them for your memoir?” She shot back, laughing.

“If you want it to be our memoir you’re going to have to do some real work. Are you fact checker or copy editor?”

“What do I have to do?” Now we were getting somewhere.

“The fact checker does the historical research. Like when I wrote that grandma lived in their apartment since ‘the end of the 60’s’ – I had to research the neighbourhood, find a historical page about its development and read it in Polish to find out when it was constructed, or at least the buildings they lived in. The low-rises off Slowianska Street were finished first, including building number eight. Are you going to do the fact checking? Or, the copy editor edits for grammar, verb tense, conjugation, sentence structure, punctuation; all that.”

“Oh, I can’t do that, I don’t know any of that stuff. I won’t be able to find the mistakes.”

“So fact checker – do you want to be the fact checker? And it can’t be your memory versus my memory. You will have to find witnesses or online references.”

“So you are trying to be factually correct?”

“Well, I’m not trying NOT to be factually correct. I rather not write something down if I don’t think it’s true. I knew grandma moved into the apartment when it was newly built, I knew mom was still a teenager when they left Goluchow and came to Poznan. I put the puzzle pieces together.”

“So how can you say the lion story is yours?” she asked. Back to the lion story, of course. Pretty sure we’re going to argue about this one forever. I swear she has more of the middle child syndrome than I do, but I’m actually the middle child.

“Some things can’t be confirmed. That’s okay. Then it’s just on my memory to get it right.”

“My memory doesn’t count?”

“Not in my memoir, not it doesn’t.”

“I’m really happy you’re writing our memoir.” She laughed. Smartass.

“Ummmmhmmm, don’t you dare come out of the woodwork with… ‘this is my life’.”

We were laughing so hard, it was a brilliant way to end the day. Some conversations, with some people, are so effortless. The banter, the jabs; we were the witnesses to some much of each other’s lives. I ended the call; it was after 9 p.m. (I could hear my grandmother yelling joyfully from another room in another time, ‘północ, północ’ [midnight, midnight]). Yup, time to sleep, to dream, then to wake and keep the conversations going.

As I drifted off, I pondered, ‘memory is such a fickle thing.’ It’s not just the work of the mind; it’s as much the story of the heart. Imperfect. An imperfect match.

And its voice is the voice of the person who brings it to life, from one perspective.

I knew I’d get some details wrong, that was inevitable. But some of my memories I would defend to the end, because I could feel them. Even if I couldn’t prove their accuracy beyond a shadow of a doubt, I carried them in my bones. The sounds, the smells, the textures of those moments, they were a part of me. I only needed to close my eyes and there I was; the painting came into focus, the colours filled the sky, the world started moving. It was magic.

So yah, even at the risk of getting it wrong, I decided I’d keep writing. These are the conversations of my life. All the joy of transcribing them, giving them a second life, all that joy, the pain, the hurt, and the healing, they live in the process.

I’m really not invested in the finished product; what a gift it is just to remember.