“I found the storage locker where your family’s things were put. When you come, we’ll clean it out.” My aunt said over the phone, a few months before my expected arrival back ‘home’. She called me to suggest we come with empty luggage so I can take whatever is salvageable back with me.

“What things?” I had no idea what she was talking about.

“When you left the apartment; the things your aunt saved in case you came back.”

“What are you talking about? What apartment, what things, from when?

“Thirty years ago, from your home, whatever you guys left behind as you were leaving Poland. Your aunt packed it up and put it into the basement storage locker under her building?”

“Thirty years ago, it’s sat there that long. Aunty, that’s stuff’s not mine. I don’t want it. Please just throw it away.” Something inside me was beginning to ache.

“No, they were your mother’s things so now they are yours. I’m not deciding for you, you need to come and decide what you want to keep.”

“Aunty please, what could possibly be there? I have too much ‘stuff’ as it is, I don’t need more junk.”

“I don’t know that’s in there. I only opened a couple boxes; there were books, some dishes, things from your house. If you don’t want it you can throw it out. Your mother loved some of those things you know.” She knew she had me. Such an effective strategy; using my mother to get to me.

“But those aren’t my things. Someone else should go through them.”

“They were your mother’s things, so now they are your things.” She said it again, there was no escaping this. She was such a bullheaded woman, the moment she decided something would happen, come hell or high water, it was going to happen.

“Why do I have to do it?” I was almost whining. I knew I sounded like a defiant child, and even before I said this, I knew exactly what she was going to say.

“You’re the only one that comes.”

“Fine. Fine, okay, we’ll clean it out.”

I had a couple months to stew over this impending task. I had no idea what could be in so many boxes, what would have been worth the time and effort to move, why anyone would have keep something for decades. Plus, how did anything survive thirty years in those storage lockers.  

Storage locker is a generous word for these hole-in-the-ground, bunker like spaces. I knew them from my grandmothers building. Pretty much every Soviet-era block, cold, concrete monstrosities were built with these. They were the belly of the beast. Dark, except where the light crept in, musky, many had mice if not rats living in them year round and stray cats in the winters.

You couldn’t put anything down there susceptible to mould because it would be destroyed within a season. You also couldn’t put anything large; they were barely five feet by five feet, a walk in closet with rickety wooden shelves to the ceiling. Anything that didn’t fit in your apartment or wasn’t needed day to day went down there. These were each family’s’ overflow items. But let’s be honest, when I was a child people didn’t have ‘overflow’ things; they had jars of preserves, broken plumbing pieces, maybe cans of paint, some simple hands tools, plastic or metal basins stacked in each other. These were not treasure troves.

Weather exposed and with exposed wiring and dingy lighting, they were the stuff of children’s nightmares. I remember running through them, towards the light at the end, playing tag or hide-n-seek. There’s no way those basements were safe for small kids, but my earliest childhood was spent happily roaming our district, always unsupervised but in the safety of a pack of similarly aged kids. If something happened to one of us, someone would run home to find an adult. I think this was understood.  

Anyway, she was right. I was the only one that went back, year after year. I just couldn’t shake the place, the familiarity; the way when I walked those streets I was surrounded by ghosts – another life. It was instinct not conscience thought. My memories, when I tried to remember details, everything was so grey and incomplete. I never really knew if I made things up in my mind, imagined them so I could fill the gaps, or if they were real. I was only seven when we left.

The thing is, my heart knew I was born of that place. The sounds, the smells, the buildings, streets, playgrounds; so much was unchanged by time, almost untouched. Sure the vendors looked newer, there were some markets where once there were fields, but those concrete blocks, like Lego pieces, they were exactly as I remember them, walking away that last day.

I could have closed my eyes and gone home.

Sorry, had to stop writing, having a good cry.  

I decided after my son was born to start going back more often. Saving money for tickets throughout the year, we’d fly back to Poland almost every summer. At the beginning it was just him and I, until his sisters were born. We visited aunties and cousins, he / they were showered with attention and I got to hear stories about my mother and my own childhood. Every family member had albums to show; we’d spend hours over tea and baked goods, looking at pictures and reminiscing. It was my life before my other life.

Those two lives, not just past and present, but Canada and Poland weren’t connected, except by me. I was the bridge.

Anyway…  

The summer finally arrived and it was time to face the musty basement and the family treasure.

I left my kids at my cousins’ place to play and went to meet my aunty.

“Do you have a change of clothes?” she asked.

“No, why?”

“Oh you’ll see, it’s awful down there.”

‘Great’, I thought, ‘just great’.

She wasn’t exaggerating. She unlocked the door, door being the word I use to describe thin wood slats nailed together with cardboard on the inside to keep other people from looking. It was an honour system really that stopped people from breaking into each other’s lockers, that, or the knowledge that little of value was ever to be found down there.

“See those boxes, those are yours.”

Boxes upon boxes stacked six feet towards the ceiling. The ones at the bottom water damaged, covered in black mould.

“Why was this left here for so long?” I asked in disbelief.

“I don’t know, maybe your aunty forgot about it. I didn’t know it was here until a few months ago.”

PAUSE: My mother had / has (do I use present tense for her even though she is gone? I don’t know.) two sisters, she was the middle child. Yay middle child club! The sister who packed our home after we left was her older sister, now in her sixties, immobilized by Parkinson’s. She is my Godmother and next to my late grandmother, she loves me most. (I can claim that here and no one can argue.)

The sister who was insisting on this cleanup was my mother’s younger sister. She had resettled in Canada with her family in the 80’s as well, before we arrived. But a few years ago she was told she needed to return to Poland to look after her aging mother and ill sister.

See in Poland things are very different. For the most part the elderly or the sick are cared for by family members, everyone living together. There is very limited institutional care, not that anyone would want that for their relative, nor would it be ‘acceptable’. If you have so much as a third cousin, you go life with them. It is their responsibility to care for you. The people in the government homes were believed to be absolutely alone. So, despite the fact that there were no immediate relatives in Poland any longer, the lone daughter and sister that remained, was called back. It didn’t matter if it was good timing or not, there was little notice, and absolutely zero choice in the matter.

Plus, and maybe it’s all talk but my whole life I’ve heard terribly stories of the neglect suffered by anyone who ended up in such a place.  

So when my aunt got a call from an uncle in Poland, on some random Tuesday, that her mother and sister were unwell and needed care, by Friday she was already there. She left with a small bag of clothes. That was years ago and she hasn’t come back to Canada since.

“What do we do with this?” I asked her as I wedged myself into the small space, reaching for random boxes and beginning to open them.

“Whatever is mouldy and destroyed, we’ll carry out to the bins. If somethings are okay, they’re yours. You take them home. Give them to your siblings.”

‘Uuuuuhhhhhhhhh’ I complained under my breath but I didn’t argue back.

“Aunty, you know I’m here with three small kids. No, I can’t take a lot back. If they (my four siblings) want any of this, let them come and get it.”

“You won’t take ‘your’ mother’s things back to her children…” she said, with that awful tone she uses when she’s manipulating me. Guilt tripping, of course, so effective. Yup, I’d never hear the end of this. I could see that whatever survived the thirty year lock-up needed a display cabinet. Artifacts honouring my mother’s memory; she knew this was the easiest way to get to me.

“Let’s just see if there’s anything to even carry across the ocean,” I said, opening the first box. She won.

Books, more books, magazines – everything was almost black with mould.

“Shouldn’t we be wearing masks?” I asked her, the dust kicking up around us.

“Probably, just keep going. I think that box is no good, we’ll carry it out to the bin.” She wasn’t one for asking nicely or anything. I handed it to her and she started a ‘toss’ pile. Onto the next box; more books, toss again.

Finally, my hands caked with dust and my eyes burning from whatever fell into them as I stood on a makeshift ladder to reach the highest shelves, I opened a box with something other than books.

I sat there, on the cold rough concrete floor, starring at it.

In an instant, my grey, incomplete, uncertain childish memories crystallized.  

Amongst the dishes, cups, plates, there was a set of colourful bowls shaped like apples.

The apple bowls.

I reached for them, my hand was shaking, and pulled them out. My aunt was busying herself elsewhere.

Like a piece of fabric, my body draped over the box, its full weight handing over it. I dissolved, clutching the bowls. Tears ran from my eyes.  

The seven year old child in me knew and loved those bowls. They once held ice cream, bread slices, cut up peaches from my grandparent’s garden. They were real, not something I had imagined.

I stayed that way for a few minutes.

“Dorotka, what are you doing?” my aunt’s voice brought me back to reality.

“These bowls, do you remember these bowls?” I lifted them into the light.

“Yah, your mom loved those bowls.”

“I did too.”

I started a ‘keep’ pile.

………………………………………….. to be continued tomorrow…………………….…………….