I could never have imagined seeing the apple bowls again, and there they were in my hands. After a few minutes, I set them aside. Many mouldy boxes later and a growing toss pile; they were the first things to go into my keep pile.

I kept sorting through the box of household items.

Cups, plates, small containers, knickknacks, little figurines; things my mom likely enjoyed.   

There was a tin, not labeled on the outside so I opened it; loose tea. And there was a plastic container with black grinds, ‘could that be coffee?’ I thought. I licked the tip of my finger (I know, so gross, sorry) and picked up a few bits. It was real coffee.

Coffee was a precious commodity, I remember that well. Limited quantities were rationed per family. Day to day we drank Kawa Inka, a roasted mixture of rye, barley, chicory, and sugar beet. It was a tasty brown warm liquid, but it wasn’t coffee. It didn’t give off that incredible aroma that coffee does, that lingers in the air. My mother only brought it out the real stuff for special guests. It had to be quite the occasion.

But as rare as coffee was, rarer yet were oranges. There was one orange rationed per family, once per year. It was a gift from the Polish People’s Republic at Christmas time. One orange, not one pound or one kilogram, but one piece of fruit per household, no matter the number of household members. We were six by the time we left. Our orange was carefully peeled and segmented, then we’d sit together slowly eating the sun.

We left behind coffee, unused. Why? How much notice did my mother get to pack and leave, to rejoin my father in Germany?

It must have been just like that.

Our lives, the places we knew, visits with family, summers in the country with my grandparents, it all ended.

One day we were there, and the next we were gone.

Gone.

Did the neighbours know I wondered? They couldn’t have, no one could know we were leaving.

I didn’t know. I left behind my toys, my collection of colourful glass tiles that I picked off the sides of the buildings.

We were “going on holiday”, that’s what I was told, probably what the neighbours were told, to keep up the ruse.

Once the toss pile was large enough, we picked up what we could and headed to the bins, to make room to sort more boxes.

The bins were down a long corridor, up a flight of stairs, out an exterior door, and about a hundred feet from the building. They stood off the side of the parking lot.

I squinted. My eyes needed to adjust to the bright mid-afternoon sun. We had been in that dark basement for hours.  

I was completely covered in dust. Had I thought someone I knew might see me; I might have been embarrassed, but no knew me here. I didn’t know anyone anymore either.

I looked up at the towering building. ‘The Administration’ had changed the exterior. They were doing that nowadays I had noticed, in many districts, adding new exteriors to the same old buildings. Inside nothing changed. They were provided by the government, somewhat, I think people had to pay into the cost of their apartment somehow. After Poland regained independence from the Soviet Union, they were converted to condos, and families had to “buy” them again. That’s what I’ve understood from my grandmother’s stories.

The Administration said the new exteriors increased the building’s insulating qualities, my aunt explained. ‘Yah right’ I thought, highly doubtful. I was raised to be skeptic of anything The Administration sold as a good idea. We were subjected to so much propaganda; it made it difficult to trust anything.  

“Did no one really look at this stuff for thirty years?” I asked my aunt as we walked back in.

“Nope, your aunt forgot about it years ago. I didn’t know it was down here until someone in The Administration reminded me there was extra storage room in the basement.”

“Hmm” what else could I say?

We weren’t just sorting boxes, there was food. Jars of preserves labeled with the name of the fruit and the year of canning. Peaches ’82, Berries ’83, Strawberry Jam ‘85.

“Why did she make all these” I asked, recognizing my mother’s hand writing on the labels.

“Those were ‘czasy wojenne’ [war times], or just after. We always made as much as we, for the winter, just in case.”

I didn’t ask more. I wanted to, I wanted to understand more, but the few times I had asked my aunt questions about life before we left, she didn’t much want to talk about it. ‘I don’t really remember’, she often said.   

“Can we try them?” I picked one that looked like it might be delicious, and maybe still good. I thought ‘imagine, I will eat mama’s food, her jam.’ My mouth was watering; I was terribly hungry and curious if the preserves kept.

“Are you mad!” my aunt wasn’t a particularly sentimental person. “Do you want to get food poisoning or drink vinegar, because that’s all that’s in there.”

I was disappointed.

In hindsight I should have opened the jar and tried it. Sure, I could have gotten sick, but I think I’d smell the fermentation before I’d get close to eating it. I was a grown-ass woman, more than capable of making my own decisions, yet around my aunt, this aunt, I was made to feel so incapable.  

We’re like oil and water, she and I.

It’s not that she wanted me to fall flat on my face in life, but when I did, there was a tinge of satisfaction present on her face. She often and not so delicately reminded me of my hardships. This was another reason I dreaded the basement clean out. I could never be sure when she’d say something nasty. I had to stay guarded around her, my mother’s sister, how I wished it hadn’t needed to be so.

I put the jar back. She said she’d deal with them later.

I opened another box, more mouldy books, and small glossy magazines from church. So many about the Pope, the Polish Pope, the man we were all raised believing was a grandfather to all of Poland’s children. My mother was very religious, religious to a fault. I say that carefully, because I know her faith brought her comfort but it also made her endured a lot of suffering.  

‘What if, what if she had believed herself worthy of a better life, would she have lived?’ I thought, a thought that’s come to me thousands of times in all the years she’s been gone.

All of this was too much, not the work of sorting boxes, but the remembering. All the remembering.

I stopped moving for but a minute.

“What are you doing?” came my aunt’s voice from the corridor. She peaked in and saw me sitting there, books in hand, shoulders slumped.

“Those are garbage, don’t waste time looking at them. Child, move yourself; there’s so much more to get through.” Her voice was very commanding.

My aunt didn’t know how to read a person’s body language, which was probably for the best. If she thought for a second that this might be emotionally hard for me she’d likely say something that only made it worse.

“‘You’re an orphan, how can I not help you’”; how many times had I heard this. I preferred her insensitivity to her efforts at kindness.

Since my mother died I’ve craved my aunt’s affection. I still needed a mother, desperately, I think I always would. My heart remained that of a child. My aunt was the closest I could ever get to my mom. Sometimes, she’d smile at her own kids or say something to them that sounded so familiar, clearly a familial expression from one of my grandparents, and I found myself aching inside.  

But it didn’t appear that it was in her nature to be outwardly warm; at least not to me. I can’t say though that I saw her hugging her kids a whole lot either. All families are different I suppose, parents show their love in so many ways. Thankfully, my mother was a hugger. She didn’t go a day without holding me. Not, one, single, day.

It was the absence of her touch that I felt the most when she started staying in the hospital, at first for a few days, then for months. Then she never came back.

Maybe I reminded my aunt of her late sister; maybe that was part of what created this rift between us. I love everyone without caution, without reservation, with my whole heart, a bit like a fool really, but it’s exactly as my mother lived too, she taught me. I suppose that kind of emotional abandon can also be a weakness, when you prize bringing joy to others above all else.

Anyway, they were two very different women. Day and night; she and my mother. Of course no one could ever replace a mother, but when it came to mine; I don’t believe anyone could ever even come close.  

I knew my aunt thought me emotional and weak; she had said as much in different ways. So with time, I stopped hoping to feel any warmth from her.

“I know, I was just looking at the pictures.” I moved the box to the toss pile.

Another box.

I lifted the lid and a smile spilled over my face, ear to ear. There at the top (how did this thing survive) was a beautiful ceramic plate. It was a decorative piece that hung on the wall in our kitchen. My mother adored it, the motif, the flowers, the Polish style of painting. Next to being very religious, she was very patriotic.

Silent tears rolled down my dusty cheeks. I wiped them away and called out.

“Look, look!”

My aunt came around the corner.

“Do you remember this plate, it hung on the wall by the window, right?” I didn’t really need her to confirm that. Like with the apple bowls, seeing this piece brought into clear view my childhood kitchen.

“Umhmm, it did.” She walked away.

I paused and wondered if this was painful for her as well. She wouldn’t have said it if it was, she wouldn’t have shared her emotions or been vulnerable with me, but how could this not have been. These were her sister’s things, from a life she remembered far better than I ever could.

“See, I told you, you needed to go through these boxes,” her voice carried from somewhere down the hall.

“Yes, thank you Aunty.” I called back. I was genuinely grateful. Maybe this was the closest she could get to showing me she cared.

I sat alone with the plate in my hands. My aunt busied herself elsewhere. I think we were both aching, separately.

I hadn’t tied up my hair properly so it was falling on my face but the thought of touching it with my filthy hands; I cringed and did it nonetheless. Didn’t matter, after this unearthing of the past, I would need to bathe head to toe.