Remember this? Well, when my mother was down, I wrote the draft to my piece of the family story. It’s not perfect, but it’s a start. I’ve pasted the first section below, partly because I’d like feedback and partly because I want to enter Scribbit’s Write Away contest for March because I am a competitive sado-masochist.
Note: it is about my grandparents and where they live. I have strong feelings for family and oral histories. Some families are ‘chatty’ they talk about themselves and past adventures endlessly. Adam’s family are like this, and I love them for it. Our family? Not so much. Which is why I’m looking forward to reading the family history – once it comes together.
OK, here it is:
Memory and truth are rarely the same: but here is my first memory of the farm and I hold it to be true.
It was early in the morning. The dairy was still operating, and the cows hadn’t yet been let out after milking. It was cold; possibly winter, and the fog hovered close to the ground. You could barely see the cows in the holding paddock, except for the odd horn here, a foot stomping there. The drawn out bellow of a cow calling to her calf is responded to by another cow, in sympathy perhaps, or looking for her own charge.
But my attention is called away here; I am looking at the scene through the kitchen window and pop has just come into the kitchen, ready for a day’s work at the council. Nan has packed him lunch and is about to send him off with it––thermos of tea, naturally, included. I remember the lunchbox to be made of battered grey enamel, with a black plastic handle. I don’t know why those details have remained with me. Perhaps I am getting mixed up with a overlarge pot of Nan’s which I am certain is a bit battered looking and has a lid with a black plastic knob. She uses it to cook pumpkin.
I think.
The important part to this story is the question––how the hell after all these years do I recollect such detail? and Why? The answer, as far as I can make of it, is pretty simple––because it matters.
