Here I am again, retelling a story that was told to me more than 12 years ago.
This time it’s based on a conversation with my sister Carmel and her daughter Cade, about the house they’d shared since Cade was born.
Now, I don’t trust myself to retell my own stories with unwavering accuracy, let alone anyone else’s. But I attempt it anyway.
I begin by writing down what I remember from that long-ago conversation. Then I return to the transcript of the recorded conversation (knowing that it’s been so many years since I made and edited it, that I can’t remember what I chose to keep, and what I left out). I pull words from that, too, and rewrite the story until I think it sums up what was said – until it feels ‘true’.
I’m kidding myself, I know. How could anything like a true story emerge? Memory is unreliable. Like that transcript, it’s filtered by selection and omission. And maybe a bit of distortion, too.
Still, somehow, it feels like the attempt matters.
Postcards from before 