On Dust & Storytelling

I went searching for tangible evidence of the food narratives that I work to rehash and reconstruct in this space. Hoping I might catch sight of a pudding dish or casserole, perched on the corner of a coffee table, its layers fit snugly into themselves if only to reveal their contents to me, I flipped through stacks of photographs on the floor of my late-childhood home. I imagined coming face to face with my own memories in hordes of photostatic proof -- that drink I always drank, that person eating that thing they always ate, that epochal dish that represented an entire time in my life but whose taste is just out of memorable bounds. Whose image is burned into me somewhere deep, but somewhere close enough to reference with ease.

This is not what happened. I was not able to prove that, indeed, yes, Grandma’s sweet tea flowed a waterfall of ritual and love on us, all the time. There was no picture of a Sweet Tea Waterfall. I could not find evidence that, yes, actually, Grandpa sucked the marrow out of animal bones while crying at baseball games and it felt like a careful prayer to the beauty of minutiae. There was no picture of Grandpa crying over chicken bones.

The narratives I hoped to validate with photographic evidence remain, for me, floating. They get further away, or I get further away, and I am forced to find new ways or create new ways of telling one story. After they died, I used to drive past my grandparents’ house whenever I was in town, no matter who was in the car with me. I’d say, please, indulge me. I’d explain, this is where I grew up, and I’d narrate. Unsure if someone new lived in the house, I’d sneak around the path to the steep backyard, explicating details of a narrative that mean nothing to anyone but the person trying to keep it alive. This moss in the cracks here, we’d pick this out with sticks, I’d say. These steps here, I’d say, we’d have to be careful running down them because they’re not stable. That window, there, I’d point, that’s my grandparents’ room.

To me, it’s funny. My childhood lives in a house. I tell the story of it again and again, the story of the house, the people in it, the food we ate together. I retell the story every few months, observe how it distorts or endures, the different ways it materializes. Their house is empty now, remodeled actually. So I latch on to what remains: the box of photos, the stories I memorized, the ones I fabricated, concocted.

What’s worn in? What’s lasting?

What I did find in the box was patterns refracting over decades and decades. Two, three generations doing different versions of the same things: dyeing eggs, opening presents, hanging out on Grandma’s bed, putting on plays. There was one exciting clue I found, albeit a self-indulgent one. In a photo of myself, around age 9 or 10, I am sitting at the counter in the kitchen fiddling with a camera. Taped on the wall behind me, is a crudely printed advertisement for what I imagine to be a production my cousins and I were putting on, entitled “A Day in the Life of Hellen Lynn.” I guess since there’s no record of the production’s content, it’s up to us to try and remember.

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A note on the spelling of "Helen/Hellen": After finding my grandma’s birth certificate in which her first name was spelled with two Ls instead of one, my cousin Samantha and I refused (for a short period of time) to acknowledge any spelling of her name with only one L. It felt like knowing exclusive trivia about a beloved celebrity hero. Let's discuss. I'd also love to see more photos if you have them, send them to shitthatsnice@gmail.com