Your Version, My Version

Our conversation turns to how I'm doing. I think for a bit and thoughtfully answer.

I don't know.

I am split into two, two processors dealing with a crazy situation. One of me, the worker bee self, pulls up my socks, delves into this strange reality; work, life and just accepts what is, is. The other me, the analytical emotional anxious me, is struggling. My mind is searching for reason. I’m searching for a moment that I can clearly identify, the moment when I could’ve chosen differently. As if there was just one, and what would it matter anyway?

You should write all of this down. You’ve lead an amazing life, you’ve done so many things, and so’ve been so fearless. In many ways, I’m envious you. You can do and you have done so many things. I think people would find all of this interesting.

Perhaps I should. I mean, I have always written my thoughts down. I have countless half filled journals. Initially entered in with frequency and gusto, to slowly trail off to quick scribbles of half thought out ideas, to finally a note pad where I jot down phone messages. They’re all the same. My thoughts trail off, perhaps that’s my own fate; grand intentions in my 20s, just to end up a scrunched up torn pad of a human. I blink away the idea, and respond.

Yeah, you’re not the only one telling me, my friend Vanessa, in Japan, suggested I record me just talking out my thoughts, to then go back and edit later.

I was dancing around whether I had the strength to do it. When, like any good friend, she seized the moment and gave me a further push of encouragement.

That’s a great idea! I think it will be cathartic! Do it!

Well, what have I got to lose? But how far back do I go, I ask.

All the way she says. All the way back.

My grandfather was a Hungarian count. I like to imagine he was like the character Count Laszlo De Almasy, the character Ralph Fiennes plays in The English Patient. I imagine him to be educated and regal. But there isn’t any evidence to suggest that this was so. I was convinced that my grandmother and grandfather’s story was a tale of star-crossed lovers, laced with passion and tragedy. My grandfather, Ferenc was the hero, rebelling against his family, by choosing love. I imagined his family protested their love and gave him an ultimatum. He heroically chose my grandmother, Irene a young common girl not deemed appropriate for the family, and they escaped to a faraway land. But I made all that up.

My grandfather was indeed a count in Hungary. He was married to a woman, not my grandmother. She was pregnant with their first child. There were complications with the pregnancy I’ve been told and she died in delivery. The child survived, but Ferenc so grief-stricken fled his home to Germany. There he met my grandmother. She was also was Hungarian, well had Hungarian parents, but they all lived in Germany. She was the youngest of five. She was to be married to a young man, who was a pilot and was away in the war. She had just received news that he had been killed. Now I don’t know under what circumstances these two met. What would they have talked about? Did they bond over their individual tragedies? Did their grief morph into love? I remember my grandmother would later say she had only ever loved the young man she was destined to marry, who had died. But this was after having had a lifetime of reflection. In any case a deal was struck I suppose and they decided upon making a life together.

They lived in Germany but were restless. There was talk of moving to another country. They had heard about America, but also this tropical land Australia. Supposedly there was a flick of a coin, and they packed their bags for Australia. A few years later my grandmother’s older sister Mia would follow her out to Sydney and join her in building a family. 

There is very little known about my grandfather, he died before any of the grandkids got to meet him. He had died a few weeks before my sister was born and she is the oldest of us lot. With my mother having had my sister and I, and my Aunt, Elvira having had four children. Mum doesn’t talk much about her childhood. Mum doesn’t talk about much actually. I was in England when I discovered I have a half-brother.

It was before you were born, it was during my life before I met your father.

 That seemed logical, I couldn’t argue with that. Still, it was weird to hear of new discoveries of my mum. I’d constantly pump her for information when I was a kid about her father. He was this mysterious character and I wanted to know more.

 But what was he like? Are you like him, or more like Nan? What did you talk about? Was he at home often? Did Nan ever tell you about living in Germany? About the war? Why did they choose Australia?

The questions were endless, like they are with all kids. She’d have the same response to all of them; I can’t remember. Occasionally she’d adjust it to; we didn’t really speak about those things. We didn’t do those things in those days.

So what did you do, then mum?

Oh you know, just kept busy.

I suppose I made up my own image of him, and he was gallant and ever so European. I loved my version of him. He wore a cape and chose love over life. If he was alive he would embrace my strangeness and tell me to go out and explore and never look back.