Uphill Both Ways

An older relative of mine has been trying to tell the story of our family for decades now. He has travelled the world to meet second and third cousins. He has asked me to proofread and fact-check short biographies of my late parents and to draft a terse entry about my own life. These sketches include births, deaths, and marriages, graduation dates, career whatnots, details about emigration, and a sprinkling of hobbies and sports. They are devoid of jokes, which is a shame, because our family has always laughed a great deal, in defiance of both success and tragedy. Lines of conflict and attachment have been erased; so too all our disgraces and failures.

I have dutifully reported the births of my children and other milestones even though the compilation of this ever-expanding secular family bible strikes me as a wrong-headed endeavour. This record of our lives doesn’t reflect who we are to one another or what was important to us. We might tell ourselves stories in...