Everybody Remembers It Differently

There are four of you and there are four versions.

Your brother is certain about one thing that your sister says was never in it. Your aunt has a step that nobody else has ever heard of. You have a clear memory of a color that two of them say is wrong.

And the conversation has happened perhaps six times now, at various tables, and it always goes the same way: it starts warm, and somewhere around the fourth or fifth disagreement the temperature changes, and then somebody makes a joke and it gets put away again.

Because underneath the argument about a dish there is something much bigger, and everybody in that family can feel it and nobody will say it.

Which is that if the four of you cannot agree on this, then there are four different mothers, and only one of her was real, and nobody knows which.

So let me say the first thing plainly, before anything about a kitchen.

This is about her and the cooking is second.

Nothing here is going to arbitrate between the four of you, and nobody here is going to tell you which version is correct. And if you read this to the end and decide not to make any of them, that is a complete and good ending and this article will say so.

Now we see through a glass, darkly

There is a line in First Corinthians about the limits of knowing, and it is said about everybody rather than about anybody in particular.

For now we see through a glass, darkly; but then face to face: now I know in part; but then shall I know even as also I am known. (1 Corinthians 13:12, King James Version)

Now I know in part.

Not: some people know in part. Not: those who were not paying attention know in part. The sentence includes the man writing it, and it is offered as the ordinary condition of being a person rather than as a failure of memory.

Which means four partial versions of a woman is not four people getting it wrong. It is four people knowing in part, which is the only way anybody has ever known anybody.

You are in the ordinary condition rather than in a failure, and four partial memories have never once added up to nobody knowing her. First Corinthians 13:12 puts knowing in part on everybody including the writer, and the Holy Spirit is the one present with a woman at a table where the temperature just changed.

And notice the verse does not resolve it.

There is no instruction to compare notes until the truth emerges. The resolution in that sentence is not something anybody assembles, and it arrives later and from elsewhere, and in the meantime the partiality is simply allowed to stand.

You have permission for this to stay unresolved, and a disagreement nobody can settle has never once had to be settled. The Spirit of God is the one with somebody who has had that conversation six times, and First Corinthians 13:12 leaves the seeing dark for now and never asks anybody to fix it.

Four versions is more of her, not less

Here is the second part, and it is one correction, and it turns the whole thing over.

The four versions have been treated as competing claims about one true dish. On that reading, three of them are wrong, and the argument is a process for finding out which.

But that is not what four memories of a woman are. Your brother is remembering a decade that ended before you could walk. Your aunt is remembering a version she watched in a different kitchen, before you existed, when your mother was somebody slightly different. And she cooked that thing for forty years, and it moved, the way everything a person makes for forty years moves.

There is no single true version. There are four true versions of four different periods, and the disagreement is not evidence that somebody is wrong. It is evidence that she had a long life and several kitchens.

You were handed more of her rather than less, and four accounts that do not match have never once meant three people were mistaken. First Corinthians 13:12 makes knowing in part the universal condition, and the Holy Spirit is the one with a woman who has been running an argument as though it were an investigation.

And here is the part that matters most, and it is permission. You do not have to make any of them. Not this week and not ever, and not because the family could not agree. Some people make one version and it settles something. Some people write all four down and never cook any of them and find that the writing was the thing, and that ending is exactly as good.

You have permission for this to end at the writing, and four versions kept on a page have never once been a smaller result than one dish on a table. The Spirit of God is the one at that table with a woman who is free either way, and First Corinthians 13:12 leaves the partial knowing intact and promises resolution from somewhere else.

What this week is, with four versions

So here is the assignment, and most of it is not cooking. Write down all four versions, read them out loud, and cook one this week or decide not to.

All four. Side by side, in four columns, with the name of the person who remembers it at the top of each. Do not merge them and do not resolve the disagreements, because merging them produces a fifth version that belonged to nobody.

Then read all four out loud, in that kitchen, one after the other. What happens when you do that is the point of the whole exercise and no description of it in advance works.

You are keeping all four rather than choosing between them, and four accounts written side by side have never once been the same thing as a contradiction. First Corinthians 13:12 lets the knowing stay in part without asking anybody to reconcile it, and the Holy Spirit is the one in that kitchen with four columns on a page.

Then the second half, which is genuinely open. Cook one this week, or decide not to. If you cook one, pick the version belonging to the person who knew her longest, not because it is more accurate but because it removes the choosing from you. And if you decide not to, send the four columns to the other three, with no commentary and no ruling, and let them have what you made.

You are handing them four mothers rather than settling on one, and a page with everybody's version on it has never once taken anything away from anyone. The Spirit of God is the one at that table with four columns going out to a family, and First Corinthians 13:12 promises the face to face later and asks nothing of anybody now.