When I was very young, I was also small, but nothing ever really surprised me.

When I was very young, I scribbled poems in a notebook. I learnt about the death of a dark, cold staircase. I discovered tons of different things. Now I know that death can also hide among bushes, leaves, and soft grass previously reserved for peacock butterflies, ants, and cigarette ends. Death is a part of the innocent, natural world. Coulvb d someone address this fact? Some country’s government or a social movement of some sort? This is my plea, because I, for one, was deeply shocked when Jan Stanisław C. died. Just like that, in the grass. Scattered like an afternoon shadow, lifeless by a tree.

He just died on me, no questions asked. Even though I was already an adult, at that point my entire childhood died as well. And it was rather nice! I’ve almost forgotten my parents’ divorce, the discontents of school friendships, and that overwhelming sense of not fitting in.

My childhood was supposed to be a postcard from a great holiday, not my last will.

I simply couldn’t believe it. Jan was tall and strong. Sometimes, he towered over me like a mountain, obscuring everything in my view. He’d say that he could lift anything he wanted: a large pipe, car tyres or even me. I believed him because he looked like a comic book character, like Batman, but without a cape. When he went up a ladder, I believed he could climb right up to heaven – if he felt like it, but he didn’t like God.

Sorry, but I think you’ll agree with me – people like him don’t just die.

I’m just like Alice without her potions, anxiously shrinking down or growing to a tremendous size whenever something goes wrong in her life. A scared little girl in ill-fitting shoes and too big a dress.

As a black cat with a wide smile walks past me, I close my eyes. I freeze in the familiar cocoon of responsibilities and obligations. It seems to me that I will forever fit under a flower stalk. And then, a giant comes and mows the lawn. From left to right, there’s nothing left. The flower falls to the ground and there is nowhere left to hide.

The expulsion from paradise is underway.

[In Poland] we called it działka, i.e., an allotment with a small summer cabin or a dacha^[i]. We talked about going there to repair the stairs, or the electricity bill going up. We’d leave on a Friday evening, but eventually, once Poland had changed and people started driving everywhere in cars, there was no point going on a Friday. The traffic on the way to Siedlce was way too heavy. So, we’d either go up early Saturday morning or on Friday, only earlier. First, we drove a white Fiat 125p with a faux wooden steering wheel and brown faux leather upholstery that would burn my arse and thighs in the summer, all plastic and fake. We’ve always had plenty of luxury in Poland – you just had to see it as such and name it accordingly. To an untrained eye, cars might have appeared as tins on wheels. To me, they were the epitome of grandeur. Riding with grandpa and grandma, the smell of air freshener. Nobody told me what I could and couldn’t do. I could be as old as I wanted to be.

Jan Stanisław and Barbara C. bought the allotment in the same year I was born. Initially, it was just an empty plot of land, unfenced and overgrown. Rods inserted into the ground by municipal surveyors denoted the scale of their purchase. A fair bit of land for recreation surrounded by a (predominantly) pine forest abounding in wild mushrooms – boletes, bay boletes, scaber stalks, and chanterelles. People rambled the unfenced area, thinking that it was common land, but the opening was already ours. We would put up a tent and a travel fridge with dairy and drinks next to the car. Over time, Jan Stanisław built a fence and a house. The roof was the apple of his eye – for many years, building roofs was his trade.

Of course, a roof symbolizes the archetypal sense of security: being taken care of and sheltered from the rain, lightning, and the evil eye. Foundations denote the beginning of creating your own place on earth, but the roof equals the end, the final touch. Jan Stanisław climbed the ladder with the roofing felt, dissolved coating liquid in a bucket, and poured it between the roofing tiles. He sat astride the top, big and powerful, whistling old Warsaw ballads under his breath. Brought up at the intersection of the Ochota and Wola districts, between the railway tracks at Warszawa Zachodnia and Górka Szczęśliwicka, all his life he was stuck in the lumpenproletariat. The intelligentsia never understood his paint-smeared nails, tattoos covering his entire body, blowing his nose without a handkerchief, and his brutal honesty. “But Janek, what are you saying?”, “I say what I think, your cake is shitty, I don’t like it. What can I say?”

“Grandpa, come on, you’ll upset the lady.”

“Oh, come on, she’s upset? What’s upsetting? I just say it how it is.”

Months passed, and the house grew in size. As a small girl, I spent almost all holidays there, between the trees and the woodpecker’s drumming. I felt a little bored, a little feral. I’d hide under the table and chairs, and then I’d become really tiny, almost nothing.

Sometimes, for hours, I would stare at the mirror. I didn’t feel lonely then. I didn’t really want to cross to the other side, I just needed company and couldn’t stop imagining new characters being born out of my own person. They’d invite me to tea, just like Alice, surprise me, and knock me out of my stupor.

I grew and then, again, I would turn into an imaginary mustard seed, spoiling the taste of the entire dish. As an only child, I knew how to play on my own. Quite early on, I got into reading books and counted the passing of time in pages. I remember being eight, sitting on a deck chair and reading Lassie Come-Home. I also remember the inflatable pool and a fabric doll house where I kept my dolls. Soon, it faded in the sun and I could barely fit inside.

I swapped Barbies for mixtapes and first rebellions.

Outlandish outfits, favourite music. This story of growing up, a wave of change is inscribed in the history of our działka, but it is also rather urban. Everything happened in the right order, as if I was reading from a fat, wise book hidden in an attic library – “we have everything you want and so is your life on parchment”. So, better be careful.

Our działka was always a Summer House, subordinated to all the activities involved in taking care of the land. Transplanting flowers, fertilizing the ground with wheelbarrows of compost. Hanging earth-soiled gardening gloves on the fence by the veranda. Watering twice a day. So much water poured onto this sandy plot, rapidly soaking into the soil. Awfully dry, bringing in extra soil in order for things to grow. A long, green hose, connected to a tap at the back of the house, dispensed droplets to flowers and shrubs, grass and trees. This went on and on – tedious, but at the same time solemn, ceremonial. Jan Stanisław standing on his crooked legs, firmly holding the hose.

“Sylwia, straighten this up for me, will you? It’s twisted.”

“Oh, there’s the water! Thank you.”

Now, whenever I visit the place of his death, the wind stops immediately.

His small wooden bench with a workshop vice and mountains of small objects are still in the shed. And also, a welding mask. There are so many items – too many to catalogue, use or even get your head around. It’s difficult to appreciate all these boxes, crates, and bags. For a hoarder, this would be messy, but here it only seems like a mess. In fact, everything here has its own internal logic, and we can see it once we open our minds to unusual juxtapositions and uses. A margarine container filled with nuts and bolts. A jar covered with some kind of goo that can be filled with a new substance.

These were the tools for constructing adult Sylwia.

There was also a special tree climbing belt. You hug the trunk, tilt back thirty degrees and can then climb up the tree to saw off branches, collect cones or clean birdhouses. You wear old shoes, too worn-out to wear out in the street, but the holes don’t matter here.

Some old black paint. I guess it’s for the roof. As for the roof, the following words come to mind: roofing felt, table saw, gutters and metal roofing tiles. Words such as insulation materials, snow guards, hatches, stairs, step overs, and roof walks, vents, ridge tiles, and chimney sheets, coffee on the veranda. Now and then, he’d leave the workshop and sit down, rest. Look around. Think. He’d grunt and scheme, yawn loudly and pat his stomach. Look at my gut, how large. The coffee was almost cold, I couldn’t drink that, but he liked it that way. Two sugars.

And all these things. His things, everywhere. Now useless, of course, lacking context. Meaningless in their plainness.

And, especially, those bloody coffee glasses. I could smash all of them, one by one, against the wall or the floor. Throw them off the counter and trample them with my shoes. Toss them on the floor along with the plates. You can’t wash them properly, they annoy me. They’re reminders. Every corner here reminds me of something, it’s driving me mad. How can I relax? People say, “Oh, you’ve got a działka, how cool, you’ll get some rest.” And indeed, I do: my family dig in the ground, fix things here and there. Meanwhile, I flounder, restless. I tell them what to do, give my opinion on this and that. I put dinner on the table, I clear up. But all in all, I don’t really do anything, because I can’t. I’ll say something about everything, I’ll discuss every object, but I won’t touch anything, because I am reminded, I remember.

My childhood. In every nook and cranny – my past.