A Partially True Remembrance, and a Complete and Total Lie

When my father was young, seven maybe, he was almost killed. Or, at least that's how he told the story on the playground for days after. He was playing outside of his grandmother's garden that was bordered by the woods, filling his hands up with fresh dirt and letting it slip through his fingers when a grunting sound came from behind him. "Charged by a wild boar", he told me years later. If it hadn't been for his grandmother jumping the fence like a hurdle and grabbing him to safety on the other side- Bam. Boar breakfast.

My mother never liked the way lavender smelled. When she was in college, she stood in an empty room in an old house as a dare. They told her that just months ago, a woman her age- 19, maybe- had been killed in this room. The dare lasted three minutes. She stayed two and a half. All she could remember was that the room, empty and grey, reeked of lavender. She wasn't scared so much as unnerved, she said. It was the eerie peacefulness of the room that was so strange.