Watching a young version of myself on my parents’ television this past Thanksgiving, I was struck by several thoughts at once. First, my hair was much darker than I remembered (it has been a LONG time since I have seen my natural hair color), and second, I have no memory of the events I was witnessing.
Strange as that may sound, it felt even more so. My dad is known for always having a video camera at every grand kid’s birthday, sporting event or family gathering. And no real reason has ever been necessary for him to hit the record button. But it had not occurred to me that his videographer days started way before grandkids. That this habit of recording his family’s personal history had, in fact, started even before his own kids were even born.
So there I was, sitting with my ten and thirteen year-old boys, watching old “home videos” and I realized that I am now older than my parents were in these videos and that I was about the age my kids’ are now. It was truly a Twilight Zone moment. One video was from a birthday party, probably my fourteenth judging from the very Brat Pack/Sixteen Candles/Breakfast Club way everyone was dressed and had styled their hair. It took me a while to pick out which girl was me – I could not believe I was the girlie girl one who ran like a girl and jumped up and down in a giddy ‘woo hoo’ manner. I wanted to shake her – “Why are you acting like that?” (Or was it me, today, that I wanted to shake, “Where did that girl go?”).
I was actually able to identify most everyone else in the video because of Facebook. Ah, technology. Some of these girls – now women – had recently reconnected with me after 25 years or so by posting old group photos of us and “tagging” everyone in them on Facebook. Geez…. the culottes, leg warmers, feathered hair and nightgowns. But hey, compared to kids today we seem SO tame! Ugh, that phrase has officially turned me into my parents….
Next (back in 2009), we watched videos of Christmas morning 1982. I would have been fifteen, and yet, I have no memory of this either. Sitting with my parents, brother and sister, and watching and listening to us all interact 27 years ago in the same room we were currently sitting in and not being able to recall it was, again, akin to entering another dimension – the memory dimension.
Throughout this video trek down memory lane, I felt like I was watching somebody else. Somebody else’s family. Somebody else’s friends. Why don’t I remember that Christmas? Why don’t I remember that birthday? Why do I remember some things when I was much younger? Is it the teenage years? Was I so wrapped up in fitting in, my weight, my hair, what I was wearing, what boy I liked, who my friends were, what others thought of me, that I never took the time to be present in the moment and feel it – experience it – remember it? Hmm.
I do remember before my wedding day in 1994, somebody (I can’t remember who…sigh) gave me some wonderful advice. “Focus in on the moment, on what is happening, and truly experience it. Step back and look around, take it in so that you CAN remember it.” Basically, I was told to be present. And I was. And I have used that advice in my life and in many experiences since then. And I do remember details from that day and from the following fifteen years. But it also occurs to me that I have lots of photos and videos of that day and the years that followed and that I have seen and revisited them innumerable times since the events took place. And maybe that is why I remember them. And maybe that is why I remember my young childhood years (and not the teen years) – because those are the old home movies we have watched on the rare occasion we would set up the 8mm silent projector. Yup, I don’t remember sound as a child, but I remember events.
We watched more videos at Thanksgiving. Of my sister in the band. Of me at a swim meet. Of my brother’s sixteenth birthday when my parents hired a Singing Telegram dressed as a Playboy Bunny (I told my kids not to hold their breath. I’m not buying them a car either…). Of my mom at her Apple 111 computer. Some were barely familiar…others, not at all. But, I realized, it wasn’t necessarily my memory, it was just that I had not watched those videos and as such not revisited those memories in a long time – if ever.
Upon returning to my own home, I rifled through my collection of dusty home videos. Tapes of vacations, the birth of my children, their birthday parties, school events, Christmases, sport events, and other random days. As I glanced at the cases, I remembered those moments clearly, for I have experienced them more than once, at different ages, with different people. They are my personal history lessons – which, like all of history, if not revisited, studied or relearned, would be forgotten.
As I reflected upon the literally hundreds of video tapes my father has taken over the years, tapes which have been lovingly and neatly stored and categorized, I am in awe of the history and the memories he has captured and preserved for all of us. Memories that we can re-visit, experience and feel again. Memories that can be relived through who we are now, and out of that will hopefully come a kernel of a feeling for who we were. Thanks for the memories, Dad.
