Some memories are kept and treasured as they occur. Others are pieced together from what we see in photographs, what we hear in the stories of others. The convenience of all this is that we don't have to be faced with our former selves in the true sense. We can be kind to ourselves in that way, and remember only that we were good or funny or misunderstood.
My family rarely keeps videos, so I don't have much actual proof of the way things were; the way I was. So watching old Christmas videos is hurtful and heartbreaking as much as it is endearing. Case study: 1991 Christmas in July in Illinois. I will be nine in just over two months. I am heard before I am seen--hollering at my father, my shriek of a pre-pubescent voice booming a soprano cannon over the general roar of the extended family. I flail my skinny arms in a plea for attention. I open presents unappreciatively, literally dropping each one after I have sufficiently inspected it for imperfection. I do not say thank you.
And then my mother. Clinging to the siblings at goodbyes, making a (convincing) show of loving my father. Close up on the sisters having a secret conversation. Barb looks around, concerned. My mother looks over her shoulder, then turns back around to touch her sister's face. Two years and Barb will be divorced, driving from one coast to the other to move right next door to my mother. Seven years and my mother will be divorced too, a confirmed lesbian. Tearful goodbyes, embraces. My mother leans in and kisses the window of the car Barb has just gotten into.
Now it's our turn, piling into our car to make a trip I don't remember. My dad wearing a bizarrely out of place dashiki. Me in a Madonna t-shirt, my soft-spoken and long-haired brother advertising the Sex Pistols. And my mother, young and beautiful. Mothers are always more beautiful than you remember them. My grandfather talks up my brother about his upcoming senior year. My dad makes bad jokes. I hide myself behind a wall of pillows.
There we are all on video--proof we were once young, married, alive, a family. These gatherings have dwindled from their former glory to a modest seven or eight. I have trouble recognizing the people in this video as my family, and some of them aren't anymore. I don't know which one is more real.
When I think of my childhood in Illinois I think of car windows and fields rushing by for miles and miles. I think of hot, sticky summers and the smell of grandpa's car (the one he won on the game show). I think of the window seat on the staircase and the adjacent linen closet, both of which I was certain were packed to the brim with dead people. Baseball cards, night walks through town to get ice cream, the movie theatre's popcorn machine, yard sales. These memories are weighty and silent. I don't exist. I can't see my face or hear my voice. The people are frozen in time or maybe move in staccato. All these dutifully recorded memories, so horribly accurate, do not really exist. And yet here they are in all their garish color and sound, declaring their validity frame by frame.
I remember hungry hungry hippos right there by the stairs.
I remember the old-fashioned refrigerator in the kitchen.
I do not remember the sound of grandpa playing jazz.
I do not remember the sound of Z's voice.
The comings are so much more beautiful than the goings.
Everyone always has to go.
