I Saw Her Again

Yesterday when I got home from work, I decided I would go ahead and start cleaning out the hall closet. I quickly got to work before running across a bag that contained three home videos and the biggest video recorder I had ever seen. I have been longing for home videos for awhile, assuming that they had been misplaced or thrown away over the years.

My heart started beating faster and faster, and I rummaged through the house trying to find an hold VCR. No luck. I got on WalMart.Com and found a few that were way too expensive considering how outdated they were, and then turned to Craigslist where I found a brand new one being sold by a chiropractor just a few blocks from LR. I considered it fate. One hour and a $10 later, it was mine.

I sat through class afterwards and it seemed to drag. The time was going so slowly and I was growing more and more impatient. I was so eager. I longed to see what my childhood was like because I blocked so much of it out. I was so excited to see a remnant of my family intact, pre-divorce.

I got home and we set it up. My mom was also mildly intrested, as she coudn't remember what was on the tapes.

The first one went in, and I watched as a five year old me took swim lessons at the YMCA with my sister. I was so skinny, so happy and so willing to learn. I giggled when I should have been serious. I fell in love with who I was.

The second one went in. A close up of me, about three months old being held. A voice talked to me, telling me she loved me. Telling me I was a beautiful baby. I asked my mom, "Who is that holding me?" She didn't answer. The camera zoomed out and I froze. There she was. The love of my life, the light of my darkness, the heroine that saved me time and time again. My grandmother smiled at me, she kissed my left cheek.

I wasn't prepared for this. What was I thinking? How could I not have thought, for a moment, that she would be on these tapes? She lived with us. She took care of me while my parents worked. I was so blindsided. I walked away. I wasn't ready, but I needed to be.

I came back. I sat in front of the television for probably four hours. I watched each tape beginning to end; pausing, stopping, crying, playing, laughing...remembering.

I had forgotten her voice. Her smile. Her glasses. Her walk. Memories came flooding back to me, enveloping me in a hurricane of sadness, joy and resentment. I thought about how lucky I was to have had her, how mad I was at God for taking her from me so soon and how my own children would never know her love.

I could blog about her for days, months... I could write about the happy things in the video, how silly of a kid I don't remember being... instead I will stop and reflect on the fact that nothing in this world could have prepared me for seeing my grandmother for the first time in almost 8 years. I don't think I could put a price on how lucky I feel, how blessed I am or how completely moved I have been by finding something so simple, yet so very, very important.