On my birthday every year, my cousin sends me a photo of myself as a child, surrounded by siblings or grandparents, cousins or friends. Not sure where he has stashed the pictures, because each year I’m surprised that I’ve never seen them before. I think he has run out of photographs after all these birthdays, because he has recently taken to snipping a tiny scene from one of my dad’s many home movies and emailing it to me as a small MP3 attachment.
A few things are slightly amazing about all this: I don’t think it’s that easy to extract snippets from old Super 8 films; this means he has copies of all the many years of Dad’s home movies which I don’t even have; and he was in only a fraction of them. My cousin is one of many people who are enamored with these films. Dad took careful aim with his camera for decades, stewarding the passing of time (and of people) as though he was documenting history itself (which, of course, he was). From the late 1950s until his death in 1987, Dad recorded every birthday, Christmas, retirement party, federal election, vacation and wedding. Summer shots at the lake when Sylvan had a beach – actually, when Sylvan had wooden sidewalks and a movie theatre! Every day, we have shots of us at home, picnics in the mountains, people playing the piano, and many others drinking beer.
Many people of his era took volumes of black & white home movies, but I’m not sure everyone’s family made as much entertainment of it as ours did. We would invite people over on a Friday night to watch hours of our movies (my cousin would have been among the guests!) These people brought their children and cases of beer and settled in for the festivities – even though they only sometimes caught glimpses of themselves. It seemed enough to see what Dad had captured, because he took such care with it all. He saw so much of his own life through the lens of that camera and I wonder now if he sometimes felt like he was missing out. I think he enjoyed doing it, but I think he was also determined to do whatever it took to leave us with a true and lasting history of our family and the multitudes who drifted in and out of our happy realm.
What are you doing to document your family’s history for your loved ones? Not for their information after you’ve passed away, but for right now! Are you writing down the stories or at least sharing them verbally with your kids and grandkids? Sharing why you saved those particular historical Christmas ornaments and the many other items and memories that are significant to you. At least writing on the back of your photographs, even if you only keep them ‘organized’ in a heap inside a box under your basement stairs. Don’t let a memory pass by unexplained to the many people in your life who will be uplifted by knowing it. You are the only one who knows the story, so the responsibility is yours! No pressure of anything, lol.
What a gift Dad left! Not only reels of film, but The Black Book where he documented everything that was contained in each film. In many ways it was his life’s work. When I think of my cousin pouring over the particular home movie he took this year’s birthday clip from, I’m struck by how far Dad’s efforts reach. His images are meaningful beyond our family because they capture a culture and the sense of an era. I would say it’s a job well done, Dad, despite all the jokes about having to watch other people’s home movies! He made everyone feel like a star when his camera landed on you.
Visit Sandy’s website at www.LifeInRetirement.ca