I went through more of the home movies last night, all of them, in fact. Needless to say, half of the tape is my sister aged 0 through four (when I was born) and then half of it is the next fourteen years of me too. It's always that way, isn't it? The last clip on the tape is the slumber party I had when I was 14.
When I was not much older than that, my mother and I borrowed a splicing machine from someone and put all those years of 8 mm reels onto a single big reel. When VHS hit town, I just had to take that one reel into the local Fotomat -- do they even still exist? -- and get the whole thing on tape. There was no sound, of course, but one evening my parents and aunt and uncle and I sat around watching it and talking and I had a cassette recorder going, which I later dubbed onto the videotape. So I have a kind of running commentary for some of it. It's very funny:
"Oh look, there's Pa! Why was he wearing a three-piece suit in the backyard?"
"You were so handsome!" (My mother to my father.)
"Hey, you had hair!" (Me to my father.)
"You're terrible!" (My aunt to my uncle after seeing him pinch the dozenth bottom -- usually hers.)
And so on.
It also reminded me of the times when I was a kid that we would pull out the projector, darken the den, and sit around the room watching the same films, listening to the clack-clack-clack and probably, the same commentary. I think we also took it for granted that we would see our extended family a lot, even when they lived far away. We drove up to Massachusetts every other month or so (in the pre-Connecticut Turnpike days) and my other grandparents took the bus out from the Bronx (or my father picked them up) at least once a month. I noticed that both grandmothers attended most of my birthday parties, at least the ones we have on film.
Anyway, I'm rambling again, just in the past tense. As promised -- or threatened -- a picture or two from the flick:
Even now, I prefer a nice dry white. Never could take that sweet Kosher stuff. This is my first taste, at 5.
Grandma directed every moment of Grandpa's life, even when he was the only one who knew what was going on.
These pictures are very yellow, but indoor filming was always accompanied by a bank of super-high-power, incredibly bright lights. I used the Haggadah to protect myself.
She was still at his elbow. You can't see the yarmulke in the earlier picture because his hair was still black. He always wore a cheap, plain one, the kind they give away at funerals. I bought him a pretty, embroidered one once, but Grandma put it away "for good" and never let him wear it.
I know this is a terrible picture, but I love it anyway. Grandpa and the Sibs laughing at something together. He was a very smiley, happy guy, and sometimes he would get carried away laughing and would be very giggly and silly. Needless to say, we all loved this and tried to get it to happen whenever we could.
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I'm watching American Idol!
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