Last Mother’s Day, I made a bold request: Could we pretty please take our disheveled box of camcorder tapes and have them digitized?
And then I did the math.
Forget that idea. Too expensive.
My husband, however, did not forget the idea. He shipped the box.
He said yes.
The two of us have had the best time returning to the old country, laughing at our younger selves, tearing up at the tender remembrances of raising our four children, long ago. Some evenings after dinner, when I press play and jump back into the rigamarole of this fond season, I pine for the good old days, just a little. We raised our sons and daughter before the era of smartphones and also in a home where every waking breath was not captured on film but enjoyed in ordinary, unscripted ways.
***
Jon and I were married in 1994, and our dress rehearsal and wedding were filmed by relatives. As I now gaze upon our young faces, tan and relaxed, I discern veiled glimpses of us now—expressions and mannerisms woven within our DNA, likenesses that even surface in our children and grandchildren.
I watch a snippet of video— mere hours after our wedding ceremony —as we prepare to embark on our honeymoon. While wedding guests mingled on the grounds, punch in hand— chatting, laughing, waiting to bid us adieu —two little brothers I had long babysat shyly approached, asking me for a goodbye hug.
I crouched down with a smile and embraced them, my eyes softly closed. Watching now, I remember what had long grown faint, a feeling returning, strong as bone: A deep ache born of saying goodbye to a season, forever.
Of course I was still myself as the video rolled, marrying the man I loved, yes, but two things may be true at once: my heart was bursting with affection, and bruised by the hammer of wistfulness. I had walked the aisle and crossed over a bridge into a foreign land, my passport indelibly stamped with a shiny ring and a new last name. A beautiful, chosen, and marked road, and one that I could never walk back.
And then Jon touched the small of my back and the sadness departed. I stood and smiled and flung my bouquet backward as we grinned, waved our goodbyes beneath a rain of birdseed, and departed, our Just Married! sign scotch-taped to the rear window as white streamers fluttered in the warm breeze. A trail of tin cans strung to the back fender clunked and sputtered, skittering gracelessly across the pavement.
The video slowly fades, and all is hushed for two years until the film opens again and finds three of us in a minuscule apartment, our handsome six-month-old son babbling and crawling and giggling. We felt as though we had won the jackpot: our own apartment, a precious son, and a borrowed camcorder.
***
Somewhere along the way we purchased our own camcorder, and used it whenever we remembered to record birthday celebrations and Christmas mornings with two children, then three, and finally four.
Oh, let me count the ways I love you, Mundane, forever and always my sweet spot. Give me the ordinary over carefully-scripted-obsessively-orchestrated-matchy-matchy-photo-snappy events any day of the week.
And there she is, oh beloved quotidian! Now digitized:
Our sons in a heap, happily wrestling, shuffling through a pile of Legos, commandeering a game of backyard football, two-hand touch. Our baby girl shadowing her big brothers with a pile of stuffed animals in her small arms, wearing her chunky play necklace of sparkling beads, singing and pushing her doll stroller through the living room, her big brothers gently patting the top of her head or kissing her cheek as they pass by in a flurry of activity. Our two-year-old scooping up a block and magically transforming it into his air guitar; another son biting his tongue between his lips as he finishes his fast math worksheet; another cradling his guinea pig while practicing impersonations. Children lined up at our dining room window, waving goodbye to Daddy as he backs out of the garage; my husband gives them his signature wave, long and slow, arm outstretched and motionless, as he smiles and leaves for work.
At other moments I hear Jon’s younger voice in the background, amusing himself with dad jokes as he tosses the ball tirelessly to our sons, the soft, indoor football sailing seamlessly beneath our chandelier as they run routes over and over in slow motion with precision and ease. I hear my younger voice: Share your toys, and No, we do not speak to each other that way, and Have you finished your homework? and Good job, you read the whole book by yourself!
Sometimes the vacuum cleaner is humming in the background, or I am washing dishes at the kitchen sink as Jon records the daily antics of our four. It is this daily warp and woof I miss: days of perpetual movement, noise, chatter, chores, laughter, the front door opening and closing, children running up and down the stairs. The rhythm of a large family, laced in simplicity and peace.
Well, usually.
Jon and I could not stop laughing, surprised to take our time machine back to one fall night two decades ago. I filmed the children solo, informing the camcorder that my husband had worked all day and was now at seminary class. I hear the exhaustion in my voice, a growing impatience as the children fiddle around in the living room, while the day’s fatigue slips and settles in our home with evening’s shadows. As the boys begin to act up I snap: If you don’t behave I am going to lose my mind.
The video cuts out and begins again, a minute or two later, I presume, showing four smiling children lined up on the sofa and surrounded by the voice of a (now) composed mother.
How kind of God to remove my rose-colored glasses and remind me that the good old days were not without their challenges.
Such is life.
***
Somewhere along the way, our camcorder broke down, but we kept living through heaps of ordinary days strung together like beads on a necklace I still cherish. Videos are mere shadows of true life. Those digitized memories do not show my toddler gifting me a clutch of dandelions, or me sitting on the edge of our son’s bed, drumming up a story about a naughty raccoon. Those digitized memories do not show painfully arduous church seasons, or me teaching our children to drive, or rocking a sick toddler while humming lullabies over them. Those digitized memories do not reveal the gazillion sports practices, games, piano lessons, or picnics at the park, or the joy of teaching our children to read and write, or the tedium of making ends meet while balancing the checkbook, or the arguments that hurt, and the apologies, so sweet, or the afternoons spent counting four little heads at the swimming pool, my body and mind vigilant and alert until everyone was wrapped in clean beach towels, and flip-flopping to the van.
The crumbs of nostalgia might choke me.
I am once again crouching to hug something invisible and familiar and lovely goodbye. But now I am older, bidding adieu from our driveway as our sons and daughter and their families honk the horn twice and wave goodbye, our grandchildren’s precious upturned faces disappearing around the bend, homeward bound, to their own home that is not mine. I smile softly as I hug each goodbye.
My grateful heart is full of memories recorded and unrecorded, stuffed with love, and also bruised by the memories of a season forever sealed. My mother-heart waves goodbye, down deep and unspoken, even as my grandmotherly arms fling wide open.
So I thump my Bible atop my desk, take my seat and drag my heart, my limping, limping heart, before the throne, feeling silly and dramatic inside our hushed house.
The refrigerator hums, the dog’s tail thumps and God speaks, telling me that two things are indeed true at once:
I will remember the deeds of the Lord;
yes, I will remember your wonders of old.
I will ponder all your work,
and meditate on your mighty deeds.
and
Remember not the former things,
nor consider the things of old.
Behold, I am doing a new thing;
now it springs forth, do you not perceive it?
I will make a way in the wilderness
and rivers in the desert.
***
A new season is here.
Do you hear it?
The low thrum of autumn, a faint harkening. The leaves will soon shed their verdant hues, aging into beauty, spinning, fluttering in warmth and glory: butter gold, mustard, burnt orange, chestnut, cardinal red. Their youthfulness has passed, but their purpose remains.
The Palest Ink 
Praise the Lord for great memories!
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