family christmas movie

Today I watched a Christmas video of my family from 1983.

It is honestly the only home movie that exists of my entire family until about 1996 when my parents bought a camcorder.

My youngest sibling was six months old. Erica was five. I was four.

I haven't seen this movie in years. I "borrowed" it from home when my parents were going through their divorce because I was sure that my mom was going to try to destroy everything in the house which had anything to do with my dad, and I couldn't bear the thought of losing this film.

I tried to brace myself ahead of time that it wasn't goig to be difficult to view. This February, my grandmother will have been gone for an entire decade. And while I never feel like she's too far away, watching her in live action on the television is always a cruel tease.

And it was again today.

Everything good about me came from her influence. Everything I want to be was planted within me by her hands. She was the sole influence in my faith as a child, and the one who encouraged me in it as I got older.

She lived a life of sacrifice, indiscriminate love, and compassion.

And as I watched her little four foot ten inch frame shuffle around her trailer, handing out gifts to Erica and I, and speaking in that sweet southern drawl... I missed her so badly.

It hurts so much that she doesn't get to be here with Lilah. I want her to see me as a mother, and I want her to be proud of the mother I am. I want her to know that I try every day to be the person she always believed me to be.

And I look at that little girl who was me. She was so quiet unless she thought no one was looking. She was happy. I want to go back and protect her from all the things I know will happen. I want to trade places with her just for a moment - to have back what used to be.

Looking back with what I know now, there is such a subtext to that video I never would have picked up on before. Things that were unsaid then which have since been spoken aloud. For better, for worse.

For the rest of today, without even thinking, I called my daughter by my sister's name.

Memories are hard sometimes.