I found the DVD of 1989 when I was 33 and the mother of a baby girl. The video was shot by my sister and it covers ordinary days of a visit and the baptism of my baby. We are all so young and I looked at the stream of images unready for the effect. There was my sister Lizzie, standing as godmother to the child, there is my brother Johnny. My sister Mimi is holding the camera, only her baby is in the video looking like a doll. My oldest is four, and my son is two, and my husband looks like a movie star.
We were living in San Francisco, and my husband was a consultant with Deloitte and Touche. He was always on the road, mostly in Kansas City and Sacramento. Here we are with our three little children in a church called St. Anne of the Sunset in San Francisco. In one scene I am counting angels on a pew for my little son. We manage the candle held by our four year old. We are all so young and have no idea what is coming down the pike. No idea at all. In these images we are still a month away from the big earthquake.
When I look back on those days I remember being so busy with small children that I didn’t have time to brush my hair. I was so unconcerned about vanity and fashion. When I see my thirty-three year old self, I wonder what magic holds skin firmly to cheek and makes everything look so easy. Ah, youth.
There we are, halfway through with having babies. Three more coming in the future.
The future waits with losses so disconcerting, so bewildering, so final.
For a moment, on this brilliant, beautiful afternoon I can return to the images of my dear sister, my small children, my handsome husband. This is the stuff we don’t realize at the altar, that these busy every-days are the stuff of our legends. I always want to remember being together, being young. It was a marvelous time, it was. Life just goes by so fast.