This Christmas I followed through on a promise I had made to myself almost twenty years ago. After storing a box of family videos since high school, I had the VHS tapes digitized and shared them with my family.
On Christmas morning, my oldest brother, my mother, my eighty-seven year old grandma and I sat down and watched the compilation video I’d made. They loved it! They talked about how different things were. How people dressed well for special occasions. How thin everyone was. How kids rode in cars without seatbelts. We’d forgotten how we used the rim of a five-gallon bucket nailed to the shop as a basketball hoop. And how we jumped off the same shop and the roof of the house in the winter for fun.
Remembering takes effort. It’s why we often store our memories other places than our heads. We outsource them to our phones, our notepads, calendars, and pictures on the wall. But we aren’t meant to leave them there indefinitely.
Many of the tapes I had digitized only had family videos on part of the tape and then other movies like the Karate Kid on the rest. It’s fitting that part of that epic feature, The Ten Commandments, was on one of the tapes because the emphasis on memory is an important part of the Exodus story.
Recall that God raised up Moses to deliver the Israelites from slavery in Egypt, but Pharaoh did not let them go. God visited nine plagues upon the land of Egypt and right before the tenth and final plague, when the narrative was at its zenith, God interrupted it by commanding the Israelites to celebrate the passover meal.
“And when your children ask you, ‘What do you mean by this rite?’ you shall say, ‘It is the Passover sacrifice to the Lord, because He passed over the houses of the Israelites in Egypt when He smote the Egyptians, but saved our houses.’” The people then bowed low in homage.
Exodus 12:26-27
At the moment when the author had the reader’s fullest attention, he said, this story is not just about this story. This is a story to inspire all stories to come. When you become enslaved by bitterness, by indulgence, by vice, by tyrannical leaders, remember the one who sets the captives free.
And Moses said to the people, “Remember this day, which you went free from Egypt, the house of bondage, how the Lord freed you from it with a mighty hand: no leavened bread shall be eaten.”
Exodus 13:3
The path toward gratitude is paved with memory. Resentment comes naturally. Gratitude takes effort and it often comes in the form of tradition.
Last night, I smoked a cigar with my brother and he asked me what I remembered about covid. He was trying to make sense of the fever dream we all experienced. There is a collective memory loss that occurred between 2020 and 2022. In part because normal markers of time were suspended. Holidays and events were cancelled. Work routines were disrupted.
But there’s another part to this group amnesia. Attending church services and the gym were banned. We were required to hide our faces from one another. Neighbors were encouraged to report neighbors. We were told not to give each other hugs or even sing and for the most part, we didn’t. That’s the other reason why we blithe it, we don’t want to remember.
I’m not sure what to do with those years but trying to forget them is not the right response. It is part of our collective memory that needs to be reckoned with, but its certainly not the only part.
On the eve of a new year it is important to pause and remember the present and past ones. To take some time to take some time back and study it.
It is through remembering rightly that we can move into the future courageously and humbly.
Some kind of magic happens when we remember, especially that which is painful or doesn’t make sense. With the bad comes the good. As we talked last night I told my little brother how much it meant to me when he brought me seeds and soil to plant flowers in the spring of 2020. He realized what a toll living alone and being locked down was having on me and he gave me a beautiful task.
The shoots of the new year are about to emerge from the soil of our lives. Let’s till the brown husk of the old into the soil to fuel the green of the new.
The only memories I had of my great-grandma were after she had suffered a stroke and was succumbing to dementia. Everything about her in my mind was blurry, from her shaking hands and voice to her need for a walker.
On these videos I see her smiling, hear her clear voice, watch her steady hands reach out to my brothers and I as she strides across the frame.
In one video, the family gathered for her birthday on a beautiful summer day. One of the presents she received was a porch swing. After it was put together someone had the idea that her and my great-grandpa should pose for a picture. They sat down and then something unexpected happened.
My little brother, who was a toddler, climbed up on the swing with them. I soon followed him. So did my cousins. My grandpa signaled to my brother, “there’s room for you,” and patted next to him. Instead of a picture of my great-grandpa and grandma it became a picture of what they had created.
We are on the cusp of a new year. Before the champagne is flat we will be called upon to busy ourselves with replacing 2023 wherever we see it with 2024. Instead, may I suggest, climbing up next to those who came before and partaking in something onerous that may bring the unexpected. Celebrate the new year, but first, remember the old year.
Nate, that was so beautifully written. Thanks for the reminder of the importance of our memories and of reminiscing. It was wonderful to see great grandma and grandpa’s faces. So quickly I forget. ❤️