backup

Weeping in a Best Buy is not a scenario I ever aspired to be in, but there I found myself today.

I’ll back up.

Three and a half years ago, our laptop died and with it went all of our data. We did not have an external hard drive at the time, and this was before I uploaded hundreds of pics on facebook and other online locations. These past years I have toted that old Dell around with us, always hopeful that one day when I wanted to cough up the dough, a computer wizard could retrieve all the videos and pictures from those pivotal years. In a sense, I felt like I still had all those memories in my back pocket and it was just a matter of taking it in somewhere and putting it all on a disc.

Last week I took the laptop in to a recommended computer store, and was told after a cursory look, that it would be no problem to retrieve any data on it. Four days went by as I dreamed of looking at all the videos I could recall; Ronan in his snug little retro car footie jammies at 18 months, bouncing up and down to the beat of a band down the street while we sat on the porch of the missionary house…Cedahlia at 2, laughing her head off each time we put Mr. Wendel down the slide at a park in Omaha….Newborn Ronan snoring loudly on my shoulder after feeding him- I whisperingly begged Skip to grab the camera and preserve what I knew was one of those moments that would make my heart swell forevermore...all of our pictures from when we lived in Minneapolis, Omaha, BoysTown, Hawaii. I have a terrible long term memory. Legitimately, there is something wrong with me. Often I am embarrassed when a friend or loved one recalls a shared experience in detail, and I have *nothing*! I only have certain scenes vividly preserved in my head, and most often they are because photos have jogged them.

When I stopped in today anticipating The Backup Disc, Mr. Just Rolled Out Of Bed Computer Wizard sheepishly told me  that he had ‘read the notes wrong’ and that in fact, the drive was completely ruined and after trying three different avenues, there was no chance of retrieving anything. I was heartbroken. It takes a lot for me to cry, but I cried on the way to the car….while in Campbells getting those sugary gummy bears I had happily promised Ronan before the bad news…and then while at Best Buy where I immediately headed to purchase a 1TB Passport. Ronan just watched my struggle curiously and said ‘Oh. So this is what you look like when you cry?'. I explained to him why I was so very sad, and he told me to just ‘look at the pictures in your head when you are feeling sad about it’.

Desperately I wanted to see my kids as babies again; to hear their sounds, to see their baby faces in the hopes that more would come flooding back to me. What is it about photos and videos that trick us into believing that *then* everything was better, perfect even? The moment we decided to capture Cedahlia playing in the shore at Onekahakaha Beach, while 7 month old Ronan scooted off the towel to eat sand; was that pure happiness, sheer joy? If I’m honest, I have to admit that those were some of the most tumultuous times of our married life, our professional lives, that back at 141 Alawaena Way awaited a half dozen angry, violent girls, my nervous eye tic going at a ridiculous rate. Yet, if I could just see that 30 second memory again, I know my heart would flood with nostalgia and longing.

I considered all these things today, as I wept for a lost baby Ronan and a lost toddler Cedahlia, barely realizing that they were right there beside me, begging to karate chop or read books. If someone documented my afternoon, it would be of me and the kids driving to two Pizza Huts before we found one that would redeem Cedahlia’s free personal pans from BookIt, and then me trying to get my hard drive figured out while they watched Alpha and Omega. Is today perfect and dreamy and something I will long for when they are sullen teenagers? Maybe?

Photographic memories are stealthily edited. Selective in the emotions they stir, they cut out the realities of financial hardship, painful distance between loved ones, sleep deprivation and being at the end of your rope with mothering. My heart is still aching over this loss, and I bet it will always squeeze with the realization of what has been lost to me and to them. But I do have to ask myself if I am trying very hard to enjoy the everyday moments here and now. Too often I am thinking of *then*...when they were tiny and life was pretty simple...or *future then* when Skip is home and we are a family again. Perhaps one day I will long for March 9, 2011 when it was drizzly and sleepy and we played with the stuff in our rainy day box and I ate most of the gummy bears while they weren't looking. Since no one is here to take a snapshot, I write about it and that works too.