This weekend we went down to visit my mum in what is probably the penultimate visit to her house before we move to the US. Thanks to my lovely friend John, we were equipped with a slide projector, which meant my mum could finally look at the slides from her last visit to Sri Lanka, and we could sit and have a proper 1970’s slide-show evening.
It’s really very odd.
I mean, none of us have really seen these slides since, I think, around the late 80s, possibly some time in the early 1990s, because my parents slide projector broke and no spares were available. My dad’d stopped taking slides when it broke, and apart from occasionally digging it out and manually moving the slide-change mechanism with the cover off, and avoiding burning your fingers on the hot-bulb, it was simply a case of not seeing them.
So, the last two nights we sat down with my mother and her husband, and we worked our way, initially chronologically through the slides. Then when it became apparent we’d no-way make it through them all, random boxes were pulled out – and snapshots of our lives flicked up on the wall.
It was amazing. It’s a weirdly powerful experience – and I let my video capture random snippets of the show with the stories attached to some of the pictures. But I’d forgotten how, unlike flicking through an instagram feed, or scrolling through flickr, the experience is remarkably immersive. I mean, for all the tales of long winded 1970’s slide-show parties; I always adore hearing my mother’s stories. She is a hilarious story teller, and has had the most incredible life.
I’ve asked her to write her story, because I think many of the tales she tells would amuse people outside our family. And because I want her stories preserved for posterity. I’ve a terrible memory, and there’s just no way I can remember enough of it… But she always laughs and declines.
At any rate, it was a wonderful, but incredibly melancholy experience.
We’ve packed up some of the slides to take with us, and made my mother and her husband promise to send us the rest, should they ever want to throw them away.
But it brought home the enormity of leaving the UK for me.
It is exciting, but it’s also terribly painful leaving my family so far away. I’ve no idea how Kathryn’s coped with it so well. It doesn’t make me not want to leave, but it does make me fiercely wish I could take my family across too.
