When my grandmother died in December, because I’m the nostalgia-poisoned oldest granddaughter, I became keeper of The Stuff. Boxes of photos of people I’d never seen in my life, marriage certificates and high school diplomas, diaries and church keys, an enormous box of letters between my great-grandmother’s parents before they were married. So much stuff, I’m still buried in it almost four months later. But there was also this 8mm film, and because eBay exists and my brother, inexplicably, had some empty reels, I now have all of it on my computer (and my phone) (and my Instagram account) (and now this site). I’m not kidding when I say I recognized immediately, unquestionably, the thought behind some of it: someone someday will find this awkwardly framed flood footage valuable, will maybe film an echo of it from the same yard in sixty years.
(I recognized it, of course, because it’s me. I’m someone someday. I have my own secret flood footage to prove it.)
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