Home Movies

Wednesday January 6, 1993

Didn't sleep well. Lots of wind and rain. I get up at 7:20. We leave for the doctor at 9. I ate a bowl of cereal and took a pain pill. I get my lab work done and briefly speak to the doctor. I speak to a lady who had the pump and did very well. Now she's back to probably go on it again.

We head for Frank's folks. We all go out to lunch at a Chinese restaurant. I eat about half and bring the rest home. Back at their house we watch some home movie video from the 1940s. It's great. We head home about 3 p.m. I am very tired. I lay on the couch all night. I cannot eat dinner. I feel so full and have a stomach ache. About 9 I feel better and eat some yogurt and apple.

When I was 12 years old my Mom went to work in order to have her own career and interest outside the home, but prior to that she was a typical 50s Mom just like the one pictured above. She was very involved in the lives of my brother Gary and I. She took us on trips to the beach at Santa Monica every summer and she took us to the library in Panorama City every 2 weeks for more reading material, which contributed to my love of reading (and writing). One of my favorite memories as a child was when Mom would set up the movie projector in the hallway, close all the doors so that it was very dark, and show reel after reel of home movies against the wall at the end of the hallway. The movies were of our vacations, birthday parties, and other activities. It was alot of work threading the film through the projector, and each roll only had about 5 minutes of video. My brother has boxes and boxes of those small reels of video. A few years after Mom passed away, we stayed up til the wee hours of the morning watching them in his living room, just the two of us. It was wonderful to relive our youth. One thing I remember clearly though was that Mom is in almost none of those movies, because she was always the one holding the movie projector or the camera. I hope some day to put those movies on DVD. Maybe when Gary retires in a few years I'll make a special trip down to Simi Valley to organize those movies together and send them to Costco to make DVDs, maybe one for each decade.

I remember on one trip to visit Mom and Frank they showed a DVD that Frank had made from old home movies. I'll bet it was the same movies that they watched this night. It was the first time I heard that Frank, who I always thought was an only child, had a sister who died very young. She was in some of those videos.