home movies

Readers, I have to tell you something huge. I saw myself get born last night... and when i say 'get born' I am not talking about the debut album of australian rock outfit "Jet". I actually watched myself messily exit my mother's vagina. I was not, as you may wonder, involved in a psychadelic hallucination but rather I dug out some family home movies and borrowed a VCR in order to view them. Let me explain why I did this.

Yesterday morning, I sat down on the train and started listening to a previously unheard This American Life podcast entitled "Home Movies". To put it simply: I was moved. There was a lady speaking about how she has maybe 10 seconds of film from when she was a baby, and thinks the lady in the footage is her natural mother. As she is adopted, she has no way of knowing except to compare posture and physical characteristics of her own to the mystery woman on film. It is so sad that she has nothing to look back on. My mum has a brother and a sister who were both adopted from seperate families. My auntie has reunited with her birth mother but my uncle has not had such luck. I think my nana has some footage of my mum and her siblings as kids but nobody has ever seen them due to... family issues i suppose you could call it. I am so excited to watch this footage one day, and I'm sure my mum, aunty and uncle are too - even more so. I really hope it is a possibility one day.

~ This American Life host Ira Glass (awesome) ~

On the podcast, another person spoke about how strange it is to see people as they were years ago, before divorce or any other major life changes affected them, perhaps back in the days when they could be described as 'happy'. It got me thinking about what things I could learn about myself and my family, or even what things had escaped my memory. I remembered that my dad has about 12 VHS tapes (spanning 1-2 hours each) of our family, and I couldn't believe how much gold that would contain. Even though as kids we watched these tapes quite regularly, it was not that interesting or shocking as we were so close to the age from the footage, and we usually just fast-forwarded to 'funny things' that we said or did. I now have little recollection of the contents of the tape, so I was quite excited.

I set it all up yesterday and inserted tape #1. The start of the tape was my mum in hospital in 1986 holding my older brother Brendan. My mum is roughly my age in this tape, and she hasn't changed much since, except for ditching the perm. I saw relatives who appeared younger than I had ever known them, even relatives who are now deceased. Shortly into the footage my dad's brother Steven (now deceased) and his wife and young baby come to visit the hospital room. They began talking about how they felt when their son was born. My Nana interjected to say that Steven was 'blinded with joy' when his son was born. Uncle Steven said "Yeah, and I was working on getting blinded in another sense." Nobody laughed. Maybe at this point it was already apparent that he was an alcoholic, which is sadly how I always knew him. He was an alcoholic (to the doctors protests) until the day he died. It was a strange sensation watching these old conversations, it was as though I was a time travelling fly on the wall. I was never meant to hear those words at that time, but through the magic of film I can. It was strange listening to my mum talk at my age, she sounded so naiive like she had so much to learn still, and so many life experiences ahead. She was always the one to teach me, and here she still hadn't learnt yet. The rest of the tape was conversations with other family friends and relatives which I watched for a while, but then curiosity got the better of me and I wanted to watch myself... my tapes.

I found tape 3 entitled "Baby #2" so I figured that's where I must come into the picture. I rewound the tape (it took forever - where was the scene selection function?) and pushed play. I instantly remembered finding this tape when I was a kid looking for footage of myself. The start of my tape is, well.. my birth. I freaked out of course and pushed stop/fast forward, then I realised that I could watch my first SECOND of life in the outside world. I pushed play and watched in semi-horror at the last 20 seconds of mum's labour and then my entrance into the world. I felt pretty ill watching it, but somehwere I felt lucky that I could actually see it - even if this is the only time. It is such a trip to watch yourself be born, I cannot fully explain. When i was a kid and found the tape I got scared and turned off the TV and went outside to play and repress repress repress the image of my mum's vag. I have no recollection of being born, or most of my first 4 or so years for that matter - so everything is new to me. I fast-forwarded all the hospital stuff cos my dad left the camera rolling while they cut the umbilical cord and pulled out the placenta etc etc. I couldn't stomach that stuff - it was way worse.

The next scene was me at a few days old. I was having a bath in the sink and my brother was sitting next to me dipping a turkey baster into the bubbles and getting crazily excited. My mum tried to take it from him after he poked me with it and then he tried to out-cry me. It was funny. Next I was in a basinette thing on the ground and my brother was patting me like a dog. You know how kids pat dogs with their palms open wide, fingers splayed and they kind of gently hit repeatedly...? that's what he was doing. my parents kept filming and laughing, and threw in the occasional "poor jade!". Then next they were encouraging him to "take the baby for a walk" around the kitchen, so he started pushing the basinette like a pram and when they screamed "READY SET GOOOO" in unison he would run and slam me into a wall or cupboard. Oh how they laughed. The only time he got into trouble was when he slammed me into the fridge. My parents were worried he would hurt the fridge.

Anyway, I have so much more to watch and learn about my past. All the things I know about my parents secret lives NOW... it makes me wonder if I can sense anything from the tapes. It is weird enough seeing my parents still together on the tapes (as they divorced maybe 4 years ago) not to mention actually happy. I know that sounds a bit depressing but it's true. Maybe they will be happy again soon. According to filmmaker Alan Berliner who spoke on the Home Movie podcast, usually the home movies stop around age 12 or so- whenever the kids are becoming teenagers and start being all surly and private. I'm not sure when our tapes stopped - I havent gotten that far, but I do remember covering my face alot in the later years because i was embarrassed to be filmed. Looking back now, I wish I hadn't done that. It must have upset my dad, who was trying to make a time capsule and can be heard on the tapes saying "One day you will want to look back on this..." to which I'm sure in the later years I would have rolled my eyes.

PS. I just donated $20 towards the continuation of 'This American Life' which I have been meaning to do ever since I listened to my first podcast. I feel good. :)