Four little girls in white, festooned with bubbly bows, make their way down an earthy aisle on a picturesque bluff while scattering flowers. They are the prelude to the unison fanfare of the Bridal Chorus. The warm-up act for the much-anticipated bride-to-be. As they enter, a wave of “ohhhhhh” rolls across the rows of fancy-dressed guests. In almost every hand a camera rises to document the human welcome mat.
Everyone present wants to ice the moment.
We’re always a bit afraid we might forget.
My smart phone says there are 14,337 items in my library. I open and scroll… there is a turtle. A recipe. A row of mismatched hanging pendants at a restaurant I don’t love anymore. There’s a random barcode, a screenshot of a paragraph that moved me, a breakfast biscuit used as a response to “What are you doing?” A close-up of daffodils poking stubbornly through snow.
Among the randomness are keepers. Austyn standing, crawling, walking, talking, dancing, laughing. Scottie wearing Pop’s sunglasses, a video of her singing Jesus Loves Me while shuffling around the kitchen in her mother’s shoes. There are random shots of Rosco cocking his floppy-eared head like a human or posing like a beautiful statue as he proudly trees a squirrel. There are sunsets and sunrises in brilliant sherbert colors that never quite do justice to the way they actually looked, family bad-hair Christmas morning portraits, my friends and me on a Vermont mountaintop enveloped on all sides by jeweled trees. And this rug I want to buy.
The captured overwhelms me. I quickly close the photo feature lest I drown.
My cell library is more clutter than amalgamation. I never clean the snapshots out. I don’t file them into albums. I don’t delete the duplicates or deal with the “What is this?” And I hardly ever go back and rummage through what I have saved.
I hoard because I’m desperate to remember, but I wonder what I’m swapping as I scramble for lasting proof.
In 2014, while coaching Team USA at the World University Games in Kazan, Russia, we had the opportunity to participate in opening ceremonies—a blow-out the likes of which I had never seen. As athletes and coaches of all sports representing all the participating countries stood in an eternal line that morphed into a human tsunami on the stadium ramp, anticipation skyrocketed. We dominoed out of the tunnel to “les Etats-Unis d’Amerique... Soyedinonnyye Shtaty Ameriki... The United States of America” and all I could think was, I want to remember how this feels! The track we began to parade around was packed, as were the stadium seats around it. On the infield, a myriad of extravagant stages boasted erratic eruptions of intricately choreographed exhibitions. As dancers danced, the crowd flashed, in grand synchronicity, objects from host-sponsored swag bags while following cues from giant top-of-stadium screens. How will I ever be able to convey this pageantry to those I love who are not with me? I panicked, pulled out my phone, and attempted to record it all.
I have reels and reels of visual evidence—videos and stills—but I really don’t remember how it felt.
Presence and procurement play tug-of-war like twinning rivals. We like to think we can be in it and outside it concurrently, but experience doesn’t work like that. Attunement is required.
When we’re documenting, we almost always know that at some level we have made a trade.
It’s great to have a tangible reminder, but nothing ever takes the place of being there.
P.S. If I Like a Moment