Wave after wave of happy memories

How many things do you have stashed here and there, long forgotten?

Here at our house, a never-ending chess game is always in play. I put things where they SHOULD go. Basil rearranges them.

I never know where I might find things.

This is particularly bothersome in the kitchen, where I want to open the fridge or the cabinet and put my hands on what I’m looking for without having to look.

This never happens.

Another thing that never happens? Basil does not part with things. Son of Depression-era parents and a father who believed he would someday “fix” any broken item, Basil has a hard time discarding any item.

This proved to be a good thing this weekend. I need a video camera to film myself teaching Jazzercise this week and had been stressing over whether my iPhone could be situated properly in the room to do so.

Voila! Out of a drawer in the living room, Basil pulled our old Sony video camera. I’d long forgotten about it. It had been set aside in favor of new-fangled equipment and needed a good dusting to start.

But it worked just fine. Basil fussed with it all day yesterday, charging it up and playing with it like he is Stanley Kubrick.

You can imagine how much fun we had watching the last videos in it. They are from 2004, in Cape Cod and Nantucket. Most of the time, Catherine is manning the camera, so we were longing for a bit of Dramamine as we watched.

But what fun to remember the little girl she used to be, giggly and silly, in one frame urging Basil as he tentatively waded into the frigid waters at Chatham Light Beach to “dive, dive, dive!”

Among the stills from the camera is this fun one, one of my favorites even if it’s been enlarged one too many times!

Catherine and me. Chatham, MA, 2004.