Family Documentary
August 31, 2005
Tom Petty had it wrong. The waiting isn't the hardest part; the writing is. You always want to do justice to the subject of your story. Even more so when the subjects are your own parents.
Maybe that's why this project is so hard to write.
I've slogged my way through more than six hours of video, logged it all and set it out in front of me. In fact, I did that months ago. Whenever it was time to scratch out a script for the video documentary I'm doing about them, something always came up -- work, play, a book I had to read, a trip to the bank or even a trip to the bathroom -- and I'd be excused.
Now with my calendar clear and no other reason standing in my way, I'm forced to finally confront the monkey on my back.
I've finished the beginning. April 2004 my camera and I followed my parents to Tampa Bay Downs, the local horse racing track. Video and sound could be better but we see and hear my parents interacting with each other and with me and I wanted to start the project with video of them doing something together before going back in time.
I've edited it into a five minute piece. It has no narration, just my parents and the ambience of the track to guide the story. It would bore a general audience but that's not the target for this. I want my nephews -- and their children someday -- to get to see and hear their grandparents as they were in real life. (There is no imminent danger of my producing children.)
My maternal grandfather owned a color movie camera when my mother was a child. My uncle had the films transferred to VHS tape years ago. I did not know they existed until last fall when I told my mother about my plans to document their lives. It fascinates me to watch them and there's not even any sound. I know this project will hold the interest of my parents' descendants, especially after they're gone.
My writer's block, strangely, is not emotional or conceptual but technical.
The piece at the horse track will lead nicely into the main body of their story. My mother has always loved horses. Her father's films include footage of her riding a horse at camp and I also have a large photo of her astride a horse. In our interview, she told me: "I was never one to be a world-class rider or anything like that but I loved horseback riding and just watching the horses. I mean, I could shovel manure all day long and be in seventh heaven."
And now I'm back to her childhood. My plan was (and still is) to go back and forth between Mom's and Dad's separate stories until they intersect with their first meeting. They both remembered it clearly and they both recall a funny anectote about eating onions before a first date that will produce a wonderful moment in the story.
My first roadblock has been how to make logical transitions between Mom's and Dad's childhood stories. I haven't figured that out. I'll ask them what kinds of music or radio programs their parents had playing in the house and perhaps use that so that I'm not unreasonably jarring people away from one's story to jump back to the other's.
The other salient structural problem is the tremendous imbalance in material I have for each of them. While my father's parents apparently never failed to purchase the school portrait, they appear to have taken no pictures of their own. Thank goodness Dad did a lot of school activities and saved his yearbooks. Poring through them I learned that he was named "Best Looking" by the girls of his high school senior class.
(It is an honor I regret to say that my classmates rightly did not bestow upon me. Their judgement could be questioned, however, since their choice for the rowdiest and mellowest person in the class was the same guy.)
There is also a yellowed picture from a July 1949 edition of the Philadelphia Enquirer that shows Dad holding a pose after making a golf swing. The only picture of the farm house he grew up in comes courtesy of his mother, who PAINTED it!
My mater, on the other hand, is featured in color movies beginning by around age 5. Although it is a sign of my grandfather's distance from his two children that many more of his home movies feature his friends than they do his kids, the fact that there exists any motion pictures -- in color! -- of my mother as a young girl roller skating down the sidewalk is amazing enough.
She also has plenty of childhood photographs. And, of course, her interviews filled twice the amount of tape that Dad's did.
I also face editorial quandaries. Do I address my mother's alcoholism? I had not planned to but in our interview she raised the issue herself. She has been sober for more than 25 years now but her drinking while we were children had more effect on our lives than any other thing she did. While I intend to tell the truth, is my job here to tell the unvarnished truth -- splinters and all?
My mother also told me that she regretted not holding me as much as she wanted when I was an infant. "I'd seen other people's babies spoiled," she said. "And I didn't want to have a spoiled baby." Then out of nowhere she burst into tears.
You have to understand something. Other than once instance fueled by her alcohol use, I have no memories of my mother crying. Suddenly, in what I envisioned as an innocuous recap of her life story, she had lost control of her emotions. I sat frozen in shock. Finally after an eternity lasting a few seconds she waved her hand asking me to stop rolling tape.
It was a stunning revelation that creates a powerful moment. Do I use it? It obviously has more meaning to me (and to her) than it will to any of my brothers or nephews. Will it tell them something about Mom that will enlighten them? Is it something they'd want to see even if it makes them uncomfortable to watch?
My inclination on both counts is to omit them. Let bygones be gone, the painful ones at least. There are enough interesting anecdotes to share without them. It has been interesting to learn the things I have in the course of doing this project. The process of completing it will teach me even more. I just have to work through the hardest part.
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©2005 John McQuiston