The Time Capsule
I was cleaning out a dresser and found a canister labeled “36 Exposures of Color Film.” I thought it was too old to yield photos, or that maybe I had stuffed the little tail of film that’s initially there back into the yellow canister without ever putting it in a camera. But I’m a gambler so I took it to the drugstore and waited.
We had no idea what year the pictures might be from. After I shelled out my $16 and we saw them, we could identify the exact date.
It is April 14, 2001. My son (now 23) is three years old. He wears short pants and a look of nervous excitement as he hunts brightly colored eggs in the spring sunshine. His newborn brother (now a hulking pizza-eating machine) is being carried around in blankets and a yarn hat. Our neighbor looks over the scene in a white, man-sized bunny suit, complete with floppy ears and a bow under his chin.
I am 41, and my diagnosis is years away. The boys’ mother is astonishingly beautiful.
Seeing family photos for the first time is always great. But seeing for the first time pictures taken 20 years earlier is a worm hole through time. My brain can barely process seeing for the first time scenes that are both old and new at the same time.
Also in most photos you only know a month or so of the future that those in the photos don’t know. But with these I know practically the whole lives of those photographed. The boy cradling eggs will survive a close call with a car while sledding, and travel to Japan where he’ll give a well-received speech. The infant in the photos will invent a computer game before he turns 18.
Four years after these photos I’ll be told I have an incurable disease.
If I saw photos of my sons from a week ago I’d enjoy seeing them but there would always be the concern for the future, “OK, but what happens next.”
With the time capsule photos, I know what happens, and that makes them sweeter for being worry free.
Waiting to cross a busy street about a year ago, I stood next to a young couple who had two small boys. “I raised two boys also,” I told them. “Want some advice?”
The woman looked dubious of parental advice from a strange old man. but her husband was mostly curious. “Sure,” he said. His eyes locked on mine in almost a searching way, like he could really use some, as I said. “Don’t worry so much, everything will turn out great.” I know, and he knew I’m not a visitor from the future and I couldn’t know. But he couldn’t be certain it wasn’t a comforting message through time.
In the old.new photos our boys are so cherub-like, the grass field is warm and soft with tiny white flowers and the giant, gentle bunny keeps his protective gaze on the dreamlike scene. Did it really all look so beautiful and turn out so great? Not bad for $16.
