Nostalgia

Camera-dads. You know who I'm talking about. They are the guys that go out and buy a digital camcorder the day they find out that their spouses are pregnant, and upgrade the camera every year from that moment on. These are the guys that are more worried about documenting their first born crowning than comforting their immobile wives who have endured hours of labor.

Well, I never wanted to be this dad. In fact, I was so against this type of dad that I didn't even like taking still photos. If there was a camera involved I left it up to my wife. "We should bring a camera!" she would say. "If you want to bring a camera, you're going to have to deal with it." I would have no part in it. Don't get me wrong, I want to have the pictures and the videos, but not appearing as a camera-dad took priority over actually having these images. I wasn't opposed to pictures being taken either, I just didn't want to be the guy holding the camera - the camera-dad.

Over the years, we have acquired a standard library of photos and videos. Maybe not as much as some but not a small amount either. A week or two ago our family started browsing through old photos and videos that we had taken during our marriage. We stumbled onto this:



Now to most of you this video isn't very interesting. Sure she's cute and all, but the subject matter is fairly mundane and the camera work is, uh, not professional. This video to me is heart breaking. It absolutely kills me every time I watch it. My little girl. That moment is forever gone. It kills me that I will never see her that small or hear her speak in that manner. That little girl does not exist anymore.

I discovered, perhaps too late, that it isn't the extraordinary things that are important. The ordinary moments in life are the ones we long to remember. I would trade mountains of photos and videos of sunsets over Central American beaches or images of stained glass from European cathedrals for one good video of my kids coming home from preschool. And yet, the times we remember to take out our cameras is not when our kids are explaining the thing they just made out of Legos or when they're playing in the backyard. No, we take out our cameras usually to photograph something that has already been immortalized by countless other people who are probably far better photographers and is usually available as a postcard.

They say you should live without regrets. Whether this is true or not, I have regrets. My desire not to look like a camera-dad - my vanity - has robbed me of countless moments. Priceless moments of an ordinary life that I don't even remember. They are simply gone, as if they never happened in the first place. There are no postcards of these moments. My regret is that I have not been, in some small way, a camera-dad. The problem now is, I don't know how. For 12 years I have trained myself not to pull out my phone and take a crappy, untrained, photo to save whatever moment is about to pass by, on its way to being forgotten. I am getting better, and perhaps I can take solace in the fact that at least I have some videos and photos, and that, maybe, someone will learn from my mistakes.

-Brother Brett