A Recorded Conversation
Of what follows I have very limited memories. There are really only fragments to replay in my mind, some of which I may have embellished or invented entirely over the years. Nevertheless, the emotions that remain are real. This I know for certain.
Here’s what I think I remember.
One day, many years ago, when I was a teenager or perhaps a young adult and still living in the house I grew up in, my now-deceased mother sat me down at the kitchen table and hit the “play” button on the crude radio-slash-cassette recorder we used to keep there.
She may have been sporting either a slightly mischievous grin or a cool poker face.
The cassette in the device began to play what sounded like grainy silence interspersed with occasional low-level murmurings that I could not make out. My mother watched as I remained puzzled but somehow compelled to listen because, increasingly, the voices sounded familiar
It took a while, but slowly I understood that the voices doing the murmuring were in fact mine and hers. Then, whether she’d spilled the beans or whether I figured it out on my own, suddenly I knew what I was hearing. It was a recording of a conversation between my mother and I that had taken place at that very same kitchen table some months previous.
I remembered the conversation — and I’d had no inkling that she had recorded it.
She was delighted when I figured all of this out and happy with herself for having gotten away with the little trick.
I’m fairly certain that she’d done it simply for a little bit of bemusement. That’s the only logical explanation because the words spoken were of no real significance. It wasn’t as if she were gathering evidence for some kind of parental investigation into my teenage conduct.
It was probably simply, “Hey, what if I hit the record button?”
Anyway, when hearing and simultaneously recollecting the conversation again, I was experiencing it anew, listening to it as an artifact of sorts. From this partial remove, I found it to be fascinating.
The conversation had begun shortly after I’d come home from something, probably tired and hungry. There was food, not a full meal, and we were both eating. It was probably leftovers and it may have been late at night. I was a busy teenager, with sporting and social activities, and was probably spending less and less time with my mother. Our bond was still strong but I was branching out into the world. Was she trying to capture the last vestiges of her child before I was gone?
We sat, ate, and talked in such a relaxed manner that it could barely be called a conversation. Long, thoughtful, silences would pass. We were very likely recounting recent events and perhaps adding interpretations. Who knows? In any case, there was no urgency, no strong thread of ideas, no witty banter, not even any laughter.
What the conversation did contain was intimacy. Recorded and audible. In the tones of the voices and in the cadence of the exchange. The long stretches of silence would go by unrushed. Whatever was said was said languidly and the response, if there was one, might have been “mmm.”
I think that each of us, if were are lucky, will have but a few people in our lives, over our lifetimes, with whom we can share in this way. Unfettered, not judged, unhurried, and wholly unfurled.
When the playback came to an end, we smiled but didn’t say much, almost as if we had entered into that same state of mind again. I probably said that I thought the whole thing was cool and then went on with my day.
Of course the recording and the tape have long since vanished and my mother is long since deceased. So now, in my mind, I’m left with a recording of her secret recording of that long-lost conversation that contains no recognizable words but so much else. For that I’m very grateful.
