Main Title from Home Alone (Somewhere In My Memory) - Lindsey Stirling
I have very fond memories of Home Alone, though I wasn't allowed to watch much TV as a kid. For most of the week, the TV and VHS player stayed down in our basement, a dark and foreboding place that I was rarely intrepid enough to explore. My grandparents were the only reason I could ever keep up in games of TV Tag.
My brother and I stayed with them in Kitchener at Christmastime. My grandma used to warn us that we'd end up with square eyes from staring at the television for so long. I think it hurt her, sometimes, how much more enthralled we were by her TV screen than by spending time with her.
I got to spend more time with her than most of my cousins. I was thirteen when she died, old enough that we made baklava together and talked about our favourite Nancy Farmer novels. Old enough to have started to understand how socially adroit she was. “Courtesy will get you everywhere” was a maxim she impressed upon me. I sometimes wish I could ask her for advice about a thorny bit of etiquette or a carefully-chosen gift.
The last time I saw my grandma lucid, she asked if she’d be out of the hospital in time for Christmas. It was 2005, perhaps the 23rd of December. My mum admitted that this was unlikely.
"Well, ain’t that the pits!” she said, surprising me with her fierceness.
Not that she wasn’t fierce—I remember her once extracting toys for my brother and me from a Burger King employee by bellowing “you will NOT discriminate against MY grandchildren simply because they are vegetarian”—but she was so physically diminished that I’d expected less toughness in her voice.
That wasn’t the only surprise during that visit. She and my mum somehow got onto the subject of dancing, and she talked about the tap lessons she’d taken as a little girl.
“Mum, I never knew you did tap dancing,” said my mother, smiling.
“Oh, Susie, I didn’t tell you everything!” she said, as if this should have been obvious.
I wonder how much I will never be told about the people I love. So many stories disappear at the end.
Wishing I had a better memory,
- Tessa