Time Capsule

Last week, my oldest daughter was home mostly by herself. Her dad was on call, and I was free from obligations, so I gathered up the rest of the children, and we went camping to be with my husband. The oldest daughter had to work, so she stayed home.

Eventually, her siblings had responsibilities too, so they joined her. I stayed. And while the parents were away from the home, things sort of fell apart. First, the satellite quit working. But that was OK because there was Internet and Netflix. But on Saturday, I got a call from my youngest son. His two oldest sisters were both at work, his youngest sister was at a friend’s, and the internet was down. He was bored.

Never have you heard a more pitiful sound than a 11-year-old boy claiming to be bored. OK, you probably have, but that particular 11-year-old boy doesn’t think it is true.

Never mind that this child owns a bicycle and dogs and two gaming systems. Never mind that he was in a house with all kinds of games including Sims on the computer and a huge collection of DVD movies. He was bored. Plus, he loves to read, and this is also a house FULL of books that he could be reading. He, however, refused to budge. He was bored.

I was not concerned.

By Sunday, his sisters were home, and he was still bored. The oldest sister pulled out an entire pile of books that she recommended he read, but he wanted none of that. When the oldest went to work, the middle daughter who actively avoids books, and the youngest child were both bored.

So they went digging. And they came across ancient VCR tapes including a whole slew of family videos. And they watched.

When I arrived home Monday, it wasn’t as clear to me that the children had been bored. For one thing, I would think extremely bored children would have done a bit more cleaning. Alas, it didn’t happen.

Although, the oldest child, who was the one who worked most of the weekend, was up at 8 a.m. and cleaning. Don’t be too impressed: she had an agenda, but still she was also making GREAT progress. (Agenda in this case translates to “she wanted her boyfriend to come over.”)

I pulled into the driveway and roused the children. At 8 a.m., the middle child started the lawn mower and mowed the area of lawn where we normally park our camper. This allowed me to pull all the way into the driveway since I had pulled the camper home (I am becoming a real pro at that!).

The next two and a half hours were spent with me on the phone trying to get our internet restored. It was a huge “my department doesn’t handle that” fiasco that did NOT make me happy, especially when that one tech person said my internet should be restored in 24-hours. Um, no. I want it restored NOW.

Because it doesn’t bother me when the children are without internet, but I need my internet. Especially since I had grades that needed to be posted, and I couldn’t wait 24-hours. It only took talking to two more people to get my internet restored, although I’m not sure what the problem was with it to begin with.

But while in my office, I noticed things had been disturbed. The books were all over the floor from the oldest child’s suggestions. And all of my office supplies were out, and someone had messed with the old VCR tapes stored behind my office supplies.

Later, the middle child was laughing about her behavior when she was a child. “I was a brat,” she said. The oldest chimed in quickly, “I was a brat too, but I was cute!”

And that is when I learned how the children entertained themselves Sunday: they watched old family movies. Some of the movies were from when I only had three children.

Before the afternoon was up, I had popped in a video tape to watch. Who are these adorable little kids? Oh, their voices! I remember thinking back then that I needed to capture their tiny voices. And I had. Adorable.

There was Autumn and Amanda playing together without any fighting. Although several times, Amanda would run away to find me and then run right back.

There was me before my broken ankle, and a brief (but still too long) view of me after I broke the ankle but before my surgery (in other words, on the couch doped up on pain meds). And Autumn’s fourth birthday, Maxine’s first birthday.

And Grandma Sherwood in a perm. I had forgotten Grandma Ruth was at Maxine’s first birthday party. Or that Deb Denton was at Autumn’s fourth birthday party. And I heard his voice before I saw him — my dad. And Gramps was there, and we caught on film one of his bits of wisdom. Precious.

It was bittter-sweet to watch.

And then it was time to shut off the video and have my oldest child take my second-oldest child to her first day of driver’s training.

Where does the time go?