Monday, 14 January 2002 | Tall sandwiches

She brought her new video camera over, and, after we made tall sandwiches including slices of her first avocado, we watched quiet videos of snow and birds on the pop-out screen, digits clicking by in the top corner. Then I took over, roaming through the house, pointing the camera at toys and cats and a monster head that groaned when his eye was pulled out, and at that bat that hangs in the living room, who flaps and squeaks when you flip his switch, and, oh, that Blacula poster in the hallway, and that inflatable grasshopper on top of the kitchen cabinets! Look! If you hold my cat Leeches up and stretch her out, she spans the width of the door frame! I was only able to quit when the battery was dead.

We also scanned wedding pictures—tiny, faded images in which she and my dad look young and nervous and sort-of unreal, the way all dated pictures appear to me: fascinating, yet remote. We were turning those digital, too, just as I had my house. Attempting to preserve.