And So It Goes

When I was in tenth grade, I accidentally recoreded over the video tape of my sister's third birthday party(incidentally the only video my parents had of my sister and me when we were children) to tape an episode of some TV show. I cried for 3 hours when I realized what I had done and what I had taken away from our family history. I found it very difficult to confess to the rest of my family that I had single-handedly erased that small glimpse into our past and I still have a knot that grows in the pit of my stomach when I think about the fact that the tape is one thing I can never give back to my family.
Since then I've guarded anything regarding my past like once it was gone, I would be gone as well. Anything-pictures, paintings I did in kindergarten, books I loved, blankets I slept on, stuffed animals I cherished, and I think you get the idea. My cat just chewed up the entire corner of one of my baby pictures. Not monumental, the important part of the picture, me, remains intact and, being the first-born, hundreds of almost identical pictures exist in photo albums in my parent's house. But, I can't help feeling exactly like I did that night in tenth grade. It's a sinking sort of feeling which is probably related to the instantaneous thought of what my mother would think. This is twice I've violated her past with the kind of reckless disregard that causes five car pile-ups in rush hour. I don't think I'll tell her, but maybe with some clever cropping I could salvage something framable.
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