My mother hands me a cardboard box filled with tapes, an invitation to experience her 20s as I mark the halfway point of my own. Elbows deep in the tail end of a millennium and the birth of another, I wrap my fingers around 1998. The VCR greedily licks the magnetic ribbon spinning around its dusty head. The TV crackles, glass rippling with muted colors.
A forgotten image of my mother materializes, her hair as dark as the gritty mud of Turkish coffee. A rosy glow of reluctance betrays her pale phyllo dough skin. She always hated being the center of attention. In a heart-shaped country nestled in the Balkans, her parents wait for this tape, an endorsement of the American dream. My father is squinting behind the eyepiece, trying on silly voices to stoke her dimming light. The refugee center had only supplied them with oil, flour, and a piss-stained mattress. She sinks into the couch that was brought in off the curb. The living room is barren: there is a chipped coffee table, a used stereo system, a framed picture of Princess Diana, and stuffed animals. She scrounges up torn dollar bills, buying plush critters to fill the emptiness. For years, she’s dreamed of doughy baby fingers clenched around fluffy bear paws, but she only has a growing beaded-eyed audience. On the stereo draped with doilies, a white bear hugs a crimson heart. She says it’s her favorite.
The tape never made the trip across the Atlantic.
