The cassette that was left out

Ana with 1 N Author

I turned 40 and nothing went to plan. Until, late that night, a lost tape from 1996 gave me back the little girl who used to sing.

The cassette that was left out

I turned 40 a few days ago.

For the past few years, my birthday had always come with a kind of nostalgia. This year I woke up different. Ezra, my black cat, was asleep next to me, there was glorious sunshine outside and I put on my swimsuit to go for a dip. I'd never swum in the sea on my birthday. Lucky enough to live by the sea, I thought it was a good way to start the day. Summer had decided to stay a little longer and, at that moment, the day was already won.

Then the rush began. My new phone was arriving by post at 12, finally a good camera, maybe now I'd feel motivated to make more videos, to show myself more. I also had lunch booked with three friends.

All three cancelled.

Fine, it was going to be an ordinary day after all. That's alright, I'd make the most of it anyway and later meet some friends for sunset on the beach, my happy place. That was the plan, although by now I should know my plans rarely go according to plan.

The phone kept ringing, me without my hearing aids, not showered, rushing from one thing to the next. I ended up making coffee at home and waiting for the phone. Afterwards I'd go and have lunch somewhere, on my own.

At 11, the doorbell rang. So early? The postmen don't come up to the flat, so I started down the stairs and, halfway, I heard:

"SURPRISE!"

It was my mum, my sister and my friend Sandra. A while before, I had told Sandra that the present I wanted most was to have my mum in Brighton. And there they were.

I was in shock. I'm not even sure I reacted the way I should have. Three friends had cancelled lunch, three people had crossed the sea to have lunch with me.

They had been up all night, slept at the airport, they were exhausted, poor things, but full of energy. So off we went for lunch at a Japanese restaurant.
Of course it had to be, Japan is a constant in my life. A robot came to the table to sing me happy birthday.

A robot

We wandered around town for a while and, somewhere along the way, I started to realise my sunset plan might have a few problems. My friends had spent the day messaging to ask where, what time, what we were doing, and I kept replying things like "beach, sunset", as if that were enough information.

It wasn't.

It got cold, nobody turned up and we ended up going home. I messaged everyone: come over.

And they kept arriving. Friends from different countries, who didn't know each other, good energy, conversations overlapping, each with their own plan in their head. One friend came ready for a rave, another thought I was on my own and came for a quiet night in.

My original idea had been a karaoke restaurant, but it was too expensive. I thought about doing karaoke at home, then did nothing. And it turned into one of those nights you can't really plan.

Earlier, when they arrived, my sister had given me a USB stick.

"What's that?"

"Oh, we'll look at it later."

And I completely forgot. Only in the middle of all the chaos at home did I get a message from my brother: "Have you seen the present?"

The present. The USB stick. That's when I remembered.

I decided to put it on the TV so we could all watch together. I had no idea what it was, and my TV, one of those basic ones I found on the street, wasn't cooperating. I fiddled with it for ages until, eventually, I got it working.

For years I've been saying I need to digitise the videotapes from my childhood. They're all at my mum's and, for years, they were knocking about, but I kept them safely put away so they wouldn't get damaged. Meanwhile, they'd been looking for them to surprise me, but couldn't find them.

Only one. Lost, separated from the others.

My brother had managed to transfer it onto a USB stick the day before and send it with them. It was from 1996, I was nine, almost ten. And it was exactly the one I'd always wanted to see.

Thirty years later, I was finally watching it, surrounded by my friends, the same ones I'd recently started singing karaoke with, just for fun. One of them said that starting karaoke had been like opening Pandora's box.

On the tape, it was me singing a few songs, with my dad, my grandad and my grandma.

All of them have since passed away.

It was strange to see that little girl I had forgotten. My friends kept saying:

"Ana, that's you now!"

And to think that, out of all the tapes, that was the one that turned up. The only one, thirty years later. And right now, of all times.

I like to think it was a present from my dad and my grandad, who shared my birthday. Right in the year I started singing, the year I remembered, or perhaps finally understood, that I already sang as a child.

Something about that little girl felt like now: I was singing at nine and, thirty years later, I'm once again trying to find my voice.

It was around ten that I began to close myself off. Difficult years followed. There are things from that time that are still part of my story, but maybe that's a story for another day.

I'm now working on the tension in my jaw, and only now am I beginning to realise how much I was holding there. In speech therapy, my therapist noticed a huge difference in my jaw and in my speech. It's looser. I feel looser too. I don't know whether the body tells stories the way we do, but sometimes it seems to.

For a long time I thought I was starting something new: facial exercises set to music, singing, making videos, showing myself more, using my voice more. And now that tape has reminded me that maybe it isn't so new. Maybe this voice was already mine.

After the video, I sang a little more and danced.

Thirty years later, that little girl was back. And I could hear her again.




More on the jaw, and the year I stopped hiding my mouth: Forty, and the mouth I used to hide

Categories: : MemoryinMotion