A magic camera?

“Hey Jack, do you want to keep this old camera” young Jack asked his father. They were packing his dad’s belongings to take to Vinnies. They did this every week since old Jack had moved into a retirement home up on Chemong Road.

Young Jack first thought was why dad keeps so much junk in such a little place. He was not like that when his mom was alive. “Now this place looks like a house of a hoarder,” he thought.  

From the living room old Jack responded with an emphatic voice. “Don’t throw it a way!” Adding “and please don’t open the wooden box beside it. Just bring them both to me.”  

This was the third week they spent together trying to prepare the house for sale. Neither of them had a close attachment to the little bungalow. Young Jack had never lived there, and his dad had bought the house after his wife died ten years earlier. It was at a time when the house prices in Toronto had become so expensive. Selling the house in South Riverdale was a good idea since it had so many painful memories. Moving to Peterborough was a good move close enough to Toronto and a slower pace for a widower.

Back then, young Jack felt so resentful of his dad. He perceived his father was behaving irresponsibly. In his opinion, after his mom died, his dad was not acting his age. He was drinking and partying too much. He did give his dad credit because during his mother’s illness his father never left her side. However, one thing doesn’t compensate for the other, he thought.  

Shortly after his mom died, his dad became an 80-year-old teenager. It was about the same time when Jack stopped calling his father dad and began calling him Jack, a name they shared. His dad never protested. 

Young Jack took the old Polaroid and the little wooden box and brought them into the living room saying. “You are aware of the limited space you have in your new place, don’t you? There are many things you will have to get rid off.”

Old Jack responded. “My dear boy I am not taking this old thing to my humble abode. I am giving it to you and wanted to make sure you appreciate it and keep it as I have since 1978.” 

Young Jack responded, “like the convertible red mustang?”

“Dear Son” old Jack said becoming serious and thoughtful as he was recalling memories from a distant past, “remember that summer, it may have been, 1978 or may be 79. We were vacationing and went to a pow-wow near Kelowna BC.”

The unusual seriousness of his dad expression took young Jack by surprise, and he became more attentive to what his father was saying. 

“Yup…I remember you pulled that guy from the river, didn’t you? I remember mom had to drive, something she hated, because he was unconscious, and you were doing CPR.”

“Ha! Memory”, old Jack responded, “it is amazing how people, remember the same event so differently. The same facts are imprinted in our mind so dissimilar depending on age, and circumstances.”

“You were young and probably that’s why you remember the way you do. We had stopped to have lunch by the bend of river where there was a little waterfall. On the other side of the river, there was a family, doing the same thing. The woman waved to us and began crossing the river, it was very shallow, as you may remember since you were playing in it.” 

“As she approached, she greeted us very friendly and asked if we could take a picture of them with their new Polaroid camera.” 

“When I reached the other side of the river. I notice that all of them where in regalia, and assumed they were participating in the pow-wow.”

“I took the picture and when back to our lunch. Not one minute later I heard the woman screaming, so I went back to try to figure out what happened. She showed me the photo, I had just taken, in it her husband was not beside her but lying on the floor.”     

“I don’t know how much time past but within a moment her husband, who was, also, looking at the photo, fell with what appeared to be an epileptic seizure. We carried him, as best we could with your mom, his wife, you, and their children and drove him to the hospital.”

“As we were in the waiting room awaiting to hear news about him, I realized I had the camera on my hands. I don’t know where the idea came from, but I decided to take a picture of her. She looked so distressed as if she was carrying the weight of the world on her shoulders. To my surprise when the picture developed, her pictured image showed her smiling and happy. I couldn’t believe my eyes. A Few minutes later, a doctor came to inform her that her husband was going to be ok”

“I never showed her that picture, when we say our goodbyes, she and her husband insisted we keep the camera. I refused but they insisted as a gesture of thanks for what we did for them. They said the camera had been a gift to them from an elder of their clan.”

“I have taken many pictures, with that camera, over the years and they never come out as one expects. Now it is yours Jack.” Said old Jack handing his son the old Polaroid camera and opening the little wooden box. 

As he opened the beautifully decorated little wooden box, he handed his son a bunch of old pictures, some of them so faded they were almost invisible. There were images of the family, the old neighborhood, friends, pets, etc. 

Anyone seeing the old pictures would see nothing odd about them. For young Jack, it was different, as he began looking at the pictures a tear dropped from his eyes and his legs began to tremble. He sat down remembering the moments frozen in time. Realizing the pictures described not the moment of the time the pictures were taken but a few minutes later. As if the old Polaroid camera could not see what was happening but what was going to happen. 

Almost with an inaudible voice he asks his father what he was witnessing. His father shrugged his shoulders and responded: “if I only knew.”