More Chance Encounters

In earlier posts, I commented about how chance encounters have affected my life and the lives of others. I had two random encounters earlier in the week that I'd like to think may influence their actions in a positive way. On Friday, I was flying back from the east coast after conducting a couple of interviews. When I went through security at Newark airport, my camera bag was selected for additional screening. This did not surprise me because it often happens if I forget to remove the shotgun microphone and place it in the bin. For obvious reasons, its shape often is something the screener wants to check out a little more closely. But this time, I had removed both it and the video camera and had them already in a bin. The agent seemed intent on finding something in particular because she was rummaging through the bag rather intently. I asked her if there was a problem and she commented that the x-ray revealed several 9-volt batteries. I explained to her that I used them for both my lapel microphones as well as my wireless ones. She then started glancing over some papers that I also had in the bag including brochures about my company. I then explained that I created video biographies for families. She then remarked that she bet I had heard a lot of interesting stories and I agreed and shared a short one I had just heard in my last interview--with no names of course to protect my client's privacy. She then asked me if she could keep one of the brochures because she thought it would be a great idea to have her mother interviewed.

The next random encounter was with a woman who sat next to me on the plane. An hour into the flight, I had my laptop open and was editing an interview and when I took a break she remarked that she had been peeking at what I was doing and was curious. After I explained to her what I did, she became very animated because she was coordinating a party in honor of her father-in-law who was turning 100 in November and thought this would be the perfect gift to him from his family. After a few minutes of conversation, she revealed that her mother-in-law was also still living and was 98! The little bit of background she gave me made me aware that their interviews would be historic as well as very interesting. We shared contact information and her last remark to me as I departed from the plane was that she was so glad she had sat next to me because she had never heard of a service like this and considering the age of her in-laws, it was time to seize the day.

So two chance encounters will hopefully generate the saving of family stories that would otherwise have eventually faded away and I LOVE THAT!
--Bridget

The Magic of Chance Encounters

When I look back at the interviews I have conducted the last couple of years, I am often struck by the impact a chance encounter can have on a person's life. Often it can start someone on the road to a serious relationship which is what I witnessed with several of my clients. With their permission, I'd like to relate the experiences of two of them.

One of them told me that he met his wife by asking her for a match for his cigarette while walking on a beach in a town he was visiting. I guess it was a rare case in which smoking ended up affecting someone's life in an advantageous way. The other man had just returned home from serving as a pilot in World War II and was walking down the street in his town when he noticed a girl he had gone to high school with years before who was waiting at a bus stop and he stopped to say hello. Both men ended up having long happy marriages as a result of being in a certain place at a certain time. It's fun to think how a minor action they took brought forth such blessed results. --Bridget Poizner

Guilty as charged.

I've recently been ambushed by a horde of articles with a similar theme.

'If you could call back one ancestor - just one - from the past, who would it be and what would you talk about?'

'If you realized this was going to be the last conversation you'd ever have with the person in front of you, what would you choose to say? And leave unsaid.'

'If you could leave a letter for the future grandchildren you will never meet, what would information about yourself would you include in it?'

'If there is one episode in your life that you wish you would have done differently, how would you do it again?'

Apart from guilting me into the admission that I would be utterly useless in situations like these that require quick wit and the wisdom that probably comes with years of inner reflection, I realized another profound truth. I realized that I am a procrastinator... and well, while I'm at it, so is everyone else in the entire world. There could be a few exceptions and I don't mean to offend any hearts, but it's the truth and that's what the universe was conspiring to tell me by sending these morbid articles one by one into my inbox. So don't blame me. Blame the universe.

Having neatly deflected all responsibility for that rash statement, let me now elaborate on my train of thought. If it wasn't for the sense of complacency that 'things' never happen to us but to other people... that there will be a 'right' time that will announce itself to us for all the things that we plan to do but never get down to doing... that life wouldn't be so unfair as to abruptly end, leaving so many things incomplete, including our own stories that often times piggyback on the stories of the people who surround us... why, if it wasn't for all this cotton fluff in my head, I would have known all the answers to the questions asked in those silly articles.

Q). Which ancestor would I call back?

None, thank you very much. Don't want to have to go through heartbreak twice and say good bye all over again.

Q). Last conversation and what I would say?

I would tell the person all that I have learned from their example.

Q). Letter to the grandkids?

I'll tell them I traveled halfway across the world to be able to marry the man I love - and that the rest of the family back home cried watching the ceremony webcast from the County Clerk's office. Of course, by then 'webcast' must sound antiquated to them so I would have to include a footnote explaining the technicalities involved.

Q). One episode I would do over?

None... my life is what it is because of all that I have done in the past. And I'm very happy with the way it's turned out. There will always be regrets and I'm okay with that.

I don't want to sound smug-alive though. I wish I could do so many things. I wish I could be at home right now - to hold my mother's hand as my father gets some stuff done to him in the hospital. I wish I could tell them how perfect as parents they are. I might have hinted otherwise many times while growing up and have since told them how I have amended that viewpoint... but still, it never hurts to say it again. I wish I could push 'Record' on the video camera just this minute and get them chatting about the past... when they were real people and individuals in their right and not just my 'parents'. I wish I could compensate for their absence and instead turn the spotlight on to my husband's parents - who are in the next room - and get them talking. But I know it's difficult to spill the details of one's life to someone you already know. Which explains why a fellow Video Biographer is actually choosing to hire me to interview her husband - instead of doing it herself. And well, there are a lot of things that I wish I had done earlier... and I feel that's probably true with everyone.

Something always needs to happen... an ultimatum needs to be made... to spur us into action. To give us that final push before we actually commit to doing something we realize needs to be done. Should be done. In fact, should have been done a long time ago. I've been fortunate to meet a lot of nice people in the course of documenting personal and family histories... but sadly, it has more often than not taken a trigger to prompt that move. Whether it's an illness or memory loss, that 'warning' never fails to propel us into taking the first step. And well, it doesn't need to be that way.

When 3 hours can seem like a lifetime...

One of the challenges in creating a Video Biography is to try and capture the essence of a lifetime in say, an hour or two... or as the case was on Tuesday, even three.

My interview with the Wallers* earlier this week was to do just that. To get them to share with me a slice of their life as it used to be when they were growing up... so that I could help them document that world; a world that now belongs only in their memory. But they remembered more than that. They remembered a time that belonged to their own parents (born in the 1890s) - whether they learned of this world from stories or shared memories or from looking at old pictures, who is to say? But tumbling out came tales of one-room schools, horse-drawn wagons, and a period in world history when 'fried chicken was not like it is today, with all sorts of crumbs on it'.

We talked about the world, yes... and marveled at automobiles, vacuum cleaners, the internet, and proms held at big hotels with the most glorious dresses to choose from at the stores. We talked about all that. But we also spoke about their own private universe as well... first crushes, first jobs, college, marriage, the Air Force, parenting, grandparenting... great-grandparenting.

And I learned a lot. I learned that Grandpas, under their tough and solid exterior have marshmallow hearts. Grandmas can go back to college to get their degrees at the same time as their children. Children can know their parents an entire lifetime - and still think that Air-Force-Dad actually used to fly to Japan during WW II to get back a pineapple for his favorite 'princess'. I learned, or shall I say re-learned, that we might know people for a lifetime and yet not know a whole lot about the kind of person they are... or used to be... or how they got to be one thing after being quite another.

And no doubt their children and grandchildren... and who knows how many generations after... will learn a lot about them through this interview. My only regret is that I'm going to have to be the one to reveal the pineapple coverup.

* Names have been changed to respect their privacy