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Answering machine tape from long ago brings memories of youth rushing back in
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A few years ago when my parents moved from their five-bedroom suburban home at the edge of Silicon Valley to their retirement condo nearby, my siblings and I went through three decades鈥 worth of junk to throw away. To my surprise, I found an answering machine in a box that held memorabilia from my college years at UC Berkeley.
I tinkered with it, and after few false starts it worked. So I listened. Muffled voices of long ago came echoing through.
鈥...seafood with me,鈥 said an old friend鈥檚 voice. His is among many other voices 鈥 some half-erased, some taped over 鈥 that I have not heard for years.
鈥淗i! I need to see your biochem midterm. This is [some inaudible name],鈥 announces a young woman鈥檚 high-pitched voice, slightly touched with a European accent. I could not for the life of me recall who she was. 鈥淭hanks,鈥 she says.
鈥淐ome home,鈥 ordered my mother in Vietnamese, after that unknown young woman. 鈥淵our uncle has passed away.鈥 My mother鈥檚 voice was deep and sad.
An array of voices then 鈥 a groan, giggles, wrong numbers, even a dirty joke 鈥 moments from my college years came spilling out from across the gap of time, thanks to the scratched-up tape.
What does this answering machine say about my past, I wonder, and about my generation? That my college life, and for that matter the large part of my youth, could be summarized on a cassette tape seems now fitting, living here in technologically sophisticated, constantly changing America.
The answering machine was a novelty when I went to college in the mid-80鈥檚 but has now become a relic.
A young immigrant鈥檚 life
Listening to it, I searched my memories. I tried to probe into that young immigrant鈥檚 life. What kind of person was he, really?
Here then is what it is:
鈥..seafood with me鈥 was an invitation from a high school friend who lived in San Francisco. We would sometimes go out to dinner when he had time off from his family business. I remember going to meet him through the October rain. I ended up losing my beautiful lacquered-handle umbrella on the way back to Berkeley. But his is a reassuring voice. After all these years it is still full of promise, of good intention. We have, however, since lost touch.
Still, 鈥...seafood with me鈥 means one delightful dinner. We ended up in a North Beach Italian restaurant eating crab and clams and planning future trips to Thailand and Europe.
Sometime after that dinner 鈥 a week, a few days? 鈥 I was home with my parents for my uncle鈥檚 funeral. I played the dutiful Vietnamese son paying tribute to a very close family member in time of sorrow. In my mind鈥檚 eye, I see my father sitting on a pew looking awkward, trying his best to conceal his tears, saying goodbye to his last brother. I hear my aunt-in-law and cousins crying somewhere behind me.
Faded memories returned, incidents that might otherwise have been lost forever became once more vivid.
Pregnant? A false alarm
Another message sounded: a friend down the street. She might be pregnant, she whispered into the tape. Her boyfriend did not know. She didn鈥檛 want him to know. 鈥淐all me,鈥 she said, her voice urgent. As it turned out, she was not pregnant; a false alarm. But didn鈥檛 I spend the whole night talking with her? Didn鈥檛 I panic, as if I were the male responsible? Then I sang some stupid song to make her laugh.
I listened, too, to the voice of my first love, giggly and excited about the weekend drive to Napa. And I felt intensely nostalgic, and a tenderness toward our lost youth.
They all came back: ordinary moments captured from my college life that are now full of mystery. And, slowly, in these voices, I began to recognize myself, a young man whose optimistic outlook and sense of humor, I鈥檓 happy to report, have more or less, despite the pitfalls and travails, survived into middle age.
Some years ago I visited my own alma mater just when the libraries were in the middle of throwing out reference card catalogues along with their cabinets, and some kids were throwing the cards up in the air to see them flutter down like autumn leaves.
It was a poetic marker of sorts for me, a moment when information stored in physical space found passage into the electronic ether, rendering things like library reference cards and answering machines obsolete.
But I keep the cassette tape in my writing desk鈥檚 drawer anyway, and I鈥檒l listen to it from time to time.
Andrew Lam is an editor with New America Media and author of 鈥淧erfume Dreams: Reflections on the Vietnamese Diaspora,鈥 and 鈥淓ast Eats West: Writing in Two Hemispheres.鈥 His latest book is 鈥淏irds of Paradise Lost,鈥 a short story collection. It was published in 2013 and won a Pen/Josephine Miles Literary Award in 2014.
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