The Lost Tape

I can’t really remember her voice. It’s been over 40 years since I last heard it.

My grandmother was my second mother. She didn’t speak a lick of English when my mother and I retrieved her from South Korea. And, she really didn’t speak much more during the 10 years she spent in this country after that helping raise me and my brothers. She remains to this day the single nicest person I have ever known. Actually, the best person I’ve ever known.

She would protect us from Mom and Dad’s wrath when we were bad… and whisper a soothing melody while rubbing my tummy when it was upset. And, because I was the youngest, I shared a bed with her for the first few years after she joined the household.

I remember how soft-spoken she was in voice was when she spoke to my parents and to us. But, I can’t quite remember how it sounded.

But there was this red-label K-mart cassette tape. And on it, my Mom had made various recordings about the family on this tape recorder. Just a hodgepodge of random things, sometimes with us kids, sometimes not. I vaguely recall this tape was going to sent back to a relative in Korea - whom I have no idea. The one thing I remembered about this tape was a song my grandmother sang about us three grandkids. One by one, she showered us with mostly undeserved compliments in individual verses, that we were well behaved (we were not), we studied hard (mostly), but that we were each a “good boy” in English (we are all boys). I especially remember wondering when she learned that term, of all things. But, most of all, I remember I loved the song.

I listened to that part of the tape (and only that part of the tape) multiple times after she passed in 1988. I kept the cassette tape safely in my closet for years. Although, I listened to it less and less over time - not because I didn’t want to, but as a sixteen-year-old, I had more pressing matters… like my girlfriend and getting my driver’s license. Also, my boombox was pretty awful about chewing up my Duran Duran mixed tapes. I didn’t want to risk ruining this one, which was becoming more fragile and brittle over time.

I clung onto that tape. It was really the only tangible piece of her I had left. For some inexplicable reason, we only have a few pictures of her. I guess we weren’t big on taking lots of pictures back then….

And, then I went away to college. Then, graduate school. And, the rest of my life kicked into gear, away from my childhood home.

I don’t know exactly when the last time I heard her voice on that tape. But, it was before my parents sold the house. And everything in it. Including the red-label K-mart cassette tape in a box in my closet.

I never asked my parents if they had thrown it out or what had become of it. I’m pretty sure they had no idea I still had it. Silently, I thought, I should have told them what I had stashed and where. I should have told them to put it in the safe. Why didn’t I? Dammit. Why?

But, then I remember my mother had her first bout with cancer at the time, my parents made the quick decision to retire, and I was busy trying to start a career in Chicago…. And, then I think, how was I supposed to know what was going to happen in a matter of months?

I like to think that the tape is somewhere out there just hiding and waiting for me to find it… or that somehow my parents had known what it was and had secretly stashed it somewhere for safe keeping. But, I know that’s not the reality. Somewhere buried under tons of garbage, there’s several feet of magnetic cassette tape ribbon with my grandmother’s voice on it. Somewhere.

I know it’s just a tape. But, every time I would play it, I would hear her. It was more than just a snapshot captured in time. It had its own tone, color, character. It had an element of time. It was a living, breathing thing that I would experience every time I pressed “play". The song had its own life and its own value. Because even though it wasn’t her, it was… for the few minutes she sang, at least.

And, knowing that song is still somewhere on the same earth is somehow irrationally satisfying. I just wish I had it.