Old tapes reveal a treasure

The Boston Herald

Beverly Beckham

I knew that I would find gold in the old cassettes, which I used to keep in my desk drawer. I saved them for a reason. I moved them from the desk to a cabinet 15 years ago, securing them with elastic, taping a note to the bunch: "Listen before throwing away."

I expected to hear among the interviews I taped, the sound of children's voices. How couldn't I? I have always written at home and my children were babies when I began. I remember taking the tape recorder into the kitchen sometimes and letting them sing into it.

I remember standing in the hall outside Lauren's bedroom, pressing "record" as she and her cousin Rainie pretended to be all the characters in "The Wizard of Oz." I remember shushing whichever child was at my office door, a finger pressed to my lips, hoping the person on the other end of the phone didn't hear the high-pitched squeals, the laughter of little kids.

I knew that there were snippets of these things among the half dozen tapes I had saved. I didn't expect more.

Instead I found my children's childhood, my youth and a dozen random days.

I took the tapes on a car trip. I listened to them on Route 3 on my way to New Hampshire. The tapes were old, the sound was muddy, scratchy, worse than a 78 rpm record. But each held a treasure.

Between a conversation with Stephen King's wife Tabitha and an interview with a psychic, there was Julie, not even 2 years old, singing. "Because of you, there's a song in my heart. Because of you my romance had its start." Sunshine in her voice. Then breaking off in mid-note to scream at her brother who must have walked in the room. "Robbie! Robbie! I want you to give me a kiss NOW!"   

I saw her as she was then, chubby, hands on hips, her blond hair straight and thin, nothing like what it would be, calling for her brother, who was 9 and putty in his sister's hands.

I heard me talking to Millie Potter, my first editor, the first person to believe in me. I heard me, not her because I have always quarreled with machines. My voice is serious and professional; but in the background there is whispering, giggling and the shuffling of children trying to be quiet.

Then the tape reversed and so did time. Another world: Robbie, then not yet 3, singing his ABCs, "Camptown Races" and "Happy Birthday Dear Grandma," on some morning so long ago that there is no memory attached to these sounds. "Sing another song, Robbie, then I'll get up," I hear myself say in a voice still fringed with sleep. "Sing 'Sesame Street' " my husband says.

Lauren is in our bed too, making baby sounds. The "kids" are 30 and 28 now.

Old friends, Mark and Jill, are on the tape, talking about buying a house. Mark is saying that two bedrooms aren't enough. Jill is arguing that they are. "If we get a baby this year and we get another in two years, they can share the same bedroom, Mark."

Their first baby is a teacher and engaged to be married. Their second is a college student who will graduate in the spring.

I hear Grandma's voice - not wobbly or hushed, but clear and crisp. She's telling me a story and she's laughing. And I'm laughing, too, then and now, because although now departed she is for a time back with me.

These tapes were buried treasures, stuffed first in a drawer, then moved to a cabinet to be listened to "later."  Later is the alchemy, time the magic potion, that can turn voices into people and tapes into gold.