Reel to Reel, Spool to Spool

This old photo shows my great grandmother and my great uncle, having what I think is an evening of correspondence. They lived in Norway, in the area called Sokndal. The property is still in our family, and correspondence continues to this day, especially now that the Internet is at our fingertips!

My grandpa came to America in 1921. His connection to the family "back home" remained strong throughout his life, however. My father remembers grandpa sitting at the kitchen table every Sunday afternoon, writing letters to his family in Norway. I am almost certain there were gifts of money sent along with many of those letters, since it was a very meager living they made during those years.

Grandpa was also a lover of gadgets, especially the kind that connected people. He had a home movie camera. If I'm not mistaken, he was filming his family as early as 1935 with that machine. He eventually decided he wasn't made for farming, apprenticed as a photographer, later to open a studio in town. He drove the sixteen miles every day, to and from the studio.

He also bought a few reel-to-reel tape recorders. Uncle Karl is sitting in front of their machine in this photo. Grandpa kept one for himself and (I believe) brought one to Norway for his parents to have and use. So those letters soon became audio-letters, spools of audio tape sent back and forth across the Atlantic from America to Norway. Grandpa would record on one side of the tape, and the family in Norway would receive the tape, listen, and record on the other side.

We still have many of those tapes. My Dad arranged for several of them to be transferred digitally to cd's. They had a long-awaited trip to Norway this summer, along with a few other family members, and they brought these recordings along as gifts to their relatives.

I believe I have an expanded understanding of myself when I look back to the details of my family, of those who came before me. I also believe there is inherently a desire in a family system to maintain some kind of connection, to be able to use the others in the family as support, as resources throughout life. My grandpa's family could have so easily been torn apart by the common story of emigration. There were eight children born to my great grandparents. Four of them eventually came to North America. One died in China while serving as a Christian missionary, but he too was rumored to have wanted to make his way to the new world. That left only three children to stay home.

But this extraordinary effort to maintain connections has born fruit for me and for many in my family! I have a long list of second cousins, all of whom are interested in who I am and what kind of life I lead. I tell you, the interest is mutual. There's a certain kind of love there, which nurtures some kind of peace in me.