I’ve mentioned in past newsletters how my mother died when I was an infant. I was told stories about her and had lots of pictures of her, but until I entered my thirties, I didn’t think of her as a real person. Someone who once lived a life.

She was always a ghost in the past. Flat, lacking sensory detail.

When I was in college, I had a project to do that required me to bring a person to life with words and selected multimedia. They could be famous or a role model, anyone I chose, and I chose this mother I didn’t remember.

I had a box filled with those pictures I mentioned, along with her high school yearbook, birth certificate, a scrapbook, and, oddly enough, a 33 record of her voice reading Rudyard Kipling’s poem “If.”

It’s been years since I’ve listened to it. I no longer have a turntable. I mentioned this 70-year-old record to my daughter- and son-in-law, expressing my fear that with its age, I would lose the recording one day.

Surprisingly, they had a turntable that played 33s. And not just played them, but could hook up to a computer and transfer the sound. My son-in-law dug it out (they are not fully moved into the house, what with all that renovation going on).

I brought the record to the house the following week. The thing had grown brittle, and tiny cracks marred one side, fortunately not the side with my mother’s recording.

We played it, each of us standing there blown away by this voice from the past. My daughter had never heard it before.

For me, it was startling how hearing her voice meant so much. When I listened to it all those years ago, I don’t recall thinking more than that it would be a great addition to my project.

This time, it was so much more personal. Devastating and gratifying to hear.

My daughter has the same timbre to her voice as her grandmother. If you can call to mind Judy Garland’s voice from the movie The Wizard of Oz, then you have a sense of the intonations and tone of my mother’s voice. My mother must have been in her early twenties then.

Sound, smell, taste, touch: they bring the past forward in technicolor. I had no memories the voice could recall, but emotions filled my chest. How does one grasp something so intangible with words?

I try for that in my writing, but I can say reality is a stunning experience.