It was their last weekend in the house before they moved. For the last couple of weeks slowly they'd been sorting their possessions into boxes, reminiscing of the memories behind each object as they did so. Today's job was the attic, since Gerry had moved in neither of them had touched the attic for the simple reason that anything up there wasn't essential to day to day living and had yet to have be of any importance at any other time.
Gerry was up on a ladder while he passed boxes down to Sandra, they'd now gotten past all of the ones that Gerry had added a couple of years before and were now onto Sandra's while had been there at least 7 years.
"You do realise that you aren't taking all of this stuff with us. You need to sort through these boxes and chuck a lot of it out baby." Gerry told her as he passed her a twelfth dusty box down.
"You I know, how about we sort these out and get more down when we've done them."
"What do you mean we?" Gerry laughed as he climbed back down the ladder and put the cover back over the opening of the loft.
"Please baby, we'll get it done quicker that way." Sandra whined.
"Fine."
After sorting through the normal rubbish you'd expect to find in someone's loft, like photo albums which hadn't seen the light of day for years, they were now on the last of the first twelve boxes. Opening it they saw a stack of videos, even Sandra stared at the in confusion as she tried and failed to figure out what they were.
"I've not seen a video tape in years." Gerry commented as he picked one up.
"No neither have I."
"What's on them?" Gerry asked.
"I don't know." Sandra replied honestly.
"We have an old TV upstairs with a video player, I'll go and set it up."
Sandra had been in the kitchen making lunch while Gerry had been faffing around with the tape player but in truth Sandra was more than a little interested herself as to what was on tapes.
"It's working baby." Sandra sat on the sofa as he slipped the first of the tapes into the machine. In the corner the date came up as May 12th 1972 and the screen filled with a crowd of people.
"When's she on Grace?" Came Sandra's father's voice, making her heart melt a little.
"There's two more before her." It was an almost unrecognizable voice from Grace that replied, a softer, gentler voice.
"It was my first riding competition, these are home videos. Put another on." Sandra smiled, Gerry did as he was asked and this time the date told them that the date was August 12th 1963, the screen showed Sandra sat on a play mat with Grace sat smiling by her side.
"Come on Sandra, say Mama. Ma-ma." Grace broke it down in an attempt to get Sandra to sat her first words. The camera was then set down as her father joined them on the floor.
"Don't put that in her head! Darling can you say Dada?" The Sandra on the screen gurgled happily but there still wasn't a hint of a word coming out.
"It was my second birthday and as it turns out the day I said my first word." Sandra explained.
"I bet they regretted encouraging you to speak. Anyway which of the two words was it?"
"Mama. Back to packing I think now, and we're keeping these."