"He was very conscious of his standing in society," my mother said of her father. Besides the maid and the new car every two years, my maternal grandfather's effort to keep up with the Joneses included owning a color movie camera.

Although I would like to go back in time to teach him how to use it, I was no less thrilled to discover a videotape made from those old films, no matter how shaky and wobbly its images.

For her birthday this year, I edited a montage of those films with family photographs. Her reaction to seeing herself as a little girl so many years later shocked her as much as it did me. What also amazed me about her reaction was how it sparked her memory. My mother, bless her heart, forgets clothes in the washer yet she could remember the exact circumstances of a scene shown on 50-year-old film.

Click here to see why the ending choked her up. As always, you need a Quicktime player and a broadband connection to see it.