The Earliest Roll of Film I Have

My grandparents have a dusty attic of hidden relics, an interactive time capsule I explore each Thanksgiving when I visit them upstate.

I have gleaned a variety of souvenirs from this attic: ugly sweaters, old family photographs, food cans from the 80s, and copies of American classics I still haven’t read.

One Thanksgiving, when the air was cold and the leaves were brown, I discovered the attic souvenir that I value the most, tucked behind a box of old books.

A Nikon N6006.

After a run downstairs and a few questions,I learn that it’s my dad’s, in need of a new battery but still fully functional. I can’t remember what year this was but I assume I must’ve been around fourteen years old.

Photography is a regular hobby of mine, a way to sink into my surrounding landscapes and observe with intent. It is an art of feeling removed from my thoughts but present in my surroundings. I like that feeling.

I still use the N6006 to this day. Since salvaging it from the attic, I have probably shot around fifteen rolls. Though I prefer the look of film, I usually shoot digital because it's cheaper.

I think I was cleaning out my bedroom preparing for my sophomore year of college when I found an undeveloped roll of film in my closet. I was unsure of what was on it, but I stashed it in the front pocket of my suitcase until I could develop it in the city.

What I would learn (a few weeks later) was that it was the first roll of film I ever shot on my Nikon N6006. I recognize this inaugural roll because I specifically remember taking a photo of my parents eating ice cream on a family road trip the first time I used the camera.

And perhaps you can recognize this as an inaugural roll because the photos reflect those of a film neophyte. Overexposed, often blurry, and sometimes hard to read.

The earliest roll of film I have contains 36 frames, showcasing pictures of my family as we prepare and enjoy a lake trip in Oakland, Maryland.

For my family of five, these trips to the lake were not uncommon. On the Friday nights of long weekends, we’d often pack ourselves into the family Toyota and drive west until Oakland.

In my memory, these rides are a drowsy haze of being a passenger in the backseat; falling asleep, waking back up, and hearing the mellow hum of a radio in my half-awake state. After three hours, I’d be rocked out of my haze, slowly and subtly when the paved road beneath me turned to gravel.

My family stayed in the same place every trip: a wooden house that my parents were slowly renovating with a front door that my Mom had painted blue. The house’s floors were carpeted, and my sister and I shared a room in the left wing of the second floor. Though the house was guarded by trees, we kept marshmallows, peanut butter, and other pantry goods in plastic bins to keep away rodents.

But these shortcomings on the inside of the house were trivial, as the real appeal of the property was the view. The house stood on a hill, and the back of the house overlooked the lake. A lake that I would quickly fill with childhood memories.

I have many memories from the lake and our house, some that remain entirely my own and some that are intertwined with memories of my family.

There was the Saturday when I, an eager eleven-year-old, daydreaming in boredom, took it upon myself to count the stairs from the back doorstep to the dock. (I still remember, 128.)

There were the nights we’d sit on the dock, all five of us, wrapped in blankets, listening to the waves hit the rocks and waiting to see a shooting star. (We would spend hours in the cold, just to see one or two but it was always worth it in the end).

There was the first time we used the overhead storage that my dad had bought for above the car, and the two hours we spent attempting to assemble it. (We drove silently and held our breath watching it above the sunroof, hoping it wouldn’t fall).

There were the days when it rained and we couldn’t swim, so we would drive to the local ice cream store and wait in line for scoops of salted caramel and mint chocolate chips. (It made me colder and never went along with the weather, but ice cream is never a bad idea, right?)

I look back at my earliest roll of film and am reminded of these moments.

The ice cream, the storage on top of the car, and the 128 stairs are fragments of my childhood that I remember, though I can’t picture them with exact clarity. Similarly, looking at my earliest roll of film requires an active sort of memory. They are mere supplements to my storytelling.

There is one photo in particular, of my mom floating on her back that reminds me of memory, and the beauty in vagueness. In the photo, you can see her hand but can not make out her face.

My mom didn’t learn to swim until she had children. It was sometime after childhood that I learned my mom often felt nervous around water as a beginner swimmer.

What I like about this photo is that I can not see the lines on my mother’s face or read her expression. Through its vagueness, this photo preserves the childhood memory of my mom, as a fun and fearless swimmer.

The overexposure, the blurriness, the black and white. Even the clearest photos from this roll represent a sort of vagueness. In many ways, they showcase how these memories sit in my mind: as feelings rather than visions.

It is for this reason that I love my earliest roll of film, despite its imperfections, and keep shooting on my dad’s N6006.