54. Just Need The Proof
This feels strange to think about to this day because I still believe it to be true, but nobody else in my family does. I had only just started walking and I remember throwing a teddy bear back and forth with my grandmother, who was pretty ill at the time. I could never catch it because I lacked hand-eye coordination, so she would throw it a little short, and I kept throwing short as well because I wasn’t very strong.
I had just started practicing walking, but couldn’t fully walk yet. Whenever I would throw the bear way off course, I would get up to try and walk to it, but I kept stumbling, so she would always go and get it for us. Now, my grandmother passed when I was about a few months old, so everyone in my family swore this never happened.
They said that even if I somehow remembered something from that early of an age, there is no way it happened because by the time I started to walk, my grandma was too ill to walk herself. But the creepy part about all this? I vividly remember my aunt taking a picture of us on our really old film camera while we were playing with that bear, but I could never physically find the photograph.
I hadn’t gone back to my home country for a few years, but I went back to visit when I was 11. We were going through old albums and it was there. My aunt swears she never took that picture. Everyone in my family I’ve asked swears they never took it either. The picture is me and my grandmother sitting across the living room floor, with that same teddy bear, both of us looking at the camera with her holding the bear out as if she was about to throw it.
My aunt, or whoever took the photo, caught us by surprise, so we both looked at the camera. It wasn’t on my mind as we were leaving, so I didn’t think to take it back. I wish I did. I was maybe a one-year-old in the photo and did not look like I could walk at all, so I’m not surprised my grandma didn’t even let me try. The memory is so clear in my head and to have everyone tell me it didn’t happen is just off-putting.