美国国家公共电台 NPR Preserving Memories: In Emails To A Toddler, A Window Into Her Parents' Love（在线收听）

AUDIE CORNISH, HOST:

A few weeks back, we invited our listeners to tell us about IT-related emotional breakdowns. We asked NPR's Alina Selyukh to read all the messages, and one of them stuck with her. It came from a mother distraught by a loss of an email draft to her toddler. That got Alina interested in this process of preserving childhood, and she called the mom to learn more.

ALINA SELYUKH, BYLINE: For me, the story started with a lost email, but what really got me was the reason behind it. Annie Hudson was documenting tiny elements of a memory, events so ordinary they would definitely be forgotten yet so treasured, she wanted to hold on, which takes us to the real start of the story.

AVA: Marshmallow's scary.

SELYUKH: The birth of Ava, Annie's daughter with husband David VonDerLinn.

AVA: You're not scary.

DAVID VONDERLINN: When you have kids and when life is just going by faster and faster, you just forget things so easily, and...

ANNIE HUDSON: And you think you're not going to forget, but you do.

SELYUKH: When Ava was born, Annie became obsessed with preserving memories. She ordered baby books from Amazon - one, then another, sent them back. They didn't seem right.

HUDSON: I was driving my husband and my sister and my friends crazy. They were just like, just pick a book, and start writing in it.

SELYUKH: In the end, she did. Its pages started to fill up with handwriting, cramming toward the bottom. She didn't want to document milestones. She wanted to record thoughts, stories. Anxious, Annie called her sister to ask how she handled all this with her son.

HUDSON: And she said, well, you know, I write him emails.

SELYUKH: And that's how little Ava got her very first email.

VONDERLINN: (Reading) Hi, Ava Bean. This is your dad, who is still getting a little used to that title, emailing you on February 11, 2015 at 8:49 in the morning from his office.

SELYUKH: From there, the emails poured in - a video of Eva learning to stand, later to walk, a quick photo from the zoo, a story of Ava requesting a pillow be placed at her feet for sleep, all digital markers of the passage of time and with it a phenomenal, relentless transformation of a tiny human.

HUDSON: (Reading) Sometimes the days just blur together, and it's easy to forget that you will not always be this age and this size. I was reminded of this earlier today, and it stopped me in my tracks and made me cry. And you started singing "Ring Around The Rosies."

You love this tune and have been singing it for a while now, but you usually start it out with your own special rendition - (singing) paco hosies (ph) and then (singing) ashes, ashes we all fall down. But because you have always started the song out this way until today - you started out correctly - (singing) ring around the rosies - it kind of broke my heart. Maybe you'll still sometimes say paco hosies, but I fear I've heard it for the last time.

VONDERLINN: (Reading) I saw you running back and forth on the play equipment, and you looked so happy and free. I didn't want to interrupt you, so I decided I would go ahead and leave without disturbing you. I went through the gate and turned around, and there you were, standing at the other side of the playground, looking back at me. The sun was shining behind you and lining up your rainbow dress and wild, blond hair. You looked like a colorful angel.

You stared at me for a moment, I think wondering if you should run to me for a goodbye hug. And I wondered that, too. Then you turned and ran back to play, and I suddenly realized that you've grown just a little bit. You're a little bit more independent, a little more brave, a little more powerful. My heart aches at the idea of you growing up, but I know that this is the way of the world.

AVA: I don't want to take a nap.

SELYUKH: Ava is now almost 3. Annie and David don't really know how or when they'll tell her about the emails. For now, Ava just knows she has a surprise, and it's in the ether, a word she learned from "Curious George."

VONDERLINN: You know what we're talking about?

HUDSON: Can you say hi to Alina?

AVA: Hi, Alina.

VONDERLINN: Say NPR is the best.

AVA: PPR (ph) is the best.

(LAUGHTER)

SELYUKH: From PPR News in Washington, I'm Alina Selyukh.

(SOUNDBITE OF MINOTAUR SHOCK SONG, "MY BURR")