The error message reads: Out of memory. Its capacity has reached its limit. But the ‘memories’ that it possesses are touchstones on my family’s journey together. My son’s tiny five year old fingers learned to navigate MacOs on this computer, with this trackpad. My daughter’s poems were composed here. Hundreds of papers, presentations, employee reviews, and math lessons were clicked and dragged into existence here. Inside its silicon brain are thousands of family photos, bits of music, and other ephemera meaningful only to us. Truly, this old computer is our family’s memory box.
Written several years ago just before a major family technological upgrade