We hadn't seen the movie in four years. In fact, it was still inside the camcorder and hadn't been copied onto a video tape. With the movers coming early the next morning, Dad and I were sorting through closets and separating items that would need special care before being packed into a box. That's when we found the camcorder (it hadn't been used in four years), and the video inside.

"Let's see what this has on it," Dad said, and he plugged the camcorder into our television.

I gasped when I saw you, a pint-sized version of yourself: half as tall, half as sturdy, half as grown up. Your face was rounder, your hands still pudgy. The red and white striped pajamas that come up to your knees now hung past your feet and dragged across the floor in the video. You could barely keep the waist band on your hips. Your eyes, however, were just as brown and just as big.

Then you spoke.

"This one has a package in it," you said as you pulled red holiday wrapping paper from a box. "This one has a package in it."

Your voice, it was so different, so small. I had to rewind the tape just to hear it again.

"Mommy, this one has a package in it," you said. Then, coming over to me behind the camera. "It's a package, Mommy."

With your face too close to the camera and filling up the entire screen, I could see your skin so plainly that in that moment I remembered what it felt like to touch your cheeks before they had ever been tanned, and how your forehead always seemed doughy and without even the slightest crease.

"Is that me?" you asked, moving closer to the television for a look. "Is that really me?"

"That was you four years ago, when you were three," Dad said.

In the video, Owen, who was only a year old then, popped in and out of view as he walked around showing everyone what Santa had brought him — a toy Batman. "Bad-man, Bad-man," he said.

As the camera panned back and I got a better glimpse of the room and the toys on the floor, it suddenly occurred to me which Christmas we were watching. It was "that" Christmas, the one I have had bad dreams about ever since. It was the Christmas that I bought you only educational toys, because I thought they were your favorite, not realizing that Owen's Batman and toy airplane would seem, in the moment, much more exciting.

"Turn off the video," I said to Dad. "It hurts. I can't watch this."

I was beginning to cry.

"Sarah, don't be silly," Dad said.

But he knew what I was talking about. He's been there the last four years, every time I woke up in the middle of the night with "that dream" again, the one where I realize too late on Christmas morning that I've forgotten to buy any presents and I haven't decorated. The dream began after "that Christmas," the one where your little face seemed sadder and sadder, while Owen's got happier and happier, as the morning went on.

"It's just presents," Dad said. "They shouldn't get happiness from presents anyway."

But then the movie continues. It is later on Christmas Day. You and Owen are dancing in the living room.

"Film me, Mommy. Film me," you say. "Are you getting me on film, Mommy?"

"Right now I'm filming Owen."

"Will you film me next?"

And then the part that has haunted me for four years comes: "Mommy, I love you," you say.

But I'm still filming Owen.

Dad wouldn't stop the film, but I couldn't watch any more. I got up from the couch, went to my bedroom and cried.

I can't completely understand what it means to be the oldest child, Ford, because I myself was the baby. I can't understand what it is like to compete with siblings who are younger and needier. But when I saw that film, I could absolutely see the way these things have made you feel.

I am sorry, Ford, for the way that things have appeared in the past, and for the ways you may have felt. But I am lucky to have seen this video now while there is still time. It could have been worse. We could have discovered the tape the night before your graduation or the day you leave home. Today, there is still time to answer: I love you, too. I love you, too.