Photographs

I have this obsession with photographs. There's something magical about a photo if you think about it. A photo is a moment in time, frozen, proving an existence. It could be the existence of an event, a person, a relationship, an emotion.. any number of things. It's something that will never be exactly that way again whether you want it to or not. A photo of me on my first birthday with chocolate frosting all over my face and a smile from ear to ear. It's almost as if that was a different person, I have no recollection of this event, yet there it is frozen forever. A photo of my mother dressed up for a college formal bears a scary resemblence to my prom photograph. I look at the young woman in the photo and it's hard to think she's my mother. A photo of my parents before they were married, my dad looking at my mom, both of them smiling, happy. I can't remember them ever like this, yet this photo proves that happiness existed at one point in time. A photo of myself about 3 or 4 years old with all my stuffed animals around me. I remember my father carefully positioning each one around me for that perfect picture. That girl in that picture had no clue what her life would be like. She didn't know that in a year she'd move to a new house, or that a few years later she'd fall off her bike, or that she'd be catwoman for halloween 7 years later, or that a few years after that her parents would get divorced, or that her relationship with her mother would never quite be the same after that. Eventually she would travel abroad, go to school out of state, learn about broken hearts, and move across the country. But that little girl in the photo, me, didn't know any of that, how could she. All she knew was her daddy was taking her picture and that's all that mattered.

Sometimes I wish I could go back to a time in life where you didn't worry or wonder what was in the future. I know I'm in full control of it, but what kind of decisions will I make, what events will happen, that will shape my life? Perhaps my inquisical mind is speaking on behalf of a small glass of white zinfandel, but most likely it is due to my nightly browsing of my collection of photographs.