MEMORIES IN FRAME

Turning the pages of our family albums is a favourite pastime for me. I assume that it is so with many. But I have learnt that even a casual cruise through just one album takes a lot more time than you intend to. So you have to see that there is no milk on the stove to spill over and no cake to get burnt in the oven before you sit down to open one.

Once you open the album you get lost in its pages. Every little picture inside becomes a frozen moment from the past triggering memories and associations. For instance, that album of old photographs of your childhood-it is so hard to believe that little “chubby cheeks” staring at you from Mama’s arms is yourself-now over fifty-and that young lady carrying you is your seventy year-old mother in her twenties! That long and lanky youngster is now a grey-haired overweight brother in middle age! So many of them - your siblings, cousins, playmates…forever young and impish in those pages. There are also very dear faces you might see no more, smiling at you…and you feel the warmth of love wrapping you up. “Once upon a time” suddenly becomes “now” and alive. The next minute the film of memory rewinds and you are playing hide and seek or fighting with your sister for the comics.

What about that album of college days? Each snap is a treasure of memories - happy faces in every angle enjoying picnics, parties, excursions. Cinderellas and Cordelias and Ophelias on the stage. So fresh, so young, bubbling with laughter and joy. You make instant decisions to communicate with each of them very soon. But they all get dissolved in the daily chores that take away all your time. Still you move around with a hum on your lips. At least for a short while your wrinkles, thick waist and grey hair become a camouflage. In your heart you realize that the remnants of the young girl of dances and dreams. The music of youth still echoes in us.

…And you can surrender all surroundings into utter oblivion as you sit down to watch those photographs when your kids were young. There they are, with their angelic faces that hold still the wonder as each murmuring beat of time reveals fresh mysteries. I close my eyes and picture them-their innocence, their dependence, their mischiefs. I know they still live concealed in the tall youths who have grown into men. How soon the years roll by and we parents say “good-bye” to the child and “hello” to the youth.

It all happens so fast. Children are young for such a short time. In the place of my little girl I suddenly see a pretty young woman. The sons who once held my hand in confidence now walk in places I cannot follow. But it looks like it all happened only yesterday.
November 1998