November 10, 2005
Pictures
I have spent the last few days digging out all of my mum’s over 40 years worth of old photographs and re-organizing them into albums. It is so true that a picture paints a thousand words. After looking through nearly a thousand of those photographs, the story of my mother’s life flashed before me. I saw her childhood, the clothes she used to wear, the house she used to live in, the kind of life she led, the faces of people who journeyed with her, some of which I could recognize and some whose faces are absent from my memory.
From those photographs, the story of my mother’s life unfolded right in front of my eyes. It dawned on me that my mum was once a kid, she was once a teenager and she was once a young adult – just like me. Maybe for me, this thought never actually meant anything to me because I was never part of her story up till after I was born. I never gave any serious thought to her life before my existence, how her life was when she was a teenager or how she was like when she was dating. To me, mum has always been a mum and the mum I know in my mind is a mum whose story began only after she got me. With great ignorance, I have so conveniently discounted her experience as a person growing up from young.
Those photos revealed to me the story of a person whom I thought I knew. It showed me the different chapters of her life, some of which I was vaguely told and some that was kept secret. Those photographs invited me on a tour on mum’s life and like many other tours, it has helped me to see, to find more pieces that makes the story of my mum’s life and allowed me to put together all the pieces of mum that my mind knows. Mum grew up from a baby just like me and today I suddenly realized that her story did not start after I was born. There are so much that I do not know. Looking at my journey up till today, at the age still younger than mum when she got me, I can’t imagine how it was like for her when she was like me. It has aroused a sense of curiosity in me. There is so much of my mum that I do not know.
Here are some gems I found:
