I finally went to meet this other friend of mine the other day, after eons.
While she made coffee for me, I lied down for a while.
My head hit something hard and I fumbled around to move it and realized it was a photo album. I sat down to have a look. It was a really old photo album.
It revealed black and white, wedding pictures of her parents. 25 years ago.
I could see countless unknown faces and only two familiar ones.
I could see a lot of smiles. Only her face didn’t wear one.
It was her mother.
I wondered why she looked so somber in all the pictures, whereas uncle looked so incredible happy, giving his, what I assumed, his best winning smile.
I flipped through, and each picture showed a rather tired and unhappy woman, that I recognized as my friend's mom or ‘aunty’
She looked beautiful, but gloomy.
Maybe she smiles less, I assumed.
Maybe she was tired, I wondered.
But I kept flipping through the album.
And then one picture really caught my attention, it is the kind that you can’t take your eyes off, the kind that makes you smile when you look at it.
The beautiful young couple were being shoved and pushed into the frame by their relatives to make them pose as a ‘lovey-dovey’ couple that obviously seemed a little awkward for them but was funny at the same time, and hence resulted in the most lovely, unabashed, genuine grins that I had not seen in the entire album.
It was adorable.
*smiles*

My parents have a picture like that too.
It has been framed and put up in the living room so that whenever I enter through the door or walk into the room, it makes me smile when I see it.
It’s a rare occasion when both my parents smile for a picture. This one time they did, and both of them look so beautiful and so happy, it makes me want to cry.
Marriages suck otherwise.
Its one big fat compromise, I have decided.
Its one thing to love someone but its quite another to spend your every living moment with that one person. It drives you nuts. I have seen. I have heard. And it scares me.
And 25 years ago, you hardly had ‘love marriages’. They were all arranged. *shudders*
My parents have been through a LOT.
And I know there is nothing called as a perfect relationship. But the fact that you want to stick around even when it really starts to suck is what makes it perfect.

But whenever I see that picture….nothing matters….

And I don’t know why aunty looked so unhappy on her wedding day.
Maybe it was the gloom of the unknown that shadowed her happiness, maybe she was uncertain, maybe she was scared to live with someone she hardly knows for the rest of her life, but I guess that one picture perfect moment kind of dissolves all those suspicions. Cheers to those moments!
Sometimes we all want to shut our eyes to the reality and see things make us smile. And sometimes this veil of silent captured memories speaks volumes and makes us want to stick around…..