Pictures are just pictures until I saw how my parents are getting old

Pictures are meant to immortalize the moment you are in. It makes those memories stay still. Never moving, never leaving. But, I guess, pictures are just pictures until I saw how my parents are getting old.

A snap to remember

Moments turn to memories. It’s better to keep these memories through pictures. I knew about that. I look at a picture and smile at the thought of what happened that day. The camera flickered as we laughed. Or cried. Or just posed. That’s what I felt with my friends, though.

I’m never fond of taking pictures with my family. I didn’t find any significance in it. We always see each other at home, so why bother to immortalize the usual things? I’ll see them tomorrow, the next day, and the next day. All the same, it will always stay. They will always stay. That’s what I thought.

We don’t need to take pictures. At least that’s what I think.

I’m close to my parents, yes. When they ask me to take pictures, I just do it. They like to take pictures when we eat out or take trips. I simply act all cold about it. Is it because of growing up? There’s that, right? When you grow up, you somehow act a little more reserved than you used to.

You try to become more mature. You smile less.

My dad at 10

We found an old photo of my father when we moved to a new house. A smiling 10-year-old him, looking proudly at the camera. He looked at it so fondly that I couldn’t help but guess what he was thinking the moment he saw the picture. He probably thinks about how time is coming up so fast. Maybe he woke up one day and thought, “I guess it’s not June 3rd, 2022 anymore. It’s the 4th.” And he’ll be doing that in the following days too. Thinking of how today will soon be his yesterday.

I felt sad at that thought. Has he ever thought that he won’t ever get to play in his tree house again? Has the thought of losing his mischievous self come across his mind before? Did he ever regret not taking enough pictures when he was a kid too?

The time I realized

They’re growing old. How can I overlook that? I was too busy trying to get my life together while time caught up with them. “I’ll bond with them tomorrow.”, I’ll say. Until tomorrow becomes next week, the following week becomes another until I blinked. And now it’s a month since I last laughed with them.

I always thought they would never understand our struggles because they’re adults. What do they know? It’s hard to believe them due to the evident generation gaps. But maybe I’m wrong. Perhaps I thought too much about my time that I forgot they have their clocks too.

It hit me. 5, 10 years from now, I’ll also think like my parents. I’ll only be able to see the childish smile mine in pictures I once despised to take. I’ll never be able to smile like that, just as how my parents will never get to have the bright, playful eyes they had when they were 12.

I won’t ever get to take back that one day we went to eat out or when we went out for a swim. But in pictures I will soon take with them, we may stay in that moment for a while longer. I’ll try to make the time run slower between the flashes of the camera.

Time ticks. And they tick fast. Pictures make time stop with a snap. A flickered memory kept in a small comforting image.