! ! The Guy In The Photograph

Out of the old tin frame the 1944, I guess, photo, shines a carefree smile from the 15-year-old caught on a hillside in the summer air in pure happiness..or so it images.. It’s the only photo from the album that I like to have around; I look at it and marvel that I ever looked like that for more than one unguarded moment.. Is the story of my childhood that I tell myself, the agonies of growing up, the uncertainties, the discovery that parents are not perfect… the not knowing who one really is…or might be… all that, a fiction, or a fraction of the truth? From time to time, I glance at it, (as my parents must have done, with all the thoughts that I’ll now never know) : accept its mute challenge of beauty, goodness, truth… he's expecting all that life may offer; this is the guy I must keep faith with… what else is there to say?