Remembering History

The winds rustle in the trees as orange leaves float to the ground. I pull my sweater tighter around me as I make myself more comfortable on the grey cement steps of the red-bricked apartment. Turning my eyes away from the swaying trees in the opposite park, I open the thick leather bound book in my hand. The yellowed pages flutter as I turn them, slowly, drinking in its contents. Photos of a different colour and clarity than now, marking the technological changes we have gone through, sat four to a page accompanied by my mother's painstaking chronology.

'Our First Date.' There she was, looking lovely in a sundress with flowers in her hair, posing against a convertible. Her wind-swept curls against the backdrop of swaying trees and a stretch of sandy beach told me it had indeed been as lovely a picnic as my mother claimed.

'My Birthday.' My mother cutting into a delicious looking cake which, from the narration below it, was baked by my multi-talented father. The usual family and friends were missing from the picture, my mother and father both having been from an orphanage.

'Our Wedding.' My parents made a lovely couple; my father young and handsome in his tux, a rosebud in his buttonhole; my mother looking resplendent in a heavenly concoction of lace and silk.

'The Prettiest Baby in the World.' A bouncing baby was happily clutching a rattle, giving the photographer a toothless grin. I was finally looking at my own baby picture. I gently finger the edge of the photograph, smiling as I noted what a chubby baby I was.

'Our First House.' A pretty lady laughing in front of a small town house while carrying a smiling toddler. Despite the black and white monotones, I could tell it was summer from the blooming flowers and the ice cream cart in the background. My parents had barely enjoyed their new house for even a year before they were killed in an automobile accident that I survived; I was adopted, their belongings were sold.

I feel a soft hand on my shoulder. Mavis sits down beside me, pulling her shawl tight around her thin shoulders. "Do you like it dear?" she asks. I put the book down and take her wrinkled hands into mine.

"Thank you so much. You have no idea what this means to me. It's the only connection I have left with my parents. Thank you for saving it all these years." She smiles and wipes my tears with the edge of her shawl. "Honey, I always knew someone would come for it."

That evening, I leave the apartment with a full heart, feeling the world a sweeter place.