I was always interested in photos of my father when he was young. Though grainy and crumbling, questions and stories poured out from those precious few. I learned that he was stick thin and that even then, didn’t like smiling for the camera. I saw him through the eyes of my mother in a picture that showed him hard at work inside a steel water tank he was making. She fell in love with her Filipino teacher who worked hard even on weekends. And my love for him grew too.
Bring out the photo albums of yore 🙂
For Father’s Day, I brought out Wonderful G’s first year baby album. I hope to make it a family tradition to celebrate both his past and present. I want to show my children that the man who changes their diapers used to be in diapers himself!
Little T and I have giggled over Wonderful G’s various states of undress in his pictures. We have seen his toothy smile and naughty look, and how his own parents beamed at him. We have marveled at how much Baby Boy looks like him when he was a baby. Most of all, Little T saw that the important events found in her own (sleek) photo book are also in her father’s yellowed album: mother’s pregnancy, first at-home pictures, baptism, and first birthday party. It is an introduction to life’s cycle and life’s milestones as well as a peek at her father’s childhood.
The gift of seeing their father in a different light is one I want to give my children and husband. I believe that it will add depth to my children’s knowledge of their father and allow them to identify with him as they grow up. Questions from those photographs will certainly be posed, and stories told. It will be another way to bond together, and a chance for love to grow more.
Make magic!
mariel
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