I found an old photo album today. It gave me much joy to look at. Pages and pages of Rahul’s black and white past. I had to add the shades with my mind, but I saw the beginnings of the man he would become. The cheeky smile he got from his mum, the salt and pepper shockwave he’d follow his dad down. The long lashes and dark eyes in which I’d spend hours of my time. It was all there in the design. It gave me great comfort too, knowing how similar his life was to mine. The community and the faith. You never realize it, but that’s what you look for. Perhaps. Perhaps not. Perhaps sometimes.
I traced my fingers over the cursive tags underneath each one, and it put me in mind of my own scrawls. There was a time, in grade nine, that I wrote in a militant hand. I’d cover pages in study notes, meticulously coded in colour and extensively liberal with flow diagrams. I knew too much then. Now my pages are filled with scribbles in my own made up language. As if I know nothing. As if I were a child.
That’s something to think about, I’m telling myself. Something other than Tom.
