Significant Photo

I noticed this photo probably between the ages of ten and twelve. I'm sure I had seen it before, but on this specific instance it had a profound impact on me. It was a photograph of my grandparents as young adults, just having started their family. Light and youthful, they were very different from the grandparents that I knew in my life and yet were obviously, insistently, the same two people. The full weight of time struck me as I had to imagine the years it took to transform these people from young to old. As a young child everything appears to be static and constant, and after I had seen this photograph, something had definitely changed.

I don't actually have the photo. It's sitting in my grandpa's house.