A Photograph of Yesteryear

The Photograph

Some of my earliest memories garner emotions that are both elusive and dreamlike as if only to exist in my imagination, resulting from some sincere desire to possess contented moments that somehow lay a seemingly illusionary foundation to my otherwise shoddy childhood. Those early years were beautiful in so many ways I’m still discovering how vital they are albeit scarce and short lived. I still yearn for those moments from time to time when I was a free spirited child with few worries to call my own save those that come along with being the youngest of three boys, raised primarily by our mother during a time when life was uncertain and filled with more life lessons than I could have ever expected since so much was going on during that time in history, both in the world as well as in the microcosm of my Korean-American immigrant family living in the pre-gangster rap era of Inglewood, California. The year of my birth and unknowingness was 1976…

There’s an old photograph that I’ve burned into my mind of my parents happily sitting around a fake plastic Christmas tree covered in silver tinsel and long forgotten trinkets, of the fragile sort, gathered over the years before I was even born. I must’ve only been a few years old but for some reason I remember… or perhaps the photograph itself represents a time and place that I long for so much so that I feel I was there to bear witness to it. In the image they sit amidst scattered wrapping paper and on their faces, rare expressions of genuine warmth & joy, perhaps even love, are shared between them. I don’t know who took that photograph but it was most certainly one of my two older brothers that had the foresight to capture a moment in time that would seldom occur between our parents ever again. I owe a great deal of thanks to the photographer since that image has been a saving grace for me during the times when I needed to recall some happy memory between my folks who otherwise spent most of their lives together fighting about things that have still not been resolved and more than likely never will. I cherish that special moment more than any material possession that I’ve ever received since more often those compensatory gifts represented the deficiencies of our family as a whole since my parents separated and divorced while I was still quite young. But even then I had a sense of what was going on though I didn’t have the capacity to understand the repercussions it would eventually inflict upon our family and the next generation to come I knew it as the reality of my life and it never felt right. It still doesn’t feel right but I understand it better now… even if it’s only a little bit more it’s more than before. Enough for me to find a solemn sense of pleasure in a photograph that is tucked away, stored in some box along with other mementos that contain yesteryear’s happiness.