Friday, November 28, 2008
Unless memory fails, there exists not a single family photograph of my parents embracing each other with any degree of positive emotion. I could be incorrect; maybe one of my aunts has photographs about which I am unaware, but from what I recollect out of our photo albums, for any photograph involving both parents, they are standing apart (huge family gathering) or side-by-side, but not acknowledging each other. Pictures of myself with any of my four siblings also convey distant attitudes. We might be touching, and there might be smiles, but someone is getting pinched.
I was viewing various Thanksgiving Day 2008 photographs friends have already posted, and for all of them, I sensed something odd. Hugging, I finally realized, my friend's parents are hugging. This is what people who like each other a lot do. A thirty-minute voyeuristic search for happiness ensued. I shook my laptop upside-down in the air a few times, thinking love would fall out of it, but, as usual, the only feeling the computer emits for me to seize upon is frustration.
Labels: aunt, family, friends, frustration, happiness, hugging, laptop, love, parents, photographs, pinching, siblings, Thanksgiving
[Lauree Frances Keith concluded this diatribe at 3:46 AM]