Marking the passing of time on a wall
This morning while the coffee was brewing in the kitchen, I looked over at a wall covered in photographs, nearly all taken by the Wife over the course of our 17 years together. I paid special attention to the photos of the boy who at the time was busy grooming his hair in the bathroom. One photo showed the boy asleep on his arm in bed, exhausted after being born earlier that day. Scattered all over the wall were photos taken of him as a toddler crawling across a beach, leaving turtle-like tracks in the sand. There was another of him playing in the snow, and another taken one summer sitting on his Big Wheel in the backyard and looking at butterflies, and yet another holding a vase of fresh cut flowers. He had grown a bit more in each photograph, and in those taken last summer I noticed that he had crossed an invisible line where he looked less like a child and more like a man.
I left the kitchen, walked into the bathroom and hugged him tightly, silently for a moment, then let him go.
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