Every few years (usually when I’m already teetering on the edge of emotional ruin) this picture pops up in my digital memories like a ghost in a thrift-store frame. It’s from my Aunt’s wedding: a time when perms were plentiful and the color blue was available only in “electric.”
There we are, my sister with a hairstyle that’s classified as its own municipality, my mom in mid-floral renaissance, my dad channeling Tom Selleck if Tom Selleck had worked in corporate accounting, and me, front and center, with a bowl haircut so hemispheric it could’ve doubled as NORAD’s backup radar dome. My outfit, which I can only assume was chosen by a rogue haberdasher on the run from the fashion police, included teal and turquoise color blocking and suspenders so wide they had their own zip code.
For years, I used to share this picture every time it resurfaced. I’d post it with captions like “The Hair That Ate Cincinnati” or “When Moustaches Ruled the World.” Friends would laugh, strangers would comment “iconic,” and someone would inevitably ask if the picture had been Photoshopped (now, AI-generated) to look “extra 1980s.”
But lately, when the photo pops up, I don’t share it. Not right away, anyway.
Because these days, I don’t just see the comedy. I see the loss. My dad, still sharp, still funny, is now in his seventies. We talk every weekend. He always picks up whenI call, but it still feels like we should talk more often. He lives iwth my sister and her family a thousand miles away. She’s busy raising her own family. Neither of us are the kids we used to be.
And my mom? She’s been gone for five years now. Some days, I can still hear her voice in the back of my mind, clear as a bell. Other days, I have to dig through old voicemails or grainy videos to conjure even the sound of her laughter. That’s the part nobody warns you about, how even voices fade if you don’t keep them alive somehow.
The Lord Giveth and the Lord Taketh Away, yes. But the Lord doesn’t hold a candle to Time. Time is a petty thief with excellent patience and no sense of remorse. He’s the kind of houseguest who doesn’t just steal your silverware, he takes your stories, your smells, the way your mom’s perfume used to linger in the hallway. All of it. You don’t even notice at first, until you look up and realize everything’s been rearranged and half your furniture is missing.
So I hold my kids tighter now. I listen to their nonsense stories about Minecraft and fart jokes as if they were poetry. I smile more often than I want to, which is saying something for a man whose resting b**** face looks like it was rear-ended in traffic. And I pose for the pictures. Every one of them. Silly ones. Unflattering ones. Photos where I’m wearing a Star Wars shirt and crocs with socks. Because one day, I want my kids to have something to look back on, to laugh at, to share. I want to be their moustached memory, their suspenders-wearing dad in a photo that’s both ridiculous and deeply, achingly dear.
Because in the end, it’s not about how we looked. It’s about what we still see.