The birthday is at the end of this month. Above is a photograph of my parents before my arrival. Below is a short piece I wrote during a different birthday...reflecting on the meaning of it all. (Note: I think my parents are beautiful in this picture...their apparent tenderness caught in a moment of photo booth antics...it has always been my favorite picture of them before other things happened in life...)

The Snapshot

They hopped into a photo booth to capture a flash of their young selves. It’s black, white and a thousand shades of gray. So his eyes are not blue and his hair is not wheat blond. Her rectangle glasses read black instead of tortoiseshell. The true colors of her eyelet blouse and his dark football t-shirt forever in mystery grays. Her long black hippie hair is in their with his bushy mustache before the scissors of responsibility found them both. They’re heads are close together to fit their smiles into the frame. She’s sitting on his lap. They look wrapped in a warm secret of comfortable joy. It was taken a year or so before I was born. It’s my mirror to knowing that my genetic contributors were once happy and truly in love, if even for a moment in a thirty-something year old snapshot of summer romance.