Based On a Poem "A Photograph"

There was slightly dim lighting from a table lamp in the study room. Almost all the lights in the house were in the same state. A faint sound of keys being tapped on a typewriter was coming from the study room.

In the study room sitting on a cushioned chair in Infront of a study table was a woman in her early forties. Her name is Shirly Toulson. She is wearing nightwear and working on a report that she has to submit tomorrow for her work.

Shirly is a journalist. She is also an English writer, a local politician, and a poet.

After working for a few more minutes, Shirly checks the time on her digital clock. It is fifty-five minutes past midnight. She decides to take a break. After all, she has been working on the same report since ten pm.

Shirly makes her way to the living room table. There is kept on the table a jug filled with water and a few clean glasses that are kept upside down. She sits down on the living room sofa and turns a glass upwards and fills it with water. And then drink it.

Shirly takes the glass to the kitchen and keeps it in the sink too tired to wash the glass right now. While doing this her eyes wander unconsciously toward a kitchen drawer. She makes her way to it and pulls it open.

There kept inside the drawer is a black and white picture framed on cardboard. In the picture are three girls, holding each other's hands. They are paddling on the beach. They are all dressed in quite old-fashioned clothes that would look awkward now. Their hair is flowing due to the sea breeze and they have big smiles on their faces.

Shirly gently caresses the big girl of about twelve or so years old standing in the middle of the other two younger girls. The girl is her mother when she was younger.

Shirly still remembers the day she found that picture. It was during the summer vacation, that one day her mother asked her to clean the garage. There she found the picture kept in the donation box by mistake.

Seeing the picture little Shirly took it to her mother. When her mother saw the picture, she laughed out loud with complicated emotions in her eyes. A bit of nostalgia and sadness. Her mother misses her childhood but she knows that there is no going back.

Shirly's mother asked her, "Do you recognize the two girls on either side of me?"

Seeing the look on her face her mother realized that Shirly did not. And she answered the question herself.

"Those are your aunts, Dolly and Betty. One time your granduncle took us to the nearby beach. And he took this picture there"

As Shirly looks at the picture now, she observes how the said nearby sea is still there but her mother and her childhood are gone. Just like how her mother's laughter is gone for her. Alive only in her memories.

Perhaps Shirly and her mother both felt lost and pained seeing the picture. She is for her mother and her mother for her childhood.

Shirly's mother has been dead for as many years as she is old in that picture. Twelve or so years.

For a moment Shirly fell silent from the loss of her mother. Just like she did on the day of her funeral. She doesn't know what to say about the situation or her overwhelming emotions.