Frames of Sepia
I just drove by the District Court and thought of you. A stream of memories flooded my mind. Faces flip by in my brain like the pages of a fading photo album — your parents, your grandma, your pet dog that I never met and your nanny. I’ve finally come to my favourite page. We are posing in front of your dad’s car, wearing our kindergarten uniform with toothless smiles.
The same wave of fondness I felt for that dusty government building the first time I set eyes on it, washed over me again. How did that dilapidated structure survive all these years looking the same? Not a crack on the wall is out of place. I’d run over from my mum’s derelict government edifice to your parents’ office. Then we’d link arms and walk over to your house with our backpacks bouncing, lunch bags rattling, and an aura of playful mischief and laughter around us.
Aged four and wearing your papa’s gown at least six sizes too big for you, you declared with unwavering confidence that you wanted to be a lawyer exactly like your papa. You study engineering now. The passion for law was abandoned with fervency by sixteen.
I remember your house vividly. The red oxide floors, the steps, the narrow little hall leading to your room and the shelf you kept your toys in. In the manner of most young children, none of the soft toys I owned fascinated my little mind as much as yours. Sitting on that low bed in your dining hall, I encountered the most delightful thing I’d ever set eyes on in my six years on earth. A bucket of clay.
Some of the memories get distorted. I remember a small gate leading to your verandah. By eleven, I am certain we never even bothered to open it, preferring to just cross over it, because we were both shooting up like bamboo sprouts, long-limbed and lean. But I also remember when we were tiny and that gate was ginormous. We had to straddle it to get across, like little adventurers, crossing big hurdles.
I don’t think of you often nowadays.
But when I think of the things that are irreplaceable in life, I think of the days we lounged around in your house, playing with your toys, plucking flowers, painting and watching TV, until my mum came along to take me back home. That would be the end of my reverie until it happened again. And again. And again. I flip through that album in my head and I wish all my days to be spent in the quiet satisfaction our friendship gave me. The innocence of childhood is captured in every frame I walk through with you.
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