The Long Way Home by Phillip Overton

  Chapter 5

  No one can recall their entire childhood. That is why photo albums draw us to their pages like magnets as we search through pictures of our early life, trying to imagine what it really was like. However, no one can ever know for certain if we enjoyed the moment as much as the photograph says we did. What was really going on before and after the photographer uttered those magic words, ‘say cheese,’ in essence capturing forever on film a lie. We always seem to be standing in front of something, our back towards whatever it is and smiling for the camera, because that is what the photographer is wanting to record. Us, looking happy and enjoying life.

  Sure, as a baby we probably smiled at anything, the chair, the dog, even at our parents holding a camera. However, as we become more accustomed to our surroundings in life, we all make up our own minds on what delights us, and what doesn’t. Occasions worthy of a smile receive one, others that aren’t simply don’t. Eventually we form our first memories, moments that years later in our adult life we can recall on our own. From there we fit the missing pieces together and pick up the story of our life. Deciding for ourselves whether we were smiling in the photographs because we were truly happy, or smiling simply because we were told, ‘smile, I want to take your photograph.’

  Maybe our first childhood memories date back to when we were three, four or even five years old. Some are hazy recollections, others are more vivid. For Simon it was a vivid memory. It was the memory of the day he turned five.