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Writing Prompt Monday: Pictures of You

Prompt: A picture is worth more than a blank page. Take out those dusty photo albums. Pick out photo #14. Count however way you like, but make sure you stop at photo #14. Look at the photo for 2-3 minutes. Then for 10 minutes, write all the feelings that photograph made you feel. Don’t censor yourself. Just write.

Finding what fourteenth picture I was going to use was a bit hard. I have stacks of photo albums on my desk right now because my sister and I are putting together a video for our parents’ 25th wedding anniversary. After going through all the albums and of course digital albums on my computer I finally picked the fourteenth picture I would use out of twenty-eight fourteenth pictures. LOL.

While looking at the picture many memories flooded my mind. The first sadness of a young child missing her father and listening to him playing the piano. A sensation of joy overcomes me as I remember when he first saw the father’s day gift my mom and I had gotten him so many years ago. This was before the divorce, which the thought again brings back the sadness so deep in my heart. How I loved hearing my father making up songs for me as a little girl. Hearing him sing songs on love, joy, and just funny little songs to pass the time. My heart is again comforted remembering sitting next to him learning a new cord or him helping me practice my music before piano lessons. Tears slowing stream down my face again from the memory of watching my mother and father playing side-by-side. I can hear them singing together in perfect harmony bring back the memory of the tapes I have tucked away in boxes up in my closet. Then the feelings of grief overcome me when seeing the picture again. There he is in a new home playing on the piano we gave him. A home without my mother or me. The feelings of having to share my father come back to me as anger and jealousy courses through my veins with thoughts of my younger half sister getting to use the piano and not I. Then they are smothered out again by the love and joy my new family gives me. The memories of how my parents have worked to remain friends, how my broken family slowly mended and become a bigger family, with sisters and a brother. How I was able to once again live with my father and stepmother for a time before heading off to college. The love my family gives me everyday because we have moved past the pain. How the piano I gave my father so many years ago still sits in his home, where he plays songs from my past while I sit listening with my younger sisters and brothers.

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