Memory Album

The first thing that my mother showed me when I got home for vacation was a photo album she had filled with stuff from my childhood: graduation pictures, grade school report cards, ribbons, high school art plates, even admission documents for high school and college. I was tired from travelling the entire day, though, so I just browsed the thing for a minute before I put it away and forgot about it. I only remembered to take a look at it on my last night at home. I saw it on the shelf and decided to take pictures of the pictures.

The first pages had pictures of my college graduation. That was a mere eight months ago but I noticed that I had already gained so much weight since then.  I wasn’t in any way fit back then either, which only makes it more depressing. I was already overweight, and my desk job made sure that I went further on a downward spiral, gravity pulling on every pound of excess fat. I really should have followed my gym program seriously.

Then I got to the pages at the middle, which had stuff from my high school days. There were pictures, mostly from our graduation. I laughed quietly as I looked at them; damn, I looked so different back then. My classmates, on the other hand, still looked more or less the same. I could tell well because we just recently had our reunion. Some lost or gained a little weight, some started or stopped wearing glasses, everyone dressed better, but they pretty much still had the same youthful faces mismatched with adult bodies. It’s like we did not grow much. We used to have a theory back in high school that our lessons consumed too much of our energy that there was not enough left for growth. This was based on our observation that the kids from other schools look a lot older than us: their boys were taller and their girls had more developed breasts. If our theory were correct, it would also explain why everyone looked like they were still in the end-stages of puberty.

Then I saw my pictures from grade school and kindergarten, which were at the last pages of the album. I looked like an angel, of course. I was a portrait of innocence itself. I looked smart too, with medals around my neck and ribbons pinned on my little white graduation gown. Yeah, I was epitome of a good boy. I was a good son, my mother was always so proud of me. I was a good student too. I was always at the top of my class. The photo album of memories also held my report cards as proof. I was never absent from my classes, even when I was deathly sick. Back in second grade, I actually went back to school only a few days after going through an appendectomy because I was worried that I’d fall behind in our lessons. I also always wanted to be the leader in group works because I wanted to make sure that I was in control of our score.

I felt ashamed after I looked at those pictures. I am no longer the good boy that I was. I skip work when I feel the slightest headache. I avoid the heavy tasks if I can help it. And over a year has passed since I started working and I still haven’t given back anything to my mom. If the boy in those pictures saw what I have made of him, he would be terribly disappointed. Sure, I’ve come a long way since then. I had gone farther than most of my classmates from back then. But I still haven’t gone far enough. Not enough to give justice to that boy’s potential.

So I am claiming this year to be the year that I become the man that the good boy should have grown up to be. I will no longer languish at the layers below my potential. I will do my best this year. There are still a few empty pages left in that album. By the end of this year, I will have filled them with testaments of how the good boy has grown up to be a great man.