March 9th, 1972
There were lots of pictures in the younger half of the Elric household.
My uncle Edward and his younger brother Alphonse (my father) had proved to be almost as bad as the man my best friend was named for with their cameras.
We have a big fireplace in our flat and the mantle used to be covered in photos, both in black and white and in color. It's still full of them but there's just not as many as before.
We had pictures of anything and everything that happened to our family of five beginning with my parent's wedding. The ones from before that were stored safely in thick, leather-bound albums that my sisters and I loved to look at. There were two or three pictures from my parent's marriage that I remember being there when I was a younger man but now they're packed away and only one remains.
It's one of Mama and Dad by themselves after dinner, I guess. Dad has his arm slung over Mama's shoulder and is pointing at her with a goofy grin on his face as if to say, "I did good, didn't I?"
Mama is laughing and halfheartedly swatting his hand away.
It makes me smile whenever I see it, especially now that I'm married myself and I know how it feels to be that young and in love and having the realization that you're going to be with the one you love until either one of you dies set in.
After that, there are several candid shots of cooking mishaps that led to flour fights, swimming, dancing, parties, festivals, and babies that eventually grew up and graduated from secondary to become artists, musicians, or lead a successful military career.
At one point somebody (probably Addy or Trish) came in and put all the pictures in chronological order. It's interesting to see but at the same time it's saddening because after a certain point, around twelve or thirteen years of memories, Dad is missing.
-/-/-/-
I should be working on Bring Him Home and Vicious Bloodsuckers, but...?
Let me know if you're interested and would like to see more.