The Truth About Love

With Time

    The soft pitter patter of little footsteps resonated through the ceiling. Hushed yet high pitched squeals of excitement followed by the hurried little movements belonged to her grandchildren. She knew they were attempting to play quietly, their mother insisting that they give her a few moments of peace, alone in her rocking chair to rest, before they unleashed all their youthful energy on her. She was thankful for the sounds of her family, somehow the noise seemed to bring her otherwise dreary house to life.

    The lace curtains, once a pale ivory now tinged grey with age, hung lifelessly from her large Georgian windows, beyond the spotty glass, she caught a glimpse of the trees morphing for the impending cold. Many autumn seasons had come and gone in her lifetime, but this one seemed just a little different — the trees seemed to have already shed their colourful leaves, leaving a smattering of reds, yellows, and orange leaves across her browning lawn. If she closed her eyes and concentrated hard enough, she could almost conjure up the feeling of running through the crunchy leaves and the drying grass, breathing in the scent of winter to come. But her body hadn't allowed her to run in ten years, so despite the better efforts of her imagination, the thought still felt like a distanced reality. She sat back into rocking chair, sinking into the cushions, grieving for what once was, when she heard the two sets rapidly approaching footsteps followed by those same, high pitched shouts of "grandma!"

    She opened her eyes, peering over her shoulder. In her line of vision, she saw her youngest granddaughter with her chestnut locks tied up in an intricate little braid crown and her teddy bear overalls covered in splatters of paint and possibly the remnants of her lunch. Next to her, stood her grandson, a boy of no more than 5 years old with curly locks the same colour of his sister, but his piercing hazel eyes so unlike hers. The bottom of his T-shirt fisted in one chubby hand, and in his other hand, he tightly clutched a book that seemed to instantly strike a chord of familiarity in her, but she couldn't quite work out what it was from this distance.

Her granddaughter spoke up first, as per usual. Her honeyed brown eyes wide with glee.

"Grandma, you have to see what we found!" She hopped up and down on the creaky floorboards, the light from her sneakers bouncing off the white walls.

"Mama said it's your old scrapbook! Can we read it with you?" Her grandson, while not as visibly hyper as his sister, seemed to hum with energy. She couldn't bear to deny them.

   She signalled them closer, and arranged them delicately on her lap, with her granddaughter perched delicately on one knee and her grandson on the other. She smoothed over their unruly locks with a sweep of her hand and reached for the so-called scrapbook.

   The leather feel of the book cover instantly sent a shiver up her spine, the familiarity setting in. Her mind spun with the rush of memories as she breathed in the traces of her old perfume, still somehow wafting off the pages. She could feel their wide excited eyes drift over her face, her hands still clutching the book, but her mind somewhere entirely. 

   She was instantly transported back to her 21 year old self, an entirely different woman from who she was now. With a working pair of legs that she never appreciated back then, and a sense of insecurity that she had fought for years to overcome.

   She could still trace back the moments that had led her to spend hours alone, with nothing but a tiny overhead light to illuminate her room as she desperately pasted photographs, diary entries, and torn out phrases from her favourite novels onto the pages of this very scrapbook. "Grandma?" A small voice cut through her thoughts and she peered down at her little granddaughter. Her face was painted with impatience, her tiny foot bouncing with haste against the curved leg of the chair.

"How about we give this a read then?" Before she had even finished speaking, their grins impossibly widened, their cheeks stretched and glowing with a rosy tinge.

    She placed the book between the two, their tiny frames barely cradling the large leather monstrosity. She flipped the cover, her fingers gliding over the first page.

   The first few pages were almost inexplainable, just collections of quotes that she had accumulated over the years. Mostly gathered as excerpts from the heavy books she spent her youth pouring over. Nevertheless, she patiently read over each one, watching their eyes filled with fascination, both surprisingly quiet in their interest. It wasn't until she hit the last few pages that her mood took a turn.

   She carelessly flipped around towards the end of the book, and the minute the page landed, she spotted a sight that she thought she had long forgotten. The page contained various quotes, like the others, but also silly doodles in what appeared to fading red paint and most importantly, a picture that still seemed to tug at her heart after all these years. She gently drew her finger across the page, shaping across each of the long dried inky black words, drifting over the photograph with its fraying edges and the hint of dried glue beneath the worn, yellowing edges. She could see her granddaughter's small fingers mirroring her motion, her grandson curiously gazing down at the picture, the question in his eyes.

   The picture, almost crisp enough to have been taken yesterday, was now over forty years old. In it was the object of her deepest affection at the time. She was 21 years old at the time of this photo, her makeup expertly applied in an attempt to accentuate her eyes, her lips softly tinted pink, but what really jumped out of the page was the look in her eyes. Her gaze was soft yet yearning, as she looked upon the boy in the shot. He was tall, shadowing her by an almost a foot, his dark chocolate hair slightly curled at the ends. He wasn't looking towards her, in retrospect, he never really did. Even with his chin tilted downwards, his glasses askew and shrouding his expression, his charm still seemed to lift off the page.

   She had loved him deeply and all she could think to do with the depth of her emotion was, not to confront him as normal person would, but to carefully plaster the only photo she had that that had almost impossibly captured them in one frame onto her scrapbook. Certain parts of the photo, namely her expression still spoke volumes to her.

   The photo was neighbour to the many quotes that she associated with him and somehow the contents of the page served as her feeble attempt at manifestation. The visual representation of her hopes that one day when she reopened it, she would laugh because somehow, by some twist of fate, he would turn out to be hers.

He never did.

   For a year or two, she pained after him. Racking her brains over ways to make him see her, make him care for her the way she did for him. But none of it really worked. At the time, her love for him, the pain and the longing seemed stretch on forever. But life moved on, whether she had wanted it to or not.

   And what she had come to realize over the course of her journey, is that while she had so longed for him to be waiting at her finishing line: the world had a different path for her, one that completely diverged from him. Against her greatest wishes, he turned out to be a passing figure in her journey.

   Somehow along the way the intensity of the longing had faded, vanishing one day altogether and as she gazed upon the page it occurred to her that before she had realized, he had become another memory, swept along with the rest of her story.

   Drawing herself back from her thoughts, she looked over at her grandchildren, still quietly laying across her lap, allowing her a moment to collect herself. It was unlike them, but the sight made her heart swell with love for her little ones.

   Life hadn't taken the path that she had desperately intended it to, but gazing at their small, endearing face made the journey to this point worth the wait.

   She gathered them against her, breathing them in. They always managed to smell like strangest myriad of warm sunshine, candy and just the slightest hint of crayon. But it always irrevocably lifted her spirits.

"Grandma, who is that man in the picture?" She heard her granddaughter whisper, their small heads still enclosed in her arms.

   She drew back, turning the page open once again. She glanced between the boy on the page and her grandchildren, an inexplicable sense of contentment filling her as she said,

"Let me tell you a little story"