Just a few years after my father and three of my siblings moved to New York, my mother started a tradition. Every couple months, she would yell at the top of her voice to call my brother and me to meet her at the living room. There, she would open up a heavy brown envelope with her eyes brimming with excitement and empty its contents on an old table which stood in the middle of our living room. My brother and I would usually exchange excited glances and dig into the several pictures that were now scattered on the table. This was the only way we got to experience my father and my sibling’s journey in the United States.
In Ghana where I grew up, it is custom for relatives who had traveled overseas to occasionally send back home pictures of themselves on the streets of foreign lands. Since my mother missed her lovely husband so much, she cherished these occasions when she had a chance to see his face again; and the pictures he sent accomplished just that. One day, my mother brought home a photo album where she had planned to store all the pictures my father had sent her. That day marked the start of an activity that my mother continued for a long time.
As my mother filled this album with photos of my father and siblings, she also included photos of us that she usually had a photographer take whenever we dressed up. She would always say after the photographer had handed her the printed photos: “one day, when my family is back together again, we will share these memories.” As expected, the album filled up quickly, pushing her to purchase another and yet another as time went on. Mama would store these albums under her bed in a briefcase, scolding us every time she realized that my brother and me had snuck into her room to retrieve them without her permission. She usually told my brother and I that if there were ever a fire in our house and we had to escape, the first thing we should save was the briefcase under her bed; that was how special it was to her.
Several years later when my father cleared the way for us to join him in New York, my mother made sure that her precious photo albums were the first items in her travel case. When we got here, one of the first things she did was show my father and siblings the “photo-story” she had been putting together all these years; chatting and laughter ensued quickly as my mother made sure my father heard all about the stories the pictures documented. I saw in my mother’s eyes that her dream had finally come true.
Although, today, my mother no longer fills the albums with new pictures, she cherishes them as much as she did years ago. Occasionally, I would see her flipping through these pages that once brought her so much joy.
