Social Experiment

53 | Changes

He chuckles and smiles at me. "As long as you're happy, sweetheart, I'm happy."

I return his smile wholeheartedly and assure him, "I am."

"Good," Dad reaches in his jacket pocket and withdraws a short stack of photos. He looks from the worn images back to me, showing me his misty gaze. "I have a few photographs that I wanted to give you."

As I lead him into the kitchen for better lighting, curiosity bites at me regarding the contents of the photos. We sat down at the kitchen table together, me at the head and dad beside me, and he spread out the photographs in front of me.

"Look through them," He encourages with a smile. "Sorry about the bent edges."

I shoot him a curious smile before looking down at the arrangement of photos, taking most of them in my hands. My eyes scan the worn images fondly; first a photo of Luke and I when I was six, sitting in a large armchair together, our feet dangling off the edge.

Next, a black and white image of my mother and I when she was younger and I was a baby. She was holding me up in a way that resembles how Musafa holds Simba up in the air, as if I were the most important baby being introduced to the world.

I continued sifting through the photos, which were mostly images of Luke and I when we were younger, until I came across a specific image that made me grin widely. In all of its colored glory was a photograph of me sitting in the drivers seat of my fathers old cherry red Mustang.

The vibrancy of the red had worn with age, but it was still clear enough to make out the shiny spots on the side of the car. I was grinning toothily in the photo, both hands firmly on the steering wheel, which was taller than I was at the time.

 I looked at my father and see he's smiling at me, and that's when I realized I was grinning so widely that my cheeks hurt. "I had a feeling you'd like that one."

"The old Mustang," I breathe out a laugh. "I remember this day."

He grinned wider. "You do?"

Sure. It was the last day of the month in May of 2004, when my dad had taken me to the car show. We drove the old Mustang, the beauty of the car so great that people thought it was supposed to be in the car show. I remember walking hand in hand with my father, reveling at all of the cars, eyes wide and gleaming as I took it all in. It was he that taught me the difference between a good and bad car, like how he taught me the difference between good and bad music.

My mom stayed home with Luke, who was four at the time, while my father and I went out. We stayed out all day; we went to the toy store before the show, we got dinner after the show, then ice cream after dinner, then went to the playground and played, even after it got dark. It was one of the earliest memories I had, and looking at the worn photograph in my hands, I was reminded that it was also one of my fondest.

"The day we went to the car show," I say simply, my lips still quirked into a smile.

Dad laughs heartily, something I haven't heard in awhile, and leans back in his chair. "Nuh uh, that's not the only thing we did. I spent about two hundred bucks that day on you, kid."

I grinned, well aware that he didn't say 'no' to a single thing I asked of him that day. "We got dinner and ice cream too, and we went to the park."