My Mom and My Dad in a Chicago Forest Preserve

This is my mother.

See? She is happy.

She looks like a twenty-something-year-old version of me.

She is wearing a jacket

that has a hood that partially covers her head

because of the wind

that is pushing the current

of the river to her side.

She is also wearing

stereotypical 80’s blue jeans,

the ones she still has from Eddie Bauer

that I borrow sometimes to go hiking

in the same forest preserve

that is portrayed in this photo

my father took of her

walking

by a river

when they were on a date.

My father is behind the camera.

I can imagine him laughing at the exact moment

that he took the photo.

I imagine how he is not able to look into her eyes

at the moment because she is looking down. 

My mom is the only woman

my father truly knows, besides his mother. 

But they will not be married for

years to come, at this point in time.

I can imagine my mom turning her head

towards my father after he takes the picture. 

She would smile, and

her cheeks would burn with the Chicago autumn cold,

and maybe she would throw the twig

with leaves on it that she is holding

in the water.

My dad would laugh out loud.

And a few days after the date their friends will see this picture;

a perfect moment, two souls intertwined amongst solitude.

And years and years will pass. 

And the photo will stay in a photo album

until I find it in the attic one day.

The happiness I can see in

my mother’s stance in the photograph

is what makes me think they were very happy

before they had me.

Years later I will be born.

At one moment in time, on one autumn day,

they do not know

I will look just like my mother.