I've walked this bridge before, at a time where my memories weren't quiet complete. I have vague recollections of this city and the many stories I have heard over the years. But now I am back, able to travel on my own with a different perspective on the world. Twenty years young, yet it still feels like a lifetime and a different person ago. I imagine my mom trying to take this picture as my sister and I are running around on the bridge, "Don't wander off!", my mother would say as my dad rolls his eyes and my mother snaps the picture. Now I search for the exact place my father stood looking at the bridge thinking of all the memories this one picture encompasses.
Pictures are worth more than a thousand words, some pictures are worth infinite. As I stood in the synagogue looking at the drawings of children who are long since gone, who had to face the brutality of the world they were born into, I understood. Every museum, every monument, everything that we have seen is not only a remembrance of history but honoring it, and maybe just for a second transcending us back to that time and place so we too glimpse a life very different from our own. But even within our differences I realized there are similarities, in my youth, I too drew a picture of a princess and a dragon with fire breathing from its mouth. It was never a picture I would have chosen to be the only memory of me in a museum, but looking at a picture a little girl had drawn I was honored to stand before her drawing. In a different way than the picture of my father, yet in all the same ways this picture was worth more than words, they are a reminder, a memory, and a gift.
As I look at this picture I feel connected to those hazy memories in my head, I have transcended time- bridging the gap between past and present, between father and daughter. Where he once stood, I now stand looking over the river and silently thanking my dad. I stand where I do today because of him, because of his unwavering support and guidance, because of his love and belief in my abilities. I imagine that girl had a father who loved her, I only wish love was always enough.
Sydney Harris