So, as I think I mentioned before, I'm house sitting again at my aunts' house while they're aaaaall the way in China. About a year after they were aaaaall the way in Venice. Must be nice having great jobs and no kids. There are some serious perks that come with lives like that.

Anyways. This arvo I was - as per usual - procrastinating because I still have uni work to be doing (the JCTC essay is getting underway...Not as underway as it should be, but still), so as you would, I chose the most comfortable seat I could find and noticed that there was a shelf dealie of photo albums near the chair, so I picked up one such photo album and lost about an hour of time, lol. My aunt M (my blood aunt's partner and my godmother) has a sick penchant for photography. There are billions and billions of photos that she's taken from everywhere they've been at every possible angle and most of them have her partner, V (my mum's older sister), in them, which I think is very sweet. Anyways, I'm flipping through these millions of photos from all over the place and then I open this one album that has just regular photos in it. Not travel photos, nothing posed or of anything of any particular interest, just people. My favourite photos.

Before I go on, some background: My aunt and her partner have known each other for forever. Really forever. They grew up together and grew into people together. They and my mother went to the same primary school and the same high school. My great aunts also went to the same high school...All close in age, all raised close together. Very close-knit at the time. Same primary school, same high school, different universities and kind of different circumstances (M was, as I understand it, engaged to a man for a period of time), but they wound up together and stayed there. Really. Constant. Rock solid. Life long. M and V's relationship is the example of a stable, sane and healthy relationship in my family. They've been together for longer than I've been alive.

As a little side note, they were my introduction into the queer world. I was always totally aware of their presence as a couple, even as a kid, and I knew that they were like my parents should have been (not to be mean to my parents, of course, they did what they could). When I came out they came over randomly one afternoon and, like it was no big deal, I was given a copy of a local queer magazine and a book which I adored and recently reread. That was it...Just a little "you're not alone in this world...You're just like us...We did it and you can too" If more queer kids got that from their families, they wouldn't kill themselves so often.

OK...Super side-tracked there. Big breath.

Anyway. Like, two houses before M and V lived in the house I'm minding for them, they lived in the Blue Mountains, not far from where my grandfather used to live, in a little town called Bullaburra. I remember vaguely having Christmases there as a really young kid. I still remember the smell of the place. Anyhow, that was their first home together and they were pretty young when they moved in together (early twenties, I think), like my parents getting married and moving in young. So, flipping through this photo album (that I'm increasingly wishing to steal) I found an invitation, handwritten by M, who has beautiful handwriting, to a little shindig they had for the viewing of Halley's Comet. So sweet. And the way it was written, one can tell that viewing "this heavenly body" is not a reference to the comet, but to V instead. I'm looking through these photographs and going back in time, you know? There are my uncles Kevin and Glen (seeing a theme in my family?) who look young. Really young. They're still together, too. M and V looking impossibly young and happy (and possibly slightly drunk)...And in some of the photos are my very own parents who might not even have been married yet in these pictures. 

I did a double-take when I saw the first photo that had my dad in it. There was this young-looking, skinny as a whippet, fully-bearded (blame the 80s) guy with these blue sparkly eyes and this too dark, too wavy, too European hair...My hair, really, except for the colour. His eyes are tired now, but still sparkly, and his hair isn't at all the same and it's mostly silver now. And he's so not whippety anymore, lol...But he still, somehow, looks like this young man in the photos. My mum looked super young too...I mean, my parents are the same age, lol, they were born two days apart (my mum has always made a big deal about being older, like it's years, not 48 hours). She was smiling in each and every photo she was in. She was dancing or laughing or generally being stupid in every photo. Every single one. I wonder where that kid went. She still really knows how to have a great time; she's very funny and smart in a way I'm not, but she grew up. I don't get that.

But with M and V...Like I said, they've been together for so long. As small pushy kids in primary school did they tell each other that they would be best friends and would stay best friends -- quite literally -- forever? Maybe. You know how fierce kids are about their friends. Did they know in high school that it wasn't just hormones? And what about uni? They went to different universities, did different degrees and were having different experiences (M getting engaged, for example, which still kind of blows my mind)...But they were together, no matter what. I saw some earlier photos from another album during their uni years. They got together for something and they looked like they did after they moved in together...It was like no matter what was going on in their lives, there was no one else...There would never be anyone else.

In my mind, that's marriage. 
Sorry for my ramble, lol, but photos do that to one. 

I think I'm going to talk more about my family, you know? They make me crazy, as all families do, but they have to be recorded someplace...At least as long as nothing thrilling is going on in my life, i might as well talk about the things that happened in other people's lives.

P.S. I had this intensely vivid dream I forgot to tell you about...I'll make it quick - if you've read this far, I won't keep you long. I had a dream I was praying. I know I was somewhere indoors, which I think might have been a synagogue upon reflection, but it wasn't the synagogue I've actually been to. I was with other people, so it must have been during a service (der). But the thing that was incredibly vivid and powerful was the fact that I was wearing a tallit (a prayer shawl traditionally - but not always - worn my men)...I could feel the weight of it on my head and then my shoulders, I could feel the warmth of it, the smell of the fabric and see its white body and blue stripes...I don't remember the words of my prayer but I woke up and I could have cried...I still want to cry thinking about it...I lay in bed for a while just trying to cement the feeling of this shawl on my shoulders.

I'm listening.