old albums new.

When you're young, you forget that your parents at one time were not parents. You forget they went to college, had roommates, worked summer jobs. I myself have certainly, until recently, not understood this. I didn't even realize that my mom had stowed away in the spare room closet, albums upon albums of her life in film.

So for a few days this Christmas holiday I went through some albums and came across these photos taken of my mom when she was just 20, and beginning her first year at UBC. I like to think that if she and I were 20 at the same time, we would have been good friends.

Modest as she is, she says, "I never really thought anything of those photos when they were taken." Yet here I am, completely taken by how beautiful she is in them. A friend of a friend studying photography had taken them in 1976. I think now, almost 35 years later, she looks at them in a different light. I truly love discovering the things I did not know about my parents, like these old black-and-whites.