It Is a First Time for Everything

Browsing through our family picture album, I found this picture, where my husband, his parents, my parents, and our musical cat celebrate our first reunion in our first house, during our first Christmas as husband and wife. So many firsts! I remember lots of strange feelings about that moment, and many weird things that happened, because I was the translator for both families when I couldn’t speak or understand everything myself. It is very interesting to realize how bizarre all the things around you can be, and how exotic you appear to others, in a new situation. This picture, for me, has the meaning of first time memories.

My husband and his parents are Americans, and they speak only English. My parents and I are from Romania. My parents speak only Romanian language, and my English is so bad; I have been in the United States since October 2004, and at Christmastime in 2005 I still had huge issues trying to understand what people said, and with trying to make them to understand me.

The “Family” picture (this is the album name of the picture) is the first and the only picture to commemorate that “First Family Reunion”. Our parents probably felt the strangest because they needed to use my translations to talk each other.  I suppose it is very unpleasant to talk with others indirectly, especially when you don’t know a person who became your family overnight, just like that.  More so, they couldn’t be sure about the translation of everything that was said, because my English was rudimentary.

However, using signs, body language, and a Basic English we had a very nice and warm week together, and our parents enjoyed seeing all our accomplishments.

What is a picture and how does this touch our feelings? In time people have the tendency to lose the remembrance of facts, even when those facts affect our entire life. Keeping a Memory book, a picture album, a journal, or all of these things make it possible to recall wonderful moments from the past. I am so glad I have this picture!  I can always draw an image in my mind of those happy, still weird, memories of the first time when something important in my life happened. I think that it is very nice to have support for any of the first time, wonderful things in your life, and there is a first time for everything.