They look so fun and carefree. I want to ask them if they're happy. I want to ask if they're in love. Last year, during a rare moment of vulnerability, my father confessed to me that he doesn't think my mother ever loved him. A month later, my mother told me if she could do their marriage all over again, she wouldn't. I don't think I have ever seen my parents' marriage as a happy one. But in those old photos, they have their arms wrapped around each other, and their smiles reach their eyes, and I wonder.

When my dad was a teenager he used to climb over fences in the middle of the night and steal clippings from the rose gardens of rich government officials to give to my mom and the very first thing he did as soon as we had a house with a yard was to plant an absurd amount of roses for her and when he talks about them in their youth he is so, so wistful about a woman he now has a restraining order against.