My Daddy is very smart. I'm eating cookies in the kitchen. I'm going crunch crunch crunch but I can hear him near the computer. He's working on the new machine. I like the smell of the oil he's putting on it. It smells like the baby shampoo Mummy used on my hair when I was little. Sometimes when I smell it, I rub my head and think of being in the bath. Then I get sad because I miss Mummy. I'm only a little bit sad now. I'm eating cookies and I'm remembering.

Daddy sounded smiley before preschool today. He said the machine was nearly ready to try. Uncle Derek came last night and helped with the computer. Uncle Derek has a tickly beard and smells like oranges. He's smart with computers. I'm glad he helps because Daddy has lots of work to do all by himself.

Daddy takes lots of pictures. That's his job. He has lots of cameras and lights. I like the smell of the camera bags. They smell special and expensive like Mummy's jewellery box but also rubbery like new gumboots. I like snuggling on Daddy's lap and looking at his pictures. Before the accident I could see but now I can't. Daddy has to tell me about them. Sometimes he sounds cross but he says he isn't cross with me.

One day I was dressing up in Mummy's old dress. I put on all her necklaces and I put on some perfume - just a little bit. One sniff makes the whole room smell like her. It's a happy smell. Daddy came and stood in the doorway. He laughed when he saw me with the necklaces. Then he sounded all serious. He got his Olympus. That's his oldest camera from before he and Mummy got married. It makes a good noise - ch-lick - when he takes the picture, and then another one - scrrrrrrt scrrrrrt scrrrrrt - when he winds the film. He took lots of pictures of me in Mummy's dress and necklaces. It was fun but Daddy didn't laugh. He was very quiet and just went ch-lick scrrrrrt scrrrrrt scrrrrrt.

Today when we got home from preschool, Daddy said "Guess what, Pumpkin? The machine's working, and I need you to tell me if it's any good." He put a picture in my hand. I like the feel of Daddy's pictures because they have a shiny side and a not-shiny side. This picture's shiny side wasn't smooth though. It felt bumpy. I touched it and there were lots and lots of tiny little bumps. They made a shape.

"Daddy, I can see it!" I said. I felt the shape of a face. It was a girl's face and she was smiling. "Who is it, Daddy?"

"It's you, Pumpkin." Daddy's voice was all prickly. He put my hand on another picture from the machine.

"Is this me too?"

"Remember when you put on Mummy's necklaces? I took these pictures then. Can you feel them OK?"

I could feel them. It was like the special books at preschool. I made a jigsaw puzzle in my head and used the pieces from my fingers to put it together. It was my face. I was only little when the accident hurt my eyes, but I can remember colours and shapes and faces. I see them in my head. Faces are the hardest. I could remember Mummy but sometimes I get muddled up and I didn't know if it's good remembering.

Daddy gave me another picture. I know what my face feels like but it's different in a picture. I asked my Daddy a funny question.

"Am I pretty in this picture, Daddy?"

For a little while he just breathed and didn't say. I could tell he was looking at me and thinking.

"No," he said, and I felt sad. Then he said "No, that one is your mother."

Mummy! I touched the face again, making the picture in my head. I saw eyes shaped like watermelon slices, just like mine. I saw smiley lips, nice like kissing. She was just like I remembered. I felt so happy and just a little bit sad too.

"Oh, Daddy, I miss Mummy lots. I want to always remember, forever and ever."

"I know, Pumpkin. Me too." said Daddy, and then he went all sniffly. Hot tears splashed on my arm. I put my head on his shoulder and we had a little cry. We do that sometimes. I patted his hand until he stopped shaking and blew his nose.

"She was as pretty as a flower," said Daddy, "and so are you. I wanted you to see...."

I did see. She was so pretty. Daddy said I look just like her.

"Thank you, Daddy. It's so long since she died. I don't want to forget her, ever." I smiled at him and I know he was smiling too.

"I remember your mother well," he said and he gave me a big squeeze, "but if I ever start to forget, I'll always have you to remind me."

It's my best day ever since Mummy died. Daddy's making more pictures for me with the new machine. I'm in the kitchen. I have the picture of Mummy in my hand and I have the same picture in my head. I'm not scared of forgetting - not anymore. I'm eating cookies and I'm remembering.

The heat was stifling, the humidity trying to choke the very breath from her lungs with its tremendous weight. There was something of a breeze, but it was far from refreshing, serving only to increase her awareness of the excessive temperature. The sun illuminated everything in sight to a blinding brightness and poured out penetrating rays that greatly perturbed nerves deep in the skin of her face, neck, and arms. A dying gasp of wind puffed a cloud of dark dust across the exposed parts of her shoulders and back, each of the million particles feeling like a piece of molten shrapnel.

Distances became hard to judge as the very light itself skipped and danced in agony from the heat. Not that it mattered any more – there was nothing to capture the eye's attention. Not a shrub, not a stone, not even a crack or mound in the parched earth. Desolation. Ultimate desolation. She took a few more steps in what she hoped was the right direction, her mind divided between pleading with her body to keep moving and searching for her salvation, her eyes straining against the sun's relentless onslaught.

Finally, a darker patch flashed in her peripheral vision. Or did it? It was so hard to tell. She strained against her muscle's better judgment to inspect the bit of terrain. About thirty feet away, small fissures and a few straight lines were formed in the earth. Over a two by two foot area, the ground was shriveling as the heat sucked up the last of the moisture from the patch of thinner soil.

She kicked the toe of her shoe through a few thin layers of the baked soil until she found the metal ring she knew was there. Kneeling, she forced her fingers into the searing band and heaved upwards, an act that sent several streams of sand plummeting into the disorienting black abyss below. The gas pistons on the hatch hissed as if deeply agitated at the very thought of exposing themselves to the blistering desert air. Unable to focus on the darkness, she dropped to her hands and knees, finding the steel rungs of a ladder with her feet. As quickly as she could she immersed herself in the cool, almost balmy blackness, dipping deeper until she was able to grasp the top rung with her scorched hand. Descending deeper still, she reached above her head, and pulled the cover closed. The abysmal blindness had never felt so soothing.

“Caroline? Caroline! Are you even listening?”

Caroline sank lower in her desk chair and fixed her gaze to her lap.

“Could you repeat the question – please?” she asked sheepishly.

Mrs. Carter sighed and Caroline knew she was giving that “I'm disappointed in you” look again.

“Once again, what measure do we use to classify something as a desert?”

Caroline was pretty sure she knew the answer, but a nervous glance to the side confirmed what she was afraid of; all the other kids were staring at her.

“I don't know,” she mumbled, resuming her examination of the course threads in her blue cotton skirt.

“Louder please!”

“I can't remember,” she offered with a little more volume, but much less conviction.

Another sigh from the rickety Mrs. Carter.

“How many times do I need to tell you, Caroline? You really need to pay better attention. Now anybody else? Daniel?”

“How hot it gets!” Daniel replied proudly.

“Wrong,” Caroline thought to herself, relaxing slightly.

“That's a common characteristic of a desert,” replied Mrs. Carter in that tone teachers always use when they don't want to tell a student they're flat out wrong. “But it's not the measure...”

Her words started to drift around Caroline like water around a stone in a lazy brook and were soon nothing more than a distant murmur. Her eyes once again turned to the open textbook on her desk. She turned the page, letting her hand slide across the glossy paper, pressing it flat. Her fingers traced across the icy blue, gray, and green hues of a frothy Antarctic coast sitting proudly in front of distant ice covered mountains that rose majestically out of endless miles of crystalline snow. She pulled her hands back and stuffed them into deep, fur-lined pockets to protect them from the frigid air. The stiff and bitter wind pressed hard against her back, causing ripples to dance across the surface of her thick parka. The fur lining of her hood flicked playfully against her face, but she could feel nothing, for the bitter cold had long since caused her skin to go numb. She watched the constantly shifting surface swirl about her boots, and enjoyed the distinctive crunch they made as they pressed into the snow. Each step a victory, she thought, one more step to widen the gap between me and certain death. A smile spread across her frosty cheeks. Not even this place, in all of it ferocious beauty, would defeat her.

Being a newlywed suited Carrie Henry very well. Perched atop a mountain of clothes and memorabilia in her "Mrs. Henry" t-shirt, she had taken the day to organize her old room in her parent's house.

Kinda sad, she thought. Lived here 'til I was twenty-five.

No matter. She was married now, with the entire world as her oyster. It amazed her how two people saying two little words could somehow make up for a lifetime of aching and loneliness.

A glint of shine caught her eye. She looked down at her rather jewel-laden left hand and smiled, slowly turning the diamonds so that they caught the light at the perfect angle. Prisms danced across her face. A small landslide of old papers re-focused her attention to the task at hand. Dear God, she and her mother never threw anything out. Old receipts, report cards, every picture she had ever drawn -- it was all here in its unorganized and dusty glory. Carrie stifled a cough as she grabbed another slug of nostalgia. The trash pile was almost the same size as the heap she sat upon. This was a good thing.

The cloth-covered box was barely visible in the hole left by the stack of grade-school finger paintings. Carrie didn't even notice it when she made her next two passes over the heap of papers. Only after picking up her tattered and deliciously tacky high school diploma did she notice the grimy pink and blue flower print. "This ought to be good," she said under her breath as she wrenched the box free from the clutter. She vaguely remembered building the box with her father many years before. Held together by two brass hinges that were about two sizes too small, the box felt like a stone in her hands. Whatever the contents of the box were, they certainly weighed enough.

Carrie carefully opened the lid, minding the hinges that creaked and groaned as they came to life after years of dormancy. Cards, envelopes, and strangely folded pieces of loose leaf paper stared back at her. She selected one that was folded neatly in the shape of a pinwheel, and gently opened it. It took just a few lines of reading to remember -- it was a love letter that had been left in her locker her Senior year of high school. A smile crept over her face as she read further. She always had her suspicions of who her secret admirer was, but he had never made himself known. Looking over the rest of the contents of the box, she realized they were all old communications with boyfriends past. Boy, her husband would flip if he saw this.

She made herself comfortable by resting her back against the side of the bed, and read further. Postcards from far-away places, birthday wishes, Valentine's Day poems -- everything a girl needed to give herself a ravishingly good ego trip. As she neared the bottom of the box, she saw the sharp, stiff corners of a photograph. She softly pulled the picture from its resting place, and turned it over. She was met with a familiar pair of eyes.

It was him.

Her stomach lurched into her throat as she examined the picture further. She was there, too -- smiling, happy, fingers entwined -- with him. A moment frozen forever in time, too perfect to forget and too painful to remember. He had left her only a few days after this picture was taken. Anger surged through her. She had been positive that she had destroyed every last picture; every last trace of him in her life. Yet, here he stood in all his glory, with his laminated eyes still promising her forever. Her cheeks flushed red as she readied her hands to tear the photograph to shreds. A flash in her mind stopped her. She had been passed over, disappointed, left high and dry on the chance that there may be a little more to life.

She was more than that.

A tragedy, yes -- but she was still Carrie. Her life was finally starting, and inviting even the smallest memory of him would destroy it all.

The photograph lay lifeless in her hand. Grieving is good. It's healthy, she told herself. She pushed back the hot sting of tears as she placed the picture face-up in the otherwise empty box. The lid closed smartly with a resounding snap.

Yes, grieving is good -- but living is better.

Without hesitation, the box found its way to the pile of discarded papers that was destined for the dumpster.

"Goodbye, Brandon," she whispered.

Being a newlywed suited her well.

Kim rubbed her fingers across the glossy cover of the magazine. It was a picture that she had taken almost a year ago. She had been there, looked into those soft brown eyes, and wept that she didn't have the answer to the question that they were asking. She had taken the picture, then put her camera away and stepped across the line that separates journalists from their story.

Kim didn't remember sending the picture into the magazine. It was quite possible that she hadn't. Frank had yelled and sworn at her for days before finally disappearing in a cloud of dust and gravel, leaving her on the far side of that line doing whatever she could to make some difference for the people who had become so much more than photo opportunities. He probably took the memory card so he had pictures to go with his story.

She didn't see the magazine when the story first broke with her picture on the cover. She was still in that remote camp trying to live on the same rice, beans and dirty water as the refugees. It was when she got sick and they shipped her home protesting the whole time that she first saw the image that she had captured. It was in the waiting room of the psychologist she was going to convince to sign off on her being 'mentally fit' to return to work after months of illness and reverse culture shock. Instead she saw the people and began to cry uncontrollably, as if she were the one who so broken the world that this picture needed to be taken.

It was months before the psychologist was convinced she was ready to leave the hospital, never mind the country. While she fumed and waited every more impatient, Frank, of all people, would stop in and give her updates on 'her' refugee camp. Conditions were better he told her. Recent rains had meant a sufficient crop to feed the people for the first time in years. The warring militia had agreed to a cease fire. Her photograph had touched hearts and money flowed to support people trying to make a new life.

The Pulitzer came as a shock. Just as she was making her fragile peace with her life, that image was once more blazoned across the consciousness of her people. They repeated Frank's story, but added another story that told the cost of that picture to Kim personally. It told of her courageous decision to stay in the camp and work. Frank didn't call it courageous then, foolish was the politest word he used.

The magazine called and wanted her to come back and work for them. "Do a follow up story," was the suggestion of her once upon a time editor. When she had hung up on everyone up to and including the Chair of the Board, they sent Frank.

"She wants to see you again," he said as he put the magazine down in front of Kim. The brown eyes looked out at her and she ran her fingers across the cover.

"I wouldn't think that she would ever want to see me again. I made her into an icon of suffering."

"She tells me that God put you there to save her people."

"Which God?"

"She doesn't say." Frank shrugged. "I don't think she cares."

"And she really wants to talk to me."

"She's in school, learning how to make her people's lives better. Without you, without that picture, none of this might have happened."
"The rain would still fall."

"But who would have been left to plant the crops?"

"I crossed the line, Frank."

"What you did was wrong for a journalist, but right for a human being."

"So are you a journalist or a human, Frank?"

He smiled uncomfortably.

"The jury's still out on that one."

"I would do it again."

"Yes, you would, and maybe that's why you should go. People learn to care through your eyes."

"What if I fall apart?"

"Then we come home."

Kim looked at the magazine and flipped through it. Her pictures stared back at here, but now instead of tears they evoked anger.

"Not everywhere got rain," she said.

"No."

"No every child is in school and doing well."

"No."

"I think we should do a follow up to show what can be done," she said tossing the magazine aside, "but we need to show that there is lots of work to do."

Frank smiled and lifted her camera bag from under her chair. He held it out to her. Kim took the bag and unzipped the top.

"I haven't used a camera since that day."

"I don't think you've forgotten how."

She pulled the camera out. She felt the familiar weight, how it fit in her hand.

"No, I don't think I have." She switched the camera on. "Batteries are charged?"

"And the memory card is empty."

She put the camera up to her face.

"Not for long."

I saw it out of the corner of my eye – a fluttering slip on a brick wall. I was so late for work, I figured one more moment to investigate wouldn’t increase the boss’s screaming too much. I thought it an odd place for a missing child poster or an advertisement, but gave whoever stuck it there props for originality.

As I got closer, I saw how wrong I really was. It was a child, but not a missing poster at all. It was a photograph – black and white and grainy, but it looked for all the world like I could reach out and feel the girl’s silky hair slipping through my fingers. There was a depth to her eyes I started to feel that I couldn’t escape.

A blaring car horn wrenched me from her grasp and I shook my head slightly to free myself from the lingering fog in my mind, and noticed an address scrawled at the bottom of the picture. There was no name, no phone, and no explanation - just the address. Looking around somewhat furtively, I rummaged for a pen and paper and jotted down the address. As I slipped it back in my bag, my hand brushed my cell phone. Resolute, I grabbed it and dialed my office number.

Twenty minutes later, I stood in front of a dilapidated clapboard house. Thoughts trundled through my mind like Grand Central Station on a busy day. Is the photo a secret code for drug dealers? Will I knock twice and be shot for not knowing some secret handshake?

Is it a serial killer that’s just too lazy to hunt for his own prey and waits for someone to see his address and wander into his pit of death? What kind of lotion will I have to put on my skin? Should I tell him I have sensitive skin and may break out if it has a harsh fragrance?

Am I losing my mind? Was there even a picture at all? Maybe I just imagined the whole thing. What if she’s missing? How do I look into the eyes of a mother who rushes to the door hoping and praying it’s her daughter on the other side?

I press my palm to the front door and stand there – eyes closed and head bowed – and imagine her face. She was six or seven but her eyes were at least 50 years old. There was a sadness there I understand. Her eyes are so like the ones I see in the mirror every morning, except for one thing.

In her eyes, there is a distant hope I no longer have. Her sadness is tempered by an acceptance I’ve never quite worked out. The slight smile on her mouth seems to fit, somehow, with the darkness in her eyes.

I can’t stand to know why.

Sliding my hand down the stained and peeling door, I turned and walked away.

I hate this.

Everyday for the last two weeks I've been copying old, inventory lists into my company's newly established electronic registries. It's a horrendously monotonous job that requires next to no brain activity. Yet, thanks to the sheer number of entries that have to be made, a long day's drudgery is always ensured.

Okay, enough.

I shut off my monitor, flop back in my chair, and gaze blankly at the ceiling, thankful to be looking at something that isn't a monitor. A few peaceful, work-free, minutes drift by before I realize that the only thing more mind-numbing than doing next to nothing is doing nothing at all and I hurriedly begin scanning my cubicle for something, anything, to stave off the boredom. After a few passes my eyes fall on the makeshift display case resting on my desk; three old, college textbooks, lain flat, that proudly bear the entirety of my life's notable achievements.

The newest addition to this pile of pride is a palm-sized, two-year service medallion, awarded for my ability to remain employable up to today. Directly underneath it, in a burnished silver frame, is a four-year computer science degree that I'd struggled to complete in five. An assortment of participation awards for a myriad of sports events are clustered nearby and leaning against a spirit award for discus is a small, leather folder. It contains my high school diploma. I snatch it up from the display case, taking care not to topple the supporting award, and run my fingertips nostalgically along its black, leather binding. Something slips loose from the folder and flutters softly to the floor; it's a picture of my graduating class. There's me, in the front row, shoulder-to-shoulder with a rosy-cheeked, teenage beauty. Our hands are clasped tightly together for fear we might drift apart.

Elisa.

We met in grade school during an especially aggressive dodgeball game and by junior high we had become fast friends. In high school, after a memorable camping trip that involved a smuggled six-pack of Coors and moonlit skinny dipping, we started our relationship proper. We were inseparable. Hours were spent on the phone basking in each others voices, lengthy sonnets were composed extolling each others virtues, and anyone unfortunate enough to cross our path was annoyed half to death. Every moment with Elisa had been bliss. Of course, all the time we spent gazing into each others eyes took its toll on our studies. College applications came around and only one school, on the opposite side of the country, had been willing to risk having me as a student; Elisa hadn't even managed that.

The news came as a devastating blow, but we were adults and after a serious, hour-long discussion, it was clear what needed to be done. My love for Elisa was something special, school could wait. Later that evening I asked to speak with my father. We stepped into the living room and, bathed in the warm glow of the fireplace, I calmly explained my plans to forgo college in order to remain with Elisa. He didn't say anything at first, just stared at me, his head slightly cocked, as if I'd proclaimed myself the king of Gumdrop Mountain.

“You can't be serious.” he said, finally breaking the silence.

Things had broken down from there. He tried to talk me out of it. He yelled, he begged, and he pleaded, but I stood resolute through it all.

“Dad, you just don't understand our- ”

Smack!

My vision burst bright white and my mind went blank as my father's palm exploded across my cheek. My fingers brushed my face uncertainly as I willed my shaky knees to support me. “Can't you see how stupid you're being!?” he had shouted through teary, red eyes, his voice brimming with frustration. I just stared back at him stupidly. Never before had my father struck me.

The very next morning I went to Elisa's house and explained to her the benefits of a long-distance relationship. One last summer was spent talking about how much we'd miss each other and then I departed in a flurry of kisses and promises. The strains of study, part-time jobs, and fifteen-hundred miles of soil, took it's toll however and within a year I lost touch completely. Now, years later, I'm performing meaningless labor in a dreary cubicle while the love that my father forced me to leave behind gazes happily up at me from a piece of celluloid.

I wonder what she's up to?

A few keystrokes in Google and the profile photo I pull up tells me everything I need to know. The vibrant sparkle her eyes had once held is dead and gone and her childhood beauty has fled in what looks to have been a hurry. A frowning child balanced precariously in the crook of her arm suggests that her current occupation is 'between husbands'. A small grin threatens to escape my lips as I caress my stinging cheek. Silently, I close the web browser and return to work.

The dying wish of a man who has seen as much as Tho was a hard site. If anyone could ever have the right to be in pain he should. Now, dying of cancer, Tho reflects on the difficulties of his life, telling news reporters from around the world just how bad it was to be him. To suffer and keep going in such a way was what made Tho so very much alive to others. It was 1968, a year of turmoil in both American soil and Vietnamese. Tho, now in his 30’s was a simple farmer, living with his family. The smell of burning debris and rotting flesh was not too far from his house. Tho everyday went to the big city occupied by American soldiers to get his day’s pay, 20 cents. Keeping his family alive came above all else, even if it meant being weak himself. Many days passed with the same routine, back and forth, to the city and back to the warmth of his family. One day, a day Tho was sure to never forget, he was coming back from the city and noticed there was a strange odor coming from his house. It was on fire. American soldiers believed Tho’s family to have been harboring Vietnamese soldiers. Tho dropped the 20 cents he had from the day and ran as fast as he could, fighting to get through the soldiers while they laughed and the most vile, inhuman comments. His family burning, his kids screaming and the laughing of the soldiers was enough to make any man go crazy. Tho grabbed the nearest American soldier and threw him to the ground, grabbed his side arm and shot it. The other soldiers quickly disarmed Tho, screaming and crying out for his family and placed him under arrest as a Prisoner of War. War had killed Tho’s family and for that he stayed in jail 50 years. After the story Tho mysteriously reaches into his sleeve and pulls out a small crumbled up handkerchief. Inside the handkerchief was a small paper seemingly small and fragile from the years it has seen. Tho’s face lights up with a smile or rather a small grin. A single tear flows from his eyes and onto the paper. The photographer takes the photo. Tho died a few minutes later the tears still flowing from his eyes. The paper in his hands was a picture of his family, wife and his sons and daughters all together next to the house they used to live in, a day before it was burned. This photograph along with the story was to be published in National Geographic’s Special issue called Things War Changes. Days later at a United Nations Peace Conference every single nation in the world decides on world peace. Tho, one man managed to change humanity. It is good to dream….