I have been trying to whittle down the photos in my phone to below 2000 this December. But it has been hard since every other day finds me taking random shoots of my kids.

In this case, the Japanese saying 一期一会 is a hindrance because I keep swiping right, obsessing about what happens if I never encounter such a reaction from my kids again. Never mind that I usually take 2-3 shoots of them doing the same thing from different perspectives. Deleting photos have become akin to wiping memories away.

This context explains why it is so amazing that I still have this photo that I took in 2021 on my phone - the sole surviving remnant of my days teaching at Naval Base Primary School. Something about it has tugged at my heartstrings so powerfully that I have resisted the ‘Delete’ button all this while.

At first glance, it seems a pretty mundane photo - just two girls formulating an oral response based on the prompts I wrote on the whiteboard. Or they were just copying down my prompts lar. Anyway, their action is irrelevant. I think I wanted a visual reminder of the year I went through hell and high water to get them to pass their PSLE. A visceral encapsulation of my heart and will as a teacher.