ur family photo albums followed us from house to house. When my parents were married, my mother was the caretaker of those big albums. Early pictures were all black and white. My mother set them in chronological order, capturing birthdays, Christmas and New Year holidays, and other family events. There was a stability those photos gave me. They became our family history, and when I wanted to see our family’s beginnings and gauge the changes we had gone through, from clothing to location, I consulted the albums.

I certainly needed continuum in a family that was about to break up.

My father, a Singapore jazz musician and avid amateur photographer, took most of the photos. There were several of him and his band at work at the cabarets and clubs. When a new batch of photos was developed, my mother would make it a family project. We’d gather around our low wooden, glass-top coffee table where the latest photos would be laid out in rows. She would say, “Don’t touch the picture here,” as she pointed to the center of the black and whites. No smudges were allowed. She showed me how to pinch hold them by their pointed ends and carefully place them in the triangular paper, and later, plastic photo corners. I’d imitate her and would correct my older brother and sister when they didn’t hold the photos just the way our mother had instructed. 

As a child, I made a ritual of album viewing. I’d get out the stack of albums, place them on the coffee table, sit in a comfortable chair just a few inches from the table and stretch out my short legs, my ankles on the end of the table top. As I balanced an open album on my legs, I’d take a deep breath and dive into the pool of memories, beginning with Album One, Picture One.My parents standing next to each other, my mother in an evening cocktail dress, my father in a Barong Tagalog, a traditional Filipino shirt, as they pose stiffly, side by side, in front of my father’s expensive camera set on a tripod. They look ideal together. I’d wish all our days were as silent and perfect as the copies before me. Those thick, spiral bound albums were accessible when I wanted to link hearts with family and friends and return to happier times.

There were two pages that were the highlight of the albums whenever visitors came over and there was a lull in conversation. Out came the albums. These pages were dedicated to Elizabeth Taylor whom my father had met during the latter part of 1950s. She was already a big star, and her visit to Singapore made headlines and brought out reporters, professional photographers, and anyone who could get a pass to see her.

My father was fortunate that he happened to be working at the Great World Cabaret, the venue for Ms. Taylor’s photo shoot. He was filling in for his deceased brother-in-law, Lino, who had played saxophone in the orchestra of the Great World Cabaret. A few months earlier, Lino was in a motorcycle accident, run down by a bus and killed. He left behind a pregnant wife and six other young children. To help his sister with finances, my father stepped into her husband’s spot in the orchestra.

During break time, he joined the curious crowd to get a glimpse of the star, and was able to get closer, get her autograph, and photos of them together were taken. Their heads were almost touching. That particular photo of Elizabeth Taylor and my father took a prized position in our family photo album for decades. There were other photos of her and her late husband, Mike Todd, when they visited Singapore circa 1958, but that photo of my father and Ms. Taylor captured an intimacy that I had never observed between my parents.

My father in the photo is in a suit, his thick black hair slicked down with Brylcream.  He is bending forward, leaning in as he stands before Ms. Taylor and she is autographing something for him. It was such an intimate photo and at my young age, Ms. Taylor struck me as someone who held more of my father’s attention than my mother ever could. In some childish way, I worried that my father liked Ms. Taylor better than my mother. She was a “timeless beauty,” as my mother would say, and despite my worried concerns about Liz Taylor being the other woman in my father’s life, she was probably the only woman my mother was not jealous of. My father, a very handsome man, had his own following of young women.