So. Wow. I'm 23.

Doesn't feel that much different from 22, despite the hissy-fit I was throwing in the weeks leading up to the date.

Went to dinner last night, using our new spiffy gold Entertainment Card at a restaurant that would usually be out of our price range. We did three courses and all. It was just wonderful.

My present from my parents included a scarf and some pillow cases and an envelope full of capsicum seeds (for the growing thereof, it's not some bizarre Evans family metaphor) and what I actually asked for: a photograph of my parents.

Not just any photograph, though. I had a particular one in mind. I've long held that photographs are not so much about the physical representation of the subject matter, as the further traits and significances that the image can portray. Hence, when my parents asked for a framed photo of me for Christmas, I didn't give them a cheesy grinning portrait shot, but an enlarged copy of the photo that's currently up in my personal section. They were slightly perplexed; well, yes, it looked like me, but it was sort of... weird.

I tried to explain. I don't think I succeeded.

In any case, when it came time for the favour to be returned, the photo I decreed that I wanted was one from their wedding.

"But," my mother objected, "we don't look anything like that any more!"

"You do," I told her. "And you'll always look like that to me. And your stances just sum up your personalities perfectly. It's a photo of you, not just of your bodies."

In the photo, my parents are standing over the wedding cake. The knife's already been planted, and now my mother is turning to my father, hands waving, obviously holding forth about how things should proceed from here. He's watching her with the same smile of indulgent affection that he's worn for the next 25 years. It's them. It's perfect.

"When I went to pick up the photo," Dad told me, "the girl said: 'Ooh, he's good-looking, isn't he?' and I said: 'Watch it. That's me.' That photo was taken quite a long time ago, you know."

"Well yes," I admitted. "After all, it was taken at your wedding. Which was, I assume, at least 23 years ago."

"More than that, thank you!" my mother burst in.