If the painting had eyes.

Last night, I went to visit my Grandpa who lives in the building right next to mine. I'm in my home country for my break right now. My aunt was there visiting him as well. As my aunt and my Grandpa talked about a book about Hajj, I looked at the framed painting above the couch my grandpa was sitting on. It's a painting of a road near a forest.  


Once upon a time, both the building that I live in and the one he lives in didn't exist. It was all one big house with no upstairs. All of my aunts and uncles [I have 4 aunts and 2 uncles] lived there since they were born and almost all of my cousins and I grew up there. That was until we all moved and my grandparents decided to split his land for his kids so that all of them had their own apartment to live in. For as long as I can remember, that painting had always been in the living room of my grandparents' house. It might've even been there before I was born. 


So as I sat there last night looking at the painting, I wondered, 'What if that painting had eyes?'.
If it did, it would know the whole history of our big family. It would have witnessed the coming of me and my cousins in to our first home, the ceremony in which each of us was named, possibly our first steps, the tantrums we through, my first tricycle I rode around in the living room and even further in the past -- my parents' wedding, my aunts and uncles' weddings. It would have seen all the trouble my mum went through before she and my Dad got divorced, the time when my uncle was struggling with Schizophrenia, the time when my Aunt got so mad at my Grandma that she slammed the door and went out of the living room... and more recently, my Grandma's sickness before she passed away, and  all the pain and grief my Grandpa must have gone through after that. It would have seen every birthday party I had until I turned about nine years old. 


That painting would know literally every single thing, the good times and the bad, that happened in our living room.