There is a picture hanging on the wall of my grandparents house of these two smiling people holding hands. They are sitting on a swing and they have nice clothes on, as if they came from a wedding. Her long white dress is trailing behind her, and there is a little dog in the background that looks like it is about to get muddy prints on her dress, but she doesn't seem to care. He is looking at her like there is nothing in the world he needs to worry about anymore. I always wondered how those people could be so happy, even when there are so many terrible things going on in the world.

But every time I looked at the photo, it looked different. It seemed like the people in the it were aging. I mean I could have just been losing my mind, but I thought for sure that they looked younger than the last time I saw them. And then one time, when the dog just dissapeared from the frame entirely, I knew there was something special about this picture.

“Grandma? What happened to the dog in the picture?” I asked her one day.

“What dog?”

“The one that was in the picture two months ago. Didn't you see it?”

“I have no idea what you are talking about sweetie. Why don't we go take a walk outside?”

By now I was really confused. I couldn't figure out how the dog had just disappeared from the picture, and that no one noticed!

That night while I was lying in bed at my grandma’s house, I heard the faintest sound of a dog whimper. I tiptoed into the hallway with all of the pictures, and followed the sound. It seemed like it was coming from a picture I had never seen before. It was of a tree in the fall and on the ground by the tree there was a dog that looked exactly like the dog that used to be in the happy couple picture. I checked the happy couple picture just to be safe, and the dog still wasn't there. I saw a mosquito on the picture, and I instinctively slapped the mosquito with my hand, but my hand went through the picture! I panicked, because I thought I had poked a hole in my grandma’s photo. But when I took my hand away, there was no hole where there should have been!

I thought that maybe it was because it was the middle of the night, or maybe I was just dreaming, but I swore that my hand went through that picture. So I tried again, and sure enough it went through, and I thought I felt a slight breeze on my fingers. I took the picture off the hook and put it on the ground, then carefully, put my legs in the picture then my whole body. Once I caught my balance, I looked around and saw the bare tree, and realized I was standing in a pile of leaves.

It felt as if I had stepped into a whole new world. Like I was sucked into the picture for a reason. Then the dog started to bark at me. I walked over to him and saw that he had found a hole and I stepped through it, not stopping to think.

As I regained my senses I smelled dust. We had to be in one of those photos of grandma’s relatives. As I turned to find a way out, I realized that the woman sitting in the front of the photo looked just like the one who sat on the swing in the happy couple photo.

“Excuse me? Miss? Can I ask you a question?” I asked.

“Yeah, sure, anything.”

I knew that if she was actually the woman in the happy couple picture, there was something I need to find out.

“How can you always be so happy?”

What she said next is something I will treasure and remember for the rest of my life.

“Somebody once said ‘Happiness is letting go of what you think your life is supposed to look like, and celebrating it for everything that it is’” She said. “And I like to live by that quote, because if something goes wrong in your life, it probably went wrong for a reason, so you should make the most of  it now, and it should turn into something good later. Now you and your dog run along” She said as she winked at me.