When Suzy returned to Singapore after six years in China, she expected home to feel familiar.
It did.
But not completely.
“Everything was still here,” she says. “My parents, my in-laws, my friends, the neighbourhood. But six years is a long time. People’s lives had carried on.”
Suzy had moved to China with her husband for an overseas assignment. What was meant to be one chapter of their lives stretched across several years, three jobs for her husband, and the difficult period of Covid.
For long stretches, travelling home was difficult or impossible.
Their son was in Singapore, living with his grandparents while attending primary school.
“That was probably the hardest part,” Suzy says. “You can video-call, you can message every day, but it’s not the same as being there.”
There were WeChat groups and family chats. Photos arrived from birthdays, meals, school activities and gatherings.
She was grateful for them.
But sometimes they made the distance more obvious.
“You see a photo of everyone having dinner and you’re happy to see them,” she says. “At the same time, you realise you weren’t part of what happened before the photo or after it.”
By the time she returned, Suzy found herself appreciating things she once would have considered completely ordinary.
Lunch with her parents.
Sitting in her in-laws’ living room while everybody talked.
Running into an old neighbour.
Meeting friends without having to calculate flights, quarantine rules or annual leave.
Even a simple family gathering felt different.
“I used to think, there will always be another one,” she says. “Now I don’t take that for granted so easily.”
That was part of what drew her to Clozeu.
Suzy began reconnecting with family, relatives and friends there. For gatherings, she liked creating Events where everyone could contribute the photos and videos they had taken.
Not just hers.
Not just the pictures someone happened to send into one chat.
“The thing I like is seeing the same day through everybody else’s phone,” she says. “You realise there were all these little moments happening around you.”
Later, some of those moments could be chosen and kept in Collections with the people who shared them.
For Suzy, that distinction mattered.
A family birthday was not simply a folder of photographs she owned.
“It happened to all of us,” she says. “So I like the idea that what we keep can be ours too.”
She sometimes wonders what those Collections will feel like five or ten years from now.
There will be more birthdays. Her son will grow older. Parents will age. Friends may move away again. Suzy herself may find another chapter of life taking her somewhere unexpected.
But this time, she hopes the shared trace will not be scattered quite so easily.
“I wish we had something like this during those six years,” she says. “I know I missed things. You can’t go back and change that.”
What she can do is be more present now.
And when the family comes together, make sure some of what they shared has somewhere to remain.
“For me, it’s not really about collecting photos,” Suzy says. “It’s knowing that I’m part of the picture again.”