For Mother's Day

When my parents moved to a hurricane-prone area, I started receiving boxes filled with photographs to preserve in case of a flood. After sorting volumes and years of photos, I am struck by how many vivid memories I have that were never photographed. Most of these have to do with my mom. Like many moms, she was more often behind the camera that in front of it. Or like me with the delete key, photos of her would show up missing.

Those missing photographs were snapshots in my memory. Like, for example, how she looked floating in front of my little boat raft in the pool, or putting on make up, or cooking popcorn on the stove, or the back of her hair when she drove or what her hands looked like when I would play with her rings in church. (As it turns out, her hands look very much like mine when my daughter holds my hand.) There are moments when my daughter looks at me very hard - when she is studying something I'm doing- I wonder if she is taking one of those snapshots.

For the last 12 years, I have lived 700 or so miles from my mom. Though we talk almost every day, when I think of her, I still imagine her to look like my childhood mom, busting me out of preschool to go get cheeseburgers and watch As The World Turns. I remember what she smelled like when she was getting ready for a party or church, like perfume and spray starch or after a day at the pool, chlorine and baby oil. Even as a married woman, long gone from home, I opened a package from her and just the smell of her perfume made me burst into tears.

Here are a few of my favorite photos of my mom. I'm sure if given the chance to see the originals, she would hide them. But to me, she looks so beautiful.






I love this photograph. She looks so beautiful. I just hear Diana Ross singing Baby Love when I see this photo.


Mom went to college when I was 6. Here she is drawing Squirt, the family Hamster, for an art class. Even at 6, I understood how brave she was to go back and I was so proud. I still am. I hope I inherit her energy to constantly try new things. Happy Mother's Day Mom.