What Treasures Wait Patiently for Us

Sometimes we get more that what we expect. That happened to me yesterday afternoon as I was going through family photos. There was one photograph of my mother taken when she was probably in her early thirties. It was one of those contrived glamour shots from the 40's that bore no resemblance to her in my mind. My mother never wore make up other than lipstick, but in the photo she looked heavily made up. I'm sure it was a black and white photo that had been "tinted" by the photographer.

The frame was in poor condition. I had just set up an account with Graphic Dimensions for Daily Painters of New Mexico placing an order for a number of frames, so I started taking the old frame with my mom's photo apart. I was stunned by what I saw behind two pieces of cardboard used as filler behind the glass and featured image.

It was a photo of my mother as a child, perhaps 8 or 10 years old. She died when she was 72 and would be 98 years old this year. I had never seen a picture of her other than as an adult, and the emotion that instantly welled up in me that moment is hard to explain. Suddenly, I had a connection to her that I had never had when she was alive. Here was a glimpse of her taken 90 years ago !

I always knew her to be somewhat fair skinned and in this photo she was dark skinned. That brought me to understand why she hardly ever went out in the sun. She was full-blood Sicilian Italian and there was a time in her young adulthood, during World War II, that being Italian in a small southern town was not to her advantage.

The beautiful little girl in the photograph was mysterious to me. The more I looked at her, the more I recognized my mom and too, my daughter who I always thought took after her. Many of the veiled "dots" in my life started to connect in a matter of seconds.

I have always been fascinated with old photographs that you find in flea markets and the dusty corners of antique stores. I wonder about the lives of those children, newlyweds, men of war and persons of note that were momentarily captured. This photo is of a life that I treasure.