Below, a photo of my mother, holding me about a week after I came into her life. I was 5 weeks old; she was 31. She’s clearly not yet comfortable with me – left arm and hand stiff, right hand holding the pacifier at the ready. And I’m clearly not yet comfortable with her – looking away, not nestling in. We are posing, posed, for the camera, not relating to each other. But we both stuck it out, and played our mother/daughter roles as best we could for the next 60 years.
She is gone now, and I’m left sifting through my fragmented memories and a few old handwritten letters and more documents than I have patience for, looking for clues to help me better understand the landscape of her life. There was love, and resentment, complexity, and a lot of unanswered questions. One thing I’m sure of – she would have been happy for me to share this photo of us, from a time when all things were possible.
