Another Birthday

Photographs are so funny - We can look at them a million times and find something new every time we look. I love this photo of you. It's priceless in so many ways. Snapped haphazardly by me on a beach outing, dad, you and I took in the early nineties. I don't remember that specific trip too much unfortunately..it's hard when you rely on memory - we took trips to the beach so often, and i wish so much i remembered more than i do. This was before you were sick. I still have that gray jacket you are wearing. The cuffs are tattered and holey, bleached with years of using it at my cleaning job. I still pull it on and wear it to keep me warm. The zipper is broke but it still it does its job. Even now... The car door open behind you belongs to the Caprice Classic we had that survived your lifetime of ownership and some of mine. That damn gold tank was a reliable S.O.B. Your thick beach coat is draped on the door, and the hint of gray sky in the corner tells me that the warm coat is essential. Your tussled hair and smile larger than life tells me it was a good day..perhaps perfect(?) beach outing - full of windy, cold weather and relief afterward from being higher up. Unfortunately i caught you at that nanosecond where you blinked. Blasted! I would have loved to have had the liveliness of your eyes captured, but that's ok. I haven't forgotten them..

If i didn't know you, what i would gauge from the photo would be that you were a happy, simple woman of little frills..someone of low maintenance that didn't mind her hair being mussed and a cloudy day to still smile truer than the sun. But, I DO know you..and that assessment still sits right.

I have photos later of you taken at the same beach. You are sick and bald and still smiling. It is perhaps not as wide but still as true.

Photographs really can capture a person's spirit/essence. Perhaps i wouldn't believe that if I didn't have this one as proof.

My father has called me over-sensitive before...he used that term in a time when he was trying to come up with my flaws. That's ok. I am. I am definitely over-sensitive. Perhaps Mom, you'd hate this photo of you? Well, I'm still glad i have it. And, if lingering in the details of a perfect day makes me super sensitive than so be it.

Happy Birthday Mom.

The details are not missed.