Sally Edelstein and her mother 1959
There is not a single snapshot of my mother holding me as a baby. Not in black and white not in color. The kissing, cooing, and snuggling photos like the mother-daughter photos that fill my social media feed on birthdays and Mother’s Day don’t exist.
There is no tangible evidence of a mother-daughter hug.
There are multiple mother-daughter pictures through the decades but it is always standing or sitting side by side.
And that’s exactly where she always was. By my side and on my side. I could always count on her and she never let me down. She was in fact, a picture-perfect mother.
I feel her by my side today. I sure wish she were.
Envisioning The American Dream 
As the fourth and final child in my family, there are far fewer photos of my, period, as a little guy.
Like yours, mine tend to be as part of a line-up, usually with one or more of my siblings or a family dog. I remember some of me on my grandmother’s kitchen table, mixing salt, pepper, and sugar together and other mischief the photographer (my Dad?) thought “cute” and others of me “helping” build out new home in the early 1950s. Then, there are the school photos. (ugh!) that I learned not only were sold to one’s parents but ended up in that notorious “permanent file”!
Regardless of a paucity of documentation of our times with our parents, there are those memories, mostly better focused, happier, more permanent, and more satisfying than anything on paper.
LikeLike
Living in a culture now where everything from the most mundane to something significant is immediately documented with our phones, it’s hard to recall there was a time when we weren’t walking around with a camera 24/7 and photos were still in that staged setting with few spontaneous photos ever taken. You had to go get the camera, find it, make sure it had film in it, etc. That said, the warmth I felt from my mother is imprinted in my every being so don’t need documentation to confirm what I know.
LikeLiked by 1 person
Fewer than 20-30 photos of me in my childhood, yet my smartphone as over 13,000 of mostly my cat and his late brother. No kidding!
LikeLike
This is so warm and wonderful. The photo is a charming keepsake. I went looking for childhood photos with my mom and found a similar void for me as well as my siblings. Come to think of it, I have no recollection of my mom or dad pointing a camera our way. Is it something about the “pre-Instamatic” era?
LikeLike
Thank you. Yes, it does have something to do with that. See my reply below.
LikeLike