Remembering Mom, Through Dad's Lens

The Boston Globe

He was always taking her picture. He could have photographed different things: the trees he planted to separate our yard from the neighbor's; the birds that nested in those trees; our dog, Buttons, whom he fed leftovers on the sly. He could have photographed the grotto my mother wanted, which he struggled to build on so many of his days off, or the cement patio he poured, where my best friend, Rosemary, and I left our handprints.

But my mother was always his focus.

He cajoled her with flattery: "Come on, Dot. You look so pretty. Let me take your picture." And my mother would lap up the praise, posing in front of the grotto, in front of the trees, in the kitchen, at the beach, anywhere, everywhere, smiling.

So many photographs, square prints and Kodachrome slides. My father took hundreds of shots of my mother. And I've looked at them hundreds of times.

But what I never saw until just last week — maybe because they are now on my computer and clustered together so there is no missing the theme — is the unwavering love in each of these shots, not just my father's love for my mother, but my mother's love for him.

It's a funny thing about our mothers. We see them as just that: our mothers. That's their leading role. Who they were to us defines them. But before us and after us and away from us?

I know so little about my mother's life. She fell off a bike when she was 12 and broke her leg and never rode again. Her father left for good when she was 13. When she was dating my father, she won a singing contest and used her prize money to buy him a pair of shoes because the only shoes he owned were the combat boots he'd worn in war. She borrowed her wedding dress. She worked as a milliner. She loved hats and pretty clothes and high-heel shoes. And gardening and old movies and show tunes and Rosemary Clooney and Ethel Merman and her baby sister, Lorraine. She loved Echo Lake in New Hampshire and tomatoes fresh from the vine and hot coffee and Johnny Carson and Nantasket Beach and sardines in a can and singing along with the hi-fi as she cooked and cleaned. And Wednesdays, because Wednesday was her day off.

I know more — and this is the real theme, the crux of the story, who my mother was to me: We watched old movies together on Sunday afternoons. She let Rosemary sleep over whenever I asked. She stood me on a kitchen chair and gently combed my hair until the snarls were out. She bought me a zillion crinolines, though I needed only one. When she didn't have money for the ice cream man, she rummaged through drawers and pockets until she found some. Whenever I had an art project, she drew the people for me because I couldn't draw. And she told me constantly that I was beautiful and smart and creative, and that of all the little girls in the world, she was so lucky God gave me to her.

For their 10th wedding anniversary, my mother took a bus to a studio in Boston and made a record for my father. She sang "Mr. Wonderful."

"Why that song?" I asked her that day.

"Because your father is Mr. Wonderful," she told me.

I get my puffy eyes from her. I see this as I study the pictures my father took. She hated her eye tooth. I see that tooth and love it. I see the crisp kitchen curtains that she changed constantly. And the wall-hanging dog house that she brought home one day, all of us little wooden dogs with our names on the bottom, the real dog, Buttons, included.

I see her pretty face and her beautiful smile and all those hats she borrowed from Wethern's, and I am so grateful that my father said, "Let me take your picture, Dot." And that my mother stopped what she was doing to pose for him and smile.