In a forgotten photo, a mother's happy face

The Boston Globe

Beverly Beckham

I had two mothers. That's what I've long thought.

The first was young and spry and pretty and hip. She sang and she danced and she loved old movies and show tunes and big hats and Johnny Carson.

The other mother was head-injured and infirm. A fall made her old. A fall took away all her prettiness. Before she fell, my mother was one person. After she fell, she was another. I knew both, I loved both, so I thought I knew her.

A picture has changed this. An old beat-up picture I have looked at a million times, a head shot a little bigger than a postage stamp, sepia and lusterless, that my father gave me after my mother died.

Why didn't I ask him then, ``Where was this taken, Dad? When was it taken? How old was she? And why did you save it? What does it mean to you?''

But the picture didn't provoke questions. It was tiny and drab and I tucked it in my library card holder and for 22 years it has never made me ache or imagine or wonder.

I scanned it last week and ordered a 4 x 6 only because I thought I should have a copy.

When the poor resolution sign came on warning me that the picture wouldn't print clearly, I wasn't surprised. But when I opened the envelope and saw the finished product, I was.

Enlarged, the picture is transformed. Enlarged, it is a photo of a bright-eyed, untroubled someone I never knew.

My mother is so young in the picture and luminous, her hair thick and curly, her eyebrows arched, her eyes shining and her smile shy but real. She's slight, her shoulders small, more girl than woman still. And there's not a line in her face, not a hint of all the things that would come.

There is nothing of the past, either. Nothing of the stories she told about her unhappy childhood, bread lines and no heat and newspaper stuffed in her shoes, her father leaving, her mother screaming and working too many hours and reeling from it all. Just a pretty young girl captured on a good day, with her whole life ahead of her and no idea of how hard that life would be.

The picture sits on my desk now. Was it taken in a photo booth, four for a quarter? Was she with my father? Was she with a friend? I wonder. And I imagine. But I don't ache because I like looking at this mother I never knew. I like thinking that once upon a time, if only for a time, if only on the day this shot was taken, she was happy and carefree and so full of joy that all these years later you can still feel it.

People used to tell my mother that she had sad eyes. The deaths of babies born too soon will do that. There was always so much hope. And then there was always so much despair.

But she sang. She danced. She hid her sadness.

After she fell down her cellar stairs, there was no more singing and dancing. She spent the rest of her life struggling to talk and walk.

And her eyes got sadder.

But this picture shows me they weren't always sad. This picture shows a girl whose eyes glow.

This is my mother before I knew her. This is my mother before life pummeled her. She smiles at me from a long ago time. Her smile is eternal.

As is my love for her.