Somewhere

Regretfully, I couldn't find the photo of my mom that I wanted to run today.

She looked beautiful. It was taken before either I or my sister, who's five years older, was born. It may have even been shot around the time my folks were married or right before my dad went into WWII.

It was before the verities of a long marriage had set in: raising two kids, managing the finances (she socked it away in envelopes to pay the bills and put what was left in the bank before dad said a word), the cooking and the cleaning over and over again, planning all those parties and family events, dealing with a husband with post traumatic stress syndrome well-before that term was coined or anything was in place to help returning vets with those problems.

There are no lines or wrinkles on her face in that photo. She was in her early 20s and the ravages of her 2-pack a day cigarette habit was more than a half century away from taking their final toll. She had already lived through the Depression and you couldn't tell that she had to live in an orphanage with her sister when she was four because her mom had gotten paralyzed scrubbing floors in a factory in the winter with the windows wide open.

And she didn't have to pray and hope and worry yet over a son who would stay in college during the riots of the late 60s-early 70s, drive a bus on the old 41 route through Cabrini Green and then backpack and hitch hike through Europe with the money he'd earned. It was either that or the Navy and Vietnam.

Rather she looked like she was posing for a portrait for her new husband. She had that Gibson-styled hair (no, it doesn't mean she had a guitar on top of her head. The "Gibson-girl" look was pretty popular in the 40s). Her makeup was perfect. And she wore her famous raccoon coat. I remember when it got damaged beyond repair in a flood in the basement at the old house. She had stored it in a trunk along with love letters from my dad and other memorabilia from the early years of their marriage. It was almost all lost.

The flood was around 1990 -- their 50th wedding anniversary. Losing those items was a turning point, because by the end of the decade, Mom and Dad were both gone. Mom first.

That picture is somewhere. And so is Mom.