The first photograph showed me at my graduation, holding my diploma.
The second captured her hand reaching into the frame as the camera timer counted down.
The third was the photograph from our backyard bench.
We were sitting shoulder to shoulder, laughing at something neither of us could remember afterward.
Her scars were visible.
She had not tried to cover them.
On the evening of the exhibition, I watched people stop in front of the photographs.
Some smiled.
Some studied them quietly.
One woman stood beside my mother for several minutes.
“I’m always the person taking the family pictures,” she said. “There are hardly any photographs of me with my children.”
My mother smiled.
“Then it’s time you got into the picture.”
The woman laughed, but her eyes filled with tears.
I looked at my mother and realized how far she had come.
The sheet that once covered her mirror was folded away in a linen closet.
