99

 

March 24, 2022

Mamammy would have turned 99 years old today. 

I think I might have been 10 when I first found this photo of her, at high school graduation (valedictorian). I remember staring at this and back at her over and over trying to overlay the teenager with the grandmother who I saw every single day once my grandparents has moved in with us when I was six. 

In my ancient wisdom of 10, she'd always been "old" and here was the first evidence that, no, she was once young, like me. I'm not sure why it was such a revelation. Even in black and white, every time I look at this photo I see her blue eyes.

I think this was her first photograph. Tales of her going to school barefoot and living in poverty in Little Cedar, Oklahoma without electricity or indoor plumbing, packed in with endless siblings, and being seven years old when the Great Depression descended on the country, this would likely be the first time the family would spend money on a photograph. 

Here are the only other surviving photographs of her, from what appears to be her early 20s, when World War II would have been raging overseas, to a couple she kept from the early 50s

This must have been a favorite dress. Different shoes = different days. 

And there didn't seem to be a lot of days when the camera was used.