I don’t have access to our family photo albums right now, so I started off looking through the pictures I have saved on my iPhone for my winter garden photograph. Most of the photos I had in my phone of family members were pretty mundane, however, so I talked to my mom (the photo keeper of the family) about what old photos she might have on her computer. I looked through the photos she had on her laptop but still didn’t see anything that really caught my attention. As I was struggling to find a photo to choose, my Mom then remembered she had a few print photos from her childhood with her. I took a look at them and one of the photos in particular stood out.

It was a photo I’d never seen before of my mom in her late teens making a wacky pose on the beach in New York. This photo captured a part of my mom that I love, and it was pretty crazy to see it on display 20 years before I even existed. To me the photo captures something that I’ve always admired about my mom, that she’s not really concerned with what other people think of her.

This trait of hers often comes out through her extroverted and goofy nature. Whether its singing or dancing throughout the house, she’s never afraid of making a fool of herself in the process of having fun. This has always been one of my favorite things about my mom and seeing her display this wacky, fun-loving side of hers in a photo from the 1970s was really cool to see.