My family doesn’t usually look at photographs and albums very often. I think since the majority of my family is still back in El Salvador, they rely heavily on social media like Facebook to connect with the rest of the family that is in the United States. A lot of pictures get posted there and that is what we usually talk about. It was rare for my mom and me to go through the pictures especially, pictures of herself. She grew up in the more rural parts of El Salvador and she doesn’t have any pictures of herself then but through stories, I feel like I can imagine what she looked like especially when I have a lot of her features. I think having her by my side during this process helped me find my “winter garden photograph.” 

My mom appears to be a serious woman when someone glances at her but in reality, she is a social butterfly that is constantly smiling during conversation. Photographs are able to capture her essence within her smile and her mannerisms that make her who she is. Most of the photos are from her being the U.S. for the first time and so she appears differently, I wasn’t able to meet that version of my mother, the one who came to a new country and sought a better life for herself. My mother is brave and she worked for what she has and she made a lot of things grow, that is who she is. She nurtures those around her despite coming from a background in which she had significantly less than others. 

My mother told me the story of how she met my father while we were looking at photos of her since a couple of pictures of my dad came up. He also came from El Salvador when he was young with his brother and from those photos, you can tell he was one of those “cool” guys with the way he posed in his pictures. She told me how she would walk by him on the stairs of the apartment building they both lived in on her way to work and that he would always try to talk to her. She gave in one day and spoke to him and he asked her out to the movies. They both watched Titanic but the thing with my mother is that even now she struggles to understand English and so I asked her if she understood the movie and she said no. I proceeded to explain Titanic to her. If there is something that explains the kind of person my mother is, it is that story.