MOM, 1938

This framed picture sits atop my desk at my San Gabriel apartment.  My printer is there to the left.  But the first time that I'd ever seen this photo of Mom was at her mother's apartment on Detroit Street in Denver way back in 1969.  Grammie used to live in a basement apartment at 1620 Detroit Street.  

So my dad knocked on her door, where just outside her door was the boiler used to heat the entire building.  He knocked, she answered, and we stepped into her quarters.  And as Dad and Grammie stepped into her kitchen and out of view, I scanned her place.  

The windows were at the top of the wall in her basement studio.  She had a kitchen, a living room, and one bedroom.  Her means were survival means.  I will never forget the windows in her front room, how high they were built into the wall, very close to the ceiling.  At that height, the windows afforded a view only of the street or sidewalk.  It both fascinated me and made me feel pity.  

I saw a few framed photos on a corner console, nothing high-Victorian or that fancy; probably closer to this William & Mary table.  

From the center of the room, standing closer to her sofa, I could see the pictures in the distance, but as I stepped closer, slowly to the pics I began to make out the eyes and the smile of some

one very familiar and realized that this picture, the very one shown above, was of my mother as a young woman.  I'd never seen pictures of my mother as a young woman, but only as the mother to our family.  I could not believe how beautiful she was.  I was never more proud of her.  So I loved the photo so much that I went and got it framed in the one shown above.  

Will never forget a few details of Grammie's studio apartment.  I remember her Bakelite 500 rotary phone on the stand next to her sofa.

The framed picture of my mom here on my old San Gabriel desk was dated 1938.