Happy Mother’s Day: mothers and babies
[NOTE: This is a repeat of a previous post.]
Okay, who are these three dark beauties?
A hint: one of them is the very first picture you’ve ever seen on this blog of neo-neocon, sans apple. Not that you’d recognize me, of course. Even my own mother might not recognize me from this photo.
My own mother, you say? Of course she would. Ah, but she’s here too, looking a bit different than she does today—Mother’s Day—at ninety-six years of age. Just a bit; maybe her own mother wouldn’t recognize her, either.
Her own mother? She’s the one who’s all dressed up, with longer hair than the rest of us.
The photo of my grandmother was taken in the 1880’s; the one of my mother in the teens of the twentieth century; and the one of me, of course, in the 1950s.
Heredity, ain’t it great? My mother and grandmother are both sitting for formal portraits at a professional photographer’s studio, but by the time I came around amateur snapshots were easy to take with a smallish Brownie camera. My mother is sitting on the knee of her own grandfather, my grandmother’s father, a dapper gentleman who was always very well-turned out. I’m next to my older brother, who’s reading a book to me but is cropped out of this photo. My grandmother sits alone in all her finery.
We all not only resemble each other greatly in our features and coloring, but in our solemnity. My mother’s and grandmother’s seriousness is probably explained by the strange and formal setting; mine is due to my concentration on the book, which was Peter Pan (my brother was only pretending to read it, since he couldn’t read yet, but I didn’t know that at the time). My mother’s resemblance to me is enhanced by our similar hairdos (or lack thereof), although hers was short because it hadn’t really grown in yet, and mine was short because she purposely kept it that way (easier to deal with).
My grandmother not only has the pretty ruffled dress and the long flowing locks, but if you look really closely you can see a tiny earring dangling from her earlobe. When I was young, she showed me her baby earrings; several miniature, delicate pairs. It astounded me that they’d actually pierced a baby’s ears (and that my grandmother had let the holes close up later on, and couldn’t wear pierced earrings any more), whereas I had to fight for the right to have mine done in my early teens.
I’m not sure what my mother’s wearing; some sort of baby smock. But I know what I have on: my brother’s hand-me-down pajamas, and I was none too happy about it, of that you can be sure.
So, a very happy Mother’s Day to you all! What would mothers be without babies…and mothers…and babies….and mothers….?
Mothers . . . and babies . . . and mothers . . . and babies . . . .
When I became a mother, I began to realize that being a mother is the penance for having been a child. 🙁 🙂
Make of it what you will, but the present-day custom in Spain is for baby girl’s ears to be pierced, soon after birth. This actually makes it easier to know right away if you are admiring a baby girl, or a baby boy, no matter how frilly or ruffled the baby clothes. Little teensy stud earrings? A girl. No earrings – a boy.
Happy Mothers’ Day, Neo and all!
Just as engaging the second time.
Pierced-ears were associated with “loose women” … and, to an extent (this being an influence of Orthodox Judaism upon American Protestant Christianity), with slavery.
But, American women still wanted to wear jewelry upon their ears, and so were invented those horrid *painful* clip-on earrings.
Still, considering what women are now doing to their ears (and noses and eyebrows), I’d welcome a society-wide return to the silly prejudice against pierced ears.
This is the first time I have seen this post. I’m glad you reposted it. I very much enjoyed it. Thanks for sharing.
Happy Mother’s Day.
By the way, that picture of your mother’s grandfather reminds me of my own grandfather on my mother’s side. Very interesting. Looks almost the same. He died about ten years ago. Miss him a lot.
He was a South Dakota farmer. Great guy. Every year during the summer my parents would round up my brother and I and take us out there to see the grandparents. Grandpa would get us up in the morning and take us to the local cafe for coffee and doughnuts. Of course, he had the coffee and we had the doughnuts. Then he would take us out to the livestock auction. The stench was unbelievable. We would sit in the arena and watch them move the cows through while some guy shouted into a microphone a foreign language that we couldn’t understand “Hee-be-ja-wa-jabber-labber-lacka-hee-haw” and on and on. We had to ask grandpa what the heck guy was saying.
Most of those small farmers, at least in that area, are now gone. Swallowed up by the big farms. Very sad. Time marches on. We can’t stop it.
Neo-Neo…Very, very nice, Kiddo! All three of you chicklets are lovely. The resemblance is really something.
Good on’ya.
All three together look like time-lapse triplets! Beautiful babies.