So, what happened to this woman?

When my daughter-in-law asked for photos of my dad as a child, little did I know it would open a scan-fest for me. Scan one, scan a dozen. Why not pick my favs and make CDs for everyone? My sister's birthday is coming up. Maybe she'd like a greatest-hits album of our parents?

I have three physical albums dedicated to old photos. There are pieces of others, mainly reprints and doubles, scattered about elsewhere. I found the photos my DIL requested, whizzed them off to her, then started a journey.

We can start with: why don't people mark the backs of their photos, although Mother was MUCH better about it than Daddy. Most of Daddy's are identified in my handwriting when I was making the albums from loose photos, asking him for names and places, and he could still remember.

But this post, my 400th by the way, is about my Mother. Viewing her photos, I see a child whose own mother never looked directly at the camera and whose father scowled at it. But Mother? Mother was smiling. Smiling holding cats (and the rest of the family wonders where I get it from), smiling atop a horse, smiling in a lake, smiling from the top of a picnic table, smiling from under a soldier's cap while at college, smiling in band uniform, modeling a two-piece bathing suit, playing a guitar, hugging her favorite cousin, riding a bike, holding a baby...

Where did that woman go? Ride a horse? A bike? Swim? Sit on a table? Who is this woman? Can't be my mother! She never did any of these things with me!

But it is she. And as she's been dead 12 years I'll never know where all that joy went.