BLog 12 stroy of a picture

I love pictures, I love taking pictures, and I love looking at pictures and reminiscing about the time and place and story the picture is telling. I choose to write about a very simple picture. The picture is of me as a baby (maybe eight months) on my mothers lap with my two sisters who were about 10 and 12 at the time standing beside my mother. We were in my grandfather’s house, in their terrace. It was night time so you cant really see the background but my grandmother has a whole bunch of different weird plants decorated all around the terrace so you can a couple of those in the back; you can also see the bars of the terrace. The picture was shot in the Dominican Republic where there is a lot of poverty and a lot of thieves so the back of the house had, and is, surrounded with bars so that thieves don’t come into rob the house. Anyways, my sister Laura is on the left (she’s the ten year old) wearing a blue dress whose color is washed out (80’s style). My sister Michelle is wearing a pink sweater with a purple skirt with the sleeves on her sweater rolled up again 80’s style. My mother is wearing like a white shirt with light pink pants and I’m wearing socks with a blue and white baby outfit (you know the ones that look like a one piece bathing suite made out of cotton). I don’t know who took the picture but I can almost guarantee it was my grandfather, like me he’s sentimental with memorandums. The interesting thing about this picture and the reason I decided to write about it is because of my mother “smile” in the picture. And the look in her eyes, she looks sooo tired and anguished as if the entire world was on her shoulders. Her eyes are open but you can see that she’s forcing herself to keep them open. Who knows when was the last time she had a goodnight sleep. At the time she was working, and taking care of three kids one of who was new born by herself without any help from anybody. Even thought she has make on you can still see the brown bags under her eyes. And her smile, it’s almost as if she is forcing it like if she is saying in her “Omg just take the picture already”. You know I could never imagine what a woman has to go through when she has a child out of wed-lock, but I can sure tell the pain in my mother’s eye from this picture. The pain, the pain, but out her pain and sacrifice and commitment to raise me up right she struggled but made me a man. I love her so much. Thank you mommy.
Ps. Dr. Chandler, I spoke with my mother about the picture I described in class and I found out what was going on that day and who took the picture. The picture was actually taken by my aunt’s ex husband, husband at the time, and he took it because that day I had received the police shirt from one of the members of church who was an officer. I had been asking for that shirt for a long time and when I got it I felt so proud and I didn’t want to take it off for days. Its funny, I actually wanted to wear that shirt to school, never did thank god, but I though if I wore to school all of the kids would have been all over me asking how I got it, so on. After that I dot two more of those shirts and I think I still have them till this day, its amazing the happiness those shirts brought me, things that simple would never bring that kind of happiness these days, anyways just wanted to tell you that.