I've often made the claim that my mother was ahead of her time when it came to social media. She pinned thoughts, jokes, ideas, and photos to the company towels far before anyone had dreamt up Pinterest. And she posted things to her "wall" decades before Facebook or Instagram made their appearance.
My brother, Tim, and my mother once tackled a crumbling lath-and-plaster wall in my bedroom by covering it with cork squares to make a giant bulletin board - only they didn't just leave it square. That would be boring. They trimmed the edges to make it an apple. A wall-sized baseboard-to-ceiling silhouette of an apple. I sometimes wonder if Steve Jobs passed through Milo in the 70s. I tacked countless posters to that wall through my teen years. I never once had an inkling that my adult years would be spent carrying around an iPhone and an iPad and a MacBook Pro, all sporting apple silhouettes. See what I mean? Ahead of her time.
Our farmhouse had one long hallway, and my mother deemed it her Hall of Fame. There was even a large sign stating that it was the Hall of Fame. There, she hung old black-and-white photos of ancestors long passed. She hung our graduation portraits. She hung grandkid photos. And she hung our family portraits. It was a hallway veritably covered with family photos. And just because we had a new family portrait taken, it didn't mean the old ones would be replaced. Oh, no. It was just added to the menagerie.
The photo I've shared with you today is the first family photo with all of us. I'm sure you noticed immediately that I have been cropped from another photo and added at the front. My closest brother in age, Tim, was 10 when I was born, so he would have been 13 when I had this picture taken, yet he is definitely NOT 13 in this photo. You see, my mom felt bad that I wasn't included in the photo, so even though it was normal not to appear, since I wasn't yet born, she took the liberty of rewriting history to make me feel included in ALL the photos in her Hall of Fame.
When I asked my brother to take this photo for me, he said "Mom was really creative. I think this is an example of 1960's Milo Photoshop."
See what I mean? The woman was ahead of her time. Just think what she could have done with an actual PhotoShop app! I am missing her today. I wish I could hug her and thank her for adding me to the family. But whenever I miss those warm brown eyes of hers, I only have to look in my daughters' eyes to see hers. Mallory and Meg inherited her eyes, and her warmth, and her creativity. There's comfort in that fact. Maybe these daily towels are my version of her Hall of Fame, and that is comforting, too.
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