

My mother smiles engagingly in most non-candid photos of her, which is why I treasure this small black-and-white shot, likely taken in the early- to mid-60s. She sits in our back yard in Brooklyn, on a swing set installed when I was quite young. (By the time I had reached high school, the swing set had been taken out and the back yard converted into a vegetable garden.)


I like to think I have inherited her brave front, her smile as quick as her wit, balanced out by a capacity for truth. A few years after this photo was taken she suffered her first major heart attack at age 44, which placed her facade and what lay beneath it further at odds. In the collage a generations-old piano shawl backdrops her ghostly form. The shawl reminds me of her spirit, breaking through her sadness.