photbooth friday - kinda

My mother says this was taken when we lived in Spain. I was about six, and she thinks it was for a passport or something official. But I had a passport already. I mean, I got to Spain, no?

I love the sheet in the background. I love the weird color of the photo. I love the tennis dress. You can be very sure that I loved the dress like no other back then. And of course I have the classic and nearly infamous Baby Madness tragic stare.

My mother comes to town today. I'm not as apprehensive as usual, and I'm wondering if that's maturity or the kiss of death. Will the visit I feel most comfortable end up being confrontational? Ah, it'll be fine.

This time around there is no tattoo convention to distract us, but after I pick her up from the airport we're driving to Santa Monica to check out this exhibit. To be honest, the exhibit looks a wwweeeeee bit gaseous to me, but I think the aesthetic of the photos themselves will be beautiful. The "novel" that this guy (Gregory Colbert) wrote in a series of three hundred sixty-five letters home to his wife make me shift uncomfortably in my seat. "Letter 84: The elephant with his trunk raised is a ladder to the stars. A breaching whale is a ladder to the bottom of the sea. My photographs are a ladder to my dreams. These letters are a ladder to you." Yikes. Also, he claims the animals in the photos have not been coerced into what they are doing. And uh, bullshit. I just straight out don't believe this. I think he's boldly lying to our face. Anyway, I wish he'd stop using words, written and spoken, so I can just look at the pretty pictures. P.S. this is all prejudgment. I'll probably get me a Gregory Colbert coffee mug and 8x10 signed glossy by show's end. I'll give you a full Colbert Report after the show. (I couldn't WAIT to say that.)

So, back to my mother's visit . . .I feel a little odd that she's coming Mother's Day weekend. We haven't even talked about that. This visit lands between her and the girls' birthdays and we've talked up the celebration of that. I feel on Sunday morning I'll be all shifty eyed, digging my hands in my pocket. "Uh, happy uh mother's day?" Then I'll chuck her on the arm and laugh nervously and this will spark the confrontation I didn't see coming - DAMNIT. Selfishly, I just want to be alone with Husband and the girls and let them rally around me; let me enjoy my motherhood. Instead I get to spend the morning pretending everything was all right.