In honor of Mother’s Day on May 14, I will be sharing pictures of Gen-Xers with their Mothers (either Baby Boomer or from the Silent or Lucky Few Generation).
This first picture is Tammy. It comes from Nelson’s glorious collection, which he generously shared with me sometime ago. I will be posting several of his beautiful images from the 1960s and 1970s. I love this picture of his wife Tammy. It was taken in 1970. Aren’t her cat-eye glasses great? Plus, that big steering wheel and the white vinyl seats really take me back to my father’s boat-like cars.
Here is an excerpt from a wonderful article I read last year, We Don’t ‘Lose’ Our Mothers — The Reality Is More Violent Than That. It was written by David Ferguson who will face his third Mother’s Day without his mom on May 14.
…We have not “lost” our mothers. We say that to be polite, but in truth, we have become un-mothered, like Marie Antoinette was un-headed or that wilderness hiker who sawed off his arm was un-handed. It feels violent. It feels raw and fundamental, a pain that reaches all the way down to your ligaments and bones. Our mothers were our first firmament, literally, our first homes, the universe from whose substance we were formed.
“And while this is a pain that all creatures who are born must face, it does not make saying goodbye to your mother any easier to do.
“To my grieving friends I would say: “Brace yourselves.” Grief on this scale is like a physical object that the body must expel.”
Leave a Reply