Look at me. here i am.

2015 - 2022

Whatever corner of the earth daughters come from, they hold within themselves their lives lived as well as the love and the pain their mothers carried. I carry my mother inside of me. 

I have these images of her in my head, with her head of curls. I see this in photographs taken of her at age 5, at 18, and at 21. And also, at the age of 30, in the photograph my dad took of my mum changing my cloth diaper when I was one week old and just out of hospital. She had curls Shirley Temple would have been jealous of. Still, my mother must have always thought that her hair was unruly.

At age 35, as a mother of two, she moved to the suburbs and lived in a house which she and my father bought. It was then that she started going to the hair salon, weekly. She would come home with her brown hair blown and combed straight. This was the mid 1960s, after all. Then, years later when her hair began to grey, she dyed it an auburn brown and continued to straighten it, as well. She did this until she hit 80. At 80 she said, “It’s time I accepted my age.” Just like that.

As for me, my aging body feels conspicuous. Naked, I am vulnerable. I look in the mirror. “I am so ugly.” I look in the mirror. “I really am beautiful, aren’t I?” My skin thins. Joints creak. My belly still bloats.

In my fifties, I took up the camera. The photos of myself are, for the most part, not snapshots but a direct gaze. I began taking them as I started taking care of my elderly parents.

And so it is that my mother plays a supporting role in my self-portraits. My mother was an intelligent but fearful and self-effacing woman who desperately tried to hold onto control. No doubt she was more multifaceted than I could ever imagine. At the same time, I was not what my mother dreamed of me. I was my mother’s flesh and blood and then I was separate. I am more than the flesh and bones I inhabit; I am familiar with this body and mind I live in. They are all mine and this is my secret.