My mother had always been a serious woman, stern but loving. I can still picture her standing stiffly in a corner, her arms crossed as my siblings and I danced and laughed and played. I had never known her to relax, to cut loose, and whilst I loved my mother, I wished that I could have seen her smile more often. She recently passed away, and my sister and I had the task of cleaning out her house in Fitzroy. We spent a week sorting through her belongings. We packed away clothes and books, and after a week of cleaning we had thrown away decades of accumulated belongings and memories. It was a painful process, and I thought often of my mother, and how she would have felt.
On our last day of cleaning, my sister and I were cleaning out an old cupboard in her bedroom. We had never really noticed the cupboard before, and we didn’t know what to expect when we opened it. We were surprised to find that it was empty, aside from a small cardboard box. When we opened it, we found that it was completely full of photobooth strips. The photos were of young people, dated from 1950-1960. I recognised my mother as a young brunette in most of the strips. She was laughing and smiling, and looked happy and relaxed. I couldn’t believe that this fun young girl was the same woman that I knew. The photos featured a revolving door of other people – friends, family, and maybe even some boyfriends too. My mother had always spoken about her friends of the past, and I identified a few of them from the stories she had told me. I saw Sue, a blonde-haired friend from school, wearing the huge floppy sun hat that my mother had always described. I identified George in one of the strips, an old boyfriend that had been in the army. He stood formally in his uniform, with my grinning mother on his arm. I even found photos of my father as a young man, looking a lot trendier than my own memories of him suggest. I was so happy to have found the photos, to have evidence of my mother happy and smiling, and enjoying life. I felt grateful for the photobooth photos, to have provided such a wonderful gift to me, decades after the photos had been taken.
