Weekly Photo Challenge: That Marvelous Face

First Face:

My Mother’s Face had to be the first face I learned to love. I am sure that I gazed at her for long stretches while nursing. I learned to get over my teen-aged embarrassment at her lazy walleye, her “long Celtic chin” (as she called it) and the fact that she never wore make-up. Her face is particular and characteristic. Her prominent eyes and small nose and mouth have been gradually swaddled by more wrinkles and folds as she ages. She is now 81; this photo was taken 3 years ago. What I love most about this picture is that she is in her natural state – enjoying life!

Second Face:

This is the face I see continually in my dreams, the face of my true love. He was 19 when I took this picture with the camera he bought me – a Canon AE-1. We were married for 24 years and had 4 children. He died in 2008. This face has echoes in the living expressions of my kids, and I love that they inherited his warm eyes, his strong jaw, his brilliant smile.

I have what might be called a photographic memory. I close my eyes and see faces. Sometimes they are faces that I don’t recognize. I used to play with that ability to imagine crowds of strangers with particular faces and wonder if I had actually seen those faces in passing or if my brain was just making them up. I do know that I pay close attention to faces and always have. Perhaps I do carry those faces within me and always will. No matter how many I collect, I think these will always be #1 and #2.

Face

13 thoughts on “Weekly Photo Challenge: That Marvelous Face”

Beautiful thoughts on faces. I tend to not notice details. It’s a great gift that you are able to do so.

scillagrace says:

May 13, 2016 at 5:06 pm

Thanks for your visit, Maggie! Details are often helpful to notice, but they can distract from the Big Picture. I have to make a point of zooming out now and again!

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Lovely, touching.

scillagrace says:

May 13, 2016 at 5:08 pm

It has been lovely to touch those faces, too!

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Smiles. So sad you lost him so young.

scillagrace says:

May 13, 2016 at 5:22 pm

Thanks for your smile. I miss him every day with a sad smile myself.

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I can only imagine.

Marvelous faces, indeed! So sad about your husband. Lovely that you see him in your children. Thanks for sharing these.
Peace
Mary

scillagrace says:

May 13, 2016 at 5:46 pm

Thanks for your kindness, Mary. I don’t take it lightly that my personal biases resonate in some way with others.

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Your post made me smile and think. What wonderful faces. I see my parents, long passed, not as they died (my father skin and bones from parkinson’s, my mother eaten with cancer), but as they were in the prime of their lives through my eyes as their child. Thanks for the memories. Your Mother’s smile is infectious!

scillagrace says:

May 15, 2016 at 10:21 am

I’m glad! My father died of Alzheimer’s, wordless and completely altered. It was hard to see his face lose the smile and the spark in the eyes. I see his face in the pictures I took of him reading to his grandchildren and remember him at his best. My mother is still at her best, which I find amazing!

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