Lessons from my Mother

One of the first things I remember my mother teaching me about womanhood involved a trip to the drugstore. No, we weren't there to purchase embarrassing creams or elastic belts, we were there to pick up photographs. We'd grab a couple of Diet Cokes out of the cooler, pay for the photos with a wad of cash she'd magically pull out of her purse and then go sit in the car, just the two of us, to sift through the photos.

The technique was simple: Discard any photo of yourself that's unflattering. A fat arm, a bad dye-job, an unsightly panty line--all were reason for immediate disposal. After fishing out the bad of you, it was common courtesy to survey the other women in the photos as well; men could be glanced at too, but any child under the age of twelve (barring exposed bodily fluids) was fine.

Exhibit A: Mother: gorgeous; little sister: pretty; me: check; big brother: pretty darned good; husband: not too bad; two little brothers: uhm, well, okay, I mean no one's bleeding or anything...
For years, I thought a decade or so had passed with no documentation whatsoever of my existence, but then I realized: those photos had been taken, but sitting in some parking lot in some town or the other, mom and I had torn them up in tiny pieces, wrapped them in the plastic bag they came in and buried them in a roadside dumpster.

This may be the reason it took me so long to get married. Cody insists on keeping all pictures. Take, for example, the year I quit smoking. I have no desire to remember myself twenty-five pounds heavier with a constant take-my-picture-you-jerk-and-I'll-kill-you look on my face, but there are nights when I wake up to get a glass of water, and I hear Cody fiddling around in our office. What are you doing, love? I say. Oh, just scanning these pictures--all of them--since we met. Gonna put them on a zip drive and get a safety deposit box and...

O, come to bed, I say.

I suppose me burning them one by one in the fireplace while he's at work today will only cause marital turmoil. Alas! Is that what they mean when they talk about compromise?