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I know that for certain. One thing I’ve never doubted is how much my mother has always loved me. Which, for some reason, has made me feel even guiltier over the years.
“I can’t believe you have this,” Avery interjects, bringing our attention back to the photos. It’s a picture of when she was around four years old. She was in a play at her pre-school, singing on stage.
“Of course I still have this. It was your first public performance.” My mom laughs. “Your dad just about climbed on stage to get these pictures. He has a video, too. For years, anyone who came over to our house was made to watch that video, the one of Damian in his football practice, or of Monique’s drawings on the refrigerator.”
Avery and I groan in unison.
“I was a terrible artist.” It didn’t take me long to realize that I didn’t have the talent to be an actual artist. That never stopped my dad from showing off my painting.
“You weren’t. You just never found your niche,” my mom contradicts.
I shake my head and reply, “I found my niche. It’s just not on the actual canvas. I have a better eye for spotting talent than creating the work myself.”
“Which is why your gallery is going to be phenomenal,” she tells me.
We continue looking through the photo album. Every page she flips, my mom stops and recounts the story behind the photo. I love listening to the pride in her voice. In most of the pictures, my brother and sister are laughing and smiling toothless grins.
It makes me happy that they had such a beautiful childhood with two parents who loved them so much. With an entire village that loved them. Our extended family, my dad’s mother, his sister, the Townsends are all throughout the photos, too.
“Ah, this is the day you were born,” my mom says to Avery.
In the photo, my mom is smiling at the camera, holding a pink bundled up Avery in her arms.
Something tightens around my heart. I can’t help but to think about how different my birth day must have been from Avery’s. And Damian’s for that matter. I was ten and twelve years old when they each were born. Old enough to remember how happy my dad and mom were to welcome them into the world.
It has to have been such a contrast to how my mom felt when she gave birth to me. I get lost in my thoughts.
“Look at Mom in the hospital.” Avery points at a photo.
In it, my mother is smiling holding Avery again, bundled up in a pink blanket. I blink and focus on her smile in the picture.
“You were so happy when she was born,” I say as I run a finger along her face in the photo. That smile says it all.
“That’s true. I was,” my mom agrees, looking over at my sister. Then she turns to me. “But that isn’t Avery I’m holding.”
She looks me in the eye. “That’s you.”
I look back at the photo, blinking. It takes a few beats for it to register, but I can see the differences. The hospital room is different, my mom is younger in the photo. Almost like a kid herself. But the smile …
The smile is the same.
“You were happy?” I didn’t mean for it to come out as a question but a part of me can’t conceive of it.
“Of course I was,” my mother states as if that’s a silly question. She doesn’t say anything more as she flips the page.
I wonder if the smile on her face was just for the camera. Some hospital staff asked her to pose and smile with her new baby and she did it for them. But the expression on her face was so similar to the pictures of her posing with Damian and Avery.
I can’t fathom it.
For years, I’ve told myself my mom had to grow into the love she has for me. She never let me know it or showed it, but ever since I discovered the truth, I’ve known it. How could anyone love something that began the way I did?
“Oh, this is Monique in the hospital,” Avery says.
I look down and sure enough it’s a picture of me waving at the camera from my hospital bed. I had to be around thirteen or fourteen. Throughout my childhood, I was lucky for the most part, not having to make too many trips to the hospital on account of my diabetes.
But there were still times when things went wrong. That day was one of them.
“I’m sorry,” I apologize out of nowhere.
