You Don’t Have to Smile and Say Cheese

The camera should come out even during the trying times

My wife took my photo after one of our “tiffs” to capture some of the newly married ‘reality. ‘ Photo by Mary Jane Murphy-Bowne.

Family photo albums are cunning deceivers. That wasn’t what I expected from a visit to my mother’s, but that’s what lingered. Of course, I didn’t share this revelation with my mother because no single criticism sticks to her children — even when we’re slathered in Gorilla glue.

Back in 1995, with a Master’s degree in English, I once asked my mom, “Isn’t it odd that a customer suggested that my English was too polysyllabic to be pouring coffee at the Holiday Inn?”

She replied that I just needed time to get my life together. It didn’t matter that I was twenty-six, married, and wanting to start a family.

In the family roles, I still feel like the bonehead — the one who rocked rather than studied — or the one who did the chores while the others had the luxury of studying.

But when I detected the omissions in the family albums, snooping with my magnifying eye, I kept my discovery to myself