It was a quilting party that day, my mother remembers. A quilting party, and she, little girl then, was allowed to stitch her part between two of her mother’s friends. It may have been one of the quilts that are downstairs on beds now, pink fabric uniting the memories of a family’s wardrobe, worn and recycled in this most marvelous of ways. So my mother, lady that she was at the advanced age of four years old, sewed, and then was distracted.

The distraction was a knock at the door. A man with a camera offered his services, and my grandmother, feeling generous that day, as she did many other days it appeared by the cat symbol on their fencepost, let him in. Yes, a picture would be quite nice, it was decided, and my mother positioned herself on the wicker couch. Her mother put a bow in her hair. Inky, one of the black cats (the other being Egbert, not present), jumped up on my mom’s lap, and the picture was complete.

The photographer visited for perhaps three years, and made pictures all of those years. Some of those photographs seem to be missing now. But this one–my mother’s favorite picture of herself–remains on a shelf in her living room, with all the memories of a childhood and a life whose pieces, retold, are precious layers of our own lives.