What Were the Chances?

Okay, it's a very small town. 

​Still, when my sister said, "Wanna?" and pulled over next to a hand-written "Estate Sale," in the home town we left when I was 8,  I was thinking that it would be nifty if they had some of my vintage pink-and-white dishes. 

They didn't.

But my sister spotted a high school Class of 1955 reunion notice. And under the notice was a small flip-book of photographs.  

"Look," she said to me, and struck up a conversation with the two women running the estate sale. This had been their mom Donna's house, for a short while; she'd moved in because her elder daughter lived across the street.  My sister said, ooh, we just had breakfast with a lady whose mom lived over there.  

Ooh indeed: our godmother, Becky, grew up in the house that this woman bought from the family 25 years ago.

At which point, I found it.

My mom was an artist, and at some point in her arty life, she pencilled a grid over the single copy of her senior photo that accompanied her journeys. The grid made it easy to enlarge an image — but rendered the photo frankly ruined. 

I asked if I could buy the photo album, and when Donna's daughter told me to just have this photo, I may have started to cry. 

Mumsie was recruited by the CIA around the time of this photo, but she did not take the offer. Her mom didn't want her to move out of Susquehanna county. Can you imagine what THAT life would have held for her?

That's exactly the power of a senior photo: Behold! It is I, on the very threshold moment of potentiality and possibilities.