THE COMMUNION PHOTO

“...the way she’s looking directly into the camera lens is so bold.”

This is my mother’s Holy Communion picture, taken around 1930, when she was about 8 years old. The studio was on Lisbon Street in Lewiston, Maine, whose growth resulted from cloth factories and the immigrants who worked the looms—my Polish grandparents among them. My mother always remembered what a noisy clatter those looms made. 

As a young girl, her dream was to become a kindergarten teacher. Unfortunately, she listened to her father who said, “Why do you need a college degree to change diapers?” So to supplement my father’s income as a machinist, she worked in the men’s department at England Brothers department store for almost 20 years. 

I don’t think she ever felt unconditional love, but she raised three children and loved us all. She loved to sew and made suitcoats for my brothers and beautiful dresses for me. I was so proud of the watercolor dress she made me for prom. 

I love the Communion photo for its irony. My mother wasn’t religious—she never understood my father’s devotion to his Catholicism—but here she exudes sainthood with her pearl rosary and calm demeanor. On the other hand, the way she’s looking directly into the camera lens is so bold. Or maybe she’s just flirting with the photographer. My mother was a big flirt, even in her final years; she flirted with the male aides at the nursing home right up until she died, in May 2009. 

At the end, when she was ill and heavily sedated, she became delusional, and believed she was a kindergarten teacher who was late for her class.

—Mina Graham