Momnotmom
by Thenmozhi Soundararajan
©2000, Rights Reserved

There's a picture of my mother that I always keep with me.

It's a curious photo, because in most photos I always imagine that people pose for the future, but in this time, this moment, this photograph I feel like my mom is searching for her past.

Across oceans and between cultures, I think back to who she was as a girl, a young woman, a doctor, a wife and a mother.

I am jealous that my sister and I are not with her in these pictures, frustrated that we could not know her then. But I also feel guilty because I think my mom, like every mom, loses something in being a mother.

Its hard to imagine my mother as her own woman

But I think she's beginning to.