My Mother was never a photographer. Or, more accurately, not much of a photographer. My Dad always teased her that when she was “in” a photograph, it was usually from behind, 12 paces ahead of whatever vacation or family event that he was photographing. Or her eyes were closed. Since she passed a year and a half ago, I’ve reviewed decades of photographs (slides!) my Dad took and I see a pattern. I believe it was no accident that she was either walking away or closing her eyes at the moment of the “click.” There’s too many of these to not be deliberate. Knowing this makes the few in which she is facing the camera, eyes open, perhaps even a little relaxed all the more precious. Mom was always scheduling portraits of my sister and me, then my sister’s sons and my own, often with my Dad in them.

But never with her.

When Mom was behind the camera, operating it, she was always nervous and prone to cut off heads and feet or whoever was on the margin. I’ll chalk that up to operator error.

All this brings me to this photograph of me, taken by my Mom right after Thanksgiving in 2015. She made this photograph with a Canon PowerShot Elph 170IS. She used to carry it around in her purse. She rarely used it. And I don’t remember her taking this shot of me.

My Dad gave me this camera two weeks ago, asking whether I could get it work. He kept trying to charge it, and even bought a new cord to revive it. He thought maybe I could work some magic on it, but I can’t. But the memory chip was in it, and still good. Relatively few shots on the chip, and only this one of me.

I’ve been staring at this photograph, not in vanity, but rather in trying to see what my Mother saw. Why was this moment, out of countless potential others, that inspired her to reach into one of the two or three purses and bags she carried, and document it. I doubt she ever looked at it after she took it, because she always said she didn’t know how to work it.

Maybe that was true, maybe it wasn’t. I’d prefer to think she reviewed the pictures she had taken, a digital photo album of her work. Maybe she paused a moment or two, thinking of me. Even if she didn’t, she managed to create an image of me that I like — and image as in this photograph and an image of me as a person. I’ll never know and can now never ask.

I can’t blink or walk away.