When I last visited her, I asked about it. She directed me to an album, whose contents I always associated with just our family's baby pictures. She kept telling me to keep looking, and there it was, folded and worn, but so clearly her! Here was the perfect illustration to my story.
I had been telling a friend about my mom and her education, and her career as a young research technician, because she had been an even younger college student than I, a college freshman at 17. My mom graduated high school at the age of sixteen. I had always thought this photo was from her first job, in the Bronx, at The New York Botanical Gardens. But, no, this photo was not from that time period. She was only 20 years old at the Gardens, working on finding a cure for a certain strain of tomato fungus. There were only 3 Botany majors at Hunter College in the Bronx, my mom and one other engaged couple, who were going on to grad school, so when the Botanical Gardens called looking for a tech, she was the sole candidate for the job. Like most non-profit jobs, the pay was very low.
Later that same weekend, when we visited with other family, my aunt told me the truth behind her departure from the Botanical Gardens. Seems my mom had been on the outs with her supervisor, due to her late arrivals in the morning, a problem with which she has been noted for her whole life. She found new employment under the classic conditions of quitting just before being fired, another infamous family trait.
To my mom's recollection, my grandfather urged her to work for the city, because the pay and benefits were much higher. That point of view would certainly jibe with my family's history in New York, one of union jobs and wages, of chasing the American Dream with a security blanket, a stability city jobs were famous for, at least they were in my family—my grandfather worked for Con Edison his whole career. City jobs were the original Golden Tickets, guaranteeing safe passage to Middle Class respectability.
Perhaps it was under this cloud of mixed memories that caused my mom to be less enthused than I was over finding this image. But to me it provides validation and proof of a rare and remarkable time for my mother, who humbly played down the fact that she was a woman fully employed as a scientist in 1963 at 22, and already on her second job. I couldn't help but be incredibly moved at her youth, her focus, her lab coat—all the things which entranced me as a child. This is my mother, here, working. Astonishing.
I love how soft her face looks here, and how she told me for the first time this past weekend that she remembered it was the NYC Dept. of Health and NOT the Botanical Gardens, because she has on her engagement ring in the photo, so she must be 22, the age she got engaged. Even after all these years, and all these viewings, this image still reveals new details to me, as I look at it through the eyes of a 40 year old.
