Descirptive Text : Family Potrait

My mother who is seventy years old, recently sent me a photograph of herself that I had never seen before. While cleaning out the attic of her Florida home, she came across a studio potrait she had had taken about a year before she married my father. This picture of my mohter as a twenty year old girl has fascinated me from the moment I began to study it closely.The blouse is made of heavy eggshell colored satin and reflects the light in its folds and hollows. The skirt which covers my mother's calves is straight and made of light wool of flannel. On the third finger of her left hand is ring with a large square cut stone. On her left wrist is a matching bracelet. My mother is wearing a blouse and skirt that, although the photo was taken fifty years ago, could easily be worn today. My mother is wearing silver drops earrings. My mother can not find this bracelet now, despite the fact that we spent hours searching through the attic for it. The smocking looks hand done. They are about two inches long and roughly shield shaped. It has a turned down cowl collar and smocking on the shoulders and below the collar. I have also carefully studied the clothing and jewelry in photograph.The small, straight nose is the same model I was born with. The most haunting faetures in the photo, however are my mohter's eyes. The young woman in the picture has a face that resembles my own in in many ways. I know that if she had smiled, she would have shown the same wide grin and down curving smile lines that appear in my own snapshots. Her brows are plucked into thin lines, which are like two pencil strokes added to highlight those fine, luminous eyes. Her face is a bit more oval than mine,but the softly waving bown hair around it is identical. My mothers mouth is closed, yet there is just the slighest hint of a smile on her full lips. They are exact duplicates of my own large, dark brown ones.
Just before giving the picture to my father, she scrawled on the lover hand corner "Sincerely Beatrice". The ring she wore was a present from another young man she was dating at the time. She spent almost two weeks salary on the skirt and blouse which she bought at a  fancy department store downtown. Mom spent another clunck of her salary to pay the potrait photographer for the hand tinted print in old fashioned tones of brown and tan. She borrowed the earrings and bracelet from her older sister my aunt dorothy. Mom who was earning twenty five dollars a week as a file clerk, decided to give her boyfriend a picture of herself. The story behind the pictures is as interesting to me as the young woman it captures.