Pretty Girls Come in All Shapes, Sizes, and Ages

The pretty girl in the pic is my 83-year-old Mom. I snapped this yesterday, Mothers Day, after my brother and I scooped her up and took her for a tasty brunch at a nice Italian restaurant near her home. She lives in a seniors mobile home park near San Diego, California. I made the picture at the front steps to her mobile home.

Mothers Day is a holiday that lets us say thanks for something very special. Something very important. Something we could would not have lived without: Our Moms. After all, none of us would be here without having a Mother. (Okay, fathers get some credit for this as well. That's why they get a holiday too.)

Most of us owe our mothers a great debt: They bore us, raised us, cared for us, nurtured us, and loved us like no other. For most men, they are the first woman in our lives who mattered, the first female face we fell in love with. They are the one woman, for some the only woman, who stood (and stands) by us through... well, through pretty much everything.

For many guys, our Mothers are the women who taught us the most about other women, who taught us how to love and admire and hold women dear. If you don't truly love and worship women--in all shapes, sizes, and ages--you'll have a difficult time, IMO, becoming a really good pretty girl shooter. It's no accident the first religions in humankind's history worshiped a female deity. Regardless of your spiritual beliefs, a nod to Goddess worship will go a long way towards pretty girl shooting Nirvana.

It's amazing how we can still learn much about male/female relationships from our Moms, even when we, ourselves, have already lived fairly long lives and may have experienced various, perhaps numerous, significant relationships with other women.

Yesterday, after brunch, I sat with my Mom and she was reflecting a bit on the fifty-one years she shared with my Dad. (My father passed about 6 years ago.) Although she told me she's quite content these days, she misses my father a great deal. She misses the companionship. She misses the little things that, in her reflections, seemed to matter most.

"What kinds of things?" I asked.

She thought for a moment, then told me, "Whenever I was a little chilly, your father would take his jacket off and wrap it around my shoulders. When he did, I could feel the warmth of his body on mine even though we weren't touching. It wasn't his jacket that kept me warm." She said. "It was him." She then added, "I miss things like that a great deal."

The pretty girl at the top is Aileen, my Mom. She asked me to make her look a bit taller in the picture. (She's under five feet in heels.) Mom captured with my Canon 5D w/ Canon 17-40 f/4L, ISO 100 @ f/11, 200th of a second. I used a single light source for front fill.