Das my mum

First off, my mum is, and was beautiful.

And for a hot minute in the 1970s she tried her hand at modeling, after a push from some friends. But it was just to make ends meet during the beginning of her career, and she quit as quickly as she began. The only paid work she admitted to was a shaving cream ad, though there were probably more.

Soon she returned her bell bottoms and mini skirts to her best friend, and traded them in for business suits, climbing the ladder of a difficult profession, until she reached a point where most of the staff below her are men.

I remember blushing with pride when I watched men kiss up to her during a bring-your-daughter-to-work-day in the early 1990s.

Later my mother hid her portfolio when she realized I show it to people. And although she claimed it was simply packed away in a bureau used to hold photos, I beat that bureau into submission many times, and it never gave up the goods.

Until this week, when my sister and I saw them for the first time in a decade.

I could not be more proud to post these photos, though when she looks at them she rolls her eyes as if they were nothing more than a letter to santa that she had written as a very young naive girl.

But you have to love a woman who puts so much emphasis on who she is as a woman that she'd almost rather not admit to how beautiful she is on the outside as well.