A photograph lays inside its cherry frame as it sits on top of a delicately carved bench. From a distance, one might regard it as they would with any other picture. However, the closer you look the more you wonder.

        They look fancy, dressed in their presumably Sunday clothes, with perfectly styled hair and carefully aligned makeup. The young girl seems to be about eight. She wears a distant expression, the one of a curious child. Her eyes are frozen upward, as if caught mid-dream. I cannot help but wonder what she is dreaming of. Is it a boy from school or plans of the future? I decide she may be like me, dreaming up an adventure. I know her face. For even though time has added wrinkles, and the chocolate colored hair has lost its curl, the eyes remain the same. The young girl is my grandmother.

        Next to her is an older woman, who most would assume is her mother. Indeed, the assumption is correct, and I imagine they have a close bond. I recall that my mother loved hanging out with her, and looked forward to coming to Michigan during the summer. Her name was Laura, though to her grandchildren she went by Mema. My mom and I were given her name as our middle one. I notice that the girl who is now my grandma (or Grammy as I call her) was wearing mascara. The first time I tried eye makeup, I thought I was so grown up, and that it meant adulthood was right around the corner. I wonder if Mema put the makeup on her daughter as my mom did when I first tried.

        The background is a simple cream color, making the mother-daughter pair stand out even more. However, the plain backdrop makes it quite difficult to pin down a location. Was it just a wall they were standing in front of? Or something more exciting? Maybe they got dressed for the picture, which was planned weeks in advanced. I had planned pictures taken before and had a special outfit laid out the previous night. Did my grammy pick it out her own, or had Mema told her to wear the specific dress so they would coordinate?

        Sometimes it amazes me, how we can guess so much from a frozen image, no matter how old it may be. Mema and Grammy both seemed amazing to me before the photo, simply from the stories I had heard. However, after further inspection and the look of dreams yet contentment clear in their eyes, I cannot help but feel as though I know them better. As if somehow, that one small moment captured became a link from the past.