Autobiography of My Face

In honor of my birthday yesterday, here I am through the decades. This is something I have wanted to to do for a while, and it's something that would thrill me no end if you would do too. I love seeing the evolution of faces, especially when people choose their own pictures, which means they are showing themselves as they don't mind being seen. How about it? A post of your face through the decades? If you choose to do it, I hope you'll leave a link to your post in my comments!

From top:

1. Me at age one, having stolen my mom's nail polish, a family joke since my stubby nail bitten fingers have never worn polish, not even on my wedding day.

2. At age four. This was my passport picture taken before we traveled to London, where we spent a formative year of my young life. I wrote about it here.

3. At age thirteen, the year we moved to the house on Paddington Terrace that gave this blog its name. I keep thinking I was younger in this photo but the date stamp on the back says differently.

4. Age nineteen, home from college for the summer holidays. This was the year I told my father that I would not be coming back home after college, that I was staying in New York. I remember he cried.

5. In my mid-twenties, on assignment in Ft. Wayne, Indiana for Life magazine. I was in the airport restaurant as the sun came up. The lensman was Michael O'Brien, an incredibly gifted photographer and lovely human being, with whom I especially enjoyed working.

6. At age thirty-one, already a married lady, not yet a mother. This was taken on the gallery of my husband's family home in Antigua.

7. In my forties, well into motherhood. My babies are twelve and nine years old here. Their dad took the picture; you can see that in the softness of our eyes.

8. And this is me now, taken last Memorial Day, on a walkabout in Riverside Park. The photographer is my husband. He sees the me I want to be, even as I climb into my fifties.

Mainly, I wanted to do this post for my children.