Mother’s Day Portrait

 

5/9/21 Miyoko Koyama (from photo)

Hat tipped flirtatiously to one side, she surprises me that she was ever this stylish. And that baubly necklace – I never saw her wear anything like it! It’s certainly not the traditional strand of pearls I eventually inherited. The way she’s holding her clutch was probably suggested by the photographer who took the studio portrait – it doesn’t look like the “mom” I knew, who didn’t even carry a handbag (“pockets are safer and more practical”). Her hair is in a tight “permanent wave.” Despite the many times I’d seen the photo, I had never noticed until I made the drawing that her coat has a beautiful diagonal weave.

This is Miyoko Koyama in the late ‘30s, probably 1938 right before or after she and my father were married (he’s in the same photo; I’ll get to him some other time). I don't know if it shows in my sketch, but the photo shows a radiant innocence that was taken from her by internment during the war. I appreciate looking at old photos of my parents because it reminds me that they had a life long before they gave me mine.