The Daily Post’s photo challenge this week asks us to look at the word face for inspiration. The recommendation to post about a face “whose lines and creases you know well” captured my imagination. There are many faces I know well, loved ones near and far whose faces often press against mine in love — with the intimacy of a shared space, laughter, eye contact expressing a thousand thoughts without words.
And faces of those who are gone, fading into a mashup of memories to summon, once more, an image of a smile, a laugh, a knowing look.
This candid picture of my mom, taken on a cross-country trip through Cuba last fall, delights me. It doesn’t show her smile, which crinkles her eyes and makes me smile back. Instead, it captures her in the middle of something exciting, this unexpected gift of coconut milk. Her serious concentration masks the laughter that overtook her moments before when my uncle handed her the coconut. She couldn’t laugh and drink at the same time…but I can see a little bit of the residual smile in the purse of her lips and the raised brow, captured a split second before that huge sip she’s taking showered me in another burst of laughter.