The photograph above, taken in Brazil in 1936, is the oldest surviving image of my mother that I possess. Mom is the blond toddler in the lower right with the suspicious look on her face. The cheery-looking gent holding her is my grandfather, the missionary Albert Lehenbauer. Pictured in back, from left to right: Uncle Siegfried, Aunt Naomi, Uncle Ronald, Aunt Flora (who four decades later would teach me how to type), and Uncle Reginald. The infant is my uncle Tommy, and the woman holding him is Grandma Helene, whose expression of dismay may stem from a premonition that she’s not quite done having kids yet—one more uncle, Winfred, would be born in Argentina in 1939.
Happy Mother’s Day, guys.