Sometimes I glance at something without thinking much about it.

A quick, cursory scan that registers nothing at all.

Today was different. It was a thumbnail photo on my desktop. A new one. Very small, half-inch if that. Of me.

I rarely have pictures of myself on my desktop.  It’s probably just seeing an image that wasn’t there before.  It’s nothing.

No. It’s something.

An otherwise perfectly mundane glance… ignited a memory.

It hit me hard in the gut. Way down deep in that place I try to forget I have.

I couldn’t put my finger on it right away.

Was it the shape of my head?  The way I looked at the camera? How I was sitting?

No…I must be wrong because my memory sees dark hair.

It took maybe a minute or two for the memory to surface.

It came shooting up with unstoppable force…..as if a balloon was being held under water… and then let go.

It was my mother I was remembering.  In one of my favorite pictures of her.

She was about three.