Mary's birthday present

Today is Mary's birthday. For her main birthday present we got her a MacBook Pro for her to take on her return visit to Alaska in a couple of weeks, where she will revisit places we went to in June but take pictures with her real camera instead of her phone. Beyond that, like many adults, she's become a difficult person to shop for. Of course I can't buy her clothes, we won't even start that. She mostly reads on her phone or laptop. We get all our music from streaming services. And so on.

Her big birthday present was getting rid of the piano in our rec room that nobody has played for a decade. Mom saved the piano when it was being hauled out into the street in Durham back in the early 60s, then she and Mary Lee paid to have it refurbished when Natalie showed (quickly passing) interest in the piano back in grade school. It was time for it to find a new home, which was quite a project in itself. I will spare you the details of that, save to say that it was ultimately a somewhat eccentric piano tuner (if that's not a foregone conclusion) from Hillsborough with whom Mouse connected me who found a new home for it.

But I needed something more. A little pondering made me decide to go through the 20-odd years of digital photos in my archives and find all the pictures of Mary that I could. You see, Mary has often complained that I don't take enough pictures of her. It is of course hard to satisfy a woman who has an MFA from photography at Yale. That said, some of her critiques are valid: I do tend to take pictures from too great a distance, don't think enough about lighting, and sometimes they end up blurry. Oh well. But we also have different conceptions of when pictures should be taken. She chides me for not taking pictures when she has a nice dress on, has make-up on, when we're out at an event, etc. But taking pictures is the last thing on my mind at those places. I am talking to people, snarfing appetizers, etc. And I also just prefer pictures of her at home as I see her all the time. Or on vacation. What I'm really looking for is a nice smile and/or signs of love and warmth. Or just her in a classic pose where I remember her being happy. Then there's the problem of her having a phone in her hand taking a picture pretty much constantly. Here, then, are a select few good ones.