The three stanzas of the poem depict the three stages in the life of the mother – as a child with her cousins, as a mother looking at the old photograph, and as a memory for the daughter after her death. She had a smiling and sweet face in the photograph when she posed for it, holding the hands of her cousins.

However, the poet cannot remember witnessing the same cheerfulness on the mother’s face in her recollections of her mother after she was born. What could have been the reason for the change? Apparently, the poet’s mother had posed for the photograph with her cousins when she was young and was not yet bogged down by the responsibilities and hardships of life.

As people age, along with inevitable physical changes, they also experience a change in their mental make-up because of the challenges in life. The line,’… how they dressed us for the beach,’ indicates that the mother herself was quite young and followed the directions given by others when she accompanied her cousins to the beach.