She was complicated.

I could put a lot of adjectives to describe her.

Some more bad than good. 

But for now, I will sit with all the good moments and memories I had with her and the good things I learned from her. She influenced my life so much and I let her know a few weeks before she passed.

Some influential things are like my love for the beach and the ocean which is where you can find me most weekends. She also had a love for flowers and especially roses. And have I mentioned before, she was a photographer? She loved photography, and loved filming, capturing special moments of her life and ours. She was also influenced by her parents. She always had cameras and used to take us to the camera store so that she could have her film developed and she wanted to see and test out the latest products.

Just these two things have really influenced my photography. You can see it in my photography (@KikiPoloPhotography) and she was delighted in her last few weeks to get her own private art show of a lot of my landscape and nature photography prints that included my macro photography of flowers and roses. She loved to shoot macro photography back in the day!

Travel is also in the blood. She traveled a lot around the world with her family prior to getting married. Even after she got married, there were a couple of small trips to Europe and obviously to New York and Atlantic City, where her family had property. And, the people really close to me know how much I yearn to just to travel and photograph.

She loved all kinds of art. She came from a family that was very cultured. She also loved museums, fashion, music, the ballet, travel, movies, making desserts from around the world, cake decorating, and she was a foodie before that was even a term. Those are some of the things that are important to me, too! I even have a Bachelors Degree in Art with a minor in Photography because like her, I am also an artist at heart.

She may have had her imperfections that affected me, also. But I have chosen to nurture the parts of myself shaped by her, to honor the qualities I loved, and to cherish the bond we share through them.

And I’ll always think of her when I’m at the Rose Garden.

RIP, mom.

(7/3/36-8/29/25)