Trying to Stay in the Picture

This beautiful article, written by Allison Tate, on Huffington Post just popped up on my person Facebook page. I clicked on it expecting another tongue-in-cheek article that would make me laugh. Instead the first person essay about being in pictures as a mother made me sad.

You see, I love pictures. I take a lot of pictures, especially now that I have a little boy and taking pictures of him is even more fun. I take pictures because I like to look at pictures. I am one of the few that still orders prints and then stores them carefully in photo albums. I take them down randomly and flip through the pictures - they make me happy in a very special way.

But I've stopped printing pictures out in the past six months. In part because it hurts. You might have noticed in this blog: I have a lot of pictures of PJ; the Mr and PJ; other people and PJ; a number of pictures of me holding the camera so that I have a picture of me with PJ; and few of PJ and I together. Especially before my parents and nana arrived to visit, there are precious, precious few pictures of me with PJ. Because those people who were around in those first few weeks either didn't take pictures or took pictures of them with PJ or the Mr. with PJ.

Learning from the hurt, I asked our very talented photographer friend, Aline Lange, to take just a few pictures of PJ and I at his first birthday. And good thing: there was not one single picture of us together by anyone else. And only one of the entire Steinbach clan.

There are most likely some good reasons for that. In the first few weeks of PJ's life, I wasn't doing well. Often I went to my bedroom or slept when there were visitors. Afterwards....well I'm not sure what that was but I'm sure it wasn't mean-hearted. I guess if  we lived close to my family and my long-time friends, they would have most likely taken pictures primarily of me with PJ, leaving out the Mr. (like on our American vacation). No one means to ignore me or leave me out of the picture (literally) but that is what has happened.

And it hurts. Because just like the author I "someday, I want them to see me, documented, sitting right there beside them: me, the woman who gave birth to them....I'm everywhere in their young lives, and yet I have very few pictures of me with them. Someday I won't be here -- and I don't know if that someday is tomorrow or thirty or forty or fifty years from now -- but I want them to have pictures of me. I want them to see the way I looked at them, see how much I loved them. I am not perfect to look at and I am not perfect to love, but I am perfectly their mother."

I am not a perfect mother but I am perfectly PJ's mother. I'd like some record of that, as egotistical as it may be. Until then, do me and all the other moms a favor: take a picture of mom with the kids. I'm not the only one wishing for more pictures.

And moms: hold still and smile.

xo

Goodbye Favorite Sweater

I rarely buy myself something special to wear. I tend to wear the same clothing for too long, spend too little on my clothing, and in the end dislike the majority of what I own. Right before we moved house and I was packing up my entire wardrobe, I posted this on Facebook:

"Packing my clothing for the move is making me realize that I don't really 'like' 80% of them, don't fit 50% of them, and that it all fits into 2 pieces of luggage and one plastic box. Including my wedding dress."


It made me a little sad to realize how crappy my wardrobe is and how I would have never really noticed if we hadn't moved.So I started sorting out my clothes and concentrating on wearing clothing that I like, are comfortable, and look decent on my post-baby body. Turns out most of my clothes are too small for my butt, so I started losing weight too. Four kilos down and a few more tops that I can wear but don't want to. Yeah?

But sometimes in the past I did spend a good amount of money on a piece of clothing that I loved from the first moment I saw it. And importantly, continued to love over time. Rarely but I did do it.

Like for example when I was in Vancouver and saw an amazing sweater - merino wool no less - in the window of a Banana Republic shop. I popped in, tried it on, loved it, and just kept loving it over the past three years. When I finally fit into it after my pregnancy - so, two weeks ago - I was soooo excited. I wore it a couple of times, PJ smeared it with jelly, and I put it into the washer, noting to myself that I had to be careful not to put it into the dryer. Cause that would shrink it.

Last night I waited, fighting off sleep. Then I lost my battle, forgot about my sweater - one of the very few pieces of clothing I loved and was expensive, expensive sweater - and asked the Mr. to transfer the wash into the dryer and went to sleep. The Mr. followed through cause he is awesome like that and since I didn't mention the sweater thing ...this morning I went down into the basement to get the clothing out of the dryer and out flopped my sweater.



Did I mention it was one of the very few pieces of clothing I loved and that it was expensive, expensive? I hope PJ likes it too. Because he will fit it in about two years. Damn sleep.

Sigh.



xo