Where's Mommy?

This year I read a blog post encouraging moms to "get in the picture."  I can't remember now who wrote the posting, but the content stuck with me.

We have come back from many a vacation without a single picture of me.  If you viewed most of our family experiences you may come to believe that I didn't exist.  I am always the one behind the camera.  Most times it is because I am more interested in capturing the people I love than actually being in the photograph.  There are also many times when I don't get in the picture because I have poured more of my energy that day into being a mommy than into my appearance.  There have even been photographs that I have deleted just because I didn't like the way that I looked in them.  I wonder if that is what happened to my post baby photographs.  All these years later only a few pictures can be found of myself during those first sweet months of life with a newborn.

The writer of this post encouraged moms to let go of their worries of how they look and instead get in the photograph.  What our children, our grandchildren, will really want to see is us.... no matter how put together we were that day.  And we all know that in reality those rare pictures where we actually like how we look will some day be outdated. And even on our best days our children will still laugh at our hairstyles and our clothing choices in the years to come.

So I am trying to make more of an effort to do just what was suggested.  I want my kids to see that I was there, I want them to see how much I loved them and everything they were interested in, I want them to have some lasting memories to look at decades from now.  I love this picture.  I do not love how I looked.  This was at the end of a very long day of motherhood that included wearing both vomit and a snow hat.  I love this picture because this fall I enjoyed spending my Saturdays watching my two boys play soccer.  I love this picture because it is a memory of a day when many forces went into making it a possibility for me to watch my boys play in their last soccer game for the year.  I love this picture because it has my face right next to two of my precious angels who will only be eight and six for a brief breath in history.  A history that I get the privilege to have a front row seat to view. And maybe in the end putting myself in the picture isn't all for their future selves, but maybe it is also for mine.