From the moment I became a mother, there was this frantic frenzy to start taking photos. I didn't want to forget anything. My memory goes cloudy pretty quickly and my children grow at almost the same speed. Consequently, I've spent much of my motherhood behind a lens. But no matter how great the shot, I've found that the picture is such a narrow corner of the moment. Some pictures are even--dare I say?--staged. If you're just going by the photos, you might have the mistaken belief that raising these girls is going by without a hitch.
This weekend was the ultimate staging as I turned the lens over to someone else for a Family Portrait. (I don't know, it just seems like it should be capitalized.) I haven't blogged in quite awhile because preparing for the Picture took every ounce of my concentration. In a family that hits the jackpot everytime we find a pair of matching socks, orchestrating a matching outfit ensemble for six people was no less than Herculian. For example, what is the right sweater for an eleven year old and an equally cute, but not exact match, for a one year old? If the girls wear jeans, is it alright if I wear a skirt? Should Scott wear a sweater too, or should I take his best shirt to the dry cleaners? And what to do about the hair? Should we go for curls? Headbands? Considering all the decisions to be made, it's amazing I could open a can of soup for dinner.
On Portrait day we dressed--carefully-- in probably the same amount of time it takes the Queen to dress for a state dinner. There was a close call with finding Anna's left boot, but in final inspection everyone had two shoes, shiny hair and looked lovely. We drove to this orchard where if you gently shake a tree, red apples fall to the ground. Other than the fact that Anna suddenly had a long standing urge to put her fingers in her nose, Sarah nearly got a hole in her tights while climbing a tree, and Elise was fascinated with trying to identify various specimans of animal scat, I think the photo session went pretty well. The photographer made the whole thing so much fun that Sarah asked if she could invite her to her next birthday party (in June.)
Now that it's over, and all the matching outfit pieces are scattered in drawers and laundry hampers, I'm counting down the days until I can look at the photos. I'm going to put the best one in our Christmas card and on our wall. It will be a wonderful way to preserve just what our family is like in October of 2008. Now my imperfect memory will never have an excuse to forget that our clothes always matched and that we frequently held hands and ran through apple orchards together. Yep, now I can remember it all. Just like it is.
(c) 2008 Carrie Finlinson
304 daybook
