Picture Proof The Crazy Mom Exists

I saw this blog come though this morning and it really touched my heart and spoke to me.  In this article the female writer, a mother, talks about how she is this super-involved mom (like most of us are) but photographically speaking there is little evidence that she exists in her childrens' lives.  I can completely and totally relate to that and in fact, was JUST talking to Jason about the same subject just last week.  Why are we moms so busy documenting the lives of our kids that we don't take a minute or two to actually pose in pictures with them?  I know my reason..insecurity.  My children literally stretched, disfigured, and tore my body apart in the chaos that it takes in having them (again, and again and again in my case), using my body to feed them, and running around just trying to keep up with these little people who are waay smaller than us, but oh-so-much more crafty-- I just didn't have the time or energy to take care of myself.  Heck, there were days when my kids were babies that I was lucky if I even had on clean clothes...much less combed hair and a matching outfit on.  There was NO WAY I was going to pose for pictures with my kids when all I ever really wanted to do was blend into the background and go through life un-noticed in this stage of my existence.  A nap would have been great...a mass-marathon photo session ala Jay's family????...a nightmare, people!  Like the woman that wrote this blog, there are very few pictures of me with my kids when they were very little.  I know this for a fact because:

The surgery to remove my thyroid was scheduled for early February 2009 (about one week before Valentines Day).  As the surgery date got closer I panicked.  Everyone told me how routine this surgery was and that I would be fine, but I was still scared.  I decided to make these small Valentine's Day scrapbooks for each of the kids in case I died on the operating table (morbid, but true....I was freaking out).  Now, those of you who know our family, know we take a TON of pictures...Surely, there would be lots of photos of me and the kids to sort through and choose for these little scrapbooks I was making for each one of them.  Well, I started looking over the past year and I had a hard time finding pictures of me and individual kids.  I found a TON of pictures of Jay and the kids, lots of photos of just the kids, quite a few pictures of my kids with my sister-in-law, but I was hard-pressed to find any pictures of me and Quinn, or me and Ashlyn, or me and Stella.  And I freaked out.  It made me sad and I decided on that day that if I made it through this surgery I would never let myself NOT be photographed again.  I managed to assemble the scrapbooks for the kids with the few pictures I was able to find and my surgery came out fine and my life went on...I did make an effort to be in more family photos, but I started noticing when life wasn't going my way, when things got tough, when things were sad, hard, confusing, or just plain unfair, I avoided the camera. Despite the unfairness of life..well, life continues...birthday parties, anniversaries, holidays...they all continue..no matter where I am health wise, mood-wise, weight-wise, life goes on.  BUT I don't want my kids looking back on their lives and not be able to find any photographic proof that they had a mother....Memories are nice, but photographs are physical proof that I exist.  And I may be overweight, or disheveled, or weary eyed, or downright crazy looking, but everytime I pose for a picture with my kids I have to remember that it's not just about me...it's about physically preserving history.   It's about giving my kids, and their kids to come, and all the generations that follow proof that I exist..And maybe one day, generations from now, my children's children's children will  be looking through old family photos and someone will see a picture of me and say, "Wow! Who is this CRAZY woman?" and some other distant family member will respond, "Well that's Donna Doak...She sure was crazy."  And the other person may reply..."Yeah, She looked it..."  And everyone will have a laugh and if nothing better comes from a photo of me and my children than a laugh?  Well, I'm ok with that.