Me with my Grandmother, and Great-Grandmother
This has been an unusual week for me in a few different ways. I'll spare you the eye rolling and just hit the highlights. My family consists of my husband and my two (grown up) kids. Any extended family I've ever had has long since passed, or if they are still living - it's somewhere I'm not aware of. This just seemed normal to me so I haven't felt any sense of loss or disconnection. Kind of the old "can't miss what you never had" theory. I just never gave it a lot of thought. It was just how it was.
In my adult life, I've moved several times and the only small box of old family pictures of my childhood I once had seemed to have been lost somewhere along the way. Again - I never gave it much thought. I was caught up in raising my kids, enjoying the day-to-day life we had created,
and doing all the normal things you do with your family.
During the last 20+ years as my kids were growing up, I made a point of taking lots of pictures, loads of pictures, of my kids on vacations, at school events - baseball, softball, volleyball, graduations - and all the birthdays and holidays in between. I've done what most of you did - scrapbooked them all!
My kids and I have album after album of pictures of them growing up.
But here's the thing that hit me this week. We're going to start changing some things and remodeling around here so I was digging around the garage last week. In a box, which was in another box,
I came across a little box - of my old family pictures. I was so surprised and so excited - it was like Christmas in May! I sat for the better part of 2 days last week going through the box, and cleaning up and dating most of the pictures
as best I could. I scanned most of them, saved them to a flash drive
for my kids, and printed a few to be framed.
With Mother's Day just a few days away, I started to focus on finding photos of my mother. I went through every photo again. After several more hours, I only found 4 photos of my mother, and only 2 of them were with me - my entire life. That made me start thinking about the albums of photos I had taken,
so I got them out and looked at mine with a different eye.
It was pretty much the same - I have hundreds of photos of my kids - but only a few of them with me. It seems as mothers, we are so focused on saving the moments of our kids growing up and enjoying their accomplishments, we forget one basic thing.
We're usually not in the picture; we're usually the photographers.
I wish I had done it differently. I'm not one to try to be the center of attention, but there's a balance in there somewhere I missed. I think someday my kids will wish they had a photo of me with them on vacation, or at Graduation, or Christmas. If I could go back and change it, I would have had my husband take a few photos of me with the kids. Not because of vanity, but because I think my children will someday wish they had more photos of their mother. Just like I wish I had more photos of my mother.
So that's my reflection for you, and my wish for you, on Mother's Day. As mothers, put yourself in the picture more often. It's not about how your hair looks, or what you're wearing. It's not about making your kids the focus. It's about making memories - and you're a big part of the memories you'll want your kids to have. It's so simple, and it's a gift to your children they will one day appreciate.
I sincerely wish you all a Happy Mother's Day.