It happened the instant Elena was born. The second she was placed on my chest, pink and wrinkled and barely crying, it was there. That nagging, tugging, wretched self-deprecating voice in the back of my mind known as Mom Guilt started speaking. It worsened the day Stella was born. Along with my midsection and my ass, it grew substantially. And like my wobbly bits, it’ll likely be with me for the whole of forever. It, like stretch marks, snot in your hair, the inability to take a shower by yourself, and countless other joys, is simply a part of the parenthood package. And we live in a culture hell bent on making it worse. I read this post on Facebook this morning, and I couldn’t agree with the author more. We as a culture spend so much time criticizing, judging, pointing fingers, name-calling, pigeon-holing, and misunderstanding that we forget to be...
Archives for March 2013
wanderer, there is no road. the road is made by walking.
This time last week I was in Seattle. I was walking the streets of a city that was voraciously burrowing itself into my soul. This place is surreal – beautiful, ethereal, cloaked in mist and cloud and mountains and sound. I was there for work (cube farm not camera) and I managed to take a few frames of this wondrous city. In hindsight, I didn’t take nearly enough images of Seattle. I was terrified so often of looking like a tourist, and now, as I post these few frames, I realize how silly that is. How ridiculous it is to not do something simply because of my fear as to how I might appear to others. I need to own my heart a little bit more. I need to own my soul and my inspiration and my gut feelings. And I need to follow them. Always. I can’t keep waiting...
twenty frames
It is seemingly impossible to take too many photos of your children, but it is possible to take too few. When I first picked up a camera I shot everything. All. The. Time. My camera seemed to be permanently positioned in front of my face. I have folder upon folder on my computer of photographs of my girls. Archived by year and then by month and sometimes even by event. Every year since 2009. But then I realized the other day that I don’t have one folder for 2013. No January. No February. No March. I promised myself I would never stop shooting just because. But I did. I rarely pick my camera up anymore when I’m at home. And I hate that. A lot. Ferris Bueller once said that “life is pretty short. If you don’t stop to look around once in awhile, you could miss it.” So last...
the time I played in the snow on a perfect winter day.
No matter how often I may say otherwise, I’m not that old. I suppose technically I’m still young, but I am old enough to know that life is short. Fleeting, really. And the best parts move at the fastest speeds. Though the clock seems to slow during the parts we know we need to savor, the second we blink time has sped up and memories are whisked feverishly into the annals of our minds. Stacked and categorized by sensation and feeling. Momentum and mood. It’s a cruel trick that time plays on our minds, and on our hearts. This dichotomy of time and movement was the most clear to me when my grandfather was in the last months of his life. As I watched him slowly fade into the recesses as a tired, old man, I also watched my daughters spring into their childhood. Loud, voracious, awkward and gangly. Their...