Getting Mom in Front of the Camera

Published in The Packet

In January, I had all the digital photos we took over the course of 2012 printed into a coffee table book I dubbed the family yearbook.

It was a hefty tome. Five percent of it was scenery shots of our Golden Retriever frolicking about North Atlantic Canada, five percent were family pictures from around the holidays, and ninety percent were pictures of our baby.

I really wanted the book to tell the story of our lives through pictures. However, as I flipped through the book, I realized the story my yearbook was telling and the story of our actual day-to-day life were quite different.

One of the sadder aspects of my husband’s job is that during the week he gets about an hour and a half of quality time with our baby before we tuck her in for bed. I do most of the childcare around here. According to our yearbook, dad is the primary caregiver.

In the pictures, my daughter had a mother who disappeared shortly after her birth. We have a triumphant picture of me holding her in the hospital. Then I vanish, and the book documents quality time with dad. There are pictures of dad and baby reading together, dad and baby at a pumpkin patch, dad showing the baby puffins, dad and baby looking at planes at the airport, and a hundred more dad and baby variations.

I took these pictures. I love these pictures. But my daughter doesn’t exist within a Disney cartoon. Unlike Princess Jasmine or Ariel or Belle, my daughter has a doting mom. Her mom is just too busy behind the camera to get in front of it.

“What if I die suddenly? How will my baby know she was cuddled by me, bathed by me, kissed and soothed by me?” I complained to my husband.

“Stop saying you’re too fat to be in pictures and then I’ll take some,” my husband replied.

“Stop taking pictures where I look so fat,” I shot back.

Of course, he was right. Like most other moms, I avoid the camera because I don’t want to remember the extra weight, the dark under eye circles, and the frizzed out hair that have become my reality. I keep thinking that when I fix these things about myself, I’ll beg my husband to fill our camera with pictures of the baby and me.

Then I came across a Huffington Post article published in October of last year by Allison Tate, called “The Mom Stays in the Picture.” She described her resolution to get in pictures with her children despite her self-perceived physical shortcomings because she knows both she and her children will cherish these pictures later on. The article received tremendous response from women who identified with the Tate’s story, and the Huffington Post challenged women to submit photos of themselves with their kids. They received over 2,000 pictures with moving descriptions of how treasured these photographs were after time passed and kids got older, or after a divorce when family pictures were scarce, or especially after tragedy intervened.

Now I was even more desperate for pictures with my baby.

“Take pictures of us building with the blocks!” I asked my husband over the weekend. I asked for him to take more photos during story time, and when I was pushing her in her little car around the backyard.

In all of them my eyes were closed, or open way too open, or I looked like I was grimacing, or that I had four chins. I knew I shouldn’t care, but they were truly horrible.

“Do I really look like this?” I asked my husband.

“No,” he replied. “You are beautiful. Just prodigiously un-photogenic.”

I deleted all the pictures and went to bed.

Early the next morning, I found this picture on my camera and for once I don’t mind that he took it when my eyes were closed.