Perfectly Your Mother

There is an article making the rounds on the internet that hit pretty close to home for me yesterday. It was beautifully true. The author of the article writes about pictures of her with her kids. She writes, "I'm everywhere in their young lives, and yet I have very few pictures of me with them. Someday I won't be here -- and I don't know if that someday is tomorrow or thirty or forty or fifty years from now -- but I want them to have pictures of me. I want them to see the way I looked at them, see how much I loved them. I am not perfect to look at and I am not perfect to love, but I am perfectly their mother." 

The article hits so close to home for me. The author speaks about how she is never in her photos because of her fear of what she looks like. I delete photos ALL the time of me when I am in them. I think that my face looks too fat, my body looks too large, and I have too many wrinkles. Combine that with the fact that I am not in that many photos of me with my kids since I am generally always taking them. 

This afternoon, I took out my camera when we decided to haul the tent outside and have a snack picnic. The weather was, yet again, perfect and my kids were adorably happy. I couldn't imagine not capturing their beautiful faces and smiles. While taking photos, Mae insisted I join them in the tent, which is no easy feet for an adult. I decided to oblige her. Coincidentally, I didn't put my camera down. Hearing the author's words in my head, I decided to take photos of me with Mae. Whitaker joined for a second and wreaked a lot of havoc - got to love that kid. The photos of me make me cringe because I think that I don't look perfect - my chin is too pointy, the bags under my eyes are too dark, my double chins are too many. But I can only hope when Mae and Whitaker read this one day, they know that I am "perfectly their mother."