I sit at the white tulip table in my kitchen nook, dog asleep at my feet, La Croix at the ready. The heat drifts in through an open window. Earlier, we blasted Alice Cooper’s “school’s out for summer” from the car stereo, driving away from another year in the books. Ahead lies a summer to fill and kids ready to unfold into driftless days. Drawings and worksheets–proof of their year–spill across the car and then onto tabletops. Already, it’s suffocating–existing in the spaces we occupy.
I regret the days I’m not able to appreciate the present, hurrying everyone along from half-eaten breakfasts to remembering shoes and getting to school on time, to shuffling them off again to baseball practice, and then pushing them off to bed. I am the engine, the one who moves everyone along, always in motion, never slowing long for a rest.
I feel guilt for the days when I am not certain if we are taking the right path. Four tiny humans are developing in the palm of my sorcerer’s hand, for it is I who finds the schools and the camps and the therapies and the social outlets and the sports. I am the architect, designing the path these children will follow until they can choose their own.
I am so in it, that I feel outside of it.
The weight of motherhood is both precious and heavy. It is a privilege, and it is a burden I am grateful to carry.
Maybe that’s why I take photographs.
Not because I want to remember what happened. I already know what happened. I packed the lunches and signed the forms and found the missing shoes.
I take photographs because motherhood moves too fast to fully live in while you’re living it. The camera gives me a way back. A chance to return to these seasons someday and sit with them more slowly than I could the first time around.
To see what I was carrying.
To see who we were.
