Behind the Picture
Comparison is the thief of joy.
There is no greater truth, especially during this time of year. It’s the season where everyone’s highlight reel gets sent in the form of a sparkling holiday card and parents everywhere can’t help but wonder the story behind the pictures, because there is always one.
Well let me tell you the story behind this photo:
Photo credit: Brian Cutter
My husband won’t even answer the door to UPS wearing basketball shorts; he is a jeans-and-t-shirt-man through and through and wouldn’t be caught in sweats outside the house even to get the paper. Luckily, I need only bat my eyelashes and he would give me the world if I asked—but you should have seen his face when I held up our outfits. Now there is a picture.
My dad took these matching flannel jammies pics when we were in Park City, Utah over Thanksgiving. Everything about this picture is adorable: from Josephine’s glee to Charlotte’s bare feet. I will tell you exactly 8 hours after this photo was taken, I was hit with a violent combination of food poisoning and the stomach flu, right at the exact moment we were set to fly home. If you have ever had the experience of traveling with 3 small children while every fluid in your body wants to leave faster than a toddler on Santa’s lap, it is one for “The Parenthood Sh*tshow Olympics”—sponsored by Adult Diapers and Pepto Bismol. At one point I turned to my husband and said, “If the plane were to go down, save the children and let it take me.”
Spoiler alert: We don’t actually sit around at home in matching PJs and the professional pictures we have taken in the past took as much: effort, coordination, and precision as the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade. Not to mention all the bribery.
So much bribery.
I would love for a cameraman to follow us around for a day and capture the true essence of my family—from the raw ragged flashes of our humanity to the sweet seconds of heart-filling tenderness. But these moments are ours and ours alone and that’s what makes a family a family. I can see the love encircling friends and family within their documented photos and I’m grateful for these images because they fill me with joy—but I know too well, that this isn’t their real story, because those truths lie during the moments in-between camera clicks.