Musings of a Midlife Mama and Other Stories

If you read nothing else, read this.  Take photos with your daughter.  You say, I don’t have a daughter.  Then take photos with your sister, best friend, your mother, your Uncle Bob, your favorite teacher, your fish.  Take photos of you and those people and things that matter most. 

Put down your spatula.  Stop cooking.  Don’t worry about not having make-up on or that your hair is a mess.  It doesn’t matter the Lakers are down by one point and in this instant Kobe could win it.  Your son is asking you now to go out and play baseball with him.  Your daughter wants you to get off the phone so you’ll take a photo with her.  Hold on.  Hold on, you say.  But there is no holding on because time goes fast.

As your daughter grows older, and she will without your permission, you will start looking for opportunities to be with your daughter, to capture moments.  They come but you must be a huntress and hunt for them because they are few and far between. You are reflective. You realize your daughter is of a different generation where her and her friends take thousands of photos.  They are brilliant at taking photos of everything.  You hope this will continue when your daughter has her daughter.

If your husband, who is a photographer, comments there are not many photos of you and your daughter, you stop to ponder. You think back to all those times you were on the other side of the camera taking the photo, all those times you didn’t ask that stranger, Would you please take a photo of my daughter and me? 

How many times did you say, I hate having my photo taken.  The camera adds ten pounds.  I look older, fatter, uglier than in real life.  Really I do, you’ll say. 

John Lennon said, “Life is what happens to you while you’re busy making other plans.” This is what happens to you.  One day your litte girl is little.  One day she is all giggles and smelling like baby powder.  The next day she is off running with her friends playing hopscotch and barbies.  Days past and she is going to dances, staying out late, and waking up grumpy because she hates mornings.

If you do nothing else, step away from the computer, paying the bills, talking on the phone, saying to your child, “Give me one more minute.”  Because soon there won’t be one more minute, soon they’ll be gone to college and you will be sitting in your living room surrounded by your family photos.  You’ll be foraging for those mother daughter photos you wished you would have taken.