Mother's Day 2008

Like many women, I rarely like seeing photographs of myself. I prefer to be the person behind the camera.

A few years ago, though, I read an essay by a woman whose mother had died. As the children went through family photos, they discovered that they had very few photos of their mother. There were almost no photos of the mother and her children together. Looking at the photo albums, one would have almost thought the children had no mother. She was essentially absent from the photographic family history.

As my eyes filled with tears over the woman's ache at the missing photos, I vowed that my children would not grow up to have photo albums void of their mother. No matter how un-photogenic I think I am, my kids need to have pictures of their childhood that include both parents. Since then I've made a point to make sure some of our candid photos include me, DH, or both of us.

Mother's Day seemed like a perfect opportunity to have DH take some pictures of me with the kids. I even liked the way some of them turned out.