Perfect Chaos

I have an obsession with looking at old photographs and video recordings.  I especially love looking at my parents' old home videos.  Maybe it's because I live close and my siblings are constantly telling me about funny clips they've found.  Maybe it's because watching those old things helps me realize that the perfect home life I remember was actually much more chaotic than I thought.  Maybe it's because when I watch those videos I realize that I'm human, just like my mom was.

I love seeing those moments of my mother, treading water in the chaos of her life as a mother of eight children.  I love sneaking peaks of those moments and getting insight into how she was feeling, what she loved and how she reacted.  It helps me realize that my mother knows exactly what I'm thinking and feeling.

I watch the videos often.  In every video I've watched there is some child crying or yelling, "mom, mom, mom, mom!"  In every video, there is my mother, as cool as can be amidst balls flying around her head and babies crying.  My mom has always had a gift for tuning out other distractions and focusing on what she needs to do.  When she was giving her attention to a child, the others needed to wait.  Oh, they'd still be calling her name, but I knew that when she turned her attention to me, she was all mine for as long as I needed her (within reason of course).

I love looking at those pictures and videos because my mom wasn't trying to pretend that everything was perfect.  Life was life and it was her life.  And that's what's so fun to watch.  I giggle and giggle as I watch things my sister and I made my little brothers do.  I laugh so hard and the doors opening and closing every few seconds when another one of us ran in or out.  I love that at moments, you can see in my mom's eyes that she was losing it, I love that it's simply us.

I think of how often we pose our children in perfect outfits, hair curled and spit up wiped.  We pose next to beautiful buildings or trees that we've never seen before and we try to capture a "moment" that isn't even real.  The moment a child looks away, the picture is "ruined".  Well I'm here to say, that I feel those pictures have a time and a place, but I'd really like to focus more on the real life situations that happen.  I want beautiful pictures of my kids in their pjs with cheerios stuck to their bottoms at noon.  I want pictures of them playing catch with dad in a "every-toy-that-we-own-is-on-the-ground-and-the-laundry-is-piled-on-the-couch" living room.  I want to capture the light hitting my daughter's bed with poop smeared everywhere, I want pictures of my children's books strewn EVERYWHERE in their room because they've literally been reading every single one and dropping them as they go along.  Goodness, I want to look back and remember the moments that drove me crazy and realize in the aftermath that it was part of what made my life so perfect.

Starting now, I will not only take, but display pictures that show my life how it really is.  When visitors come, they will know that I am a mother of children who don't ALWAYS mind, who pour bowls of cereal on their heads, who start crying when I tell them they can't have more ice-cream, who leak out of their diapers onto me the second before I leave to go somewhere.  My visitors will know that with me, they don't have to pretend to be perfect.  They don't have to pretend that they didn't change out of their sweats right before they came over.  I want my walls and displays to show who I really am, and only some of what I want to become.  I want my walls to show that motherhood is hard, and challenging, and draining, and lovely, and motivating, and worthy, and fulfilling, and beautiful.

I'll always take pictures of perfect hair, but those pictures will never be as priceless as the photos showing my perfect chaos.