My childhood is painted thick with the crispest of colors. The greenest lawns to run on, the bluest water to sink beneath, and the brightest golden sun to bask in. Our back deck was a burning funny shade of maroon. The front room drapes, a velvety avocado.
My mom was the one who colored our world. Brown sack lunches full of purple grapes and oozing red jam sandwiches. She planted the yellow flowers and folded the pink and white checkered sheets. She iced the deep blue coolers, packed the rainbow of clothing, & fed the big brown & white dog. She took photos of all it and yet virtually none of them included her.
Apparently she never made it to the lake or the beach or Disneyland. It was as if outside of the occasional finger on the lens or long casting shadow, she didn't exist.
So when someone says taking selfies is a disorder they aren't entirely wrong.
There is a disorder here.
I really don't care who or how or why someone takes a photo of themselves. In fact I tend to like them. Selfies are some of the best proof of real life there is. Even the bathroom mirror ones.
And its true, I have even been "guilty" of snapping a bathroom mirror selfie. It wasn't for a profile pic. I used it to check the back of my hair because some kid took the only hand mirror out into the yard to use to start fires and broke it. It still counts, it happened. I'm not going to feel bad about doing it or any of the others I have taken.
The thing is some of us are alone- even in groups.
Some of us are always the mother or the friend behind the camera.
When my daughters are mothers themselves I want them to have a reminder that some days their mom let the laundry wait so she could climb mountains. I want them to be able to hold onto the way the desert made me smile, years after I can no longer tolerate the heat. I want them and their children to see the true colors of my life. I don't want to be a shadow.
I want my sons to know the depth of a wife & a mother- that girls aren't just something pretty to be placed on a shelf in the back of their minds.
I am my own biographer.
My own historian.
If I didn't take photos of myself, I would not 'exist'.
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