Picture Perfect

I am not a Family Photo kind of person.

I don’t think we’ve ever had them done, honestly.  Once we were in a magazine article about military families that they sent a photographer for, and that’s our one professional family photo in 13 years.

We have a handful of shots of our family together, taken by friends and family or random strangers that we ask along the way.  But for the most part, I’m not a picture person in general.  We don’t have photos of our family up in the house.  I forget to even take pictures a lot, my children will hopefully have amazing memories of their childhood, because I just haven’t documented all that much of it.

That’s probably for the best, really.

We’ve never had pre-deployment photos, or reunion photographers.  There’s a couple shots from the 3rd reunion a friend took without us knowing, and I love them.  But I’ve never gone out of my way to have them taken.

Part of me is just lazy. I have all the lame reasons, like I don’t like the way I look or I’ll do it when I lose 5lbs, when my face clears up, when my hair is less ragey…. but there’s a part of me is mostly being a little silly.

Maybe a lot silly.

Before Canadian soldiers leave for deployment, they have a photo taken of them.  Most call it their ‘death photo‘, though many have tried to redeem the photos themselves, the name sticks.  I’ve never seen Dh’s.  He’s never wanted me to.  That photo had a purpose and if it was never needed, it would never be seen.

For some reason, when the trend started to have pre-deployment photos taken, I saw them the same way.

Dh is a combat soldier.  His deployments have always been the “outside the wire” kind.  Everyone who loves a soldier like him has their own way of dealing with that.

Mine I guess was always to avoid it.

You know that part in the cop movie where the one character is dying.  He says to his partner ‘Tell my wife I love her‘ and the partner says ‘you tell her yourself!’

That’s how I’ve felt about family pictures.

We’ll do them when he gets back.

But he was ‘back’ so many times, and there was still no photos.

I made them out to be such a big deal, I just didn’t want to think about them.  
 
Well the Fierce family has another See You Later on the horizon.

We got word around the same time that a friend who is also a photographer offered to take some family pictures for us.

It was a rushed week with more to do than time and yet, part of me felt grown up enough to say yes.

The whole experience made me anxious, 20 minutes before the photos I hadn’t even thought of an outfit, or what to dress the kids in, or that maybe I should take my hair out of a ponytail….

I’m not so good at this.

But we had a photographer I trusted and we laughed and goofed off and I’m not the kind of person who cares if it all looks perfect, which is good because Monster slicked his hair with a pound of gel as we walked out the door, and I spilled coffee on my jeans.

It’s a good thing we had a great photographer.

The truth is, in all my melodrama, simply taking family pictures is not what I had made it out to be in my head.

They are the perfect activity this rushed Canadian Thanksgiving, because even though we’re walking this road for the 4th time, what these pictures represent is so much a reminder of what I am thankful for.

It’s us. 

And we clean up pretty nice.

Comments

comments