Invisible Me

With those long, sometimes tedious, days of summer winding down and two restless kids buzzing around the house, I needed something to work on that I could bounce in and out of, something that would give me something on which to focus, but not require too much brain power. I remembered these handy little coupons I’d received when touring President Lincoln’s home in Springfield for a free Shutterfly photo book, and decided the time was right to get caught up on organizing many, many (MANY!) pictures. I had vacations to chronicle, as well as a new idea for Family Yearbooks.

So over the period of three weeks, I spent countless hours working on these photo books, and pretty soon an interesting pattern emerged.

Notice anything?  Anything…missing?  Anyone?

Let me offer up one more example.

Perhaps nowhere is The Omission more egregious than Christmas pictures. It’s like…I wasn’t even there.  At first I laughed it off. Picture taking is my thing. I enjoy it. The rest of the family, not so much. But after awhile, it began to get to me, all sorts of nasty thoughts creeping in: why doesn’t anyone ever want to take my picture? if something ever happened to me, there’s no evidence of the role I played in the family. It’s like I’m…invisible.

That thought really got me. Invisible. It harkened up all sorts of childhood memories, a time when I truly felt invisible, that I could go away or vanish and nobody would even notice. It’s  ironic that I ended up becoming a writer, talk about a fleeting, invisible profession!  (Little makes you feel more invisible than pouring your heart and soul, plus a whole bunch of blood, sweat and tears into a book that goes unnoticed–but that’s another story for another day…). But there I am, behind the camera and behind the scenes of so many others lives. I’m the one who makes things happen. I’m the one who shepherds everyone and documents the moments, the one who makes sure memories are preserved for years to come. But clearly I need to do a better job of getting in the picture, literally and figuratively. I need to participate in the moment, and I need to make sure someone takes the pictures to prove it, even if I have to ask them.

It also occurred to me that through my photo books, I have the power to balance things out. I snickered as I put together this page (selfie and all):

And this one makes me smile, too.

Maybe the mother/daughter painting outing only occupied three little hours out of the entire year, but as author of the Family Photo book, I made sure  it got a full page (out of 102)!

That’s the beauty of photo books. They’re versatile. They tell stories…any story you want them to tell.  A few years back I was looking through one of my catch-all drawers when I ran across an envelope of old pictures my parents had given me. An idea quickly took root, and I realized I could scan them in and make a photo book, complete with family history (and in doing so, preserving them).

I also did this with old pictures (all taken with film) of vacations my husband and I took before kids.

And for our twentieth anniversary, I dug out all the old pics I could find and compiled them in a History of Us photo book, with lots of pages of bad hair, bad clothes, fun times, and a whole lot fewer pounds!

Similarly, for each of my kids I created a Year One In Pictures book:

There’s something about photo books, the way they combine my two favorite creative outlets—telling stories and photography—that make them a  win-win for me.

I just have to remember to make sure I’m part of the story.

#ThankyouShutterfly