Picture Perfect

I will forever remember a story my mother related to me.  She was chatting with the mother of one of my friends when she noticed that this woman had a beautiful, new family portrait hung on the small, shadowy wall in the bend of their stairs.  My mom complimented the beautiful photo and asked why it was hung in this out of the way place.  The mother of my friend said that in trying to make this picture as perfect as it could be the entire family had a miserable day.  There had been yelling, crying, hurt feelings and general grouchiness.  She said that every time she looked at that photo, she remembered the awful feelings she had that day.

Fast forward nearly 20 years to the present.  We needed a family picture - one where everyone was in front of the camera.  That hasn't happened for us in two years.

Due to my Nutcracker rehearsal schedule and Daylight savings, we only had a 15 minute window in which to catch the light.  Of course child #3 would take a late nap.  Child #3 wakes up 1/2 ogre and  1/2 wet dishrag.  Then there is child #2.  Child #2 is a diva when it comes to his clothes.  If he can't wear a dirty tee-shirt then life may not be worth living.  Well, his picture approved shirt had a collar, and the fit of his pants (which were admittedly a bit big) distressed his style sensibilities past the point of endurance and he flopped onto the couch, enormous tears trickling down his cheek.

I squashed the desire to administer a well-placed, swift kick.  I banished the impending sense of photographic disaster.  I wanted to be happy.  Okay, so not everyone else was going to be happy, but I was not going to let this picture matter more than being nice.   A quick dig through last years box of clothes produced a pair of pants, that while three inches too short, did not make my son cry.  As for the shirt, with only love and good will I told him he needed to buck up and stop clutching his collar and turning red.  I wanted smiles in my picture.  I would even let him keep his shirt un-tucked (another stylistic sticking point).  However,  if he could not manage calming down and smiling in the picture, he would go to bed without dinner the moment the picture taking was done.  Despite my calm demeanor he must have sensed the seriousness of that threat.

When my brother in law arrived with his fabulous camera, we all ran outside into the freezing cold.  We stood on the sidewalk.  "Forget placement, everyone just clump," was the rallying cry.

Child #3 was fine as long as she was facing backward and cried every time we faced her forward.  We took a few pictures.  We looked at a few of them and found that Child #1 was crossing her arms and making "I am FREEZING" faces in the pictures that were good of everyone else.  Child #2, bless his heart, stood there in his floods and untucked shirt and tried to muster a smile.  He managed to look stoic.

Not even photoshop would save this one.  And you know what?  I felt fine with that.  That photo will document my reality.  It will also document a proud moment for me - despite the stress and dysfunction, I managed to maintain a happy heart, a happy voice and had done everything I could to maintain a happy home.  That smile on my face was real.  I can look at that picture with no regrets.

We'll go for picture perfect some other year.