I’ve been quiet online for a while. Not non-existent, socially, but quiet, professionally.  I’ve done a lot in the last year– I’ve been a stay-at-home-mom, which is pretty all-consuming. Sometimes not in the best ways. I gave up a lot of time that I could have spent being me-(not-a-mom) because it was easier not to. There isn’t a lot of evidence that I do things other than being Mom.  I take hundreds of photos of my daughter. A take dozens of photos of my daughter and my husband.

I don’t take a lot of photos of myself, I don’t get others to take photos of myself, and I …well, I simply don’t have many.

And when I look around, it’s also hard to find photographs of myself with my own mom.

It’s not necessarily deliberate. If you’re behind the camera all the time, it just becomes a fact of life. You can’t be in two places at once.  And after having a baby, do I even identify with my physical self like I used to?  Getting up in years, do I have the face I used to?  (The answer is “no”, but I’m noticing that I don’t have to decide that it’s a bad thing.)

So the idea of getting in those photos with my family– and getting into photos by myself– is becoming more and more important. For her. For me. For reasons that might not even be obvious, yet.

So I’m going to start this project right now with a selfie!  It’s not the best photograph of me, but it was a moment that my daughter and I had together. It’s a dyptich, and we switch roles from one frame to another.  I notice how she looks like me, and how she looks like her father. 20140907_201958

Maybe someday she’ll look back on this one and see those things, too. But mostly she’ll see us together, smiling. Who knows what memories it will bring to the surface for her. So this is for her.