Shooting from the sidelines.

It’s not about the bike…or the gear.  Or is it?  When it comes to shooting sports, I could probably put up a fair argument for the latter.  I don’t shoot sports, except when my kids are on the team.  Being that I don’t shoot sports (or wildlife for that matter), I don’t own any lens longer than 200mm.  And that 200mm only fits on my old cropped sensor camera body which I only use as an extreme emergency back up.  It was a kit zoom lens and there is nothing more to say about it.  

Regardless, I’ve offered to cover games for my kids teams since he was in the 8th grade, so parents can watch and cheer and still be able to have pictures of their kids without the stress of taking them themselves.  There’s an easy science to it, for sure.  Wait until the ball is snapped, follow the progression of play, shoot the pass, the catch, the run or the big finale of a tackle, put your camera down and repeat on the next play.  But with crappy gear, this science seems to be far less scientific and far more fiddle-with-exposure-shutter-speed-focal-length until you miss the shot all together.  This year, though, there are 2 other parents with gear.  Real gear.  Real big, white, expensive gear that can see every little bit of action from the safety and comfortability of 20 feet outside the sidelines.  Their pictures are perfect, up close and stunning freeze frames of midair reaches and all star runs.  Really great work.  

As much as I just want to be relieved that we can cover every side of the field, I’m not.  I find the eneagram 4 inside of me starting to compare, starting to feel a twinge of jealousy.  That twinge of jealousy leading to insecurity and the feelings of not measuring up; wanting to just sit the game out all together.

But, something finally woke up in me this past Friday; something instructors and photographer friends have been trying to feed into me for years.  Shoot with what you have. Don’t wish you had other gear.  See the ‘field’ from the vantage point of what you do have and shoot the hell out of it.  Ask yourself the question ‘where are you?’.  Answer that physically, metaphorically, in the moment and shoot from that place.  And at the exact moment of that lightbulb over the head experience, I found myself standing in the middle of a testosterone infused team of grungy, sweaty, uniform clad high schoolers who were about to win their first game of the season against their rivals.  And wether or not I was able to get the details of each exact play caught on a zoom lens, the story itself mattered more to me. Just take out your trusty 35mm and make the most of it.  

I’m not a sideline shooter.  I’ve known that for years.  But, I’m finally feeling confident about that. Feeling amped and energized by that perspective.

And that is definitely not about the gear.

From the Archives: Excerpt 1

I’ve begun the arduous task of compiling images and words for ‘I Mother Broken’. It’s arduous for multiple reasons, the current dilemma being ‘where exactly are my old journals’ and ‘what was the password we used for our ‘blogspot’ I blogged on eons ago’ and ‘I know I kept online image galleries to go with those, but I can’t find that link anywhere’. Oy vey.

Aside from the logistical challenges, this is an emotional journey for sure. One I don’t take lightly. Even just a quick gloss over a few old blogs and I am a heap of mush inside. It’s peppered with humor here and there, but, there is also ALOT of pain. My older two kids were both adopted from Uganda, but with radically different upbringings and radically different ‘coming to America’ experiences.

I’m currently looking for things in the early days of bringing Maggie home. I don’t have any. And the raw and real truth of why I don’t have any is because it was the damn hardest time of my life thus far. Everything in our family collapsed. I was angry. I blamed her. I blamed me. We didn’t go even a few hours without some form of massive physical tantrum or borderline psychotic episode. I showered multiple times a day so that no one would hear me weeping or saying out loud, ‘what have I done to this family’. It. Was. Hard.

The process of re-engaging that pain is also hard. And even harder, is that we are still in the midst of so much of this. Not sure how to heal or mature or redeem things that have been said or left unsaid over the years. So, this whole thing isn’t just about compiling a photobook to sit glamorously on someone’s coffee table.

It’s about gluing broken things back together.

Excerpt #1 from an early blog dated Feb. 10th 2013, (7 months after Maggie’s move to America) from my old website that currently isn’t hosted or active so I can’t link the entire thing. An excerpt will have to do. We went to a fancy dinner with my parents and I ended up flipping out about my newly acclimating daughter’s table manners.

You’d think with all that background I would be a little more sensitive, right?  No.  You’re wrong.  Maybe some nights I feel a tinge of compassion, but not tonight.  I was out with a vengeance.  I just couldn’t swallow looking at my daughter in a nice restaurant with her knee up to the table, disregarding the people at the table and looking sideways in the direction of the TV on the wall while she inadvertently shoved bits of bun-less hamburger patty in her mouth with her hands, while also trying to grab some fries from the center of the table.

You’re all laughing right now because you think it’s funny.  It wasn’t funny.  It was the perfect kind of behavior to push a somewhat already-had-it-up-to-here mom over the edge.  I used every possible tactic nagging moms do, but to no avail.

The victory?  Somehow amidst all my horridness, we didn’t have a complete knock down drag em‘ out meltdown in the middle of Ruth’s Chris. 

The 2nd victory?  My Cucumber Collins was awesome.

The 3rd victory?  What you’re reading here.  An apology to my children for being a pain in the butt tonight.  They were themselves... and I was the overbearing, teeth-clenching mom I said I would never be.

Good thing my kids believe in 2nd chances.

And, good thing they believe in 16,943rd chances, too. Because Lawd knows what has happened since 2013.

Football

And the season starts anew.  And just when I finally get on board with his whole collegiate quarterback dream, it gets snatched right out from under him.  Athletics are confusing, political and not always chasing individual kids' dreams as much as they are creating a winning team.

My son is a stud of a quarterback.  Coaches agree, ‘best quarterback this school has had in 10 years’.  But, last Monday, the starting quarterback slot he has been fighting for since the end of the season last year was given to the Senior quarterback; the 2nd string position given to a Sophomore who they will train to be the starting varsity quarterback for the upcoming two years and the 3rd string to a Junior who will be the backup for the starter next year.  Essentially scooting my kid out of the QB position all together.

I have no hard feelings against his coaches or the decision they made.  They are great at what they do and believe in the potential of their players.  But, the fact that a position change decision in a pivotal year in a  high school athletes life determines the rest of his future in athletics, bothers me to no end.

But, the real feelings, the depth, come from watching my son let go of a dream he’s had for years and pulled us all into to root for.  It’s hard to be a part of that; hard to know how to parent through that; challenging to watch him struggle through learning all new plays only a week before games start, being lost and confused on the field and feeling at the bottom of his game when a week prior he was completely dialed in and pumped.

I feared we might lose him again.  Freshman year was so bad.  New school, bad coaches, no playing time, slumping into fatigue and depression and palling around with questionable friends.  The school changes made last year and the success he had in football and academics were life giving to him.  It’s an amazing thing to watch your kid thrive.  And, I seriously attribute a lot of that to him fully embodying the quarterback position on and off the field; taking initiative to lead and lead well.  

When he found out about his position change, his whole demeanor changed and fear rose up inside me.  Taking me back to times spent sulking in his room with little to no drive for anything.  

The beauty of the whole thing, though, is that fear didn’t rise up in him.  He was deflated, for sure, disappointed, yes.  But he has risen above that and chosen to take on his new role with every ounce of effort and positive energy that he has put into football thus far.

His collegiate dream remains intact, it’s just now seen from a different place on the line of scrimmage and combined with a heck of a lot more contact.  Cornerback doesn’t have the cool factor that quarterback does, but it can just as easily make or break a game…and adding a little running back action to his resume couldn’t possibly look bad, either.  And his determination to prove himself in any position he plays and be the most versatile and talented player he can, will bring him right back to the top of his game in no time at all. And though I cheer for the team as a whole, deep down, I’m cheering for the character inside my son; the collective character inside lots of peoples sons that makes athletics so much more than fields and uniforms and scoreboards.

And that makes me one proud mama. Go Eagles. 

(last photo credit: Tom Bennett. I don’t own anything ginormous + white + that can be used a million miles away from the field and still get this type of shot)

Going for it...whatever 'it' is.

I had an idea once, not too long ago.  An idea that seemed passionate and plausible.  The idea to take my 11 year documentary work as the mother in the midst of this family unit, my words and photographs of my family over the years, and compile them into a photo book worthy of every mother’s coffee table.  It was an idea born out of a mid-life crisis, but a good idea nonetheless. 

However, the second I sit down to actually do my homework on photo book publishing, I am filled with anxiety.  The task is daunting, derailing and far less than positive.  There are no rainbows and unicorns in this sky.  The initial ping of a vision and spark of passion that I want so badly to be fanned into something powerful is cornered by the pulsing, steroid infused Doubt in the corner who is growing and filling the entire house of my body with it’s flexing and sweat.  Whatever idea I had at one point has been thoroughly chased away by the monster of data on my computer screen telling me ‘what to do’ or ‘what not to do’.

And in the midst of all that, I am still here writing this.  And starting something.  Maybe a little something, maybe a big something, maybe something that I give up on or maybe something that ends up gluing me together a little bit more.  Regardless, it’s something. And if you are willing to join that something, show me a little love by following, liking, etc.  I’m not sure what will be posted in this process, probably a random assortment of all things related to this book and the process of putting it together as well as work that will make it in and work that will be cut out.  I’m not sure how long it will take or how many times I will quit; how many times I will restart; how many times I will go dark.  Not sure of anything.

But, if it doesn’t start as something now, it never has the chance to be anything later.

So, I’m going for it and with that, months ago, I put together this little blurb to help me understand what I was trying to do.  Maybe it will help you, too.

Working Title:  I Mother Broken

“A mid-life-crisis-of-a-memoir of one young woman’s journey into the depths of mothering.  Like the subconscious itself, this book is a chaotic and enlightening mix of well planned photographs, vintage snapshots and impromptu phone pics representing the stream of consciousness of a life lived mothering. Punctuated by poetry, narrative, journal entries and bits of inspiration scrawled on napkins in no-name locations, it is her raw embodiment of the struggle to overcome the past, inform the future and just survive the present without losing her mind completely.  It explores the realities of fighting for her kids while at the same time fighting for herself.  A mid life crisis lived in the vacuum of motherhood.  A work of utter beauty, eternally standing on the brink of something.”

I often need a little visual inspo…this is it today.

For now, all this process will live here on the blog and as excerpts on Instagram and FB, until I figure out a better way to organize it all.

The mountains called. They want their playmates back.

This summer was about hiking.  About the outdoors.  About adventures and accomplishments and snowmelt and slippery mountain trails.  About drive and dirt and knee scrapes.  About bonding.  About her.

My youngest daughter turned 4 this June.  She is sugar rush and enthusiasm.  Supersized emotion and penny-for-your-thoughts conversation.  She loves her dad.  I mean, she loves her dad. Before the summer, verdict was still out on how she felt about me.  But, we shared a lot in the way of time spent moving on trails this summer and it helped us both.  I’m not one to come up with ‘5 important steps to getting your kids outside’ advice, but, I am absolutely about getting your kids outside.  And if you want to take the following narrative as advice and it makes you get outside with your kids more, well then, call it what you want.

I spent the summer hiking with my 4 year old and I have to say, there were far too few young kids on the trails.  And the reason?  Us.  Parents.  We hate the whining, tear streaked, sloth like pace of the never-actually-get-to-our-destination-because-we-can’t-even-get-out-of-the-car-with-all-our-s*@t-before-somebody-has-to-pee-or-already-did-pee experience.  We hate the snack overload and the water bottle carrying and the sunscreen vs. hat-she-keeps-pulling off debate.  We hate the run, stop, run, stop, pick something up, throw something, get in the backpack, get out of the backpack, sit down in the middle of the god forsaken trail and refuse to move rhythm.  We hate it all.  It is the biggest parenting hassle.  Ever.

Until, we realize it’s not about us.  There was a definite and obvious switch in me when my daughter approached me the first morning of our summer in the mountains and said, “Mama, where are we going to hike today?”  Last summer, I forced my girls on a hike a day for 2 weeks because I was convinced that I could force feed a love for the trails.  It backfired big time with my oldest who spent the rest of the summer in self confinement in her room in front of a book.  So when my youngest approached me with eyes full of light and blue sky and fresh air, I said, “I don’t know?  Where do you want to hike?”  Thus began a dance of give and take, lessons offered and lessons learned on both sides of the equation.  My goals were simple:  keep my attitude upbeat, light hearted and full of passion for the adventure; allow her to call the shots.

I stopped expecting our jaunts to give me any sort of an elevated heart rate.  Our hikes were not about me getting in a workout or a dogged determination to make it to the peak.  We had no organized snack breaks (if we had any snacks at all) and didn’t even come close to carrying sufficient amounts of water.  Because, what needed to happen was a freedom and grit that comes in the absence of those.  

It was about playfulness and falling in love.  We played ‘rock monster’ games to scramble up mountains of granite and took turns in ‘follow the leader’ to learn how it felt to be in both roles.  We toyed with being ‘lost’ and being ‘found’ and developed code words for animal sightings.  We learned how to follow rock cairns and red ribbons.  We sang Disney songs to pass the time and played silly made up games about imaginary animals when we just really wanted to be back at the trailhead.  It was about the experience of it all.  It was about adventure and exploration, about developing agility and observation skills and confidence in the unexpected.  It was about the intentionality of endurance and the mental capacity to do more than what we think we are capable of.  About pushing through feelings of hunger and soaking up the satiating feeling of accomplishment.

It was about standing on peaks and shouting at the wind. 

Except when it wasn’t.  Because we didn’t always get there.  It was about addressing our feelings of powerlessness and fatigue.  About wanting to quit and quitting.  About the effort it takes to keep moving forward and the effort needed to go back.  It was about being tired and getting in the backpack and putting her head down on my shoulder and exhaling, long and slow, filling my skin with sweat and hot tears.  It’s not always about making it.  And when we made it less about making it, we actually had the motivation to ‘make it’ more often.  She realized she had a choice.  She realized she had a drive inside her.  She learned to ‘hear what her heart was talking about’ and pursue that goal on the outside.  Self awareness, at 4 or 40, is so powerful.

And if ever there were a Winnie-The-Pooh quote to come out of her in hindsight, it might just be, “We didn’t know we were making memories.  We just knew we were having fun.”

And if it were to come out of me? “Promise me you will always remember.  You are braver than you believe, stronger than you seem and smarter than you think.”

Quitting

She quit today.  Yanked her helmet off her head in the midst of tears and plopped her butt right down on the sidewalk, adamantly refusing to go anywhere at all, much less do it on the scooter that just catapulted her face-first into the concrete.

And I let her.  I let her quit.  No motivational pep talk, no bribes, no half hidden sigh of disappointment.  I picked up the scooter, helmet, her.  Squeezed her, brushed off her knees set her down gently on her feet, took her hand and walked the remaining 5 blocks home to the soundtrack of tears and that little voice crying “I don’t want to ride that again.”

But, yesterday, she didn’t.  She didn’t quit at all.  In fact, she made it all the way to the top of Cowles mountain (a solid 1.5 miles of rocky, steep terrain) solely by the light of her headlamp and her own two feet, just so she could howl at that Super Wolf moon and insist it was full of real blood.  All to the soundtrack of, “I got this mom.  Mom, I got this.” 

And I was caught in a bit of a parenting trap when opposing motivations hit me square in the face from this little soul within a 24hr period.  And I wasn’t sure what to say.  Because, parenting is tricky.  What could be important in one situation could be precisely the worst in another.  Because, I have a thing with quitting.  A stubborn, steaming, ‘totally not ok with quitting’ type of thing.  I prone to making a bigger deal out of it than it needs to be because quitting agitates me that much.  But, in that span of reveling in her determination and accomplishment one day and being thwarted by her lack of it the next, I was caught off guard.  Being caught off guard allowed me just to feel with her. 

And I know how it feels.  Some days I quit.  I am super strong and confident and ‘I got this' so many days in a row and then the ‘I don’t got this’ shows up because some days our scraped knees just hurt too much for us to get back on the scooter.  In that moment, more important than any lecture about not quitting was the fact that I just let her know the truth of that reality.  That things hurt.  That it’s ok to put it down and walk away.  One ‘quit’ doesn’t make her a quitter.  And in an instant I realized that I was shaping her in my every tiny reaction.  And in that same moment I realized that how I wanted to shape her was more important than wanting her to get back on her scooter.  I could only squeak out, “I know, Babe.  I know.”  And I came to grips with something in myself.

We are obsessed with a culture that says don’t stop, never quit, and on and on and on and we are missing out on the lesson learned from quitting.  

I want to value and boost up and emphasize all the times when she climbs the mountain, when she does something amazing, when her motivation exceeds her tiny body.  And may that be the driving force of how I parent.  May the highs of those encouraged experiences boost up any of the lows of the other ones.  May those moments of sheer accomplishment inform the next chance to push on and succeed far more than any parenting pep talk.  

May the moments that take our breath away and the ones that make us cry, teach each other.