Bad Pictures Beautiful

I was THRILLED last night to find a promotional code in my email that allowed me to make a Shutterfly book for FREE!  I've never made one, because of cost, so I signed on ready to try my hand at cutesy memories. As I uploaded the photos onto flower and swirly-clad pages of brightness,  it did not look right.  Somehow the crisp lines and graphics outlining the picture of my daughter in a ratty ladybug  dress seemed to mock imperfections--the poor lighting, her disheveled hair, the too-small Christmas pajama shirt that she wore underneath,  and the fact that she was not looking at the camera.   I tried other backgrounds with more earthy tones, blank canvases but everything was just too...sterile.  I closed the program, frustrated, and did what any self-respecting, insecure mom would do, logged onto facebook to see what the better people were up to.

You know what I found there.  Pictures of families, beautiful families, on beaches, kissing Mickey Mouse, and kids with combed hair and neat outfits looking at the camera.  The facebook grass is always greener because people usually post at their BEST, looking, feeling, their best.  And sometimes we (by WE I mean me and you readers who have felt this way) see their best when we are feeling not so Mickey-Mousy about our own lives.   

And then there is Pinterest.  I continue to have a love/hate relationship with this internet THING that seems omnipresent.  When I first joined, I actually created a somewhat counter-culture board (I'm a stay-at home mom and I'm SUPER hard-core).  I called this board "Hazardous Homemaking"  where I posted pictures of the most gruesome household messes.   My favorite was one I titled "Laundry Vomit"--the dryer door wide open with a huge pile of clean clothes spilling out, neglected, waiting to be folded.  I considered myself pretty clever and ironic posting these awful messes next to some of the most neat, useful organizing tips on the world wide web (the juxtaposition, right?) but it didn't catch on.  Pristine Pinterest would remain a domain for mostly perfect-seeming decorating, fashion, crafts, cooking, etc. 

Instagram.  I only joined yesterday and am already feeling like it is another time-waster that takes feeling less-than on the web to a whole new, edit-your-photo-here, level.  More beaches, more beautiful families, more beautiful lives.  I squelched my pity party, for a moment, and posted a picture of my three children playing dolls in the girls bedroom.  Most of the comments were about the mess.  I thought it was a beautiful, real, moment in time worth sharing and folks seemed to be mostly intrigued by the mess.

It is only human nature to want to put our best-selves forward--to clean up before a job interview.  To look nice before meeting the school principal.  We are told it is not becoming to air our "Dirty Laundry."  So we wash-up and take a family photo and share it with our friends and say, "Look at us!"  I like to wash up, I like to be clean, I really enjoy a clean house.  But most of the moments I capture in my life happen BETWEEN washings, between laundry, and between hair-brushing.  These are the moments that are most beautiful to me.  These are the pictures that I will look back on with a tear in my eye as I remember the chaos and dirt that surrounded my life raising my precious children.  They are BAD pictures, bad lighting, bad focus, but they are beautiful, because they capture the most unadulterated symbols of what really matters to me.