April 20, 2015

Forward


My break from this journal has been so long now that I'm not sure exactly where to pick up. There's the day to day; Roo talking and bossing all of us around from dawn 'till dusk, Little Smith shifting devotions from trains to dinosaurs to superheroes... and then back again, James and I shuffling and balancing work and play and the neverending piles of laundry. There's the hope of a big change ahead; fingers crossed and crossed again, it looks like we may be very close to buying a house... join us in thinking 'good thoughts' while we wait in anticipation through this spring. And then there's the only photographs we have bothered to capture in the last month, all from our family escape to Martha's Vineyard over Easter weekend.

After years of compulsive documentation, it's been strange to snap so few photos of the kids. I scroll through my iPhone camera, and even the shots there are few. It makes me sad, to have missed new teeth and silly anecdotes. I am a 'project driven' person, and I'm only starting to understand what that implies. When I set a goal, everything else recedes until I make it happen. I still go through the motions of the day, I laugh and listen to my children, fill all the bellies and gas tanks and forms that are in my charge... but there's a constant pull to do whatever it takes to make visible what is in my head. This relentless drive is both my best and worst quality, and it is very much active right now. I have long wondered if taking pictures and journaling distracted me from being present in the moment, but in these weeks that I have suspended documentation, I feel less present than ever.

And so we will see, maybe I will be better keeping up here, maybe I won't. At the very least, I have some more pictures from our trip to the Vineyard, which was such a perfectly timed escape for our little family. And, if all goes according to plan, we'll have a whole lot of show and tell come June.

4 comments:

  1. Life picks up so much with more the one little that its easy to forget to pick up a camera. My oldest's life was very documented, the younger two not so much. Too busy living to remember to record I suppose. Pictures never are as good as the memories and the stories we tell anyway, right?

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  2. Very exciting... I will keep my fingers crossed for you guys! xo melissa

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  3. Well I've certainly missed you on this space, but I get it. I completely get it! I am also a "project-driven" person and do best with a to-do list of sorts. I think it's hard to keep track of it all otherwise. I hope to see more of you around these parts, Lilly! I love your blog so much!

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  4. I definitely understand being bossed around from dawn til dusk! It seems to be a girl's perogative. ;) I have been grappling with the idea of how important pictures are and whether it's better just to live life fully in the moment. That's just in the last two days since we lost all our camera equipment on the weekend. It reminded me that pictures can disappear leaving only the memories. I hope you get the house you want! :) Jo

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