Take my picture

I had my baby book out this week. Now that Grady's here, we're going through the same "who does he look like?" routine that we went through with Evan. And just as before, we can't agree--some say the boys look like me (or my brothers), some say Mike, and I guess we just have to settle with there being a little of both. But of course I wanted to drag out the pictures just to see.

Once I had the book out, I took some time to really look through it myself. I've looked at it hundreds of times since I was little, but this time it was different. This time, I wasn't just looking at me--I was looking at everything. At the backgrounds, at the presents under the Christmas tree, at my mother holding me. I looked at her hair, her clothes, how thin she was, and how young. She was just shy of 25 when she had me, and in the last picture in the book she had just turned 27.

It was just so weird. Until now, I never really thought about what her life was like when we were babies. But somehow I feel like I want to identify with that person, the one younger than I am now. Did she feel the same way I do about having two kids? She was always smiling in the pictures, but was she tired and frustrated too? Did she want nothing more than to be taken out for a meal at a nice restaurant and then get a full night of sleep? And you never see my dad (he was behind the camera)--what did he look like then? What was he saying to get us to smile?

It's funny to think about the part of history that gets erased. When you're just left with the pictures, it's easy to forget all the tough parts, or the things that weren't focused on the smiling baby. There's so much more to the story, so many clues I've missed because I was too absorbed in looking at myself. I wonder what kind of history we're creating for our boys?