In the weeks before this shoot, Chelsea and I talked about what she hoped I would capture. What she wanted was an honest glimpse into a standard day in the life of her and her children, three year old Jax and eight month old Holland. Chelsea is a photographer, so save for when she’s off on a shoot, she works full-time from home. Amid the everyday duties of raising up her two beautiful babies and conducting therapy sessions with Jax, who was diagnosed with Autism roughly one year ago, Chelsea squeezes in moments here and there to edit, answer emails, and attend to the daily business of running a business. And she does it all while her husband, Josh, is off putting in his own full-time day at work.
The night before our session, my phone binged with a familiar sound – it was a facebook message from Chelsea. While musing about the session she’d written this. It spoke to me and says it all far better than I ever could…
What if I’m gone before I get the chance to tell them what it was like? They’ll remember their later years all on their own. They’ll remember their 8th birthday party and the Christmas we all spent on vacation and the time they were learning to drive and got a flat tire; they’ll remember all that without my help. But what about these days? These precious, fleeting days. The days where I am laying the foundation for the way they view the world. The days where all they have to fuel them is my love and sacrifices. Maybe one day I will be gone and one will say to the other “Remember the house on Pleasant View?” And maybe they will and maybe they won’t…I don’t really know what memories their brains are keeping right now and what is getting thrown by the wayside. All I know right now is this: I wake up every single morning and thank God for their beautiful lives. Even on the worst and hardest days, I am so grateful that I am the one who raises my babies. That I am their safety net, their teacher, their nurse, their chauffeur, their maid, their chef. I am the one laying the bricks. I want them to see that; somehow I want them to see that. I want these photos for them, these pictures are for them. I want them to see how fiercely they were loved. I want Jax to know that I worked with him every possible moment I could to help him but I never judged him or tried to change him. I want Holland to remember that even though she came second, she was never second in our hearts, even from the beginning. I want them to know that they had a bond right away. I want them to know that I had to sacrifice. That it was a constant balancing act and that somedays I had it all together and others I struggled to stay afloat. I want them to know that despite the fact that there was always laundry, and work, and mail, and dishes, and cleaning to be done, they came first. I imagine if I were gone and my daughter held her daughter she’d have a photo to remind her…’my mom once did this for me’. I imagine if I were gone and my son gets bullied he’ll remember his mother loved him exactly as he was, and that would make him brave. I wish I were a size 2, I wish every moment we were smiling and focused only on each other, but that’s not what they’ll remember. They’ll remember me, fluffy belly, bags under my eyes, yoga pants but in love with them, fiercely in love with them. So…that’s what I’m hoping to capture here.
