I take hundreds of photos every month, and most of them don’t get shared with anyone, let alone online. And yet the moments in time that those photos capture are just as important a part of our story as the other images that I do choose to share.
I originally created this blog as a way of documenting our lives, a way of watching the girls grow into who they’re going to be and a way of remembering who they once were. It’s something I want them to be able to look back on as they get older, because memories fade but (digital) photographs don’t.
It’s easy (and tempting) to only focus on sharing the fun bits, the memorable parts, the highlights and the celebrations. But I’m learning more and more as I continue through this crazy journey of motherhood that it’s really important to me that I capture the ordinary, everyday times that we spend together as well.
The bits of the jigsaw that fill in the gaps to complete the picture.
The tantalising glimpses into who our girls are becoming.
The chaos, the calm and all the moments in between.
This monthly feature – The Moments In Between – is a space for me to share all of those magical and messy parts of our family life that would otherwise just stay in a folder on my laptop, never to see the light of day.
DECEMBER
December was a month where things felt both better (festive fun, twinkly lights, birthdays, Christmas) and worse (new virus strain, rapidly rising infection rates, tighter restrictions, more uncertainty). A month where joy and sadness co-existed so clearly and so closely that it was hard to tell where one finished and the other started. I found myself, quietly and privately, in tears a lot with both emotions – happy that celebrations were filled with love and laughter, disappointed that we couldn’t share those occasions with the other important people in our lives.
It’s been a reflective month: looking back at what’s been with a mixture of incredulity for all the events that have happened and pride for having survived. And looking forwards at what’s to come with a mixture of tentative hope for better days and concern that 2021 might end up being a repeat of the year just gone.
It’s the first ever year (since I’ve been an adult, anyway) that I’ve not hated the snow. Seeing it through the girls’ eyes – an endless playground of possibilities, a magical landscape, the opportunity to slow down and get cosy by a window and just observe the quietness of the world – it gave me a new perspective. Perhaps this pandemic has gifted me more than I realised? I’ve been subconsciously re-organising priorities, shifting values, holding on and letting go.
I feel like I learned a lot this month even though I can’t quite put it all into words yet. I still need to undo the knot of thoughts that are all jumbled up like an unravelled-then-retangled-up ball of wool in my head.
One thing I do know is this: we were together and that’s all that mattered in the end. And whilst sometimes it felt overwhelmingly too much and sometimes it felt not anywhere near enough, it was, of course, exactly what it needed to be. We were exactly who we needed to be. These photographs are a documentation of that. Every moment was important in some way and I’m grateful that I chose to pick up my camera and capture as many as I did this month, telling our story in the only way I know how.
This was our December. The final chapter of 2020, closing out the strangest year that any of us have ever experienced.
This is us.
