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 bits that would otherwise just stay in a folder on my laptop, never to see the light of day.

MAY

As I write this we have just finished the 10th full week of lockdown.  It’s the end of May half term which, unsurprisingly, was very much needed by all of us.  The girls have adapted incredibly well to all the monumental changes and upheavals in their world and, all things considered, have been working hard to keep up with all the work that their teachers have sent through.  They really did need a rest from their homeschool lessons and the husband and I needed a break from our new roles as teachers.

We’re now preparing for the prospect of seven more weeks of distance learning.  We’ll be continuing right up until the start of the summer holidays as none of the school years that the girls are in (Years 8, 7 and 5) are being invited back to school until the new academic year due to Covid-19 and the logistics of enforcing social distancing rules in the school buildings.

May has been a month of utterly glorious sunshine and it has made such a positive difference to all of our moods.  I know for sure that would not have managed very well at all if it had rained the whole time.  We really have been very lucky (or maybe it was just the universe giving us what we needed to be able to cope during these strange times?).

It’s starting to feel normal now: queuing for up to an hour to get into the supermarket; moving to opposite sides of the path if you meet someone whilst out on your daily walk; shops still closed; not seeing family.  As much as I’ve adjusted to it, I don’t like it.  I don’t want these parts of our new normal to stay.  I try not to think about it for too long because otherwise I get caught up in how extraordinary this entire situation is – it’s something that none of us have ever experienced before in our lifetimes and it still doesn’t feel real somehow even though we’re two and a half months in.

There are some elements of lockdown that I do want to keep going though.  I want the slower pace and reduced pressure to stay. I want more time together and everyone being home more to be a priority.  I want my daily walk in nature to continue.  I would genuinely consider homeschooling all three of them a viable option (if I didn’t have to work in order to pay the bills) – I quite like spending Sunday evenings and Monday mornings preparing lessons for the week ahead and, as hard as it is sometimes, I honestly enjoy teaching them and learning with them as they do their school work.

People keep talking about “when this is all over” and “when things are back to normal” as if it’ll happen overnight and we’ll wake up one morning and coronavirus simply won’t be there any more.  Clearly that’s not going to happen and our lives are going to be altered and affected for the foreseeable future.  I don’t think it will ever go back to the old normal and actually, I kind of hope it doesn’t.  I don’t like this new enforced normal but I didn’t like the way things used to be either.

My hope is that we – as individuals, families and society as a whole – can create a better way of being.  Perhaps it’s idealistic (I was often told as a child/teen that I was a ‘dreamer’ with my head in the clouds) but if we can at least keep the elements of lockdown that have been positives, learn from everything else and use that to move forwards in a happier, healthier way then that’s got to be a good thing.  Change starts on a small scale at home, right?  Hopefully the ripple effects will eventually reach further than we can imagine.

I’ve been trying to document our lockdown days – the joyful days and the messiness.  Some days I feel motivated to seek out inspiration and create something, some days I don’t pick up my camera at all.  Both are ok.  Our moments in between are being captured as they unfold. The story of this chapter of our lives is being told just as I’ve told all the other chapters over the last couple of years. All of these memories are being recorded for future generations of our family to be able to experience one day, seeing things through our eyes.

They might look like ordinary snapshots but there is a particular kind of magic in the mess and the mundane. These photographs are significant and meaningful and they matter more than we probably realise right now.

Every single photo has a multitude of layers beyond what you see on the surface.

Every single one speaks to me in so many ways.

Every single one is a piece of our jigsaw.

This is us.