She thinks I don't see her there, perched on the edge of her lounger, poised to catch any memorable pose. But she's been my mother for thirty years now...I always know when she's around and what's she's up to.
From the moment I became a mother, my mother became our paparazzi.
Capturing newborn gaseous smiles or me tucked in bed with them (the newborn, not the gases. On second thought, the gaseous tendencies do seem to stem from someone I do share my bed with nightly. ;), she's managed to somehow encapsulate some of our family's sweetest memories into still frames hung proudly on our walls. Even before I was a mother, my sisters and I used to roll our eyes when forced to pose for yet another picture, dreading the photographic proof of adolescence marking a trail across our faces, wondering if the camera would add two pounds or ten.
Now? Now we just roll with her.
Like when I was rocking out to music blaring from our ipod hooked up to our portable speakers, poolside. My feet started to twitch, my head began to sway, and in a snapshot, I sprang from the lounger where I too was poised to paparazzi my own kiddos.
Sometimes to the laughs and cheers of an audience, always to the humiliation of my husband who I'm sure spends plenty of time wondering where the sweet, little girl he married has gone to.
Babe, I love you. But this, me dancing? That's just how I roll.
