Our family isn’t…normal. I know, I know. What family is? But mine? It’s extra not normal. Of our four children, two have autism, one has dyslexia, and the youngest, our only daughter, is six and by all accounts, clearly on the path to world domination.
We have our struggles. For example, on any given Sunday at church, you might find my ten-year-old scripting the words to Go, Dogs, Go…during silent prayer at full voice. One kid finds great pleasure in breaking things—eggs, lightbulbs, watermelons, glass anything. The wine aisle at the grocery store is both of our favorites, just for entirely different reasons. Things like, “Why is Ken naked and in the middle of the kitchen floor?” are yelled on the regular at our house. (Don’t worry, everything is fine. Barbie likes Ken naked and chained to the stove.)
Our family is the loudest, messiest, unpredictable-est one in our neighborhood…in our town…maybe the entire state of Texas. It’s obvious we’re different so why bother hiding it?
And this sentiment is never truer than when we must get family pictures.
A few years ago, a very sweet woman at our church found me after service. “We’re putting together a new church directory for the spring.”
I winced on the inside. The church directory is a pictorial directory. You know, like with pictures. Like with pictures of your whole family smiling and looking at the camera at the same time. For our family, that’s like seeing a unicorn, flying pigs, and a purple squirrel at the same time.
A few years ago, our church hired a professional photography company to take the photos and compile the directory. At the time, our boys were seven, five, and four; the baby was a few months old. For some reason, the photographer was determined to get good pictures of our family.
Plastering on a smile, he spoke in a loud, slow voice with lots of hand gestures. This happens often when people discover our family has (whispers reverently) special needs. “It’s so nice to meet you. I’ve been looking forward to meeting your special family. We’re going to get some great pictures.”
Hmm. That felt like he’d thrown down a challenge.
Someone must have warned, er, told him about us because he was prepared. Along with stuffed animals and flashing laser lights, he forced his assistant to stand behind him and perform an entire song-and-dance routine. Literally. It felt like she’d practiced for this. And soon his enthusiasm became contagious and a little part of me started to believe this might work.
But, alas, he may have been a bit too optimistic about his skills as a photographer.
Or rather, I think our family broke him.
One son spilled a cup of water down the front of his shirt and with nothing else to change into, there wasn’t much to do about the giant, and very visible, circle of wetness. Another refused to cooperate. Instead, he laid down and activated “spaghetti arms” when we tried to get him back up. I had to stop twice to nurse the very tiny baby. At least one boy escaped three different times, plus the torture of individual pictures of each child.
In the end, we spent more than 45 minutes taking some pretty terrible photos.
The best photo the whole bunch? Only one kid was looking at the camera, two out of the six of us were smiling, and, the best worst part? One of the boys was clearly scratching his crotch at the time.
The photographer tried to sell us this picture. “You’ll laugh at this ten years from now.”
And in the ensuing ten years, before it’s funny, I can hang this 16×20 portrait on the wall in my living room and stare at my son scratching his crotch every minute of my life?
You can probably see why “It’s time for a new church directory” aren’t my favorite words.
“Don’t worry,” the sweet lady at church said. “You can provide your own picture this time.”
That’s not so bad, I thought.
“In fact,” she went on. “I have this one I found on Facebook. Will this work?” I’m certain she showed me the photo but I’m equally as certain I got distracted at the very same moment when I spotted my child exiting the bathroom without his pants on. “If you have another one, just get it to me soon.”
I probably agreed wholeheartedly. I bet I added “Find new family photo” to my mental to-do list and then ten seconds later forgot about directories and family photos and to-do lists because I live on caffeine and three brain cells and prayer. Also, the naked kid.
The day the new directories arrived, I flipped through casually to our name and froze. There we were, right there between two other smiling, coiffed, perfectly normal families. Right there, in the directory each family in our church would receive, the same church directory given to new members. Here’s what I found:
Go ahead, laugh. I know you want to. I did.
I laughed until tears ran down my face when I saw this. See, as hilariously bad this photo is, it’s the perfect representation of our family.
First, there’s me. I am clearly in the act of doing something mom-ish, most likely whisper-screaming at a kid to “Look at the camera!” I have one son in a headlock, presumable so he can’t run off, or we’re reenacting a WWE match—it’s a toss-up. Of course, he’s not looking at the camera because, well, why would he?
My eldest is front and center, holding his brother’s hand and looking like he’d rather be anywhere else. Anywhere. My husband is smiling–probably because he’s only wrestling one child instead of three. He does have a two-handed death grip on the baby–who is also not looking at the camera and gnawing on a finger. I hope she drooled on him. A lot.
And where is that fourth kid? Where is he? (This is like our family version of Where’s Waldo, y’all.)
Oh, there he is. You might have missed him since he’s squished behind two of his brothers and only one eye and half his face are showing. Miracle of miracles, he’s smiling and looking at the camera . . . sort of.
This, folks, this, right here, is my family.
After I stopped cry-laughing and then just crying and then eating my feelings, I discovered I was okay that this picture in our church directory. In fact, I kind of love it. I kind of love that every time someone looks us up, they’ll know immediately who we are. I kind of love that most of the people in our family can’t fake a smile and that means, when you get one, it’s real and it means something.
And I really love that every time I see that picture in our church directory, I can’t contain my laughter. These are my people, for better or for worse, smiles or no smiles, warts and all, and 100% not normal.
I think that’s pretty awesome.
4 responses to “The Picture in the Church Directory”
When my very energetic boys were young, taking photos was a nightmare. For my first, we wanted professional baby pictures, because that’s what every good parent does, right? So he was only 3 months old, and not even smiling on his own yet or holding his head up good by himself. So they had to lean him against this cardboard-looking thing, that didn’t seem stable to my helicopter-mom senses, and the photographer had to literally tickle his cheek to make him look like he was half-smiling before she could snap a good photo without blurry arms waving in front of a drooling chin. And of course, my son got hungry right in the middle, though I had already tried to feed him beforehand. It was so stressful! When we had our second son, I said, “No pro pics this time!” and just snapped a couple of candid shots at home when he was cackling for real and was old enough to sit up on his own.
Oh, boy. Professional photos can be so hard! I’ve just decided we’ll go with individual pictures for now and if we happen to get a group shot, okay, but no stress.
Great post. Sometimes all you can do is laugh!
Truly, I think that’s all I can do most of the time. 🙂 Thanks so much for reading.