On the Other Side of the Lens

For those of you who know me well, you know that I love my camera.  No, I'm not a professional, but over the years I've taken thousands of pictures of my children.  I put together a yearly book of them for the inlaws and ourselves.  I documented our NICU journey through photographs.  Of course, I also document everything else as well.  

But if you pan through my flickr gallery, you'll find one thing missing....

ME!  

So I've asked Joe to get behind the camera once in a while so that some day, when my children are grown, they don't turn around and ask me, Mama? Where were you?  

Most of those pictures don't get posted here...they don't even make it to Facebook.  I grimace when I see myself, but someday, they'll have these pictures to remember me, just as I remember my own mother through photographs.  

But the sun was just right this weekend...the foliage was out...and I was in front of the camera, if only for a fleeting glimpse...and I love these pictures more than anything.  I feel so alive in them.  I look happy...and maybe because I am.  I'm finding myself in a place I like a lot right now.  I hope Patrick (and Maura too!) can cherish them when he grows up too!!