Wednesday, October 11, 2006

The incredible shrinking mommy

Ok. So everyone is pregnant. MOM-101 just posted her brilliant photo-essay announcement, and it seems everyone in the Please Send Vodka forum has been totaling tea for months now.

While I am wildly jumping up and down and wishing I had enough money to send extravagant layettes to each and every one of them (and also wishing they'd all invite me over so I can make pictures of their wonderful, beautiful families) I am also a little sad.

The sadness is partly that I am not pregnant despite "trying" for a year, and in part because I see each passing minute as another in which my baby goes away. I'm a the-glass-is-half-empty AND containing-sea-water-on-the-way-to-a-desert sort of person.

Some of you might have gathered that in addition to being a pessimist I am also a photographer. Although I try to see the world in as many ways as possible, the first way is usually through the lens of my camera. Lately the camera has been tabled.

That is because Ittybit is firmly in the "NO pishers!" side of the camp. Although the message was slow in getting to me (notice all of the less-than-thrilled facial expressions of late), it has gotten through, loud and clear, thanks to her father's more frequent intervention and the fact that her constant scowl-y faces trained in my direction whenever I lift the lens have recently been replaced by very loud shrieks of displeasure.

So I've had to turn my camera toward objects, hoping to wait out the storm until the day comes when I am welcomed, camera in hand, back into the playroom.

Of course this means I have to torture myself. I have to revisit my clothing project; the one in which I had decided to document her clothes as she outgrows them. It never really went anywhere when I first got the idea because, after all, clothes are merely objects and I am interested in photographs of people.

The results are never satisfying.

But here I am torturing myself anyway, sorting through bags of stored clothes destined to wind up at Goodwill, and weeping openly as I relive the day in my mind - a seeming eternity ago - that we took her home from the hospital.

So I must stop it. I must pick myself up off of this mopebox and get on with the celebration. All this crying is fogging up my lens.

3 comments:

Nicole said...

Oh man, toyfoto. I'm so flipping sorry that there's not anything I can do for you. I wish like hell I could wrinkle my nose and knock you up. I wish that so much. I hope it happens and I hope it happens soon.

kimmyk said...

Ovaries can be fickle can't they?

I guess the important thing is you're trying.

I often sit and think about how my son was just a baby yesterday and today when i look for my baby, I find a 14 year old 6'0 tall young man. How does that happen overnight?

GIRL'S GONE CHILD said...

I too will be sending fertile thoughts and rubbing the earth for good ovary-tastic vibes I too am chomping to get pregnant again, but, um, that makes one of me. Unfortunatley, it takes two.

I love the idea of project clothing, er clothing project. I think you should keep at it :)