It was taken when Brit was 6 and Tay was 2. I think it was our first and only professional family picture. I used to have it hanging in a very prominant place on the wall downstairs. After the boys moved in and we were waiting to finalize their adoption, I would look at that picture a lot. It always brought on a lot of different emotions.
*I realized that our family would never again look the same as in that picture. That was a wonderful feeling but also a bit sad. Our girls were just starting to be independent and now we were bringing in not just one, but three boys. What would our family look like now? Would we wish we were just the four of us again?
*I also thought about the boys and how they should be in our family picture now. To be honest, after going from 2 incomes down to one and going from 2 kids to 5, we just didn't have the money for a professional picture. We had a few snap shots but it just isn't quite the same. It was actually our realitor who provided us with our first "full" family picture. We were invited to a customer appreciation dinner put on by the reality company. Because it was free food and lots of fun stuff for the kids, we went. While there, the realitors had one of the photography stores in town come and take a picture of each family. I was so proud to have all of us together in that picture. Two years later, we were visiting family in Texas and had the opportunity to have a professional picture taken with all of Grandma Connie's family. We also had one of just our family of 7. It's the one that now hangs in the prominant place downstairs. I was so excited to finally have a professional photo of our whole family that I could display!
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So since Christmas of 2007, we have had our new family picture proudly hanging in our house. But as I came across the older picture, I was trying to decide if I could hang it up again. Not in the "family picture" spot but with other pictures. I know some people would say that of course we could hang it up. After all, it's a picture I love of my family. But I also know that I have a son who has feelings, too. I wondered what he would think every day of having to visually confront the fact that he was not part of our original family. Other people would say to just put the old picture away. We don't need to see it all the time anyway since we have the new one. I was really confused as to what would be the best for all of us. Sometimes I'm selfish but one of my goals in life is to help my kids grow up to be as emotionally healthy as possible. And sometimes that means my desires take a backseat. I really wanted to ask Riley what he thought about the old picture but I knew he would probably just respond with what he thought I wanted to hear.
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As I was hanging pictures, Riley and I talked and looked at lots of different pictures. I showed him a picture of my mom's family that had been taken about seven years ago. We visited about who was in the picture. My grandma and grandpa, my mom and dad, my sister and her husband, my uncle and aunt and their two kids, my other uncle and Steve, Brittney and I. We talked about those people for a while and then we discussed who wasn't in the picture; my niece Aubrey and nephew Coby, my cousin's husband Luke and their son Josh, and Riley, Taylor, Zeke and Anthony. We thought about how those people are part of our family now but they weren't went the picture was taken. We discussed how grandma and grandpa aren't alive anymore to be in our new family picture but we have lots of people in the new picture. We realized together that pictures are just a view of what life looks like right at a certain moment, a glimpse of life as it is but not as it remains.
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So now if you come over to our house and go downstairs, you'll definitely see our beautiful family picture. But off to the side, where you might not see it right away, proudly hangs the picture of our family of the past.
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