“What we have here, are not extremely late 2019/2020 holiday cards, but very early 2021 holiday cards,” I tell myself so convincingly that even *I* almost believe myself. But the truth is, the last few years I went off the rails in the holiday card department. And that’s ok. Or, so I tell myself…
For years, I was the annual holiday card Queen. Every year our family pictures and holiday cards would be stamped and land in family and friends’ mailboxes all over the US before Christmas. In 2018, I had even planned so far ahead that when my daughter landed in the hospital in November, I was still able to seal and deliver cards while parked next to her hospital bed while she slept. Impressing many who probably opened them thinking, “Isn’t her daughter in the hospital?? How does she do it?” Yes, yes, she was in the hospital, and I still have no earthly idea how I did it. And then as if 2018 could not end any worse, 2019 hit proving to me that yes, yes it could get worse, and I should probably stop asking that question. But apparently, NOT learning my lesson, in strolled 2020 steamrolling me into a spiritually flattened pancake. I waved my white flag in defeat and again, another year went by without holiday cards.
But like a bad Chumbawamba song, I get knocked down, but I get up again, and here we were, January 2021. Getting the <you know what> show back on the road with a new plan of attack – to get holiday cards done at the beginning of the year. Come hell or high water, we were going to do this! But first, the most important part of family photos: Deciding what to wear.
Scheduling family photos finally gave me an excuse to place an order for a cute dress that kept teasing me through an Amazon ad. If you could envision a woman raising her fist in the air and yelling into the heavens, “Damn you, targeted ads! Why do you know me so well?!” (Purely a rhetorical question, I work in marketing and create targeted ads so I know how this all works, all to well. You think of something and it appears because marketers can look inside your brain and soul and we just know what you want– duh!) Because we didn’t have anywhere fancy to go these days, it was time to finally place that order in hopes that real live fancy events will one day be a “thing” and maybe I could get a few uses out of a dress. And in good universe fashion, my dress arrived in time, fit well, and would be the foundation of the other outfits for the shoot.
When the kids were little, I could easily pick out their outfits without much protest. But then they grew up and often I wonder, why do we teach our children to speak and who let them form their own opinions and who taught them to backtalk to their mother?? UGH!
My requirements for the fashionista teenager were that her dress be ‘Family Photo Appropriate’ and approved by her parents. Easier said than done. In typical procrastination family photo style, we lugged ourselves out into the real world to find outfits the night before the photo shoot browsing the finest selection JCPenney, TJ Maxx and Ross had to offer. Luckily, the youngest tried on two dress options and settled on a cute off-shouldered pink dress, and after a witch-hunt that would have made a politician proud, we finally found light pink shoes that matched and fit. Sort of. Ok, maybe they were a size or two too big, but she would grow into them in a few years (in time for the next set of photos!), and she could get by wearing them long enough for a few snapshots.
The teen, on the other hand, announcing as we left our last store empty-handed, “Well, I don’t have an outfit to wear so I’m not going. Just sign my name on the card, ‘In the Spirit of Me.’”
*Drama.*
But we came home, and she settled on a never-worn dress hiding in the back of my closet and we agreed she could wear her favorite deathtrap high heels.
But then, T-minus 10 minutes to blast off of the JCPenney Delta Photo Rocketship.
Me to Kiddo: “Is that a blue streak in your hair??” I asked in motherly horror.
Kiddo: “Yes, but I only put a little bit of hair chalk in, and I washed it out,” the 9-year-old responds in a way that in her head she knows she was just busted, but is too stubborn to admit it and thus, is going down with the sinking ship.
Me: “You did blue hair chalk…in the front of your head…right before we are leaving to get our family photos done??”
<Clearly this gift from Santa Claus wasn’t completely thought through and, as usual, came back to bite me in the you-know-where.>
Kiddo: “I washed it out!” she again exclaims defensively as she sticks her hair under the bathroom sink to try to wash out and salvage her fashion fop au.
Me: “Wait, is that stain on your dress too??”
Kiddo: “Oh yeah, I was eating a Nutella sandwich and dropped a little…”
Me: “AHHHH!”
Honestly, I didn’t know if she was going to make it. At this point, I didn’t know if I was going to make it either.
—-
Thirty minutes later, we arrived on time, and everyone smiled and posed beautifully. The shoes only flew off the youngest daughter’s feet twice during the photo shoot and a couple times to and from the car. My oldest wore my dress better (she always does). And my husband, showed up without protest in what I told him to wear. Or maybe out of duress (definitely duress). And we did our obligatory family chokehold photo as seen below. Why I didn’t make this photo the front of our card, I’m not sure… It truly embodies the spirit of our family dynamics.
Sending holiday cards is a bit of a lost art nowadays. But as time keeps chugging along, updating the friends and family address labels is a stark mix of good memories and heartache. Sometimes you add new friends to the list. Some people have moved to another state. Some people have married (or remarried). Some people have divorced. Some people have left this world completely and we realize, they really are gone forever…
Between address labels and looking back at years of other annual photos, it’s really amazing to see how much can change in a short amount of time. One minute you’re reminiscing about the first time you took your daughter for baby photos and the next minute you’re signing her up for high school and letting her steal a dress out of your closet for family photos. A bittersweet reminder that the world keeps on spinning whether we want it to slow down or speed up, and that we should get better about taking real photos so we have things to look back on. Good or bad. A little moment in time captured forever.
So here we are. We survived another year and we could finally close the door on family portraits for another year.
Or three…
