Magazine ((exclusive)) - Allison Carr Mutha

My daughter eventually handed me back the phone. She had moved on to the next photo: a crisp, perfect shot of our dog sleeping. She smiled, said “Puppy,” and ran off to destroy the living room.

I watched her over the rim of my coffee mug. She swiped past the curated shots—the ones where the light is golden, her hair is brushed, and she is smiling not because she is happy, but because I was making barnyard animal sounds behind the lens. She paused on a blurry one. I had taken it at 6:00 AM on a Tuesday. She is in her diaper, yogurt in her hair, screaming because the blue cup was, tragically, the wrong blue cup. In the frame, my own hand is visible, reaching in to wipe her face, a smudge of my thumbprint on the lens. allison carr mutha magazine

So here is my prayer for us, the Muthas : May we stop trying to polish the lens. May we stop comparing our blooper reels to other people’s highlight reels. May we see the blur for what it is—motion, chaos, love, the frantic beautiful mess of raising humans while still trying to be one ourselves. My daughter eventually handed me back the phone

I think about that photo my daughter found. The “sad” one. In it, I am not performing. I am not trying to be a “good mom” for the ‘gram. I am just being a mom. My hand is dirty. The light is fluorescent. The moment is ugly. And yet, that is the photo she was drawn to. Not the Easter portrait. Not the beach sunset. The Tuesday morning apocalypse. I watched her over the rim of my coffee mug

Why? Because it was real. Because even at two, she knows the difference between a smile and a truth.

I looked at the blurry Tuesday photo one more time. She was right. It wasn’t sad. It was just the truest thing I’ve ever taken. A smudge on the lens. A whole world inside it.