Miss Seventeen’s flowers from graduation,

waiting in the windowsill to be pressed.

(Posted late, but taken on day 143.)

Today happens to be one of my very best friend’s birthday, the Cara I mentioned in a post last week.

In honor of her 28th birthday today, I present a flash mob dance that Cara participated in late last week.  She’s the one with the long dark hair giving that Beyonce song a little something extra.  I’m mainly posting this for all of our mutual friends who read my blog, mainly because I expect texts from Christan, Brandy, Kelly, Lindsey, Caroline, Kimberly, etc. that say “OH MY GOSH, THAT IS EXACTLY WHAT CARA WOULD BE DOING IN ASHEVILLE A FEW DAYS BEFORE HER BIRTHDAY.”  Enjoy, my mutual friends.  She’s the same Cara we’ve always known and loved.

Everybody needs a friend they can live vicariously through, now don’t they?

Ashley, again, on yet another wedding day.

Surveying the reception while contemplating how we could

get on the dance floor ourselves without looking unprofessional.

Do you know how hard it is to photograph wedding receptions

and never get to actually dance?

(Posted late, but taken on day 142.)

My photography assistant (and best friend), Ashley,

holding a baby doll in an effort to pacify a flower girl

right before her nap time.

Ashley has a lot of strange duties on wedding days.

(Posted late, but taken on day 141.)

Using my lunch break to shop for roses for Miss Seventeen,

on the day of her high school graduation.

(Posted late, but taken on day 140.)

A couple of nights ago, as I was helping Miss Fourteen clean up her bedroom, I discovered that I somehow missed a small drawer of hair bows when I was cleaning out the fabulous fives’ items before my foster children moved in.  I didn’t want to make a big deal about them, so I quietly gathered them up in two handfuls and headed out of the room to find something to save them in.

– — –

One of the most gripping things about my foster care journey has been figuring out what to do with the physical remnants of my time with the fabulous five.  Do I take their pictures down from around my house?  Should I redecorate the bedroom that is now occupied by two teenage girls and a three year old boy?  Should I donate their clothes or hold onto them in hopes that Angelina, Juliana and Olivia will come back into my life one day soon and need the summer outfits I had already bought for them?

– — –

This evening, Miss Seventeen will graduate from high school.  After the ceremony ends, I’m hosting a little graduation party that her case worker and my college girls will attend.  When it is over, we’ll pick up the last of her belongings from the foster care home she and her son, Mr. Three Year Old, have been living in during the school week and they will go from living with me just on the weekends to being in my house and care seven days a week.  My life is about to become even fuller.

And yet I’m still missing something, three little somethings in particular.

I read something recently that suggested that motherhood tends to consist of laundry, cleaning up messes and fixing food for a never ending line of young “customers” that live in our homes.  The little tastes I’ve had of motherhood make me a believer in the trinity of laundry, messes and food, but it doesn’t feel like real motherhood to me until my heart gets involved.   And that is both a blessing and a curse when it comes to loving things that come and go in your life.

– — –

As I walked out of the bedroom holding the hair bows, Miss Fourteen saw them and said “Were those the little girls’ bows?”  I told her they were and she looked at my face for a second and then said “You must really miss them.”  I nodded my head and said I was going to the bathroom, mainly because I didn’t want her to see tears in my eyes.  I don’t want her to ever think that I loved something more than her or that I would trade her in if I had the chance.  I wouldn’t.  I love these foster children of mine.  My heart has made room to love them, too.

– — –

I do not mourn when the seasons change outside my bedroom window.  I don’t collapse in tears when I see winter appearing in frosted glass and bare branches.  I don’t grieve seasons changing because I know it’s just a season.  Spring will be back again next year, followed by summer, chased by autumn and completed by winter.  I don’t fear a season ending because I know that, if I wait long enough, it will begin again.

But what if you thought spring was never coming back around?  What if you packed up little hair bows and dresses and baby dolls not knowing if you would ever, ever get the chance to hold the little girls who had held them again?  Standing in the middle of my new season, with an imminent high school graduate, precocious fourteen year old and rowdy three year old by my side, I cannot fathom that I may never again have those three little sisters in my arms as well.  I am doing my very best to enjoy my new life season of summer for all it has to offer, but I still miss spring and the way I fixed those little girls’ hair in the mornings.

I am trying my hardest to love three new lives while my own heart reminds me of just how hard it can hurt when seasons change.

I don’t want to let down these three new hearts that live in my home.  But no matter how hard I try, I can’t forget the three that lived there before, either.  I don’t understand why God won’t let me have those three little girls in my life right now.  I get the sense He’s protecting me from something, but still… I miss them.   And so, even though what I want to do is get in my car and go find those little girls I’m instead going to go wrap graduation gifts for what is here and now in this season.  Face forward, gaze focused on the here and now not what used to be because I sure don’t want to miss this chance to love something new that needs loving.

“Happiness feels a lot like sorrow.

Let it be, you can’t make it come or go.

But you are gone — not for good, but for now

Gone for now feels a lot like gone for good.”

Happiness, The Fray

At Miss Seventeen’s high school for “Class Night.”

She received a scholarship.  Who is proud?

This mama!

(Posted late, but taken on day 139.)

The next four days of my life are going to be awfully busy between photographing two weddings, watching Miss Seventeen graduate from high school and continuing to wear my mother down with requests for her to watch this video I found of a pet piglet named Kingston. Internet, if you think that I’m not going to one day own a small piglet as a pet just to be able to capture my mother’s reaction on video, you obviously do not know me well enough.  I don’t care how expensive pet piglets are; the price is right when it comes to seeing my mother’s face when I show her the newest member of the family.

Speaking of videos of my mother, I have one from Mother’s Day to share with you but I am not allowed to post it on my blog until said mother views the video and approves of it.  Please don’t hold your breath because, once she finds out that I kept the camera rolling after she thought I turned it off while she complained about how I always want to talk about her hatred of pork on the blog, I think she’s going to say it’s a no go.  Perhaps I can negotiate a deal where I at least offer a written transcript of the video because, believe you me, there are some real gems from my mother in that minute and forty seven seconds of prime Mother’s Day footage.

I thought it might be a good idea to spend last night trying to rest before my upcoming weekend, but then I happened to catch a glimpse of Miss Fourteen’s bedroom not long after I arrived home from work and all hopes of being a normal 26 year old vanished into thin air.  I’m trying to think of words that would adequately describe the display of empty water bottles and tubes of Lip Smackers I found waiting for me under her bed but my knowledge of the English language isn’t expansive enough.  I spent the next 1.5 hour of my life saying things like “This is a broom!  Here in America we use it to sweep the floors!  You’re going to love it!” only to have her look at it in confusion and, get ready for this, announce that she’s allergic to brooms.

Unfortunately for Miss Fourteen, the recent evening I spent in the emergency room after touching her sulfa antibiotic and having an allergic reaction that cost me seven hours of my life and $250.00 in co-pays was still fresh on my mind so I was willing to take my chances with her and the broom.  I’m sure you will be pleased to know that we experienced a medical mystery when she didn’t fall over dead after sweeping her bedroom floor.

Once our precious bonding time of cleaning was completed (“OH YES YOU ARE GOING TO HANG YOUR CLEAN CLOTHES IN THE CLOSET”) we ventured into the living room to enjoy a microwaved chicken pot pie (her) and saltine crackers (me) and an episode of The Secret Life of the American Teenager which resulted in me being asked by Miss Fourteen to give the definition of a certain adult activity that was mentioned on the show because I am too naive to know what that show was about and to prevent her from watching it on Netflix before it was too late and, frankly, I think she already knew exactly what it was but just wanted to see me squirm whilst trying to describe it to her because what better revenge on your foster mother after she made you actually carry your dirty clothes to the hamper in the laundry room.

In other words, HELP ME BABY JESUS FOR I AM TOO YOUNG FOR THIS.

I was already in bed, half-asleep, when I realized

I had forgotten to take a picture for the daily peek.

And so, I took a picture of the light in the hallway

because, well, I wasn’t getting out of bed.

Laaaaaaaaaaaame.

(Posted late, but taken on day 138.)

While we’re on the subject of physical beauty, I have something else to say (imagine that!).

I’ve thought about writing this post for well over a year now, but I’ve just never sat down and written it.  In light of my post yesterday, I think now is the perfect time for me to tell you about this belief I have and this hope I hold onto.  Are you ready?

If I ever am married to someone, I hope that when they’re asked what they like best about me, their answer has nothing to do with how I look.

Before you think I’m crazy, let me qualify that statement.  I think we should care about what state our bodies are in.  I think that being overweight is not a good thing, especially when it comes to physical health.  I am not advocating for “eat whatever you want and celebrate your resulting weight!”

I just don’t want to be loved for how I look.

For some reason, ever since my pre-teen years, I have been aware that one of the quickest things that can change in life is our appearance.  We grow old, our face sags, our hair turns gray.  It’s inevitable.   And, if most of us marry in our youth and actually stay married, it’s likely that we’ll look far different 37 years into our marriage than what we looked like walking down the aisle.   I don’t want my husband to be enthralled by my looks because I can’t guarantee my looks will stay the same, much less improve over time.

I want him to love me because I want to feed hungry babies.  I want him to love me because I purposely walk through puddles whenever I’m wearing my wellies.  I want him to love the way I write and how my heart somehow comes through my fingers and taps out words on a computer screen.  I want him to love the fact that I chose single parenting at age 26 not because I wanted to fill my free time but because I had free hands that could be filled.

I want him to love my southern accent, my hatred for ants and the way I sing in the car when there’s no one there to hear me.  I want him to love the way I try so hard to cook but end up burning things because I get too busy talking.  I want him to love my intelligence, my humor and my inability to keep from crying when I think about the fact that, one day, Snuggles and Cuddles will die.  I want him to love me because I wish I had a big enough house to take every little motherless thing into it.

I understand wanting to look attractive and I don’t think there’s anything wrong with it.  My cousin Marisa inherited my mother’s stunning genes and I don’t think I’ve ever once seen Marisa not look absolutely gorgeous in whatever she’s wearing (including sweatpants).  I don’t think it’s wrong that Marisa uses a curling iron to fix her hair in the morning and likes to wear jewelry.  I actually love that about her and wish I had more of her and my mom in me.

But I still want to be loved for who I am, not how I look.  I read Nie’s blog and admired her marriage before the plane crash that nearly killed her but now I admire it even more because the fact that 80% of her face and body was severely burned didn’t make her husband fall out of love with her.  She will never again look the way she did before that crash, but he still loves her like he did before that crash.  Apparently, his love for her wasn’t based on her appearance but something deeper than that.

I don’t have all this figured out.  When I look through the lens of my camera while photographing a bride, I look for what angle makes her physical appearance the most flattering.  When I look at pictures of myself, I prefer the ones that show me with cute make-up and even cuter hair.  I can’t deny that all of us are attracted to outward beauty and that I don’t want a future husband of mine to find me beautiful.  I do want to be desired, attractive and maybe even beautiful.

I just hope he finds more than that when he looks at me because, from what I can tell, beauty fades awfully quickly.