View from the Prairie Box

This kid’s got me. For almost ten years solid, she’s had my heart and now our stories are woven together forever.

I have a calendar from Livia’s first year of life that I used to mark all her “firsts.” Across the weeks in the month of June 2004 there is one word: waiting.

First week of June. Waiting.
Second week of June. W a i t i n g.
Third week of June. W a i t i n g.

Then during the fourth week we got the call, the go-ahead and on June 26 Livia was laid in our arms for the first time. June 26 is our Gotcha Day, lovingly referred to as “Livia Day” in our house. And if you think we celebrate June 26 then you’d be right.

I recently came across this calendar and smiled upon those weeks of waiting. Compared to international adoption where you get a picture of your child and then wait a really long time for placement, those weeks seem short indeed. But honestly, the heart knows nothing of a short wait. Each month, each week, each day, each hour can feel very long when you are waiting for something so specific and so specially good like a child. Time seems to unfold in a mysterious fashion and the only thing I can compare adoption waiting to so that the general public can understand is to ask if you remember your wedding date.

Do you remember the weeks and months leading up to that day? Do you recall people asking you about your planning and how things were going and sometimes you honestly couldn’t concoct an answer because the whole process was very much “hurry up and wait”? Though you’ve found a florist and ordered the flowers, you can’t actually pick them up until the the day of the wedding. You’ve got an appointment to get your hair done and you’ve got the final fitting arranged for your wedding gown, but again, you can’t do those final things until your wedding is actually happening. So in the meantime, it’s hurry up and wait.

That’s very much what life is life for a parent waiting for a child to come home.

And then when you’re a foster parent, there are a few more twists and turns to expect.

It’s still hurry up and wait, but with a few major caveats. Hurry up and wait… and don’t get too excited because this kid might not ever set foot in your door after all. Or hurry up and wait… but be prepared to fall in love with this child while at the same time cheering on his biological parents and preparing for the day their family is reunited and your family lovingly grieves the loss. Or hurry up and wait… but there will be no welcoming baby showers or gifts freely given because no one expects this child to stay. Or hurry up and wait… but start tentatively planning for questioning looks and unique conversations you will have when this child is actually part of your family. Not only will you need to fairly represent him as a foster child, but you know you’ll actively try to present your own personal longing for permanency while balancing the reality of the tenuous nature of fostering. Deep deep down in your heart you have hopes and dreams, but they aren’t allowed to take root just yet and you need to give lip service to working in the system for as long as this case calls for. So mama, hurry up and wait already.

Waiting.
W a i t i n g.
W a i t i n g.

Oh, the intricate joys and pains of the waiting process.

Happy anniversary, Jeremy Tredway! I love you.

My little space on the world wide web isn’t getting much attention these days. It’s not that I don’t have time really, but my creativity is often expressed outside the internet realm. It’s summer time. And for this freelancing photographer and part-time SAHM, it means I’m here full-time with the spectacular Livia Raine. Our days are filled with lots of face-to-face time, which can be entirely fabulous or entirely draining depending on the moment.

We do Mommy School in the summers on most mornings. Not only is it a way to encourage personal and academic growth, it also serves as a way to keep me from answering the “I’m bored” statement (which is really a demanding question, isn’t it?) and thus being cast immediately in the role of cruise ship director where I plan activity after activity to keep my only-child occupied. No one needs that. And yet, Liv doesn’t have a sibling to play with, so really, Mommy School helps us out—for a few hours at least. We read, we solve problems, we do math, we write, we play. It’s all good. And all the structure inevitably encourages more independent playtime later. Win-win.

There are those summer activities everyone wants to participate in. Camps and clubs. Hours logged at the swimming pool. Park playdates and evening strolls with ice cream. Museums and road trips. We’ll get some of those in as well.

I find the transition to summer to be challenging. I love the solid assurance of the normal 8:00am-3:00pm school day. Life gets mapped out in neat little chunks and I can fit my ESFJ self into it. On Wednesdays I have bible study, which means I get to study the word of God, might get to lead the study, have lots of girl time and drink hot coffee. Some Mondays include Moms in Prayer and then it’s like a smaller repeat of bible study days. And in between I’ll take on a photo job here and there, edit the shoots, have lunch with my mom or other women, and arrange all the usual things it takes to keep a household running. By 3pm I am All Liv All the Time. And I eat it up. It fulfills both the scheduler in me and the spontaneous part of my personality that is far more P than J.

Summer, well… Summer changes all that. As I said, lots of face time. Lots of free time. A lot less adult time. I get a little lost for the first few weeks as I struggle to gain my footing. I ask myself why I feel so off-kilter, why it feels like I’m wearing a shirt that just. doesn’t. fit. right. Is it the tag? Is the neck too tight? Is it a loose thread? No, it’s just summer. Free-wheeling, kid time, unstructured summer. And eventually I adjust. I build the structure I need and go out to coffee dates a lot more. I find other moms who are at home and I inundate them with texts and Facebook messages and phone calls until I’m satisfied. I dream of the next date night with Jeremy and am excited when it rolls around.

I might even write a little. I might shoot a lot of pictures. I might get creative. And I might show some of it here.

Then again, it’s summer. So I might not.

Peonies are one of my absolute favorite flowers, and these are shared from my parents’ garden.

I’m a member of a Facebook page or two where photographers can invite other professionals to critique their work. One guy recently complained about how some folks don’t have a Facebook page for their business, so how can you see their work and then determine if their critique bears any merit or not? It’s a fair question in a way. For sure I take advice from photographers who’s work I admire and weed out the stuff I deem uninteresting or simply not skilled. Then again, I don’t have a Facebook business page either so what do I know?! (Said tongue in cheek. An online portfolio is in the works. The cobbler’s children have no shoes, you know what I mean.)

What I do know is this: clients should hire photographers based on their work. Peruse a Facebook page, a blog, a professional portfolio. Look at what they do and then hire them if you like it. If you don’t like it, don’t hire them.

What we all like is so subjective. I know what I like and I shoot that. When I start shooting what I do not like, I lose my creative spark and passion for my art. I am finding more and more photographers who are slaves to trends—and I find that pretty boring. I won’t be shooting sexy senior portraits or Anne Geddes baby images or engaged couples in positions that would make our grandmothers blush. Instead I will shoot families that love each other. I will shoot a mother looking adoringly into her newborn’s face. I will capture a quirky toddler laughing and doing his own thing and holding up dirty fingers for my camera. I will capture real moments. Life-giving moments. Real world experiences and memories for a lifetime. I want to be there, documenting the gritty moments as well as the posed ones that look kind of nice on the mantle in the living room.

I love photography. I love people. I love sunlight. Critique is helpful in moving forward as an artist and someone else’s opinion bears merit if I let it. But I have my own eye, my own perspective, and I aim to use it.

Livia and I had dinner last night at a park we hadn’t visited in, oh, seven years or so. Recalling our fun visit with friends, I had her sit on the tunnel where I recalled a photo opp a long time ago. Here she is at age ten, and below is the shot from age two (almost three).

The learning curve on gerbils is interesting. It’s definitely not rocket science here, rather it’s a learn-as-you-go process. For example, these little guys like to tunnel, which means they’ll kick up all their bedding and we’ll inevitably have cardboard chips or paper pieces outside their cage (and on table or floor or whatever). I bought bedding with lavender bits because, ooh!, it smells nice! But then what I earned in positive odors got replaced by messiness. This bedding shoots straight through the bars of their cage and, ugh, is ending up everywhere. The gerbils also seem to like to pee on the upper levels of their house, not so much on the bedding. I refuse to be a gerbil pee-wiper (in addition to my other shall we say “low” tasks as in the home) so I think this simply means we’ll have to clean their cage more often.

But look at these pics! Livia learned to clean the cage last weekend and life already seems sweeter. She puts Shiloh in his kennel (Shiloh REALLY REALLY loves the gerbils if you know what I mean), Vice in the ball and Whiskers in his wheel car, and then we collaborated to make a new home for the rodents.

In the past few days I have laughed more than once as I fed the fish—after hollering, “Has anyone fed the fish today?”—or refilled Shiloh’s water dish or dropped a handful of hay pellets into the gerbils’ cage. This is not exactly the mothering I envisioned for my life, but you know what? I don’t mind it. I like taking care of little beings and if God hasn’t given us more human chilluns to love at the moment, then I can tend to these little beasts in my home.

Fair warning, Whiskers and Vice, you are collectively the low man on the totem pole in this house. If/when respite or foster or adoptive or bio kids show up, you’ll need to start speaking out loud to get any attention from me.

My big brother very sweetly bought me a card and a little pot of tulips for Mother’s Day. On Sunday the buds were so tightly closed that I couldn’t tell what color they’d be, but they opened up charmingly by my kitchen window within a few days. (Thank you, Adam! This gift is making me very happy.)

I’m ridiculously in awe of spring this year. Or is it every year, I can’t tell. Jeremy is frequently subjected to my exclamations of appreciation for all the GREEN. One tree out front appears much larger and more shade-providing than last year and I can’t get enough of the way sunlight filters through its branches all day long, casting flickering shadows on my living room carpet while I work in the next room. And there’s another tree in the back yard whose green branches fill up my view as I walk into the kitchen. I don’t feel like I live on the plains this spring. With a little imagination I live in the rolling hills of California or Georgia and my acreage—just dreaming here—is covered with trees. Livia is even getting in on the gushing action. We drive through an area called Wilderness Park frequently and I often draw her attention to the way the trees are changing and filling out as the seasons change. The last time we drove this path I was distracted by texting and from the backseat I hear a voice that perfectly echoed my own thoughts. If nothing else I hope I’ve given her an eye that utterly delights in God’s handiwork.

Thank you, God, for warm weather once more and a world that is changing in color all around us. Thank you that I now have something new to photograph. Thank you for not leaving us in the cold deadness of winter. Thank you for spring and the anticipation of summer. Thank you that school is almost out and the pace of our days will change. Thank you for rest. Thank you for this season of renewal. Thank you for your constancy and goodness and love, for every good and perfect gift comes from you.