Friday

I was on Facebook the other day and somehow got to a view of my friendship with someone. There was no picture of my and this friend. I looked at another of my friendships, and again no picture.

Again, and again, and again.

Finally I found one with a picture, but it wasn’t of my friend and me. It was a picture of our kids.

And then another, but the picture was at least 2 decades old!

I don’t have all the friends in the world…especially not on Facebook. I have always been a quality over quantity kind of girl, probably a symptom of shyness (my mother would say it has to do more with my high standards, but that is for another day.).

Regardless of how many friends I have or where I have them, it made me sad that there is no proof…there are no pictures, not even on Facebook.

But why?

Is one of us always the photographer? Do we only take pictures when the kids are around? Why aren’t we in those?  Have we gotten to the point where life is no longer worthy of being captured in photographs? There are still memories to be made, right?

I don’t want to be one of those moms who are never in the picture because I am not perfect. I want my kids to remember what I looked like when they thought I was beautiful – even if I don’t think I am beautiful.

I want them to know that I had friends, not as a matter of conquest or popularity, but as a token of who supported me and who I supported, a reminder of who loved them, too, a chronicle of the places and people in their lives, of what shaped our family, of who I am as person.

Maybe, it is rooted in my being an only child, so there are not family or sibling pictures either. But I want my kids to know that friendship and support are important, that things like distance and time and life are surmountable – because of, with the help of, and worth the effort for – Friends.

I am not sure how to get pictures of me with friends without seeming a little creepy. I don’t want over posed portraits, just candid moments in time and you can’t force that. 

So, I suppose I need to be better about bringing my camera along. I need to be better about asking someone to take a picture. I need to be better about making time for friends – time that is meaningful and picture worthy.

And that is Friday.