Every picture, they say, tells a story, and so here is ours.
This picture tells the story of our family: three humans, two dogs (here in spirit), one more (human) on the way. This picture captures one of the dwindling moments of our current family of three, a true snapshot of our life as it currently stands, among the oranges and yellows and browns of fall in western North Carolina. This picture represents our abundant joy and immeasurable love for the young person in the center of it, an unstoppable, irrepressible girl named Mayla Ruth, whose joy and curiosity, it seems, radiate from the thin, toothy smile painting her face.
This picture captures one moment from one day of the combined thousands of our lives, one we will, no doubt, look back on in years with a remember-those-days smile. This picture will, and does, make us happy.
But this picture does not tell our full story, because no picture, even those worth a thousand words, can: It is necessarily limited by the time and place it was taken, by the disposition on the faces of the people in it, by the circumstances surrounding it.
This sometimes unrealistic portrayal is, of course, exacerbated by social media, which often and predictably depicts the best version of the person, family, or company it represents; it is natural to hide the less desirable, to mask the parts you don’t want the public to see. But those flaws, those vulnerabilities, those missteps—they are no less part of the story, no less important to its telling, than the triumphs.
So. Here is the story this picture, one of my favorites from a gallery by a wonderful photographer named Rachel, doesn’t tell.
Perhaps most significantly, it does not represent the impossible challenge of trying to wrangle a 19-month-old to sit in one spot long enough to take a picture, and, if and when she finally does, look at a camera and smile. She would, of course, much rather spend time outside wandering, picking up leaves and rocks and flowers, pointing at the creek. The fact that this picture exists at all is a testament to Rachel’s photography (and stuffed giraffe).
This picture does not tell the story of how, after college, I was lost and confused and living on the other side of the country before, as so many lost and confused people do, moving home. This picture does not tell the story of how my life changed, forever, when I met the woman on the right side of it.
This picture doesn’t tell our love story, of the walks on the beach under the stars, of the impromptu dancing to Leon Bridges on condo balconies, of the challenges navigating a (relatively) long-distance relationship: the anticipatory drives to each other on Friday afternoons and reluctant goodbyes on Sunday night and sad Monday mornings. This picture does not tell the story of leaving everything and almost everyone we know and moving to another state to build a life together, of our engagement and marriage in the mountains, of the cozy one-bedroom apartment by the river and the simple rhythms and major adjustments of life as a newly married couple.
This picture does not capture the intense joy of finding out we were going to become parents or the intense worry generated by navigating a pregnancy in the throes of a pandemic, of the hours alone in the parking lots of medical offices and birth centers. It does not tell the story of the ceaseless lows and highs of the birth of our first child, of watching the person you love most endure hours of pain for the ultimate reward.
This picture does not tell the story of the first days, weeks, months of caring for a newborn, of the significant adjustments to our life and marriage, of the inevitable tension caused by trying to figure out parenthood. It does not capture our long, challenging journey to feed Mayla, of the long nights Carly spent alone in the dark of Mayla’s room, rocking her in the chair and attempting to get her as much food as possible, of the worry we had when we discovered she dropped to the sixth percentile for weight when she was three months old. This picture does not capture the mental and physical strain of life with less sleep than we needed, of listening to our baby scream into the late hours of the night when we were all exhausted.
This picture does not tell the story of nearly changing careers to better support our family, of the difficulties of striking the balance between the head and the heart. This picture does not tell the story of the conflicting emotions of finding out we were going to have another child, our second in two years, or the challenges of being a young parent. This picture does not capture everything our daughter has taught us, of the hope she instills in us and anyone who spends time around her.
Behind our smiles in this picture are all of these experiences, the good and bad and in-between. Every picture, they say, tells a story—but perhaps one deeper than your eyes can see. Here was ours.
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