I remember taking this picture in 1992 of my new wife and new baby.
I borrowed a friends SLR camera, bummed some black and white film, and took a few shots for a college photography assignment. We didn’t even have money for photo paper so I developed this print on lithography film I found at school.
Times were tough, but we made it through.
Fast forward 16 years and much has changed – but much has also stayed the same. We find ourselves once again in the throws of late night feedings, sleep deprivation, exhaustion, tight finances, unspeakable joy, and emotions so intense they can sneak up on you and take your breath away.
I walked into the living room this morning to see the wife of my youth and our beautiful daughter asleep together on the couch. They were nestled together and even though I wanted to take a picture, the moment would not allow the interruption.
Time stood still and backed up 16 years.
I was once again looking down on a familiar scene, one that has been replayed millions of times in millions of families in millions of homes.
The scene of a wife becoming a mom.
The unexpected merger of past and future, lover and mother, individual and family, experience and uncertainty. The balance of life and death locked in flesh and blood as gentle as a newborn, yet lethal as a lioness.
Somewhere in the morning light, amidst the rise and fall of breaths as mother holds baby inches away from the life they once knew, a transformation takes place. The wife becomes mother and steps into a role of preparing the next generation to become the same. She pushes past herself, denying, submitting, sacrificing, laying everything down to make her ceiling the newborns floor.
For it is in this place of sacrifice, determination, love, that she becomes more than just a wife, more than just a friend, more than just a lover, she becomes so much more. She grows and transforms and starts a new existence, a new journey, a transformation as a caterpillar gaining wings.
She has been added to. She is more than what she was before. She is a wife and mom and her husband stands in awe of the beauty of her.