My Jenn-eration

From the moment Hope was born, I began photographing me and me with her. It was never completely clear to me at the time as to why I was doing this. I only knew that I wanted a record of something, but I wasn’t sure of what. The other day I took a few moments to look back on these nine months in pictures. For perhaps the first time, I see them for what they were. My smile tells the story: it was a true season of healing and gratitude. I don't see myself standing in the mirror pinching my stretched and soft stomach. I am wearing my smile. Indeed as is often the case, the pictures tell a story I did not realize was unfolding or fully appreciate when I was taking them, and living them. For this gift of perspective and hindsight, I am so grateful for each of these shots, in each of their blurry imperfectness. This first photo was taken 24 hours after my c-section. There were complications during my surgery and what is usually a routine procedure lasted more than 3 hours. I am stan...

One year later, I want to tell you that I’ve got it all figured out. It’s been exactly one year since I wrote Distracted Living . I had no idea that my story of that night, of that feeling of losing the ability to single task, of feeling that slip away from me like water through the drain, would resonate with so many. What was it that we were responding to? How it is that so many men and women across the country saw themselves in that moment? They know this feeling. What was it that was taking over us? I have revisited this question many times over a long, wonderful, hard, and exhausting year. I believe there were two parts to my story that night. The first, was a desire that I believe resonates with many of us to feel frustration or boredom in the day to day minutiae of parenting and to use our phones as an escape from these hard feelings. The other piece of it was a desire to operate much like our phones, to try to do multiple things at once with increasing efficiency. Perhaps ...

I serve Dylan his dinner and he gives me his signature glare: “Mom! It’s touching!” Dylan hates when his food touches on his plate. Everything needs its own neat and tidy space, as if life and all of its gastronomic pleasures should forever be served in a Bento-esque container so that the ketchup never EVER touches the salad. Never. But that’s not life and sometimes the ketchup is going to touch the salad. Just sometimes. “Deal with it,” I perhaps too hastily snap. “Sometimes you just can’t separate it all neatly.” Which is entirely true about dinner and sometimes true about life. Over the past week or so, everything has seemed to collide and touch: the messy, the uncomfortable, and the wonderful. Life’s ketchup made its way all over that salad. It was Rosh Hoshana and the whole family came together from near and far to celebrate a sweet new year. Ruby lost her first tooth. We celebrated my 37 th birthday. We finally got around to giving Hope her Hebrew name just a few days sh...