I watched her over the rim of my coffee mug. She swiped past the curated shots—the ones where the light is golden, her hair is brushed, and she is smiling not because she is happy, but because I was making barnyard animal sounds behind the lens. She paused on a blurry one. I had taken it at 6:00 AM on a Tuesday. She is in her diaper, yogurt in her hair, screaming because the blue cup was, tragically, the wrong blue cup. In the frame, my own hand is visible, reaching in to wipe her face, a smudge of my thumbprint on the lens.
I looked at the blurry Tuesday photo one more time. She was right. It wasn’t sad. It was just the truest thing I’ve ever taken. A smudge on the lens. A whole world inside it.
By Allison Carr
So here is my prayer for us, the Muthas : May we stop trying to polish the lens. May we stop comparing our blooper reels to other people’s highlight reels. May we see the blur for what it is—motion, chaos, love, the frantic beautiful mess of raising humans while still trying to be one ourselves.
Then I became a mother, and I realized the filter is a lie. The real work of raising children is not about perfecting the image; it’s about learning to see through the smudge. allison carr mutha magazine
Before I had my daughter, I thought motherhood was a filter. I thought you applied it to your life and suddenly everything was softer, warmer, saturated with purpose. I would watch other women push strollers and think they were living inside a lifestyle blog. I didn’t see the crusted Cheerio stuck to the jogger’s wheel. I didn’t see the dark circles under the sunglasses.
Mutha Magazine is the only place I’ve ever seen that acknowledges this duality without trying to fix it. It doesn’t say, “Here are five ways to get your sparkle back!” It says, “Your sparkle is currently in the laundry with a juice box explosion. It’s fine. Have a glass of wine.” I watched her over the rim of my coffee mug
My daughter eventually handed me back the phone. She had moved on to the next photo: a crisp, perfect shot of our dog sleeping. She smiled, said “Puppy,” and ran off to destroy the living room.