Photo

I do not have anyone to buy a Mother’s Day gift for, but let me make a suggestion for those who do — get a selfie with your mom. It will be worth far more than any knickknack or bauble you could ever buy her or yourself.

After my mom died, the funeral home said that we needed photos to make a memory board. Mom did take a lot of photos over the course of my two sisters’ and my lifetimes. Sadly she lost a few boxes in the move from Chicago a few years before. But while I found plenty of photos of myself that I had forgotten existed, I found relatively few of my mother either by herself or with me. It was then that I realized that she had been behind the camera for so many of the photos I had treasured over the years.

It wasn’t because I grew up in the time when film was valuable. There were plenty of photos of my sisters, my dad and me in her boxes. It was just that, I suppose, she never thought to get in front of the camera. Maybe she treasured the photos of us more than herself. No revelation there, right? Except now that she is gone what did I have left to remember her? It was the same with my grandmother, my mom’s mother, just a few years before. We had used photos of her that were not always of grandma, but ones where we spotted her in the background.

I realized then that I was not going to repeat this pattern. When my daughter was born just a few months later, I began to take photos of us together. It did help that we had a digital camera and thus clicks were cheap and instantly rewarded. I not only wanted to capture my daughter’s life, but also our life together.

That is one reason why I love taking self-portraits or selfies as they are popularly called. After my daughter was born, I took them to document important or special moments. The first time I took her to the zoo to see the giraffes, the first picnic in the park and when she would fall asleep on my chest while we snuggled on the couch. I could make a book of photos of my daughter snuggled on the couch with her daddy or me.

These moments are rarely captured if you were to rely on a third person to take the photo. My daughter and I spent almost three months on our own. The selfie was instantly our thing to do. There are often moments that you will miss if you do not flip the camera onto your own life.

Thus when people started to write pieces about selfies being vain, I defended their existence. For some of us, it is easier to snap our own picture than to pose for a “proper” photo. There is something silly and fun that goes into extending your arm out as far as possible to make sure you get everyone in the frame as you squish together.

In 2014, I challenged myself to take a selfie every day and invited others to join me. The act of getting moms in front of the camera was just one part of the charge. But soon I saw women who agreed, they had surveyed their own photo archives and saw few pictures of themselves with their children. Not every one of their selfies has their children in it. Some of their selfies are of them hiding in the bathroom from their children as moms are prone to do. But the challenge made them realize how often they were the family photographer who left themselves out of the narrative.

My mom died just a week after Mother’s Day and I lost track of the last gift I bought her. In the end, all I really wanted was a recent photo of us together. A selfie would have been perfect. Hmm … maybe a selfie stick is actually the perfect gift this year.

In honor of Mother’s Day, why not take a selfie with your mom, or your child? Share yours on Twitter or Instagram with the hashtag #selfiewithmom.

