A few years ago I illustrated a portrait of me and my first son, framed it and gave it to my husband to place it on his desk at the office. I am not a huge fan of family photography, to be frank, only the thought of it gives me stomach cramps. The concept of family is something I had to learn from scratch as an adult and mother, during my own childhood I felt alienated for most of the time, roots, heritage, feeling home - I never perceived all this as part of my adolescence. So sitting in front of a photographer who keeps telling you to put on a lovingly happy smile while you and your family basically feel like puppets having someone else’s hand up their arses, is not exactly something I was aiming for.
When I started my own family (which I was pretty sure was never going to happen until I turned 34), I found unconditional love and lost the concept I have had of myself up to this point. Very confusing. And the situation still leaves me befuddled from time to time, and yet, it was the best decision I have ever made in my entire life. Frightening like hell and scaring the shit out of me most of the time, but healthy, healing, sensible and maybe the only grown-up thing I have ever done.
Now that we have two kids a new portrait was way overdue. So what to do? Asking a photographer to take a picture? Would he or she manage to capture our specific family weirdness and toilet humor involving madness everyone else is eager to hide but we never managed or desired to conceal? I doubt that. So I picked up my pencil, made a sketch of my family the way I see them and finished it digitally last night. Which was a satisfying pleasure. I also involved our three cats, of which one unfortunately died a few years ago. The other two meanwhile live with friends in the countryside (I keep telling everyone they left home to go to uni after they turned almost ten which must be about students age in cat time dimensions) but of course they remain part of our family, so no way I would have left them out. After all family is what YOU make it, not what some photographer, your parents, aunts and uncles, neighbours, teachers, politicians, social media or society in general thinks a family is supposed to be like, always happy and in constant bliss, smiley, grateful, full of sparks and magic, positive, confident, good lookin’, enjoying vegan food in small urban restaurants, never fighting, never weird, dirty, sad, angry, depressed, desperate, lost and helpless. F*ck all that. Remember your family any way you like. And don’t let anyone talk you out of your wonderful weirdness. It’s what makes your family so lovable. And unique.
