images of mama

A few weeks ago I picked up a box of hair color while grocery shopping. I don't normally color my hair, but I thought it might be fun to try something sort of new, to go just a shade darker, nothing drastic. So, there I am, in the bathroom finally getting around to coloring my hair. First of all, I don't realize there are plastic gloves folded up in the instruction booklet so I get the stuff everywhere... it's dripping down my back, on my ears, all over my hands and luckily some of it in my hair. It's really not that hard to do and to be perfectly clear I work for the company that makes the stuff and spent two years marketing our hair care brands, so I should be a professional, but I was just rushing through. 


Anyway, I get it all on and have 10 minutes to wait until showering it off. 10 whole minutes. What to do, what to do. Wanting to contain the mess that I was in the bathroom I decide to paint my toe nails. Done. 8 more minutes to go. I then decide to clean the toilet. Done, time is up!


As I was standing there in the shower I started laughing to myself thinking of what an image that must have been. If Dan would have walked in, he would have seen what appeared to be his wife, but was actually this crazy woman with dye splotched all over her body, hair on top of her head smothered in hair coloring, moving quickly but carefully as to not mess up her wet toenails, cleaning the toilet. 


It lead me to think of all of the other crazy images we, as women, present on a day to day basis just doing what it is that we need to do. But, more importantly, it made me think about the images I want Jackson to see someday when he thinks of his childhood, images he sees when he thinks of his mama. 


I want them to be images of us dancing around the house together, singing at the top of our lungs. Images of us baking together and reading story after story, prolonging the inevitable bed time. Images of us building forts and taking hikes, of having living room sleepovers and camping together in the backyard. Images of him learning from me when really it was I who learned from him. Images that make up the bigger memories of adventures and discovery. 


But most of all, I want the images of his mama to be ones filled with laughter and smiles. Ones that can only be the result of pure, untainted, unconditional love.