Orange County photographer | Tara Whitney – Orange County's Leading Photographer. Family, Pregnancy, Maternity, infant, Newborn, Baby, engagement photography in Orange County, Los Angeles, San Diego

Truth: I forgot to take a family photo in September. I am so irritated with myself for forgetting, but I rolled with it and asked Anna to draw a photo of us instead. I like how she has all of our arms around each other. And that she put us all in our favorite colors.

September.

We started school and I had to let go of my precious, precious freedom. I had such a hard transition this year. I think it is because of the shift I have talked about and written about that took place inside of me this summer. I just became so content. Content in what I have. Content with what I don’t. Content in what I do. Content to just be together, not doing much of anything. I was afraid a big change might mess things up. Content is a very good feeling. It is better than happiness in my opinion. Happiness is too much expectation, too hard to keep up, too much of a let down when you can’t. Content feels more real to me, more true. Whether sad or happy, you can be content.

Before school started we had a terrific visit with the Falconbridges before their move to New England. Their rambling family of five squeezed into our tiny house putting our capacity at full to the brim. Ivy and Anna came together like no time had passed. Yindi fell in love with the boys, and wanted to spend all her time with them. Banjo whined his way into my heart.

The unthinkable happened. My computer died and my world came crashing to a halt. In the midst of fixing it, I spent ten hours at the Apple store in one day, (oh how my butt hated those genius bar stools after ten hours) making sure everything was backed up properly. Ten hours! I was sick with nerves for weeks. I actually physically mourned the loss of my old computer. The whole process took about three weeks from break to rebuild. I was lucky that everything was safe.

I started noticing over the last few months that Anna was squinting while watching TV and holding books very close to her face. I made her an appointment. Sure enough, the kid gots my eyeballs. She picked out the cutest pair of glasses all on her own. Black with pink arms and tiny golden padlocks as the hinge. My memory of my first pair of glasses is so vivid. I was in the third grade. I remember looking up with my eyes feeling all weird with that new prescription pulling sensation, and really seeing trees for the first time. Realizing they weren’t just big green blobs. They actually had tiny individual leaves on each branch, and I could see them swaying in the breeze. Anna had a similar experience, and after it happened I told her about mine. As we got out of the car to walk into the house with her new specs on, she said, “Oh! So THAT’S what grass looks like! I can see all the little pieces poking up! Before it was just all smooth and green!”

Mr. Nathan has been drawing, drawing, drawing. Drawing Looney Tunes characters, comics, and doodles. They are all over his notebook. He is growing so tall. Almost as tall as Drew, and two years younger. I am going to have huge men on my hands soon. He wanted to chop his hair to just under his ears, and the new cut is so perfect for him, I can’t believe we didn’t do it ages ago. He is such a quiet, easy going boy, that he can easily skate by day after day in my peripheral vision. I don’t want that. I want to force myself out of that complacency to give him the attention he deserves from me. To let him know I see him. To make sure he feels my presence in his life, and that he is just as important to me as his loud mouth brother and sisters.

Mckenna got a cold one day and was able to stay home from school. The next few days when I woke her up she had a toy thermometer in her mouth, and she looked up at me with fake sick sad eyes, saying, “Mommmm, I am sickkkkk. I need to stay home from school today.” Such a sneaky clever girl, that one.

Drew is attempting to get straight A’s, on his own prompting. He wants to get into a local performing arts high school, and the good grades can only help. (HIGH SCHOOL??!?!) Him going to a performing arts high school is him living out my own dreams for myself at that age, only I never told him what they were. The kid gots my dreams.

After two months of throwing dinner’s together randomly and eating out a lot, we got back into our dinner routine. And something happened that shocked me. For so long, making dinner has been so overwhelming to me. Such a drag my feet obligation. One more thing on my list that I just did.not.want.to.do. And a lot of time failed at. Oh the list making! Oh the shopping and loading and unloading and reloading! Oh the clean up! I hated it, dreaded it, forced myself to do it everyday because I knew my family needed it. Taking a break made me dread it even more, so it was hard to start up again. But something else has shifted. I now look forward to that time of day. The TV gets turned off, the kids do homework on the couch. We turn the station to Coffeehouse Acoustic on our satellite. Anna puts on her roller skates and zips around the kitchen on the wood floor helping me. Taking peeled potatoes from table to pan. Tossing onion skins. Stirring. Measuring spices. Nathan pops his head in with his throaty little voice asking if I need any help. It makes my heart clench each time he does. They are under no obligation to help me, but they want to. It is precious time spent together. Mckenna gets some much needed time upstairs alone. Drew pops his headphones in and listens to his own music as he does homework and sometimes sings aloud in his cracking voice.

In doing this, I am fulfilling a real need for my family, and thus I am fulfilling a real need for myself. My purpose for doing it has changed. It is no longer an obligation, something I have to do. It has turned into something I NEED to do because it makes me feel complete. It is something that fulfills me in a way I never imagined it could. It gives me energy instead of depletes it. It has moved from an obligation to a delight.

I got help with it, though. I saw a gap in my thinking and I filled it with someone else. My sister Alisha now does my grocery shopping. I used to have such a mental block on grocery shopping. I could make the list. I could cook. I could clean up. But grocery shopping put it all over the edge for me. So I fixed that.

She has started helping us every week. She is in her last year of college. Locally, this time. Lucky for me. She needs the money and the flexible schedule and we need the help. She has basically become an assistant to me, of sorts. She does the sorts of things that I don’t want to do, or things I do everyday that I need a break from. Like grocery shop, run to the post office, sweep, pick up kids from school, clean up dinner dishes, go with us to the library to follow Mckenna around so I can focus on the other kids, make returns, get new light bulbs for the garage fridge at Home Depot, stay home with the kids so I can shoot, or go on a date. She has helped us cross many things off of our to do list. The kids love having her around. I love having her around. I am lucky to have the support from someone I trust so much. It is a win win situation.

The month of September went fast, as they are all seeming to do nowadays. With the routine of school, the days slip by seemingly identical and boring. But like always, I want to pay closer attention. I want to see the undercurrents. I want to be present. I want to see things as they really are.

I want to see the blades of grass. I want to see the leaves.

xo

Tara

This family image was taken by Maile Wilson on 8/31. Posted about here. This is probably my favorite family image from our time with her, because I just love how Jeff is looking at us. And how candid it is. And how brown we all are. And my hair looks pretty rad, which is always nice. This photo wraps us up pretty nicely, even Mckenna – slightly on the outside but happier there, away from our noise.

So, August.

I am so late to class for August.

After an emotional/hard/draining July, August came quiet and thoughtful.

You really have to go through pain before you can move into a new phase, a new place in your head or your heart. So often I am scared of that pain, afraid it will overwhelm me – ruin my life or my day. I hide from it, avoid it, make poor choices in order to stay numb to it. When I do that, the pain just takes hold. It moves in like a wasp’s nest, constantly buzzing about my head. Something you know you have to deal with, but are afraid to because you don’t want to get stung. I am learning more and more that accepting those feelings and letting myself feel them is the way I want to go.

When you give yourself permission to feel what you feel, it is giving yourself permission to be who you really are. There is a peace in that, and a sincerity that feeds you.

It is the best way that I know to take care of myself.

A lot of the pain I was in had to do with Mckenna. A lot of the pain had to do with the kids growing up. A lot of the pain was personal. I felt it. I got through it. I wanted something more.

This process has changed the inside of me. And I like it.

I have realized how completely in charge I am of how my life works. You always kind of know this, I mean, no one is cooking dinner and editing photos but me. But you also kind of think that someone else is going to come along and take care of things for you. Our core need is to be taken care of. For the first time, I truly feel in charge. Like an adult. I can do whatever I want, I can make my life whatever I want it to be. I am fiercely protective of how I spend my time. I want most to spend it with the people who live in my house. I am realizing I don’t have to live my life like everyone else, just because it’s “what you do”. Because of ‘shoulds’ or ideas that no one even questions. Most people don’t even understand why they believe what they believe. It is just what they do, what their parents did, what their neighbors do as well. They don’t want to be challenged, they just keep plodding along. I want to learn and understand about the choices I make. I want to learn and understand about my children. I want to learn and understand more about the world.

But back to the point. August. August was welcomed. In August we settled into the routine of Summer and enjoyed every last second we had left. I feel like I really got to live like the mom I want to be. I took the last two weeks of it off, and spent every moment that I could with the kids and with Jeff. The boys enjoyed surf camp. We enjoyed the beach. We spent time with family, and with friends near and far. My sister gave me massages. We lazed around the house in pajamas. We took many trips to the library. We found a new sushi place. We finished the Lord of the Rings trilogy. We went to the pool at night. We debated what we would name our goldfish, if we ever got another one. We were peer pressured by the kids into buying a furry animal, but we said no. We used up our Wild Rivers passes. These kids love the wave pool. We went on dates with friends. We also Got Stuff Done, like eye exams and immunizations and cleaning up the garage. Anna now wears glasses. Drew only needs his for school. Jeff can now park in the garage. We made decisions about Mckenna, who is doing really well. We hired more help. We dreaded school starting again.

We are refining our life. We are making it better.

Bring on the homework.

xo

Tara

July is going to be pretty hard to talk about, seeing as how I can hardly remember what happened now. What day is it again?

It was the coldest July we have had in southern California in 100 years. I am not complaining.

We took a vacation, but we didn’t go very far. (This photo was taken on the ground of the Orange County fair, after all of us took a turn in a photo booth.) I remember reading in a magazine years ago, about a great way to save money while going on vacation. The people in the article – they called it a “Staycation” and spent time at home and in their city acting like tourists. It was the perfect fit for us homebodies who live in an area full of things to do. We thought it would be perfect for Mckenna, who doesn’t like flying or traveling. And it forced us to get out and do the things we have always said we would do. Like rent a boat, see a play in Balboa Park, go to the local water park, spend a day in Mission Beach, take the kids to a concert, do a food crawl at the OC Fair…

All in all the week we spent together was full of good memories, but it really brought to the forefront something else that is hard to talk about. Mckenna. I don’t often talk about how hard it is to parent a child like her. I choose to focus on the good things, and each good thing is such a celebration that it is easy not to tell the whole truth about our life with her.

But…

Mckenna doesn’t like doing things. Mckenna doesn’t like to be in, what are to her, stressful out of the norm situations. Like vacations. Mckenna would be happiest alone in our house, with no noise except for the noise she creates. With full control of what she wants to eat and when, what she wants to do and when, and the remote control. Her natural tendencies lean toward an isolated hermit in the middle of nowhere. With a Target for dollar stop shopping. That is always empty, except for one cashier and her. Because of this, Mckenna tends to impede on the sense of ease and fun during a vacation, and what really became clear to me on this one is that we need help. What really became clear to me on this one is that my burning desire to have my family unit always together, may be actually tearing us apart.

Now that the younger three have surpassed her emotionally, we are in this impossible place. Parents to a child like Mckenna, but also parents to three typical children like Drew, Nathan, and Anna. They both need us equally as desperately. And as I stare, slightly stubbornly, down the barrel of parenting an adult with special needs, and the rest of my life, I start panicking. I don’t know what this is supposed to look like. I don’t know if I can do this. I certainly know I don’t want to be doing it alone anymore. It isn’t fair to the rest of them. I focus so much of my mothering time and energy on Mckenna, and the rest of them are so easy in comparison, that they get the last bits of me. The tired worn down please just make this easy for me bits of me. I don’t want that for them. Yet, I don’t know how to make a safe place for all of them, while giving each of them what they need. I have thought for so long that I can handle this. That I can be this mother to all of them. That I can make Mckenna happy or healed all while giving the others everything they need. And I can’t. I am feeling my limits crash into me all the while fighting them.

The confusing thing with Mckenna is that there are moments of astonishing peace and joy for her, like when she sat at the front of the boat like a mermaid statue and smiled for an hour as the ocean splashed her face and the boat bobbed in the water, or when we walked out of the Train concert and she said she loved concerts and the next one she wanted to go to was Alicia Keys. Those are the moments that hold me over through the bad ones and make me sane, but they also tease me into believing that she can have MORE moments like that, if only I try harder. If only I give more. If only I fix her.

And I can’t. She is not “fix-able”. Whatever good moments she has, are most likely nothing to do with me. Just like whatever bad moments she has, are most likely nothing to do with me. They just are. They just exist for whatever reason the synapses in her brain allow them to exist in that moment. She is unexplainable and impossible to solve. Mckenna is not free. She is locked up and hidden from me most of her days and most of her life. Those moments that I cling to are few and far between, and yet I kill myself everyday to try and get more of them.

What I saw on our staycation broke my heart. I saw the five us of, wanting desperately to have the kind of time “normal” families can have, time to be free, and failing. And in that failing, feeling completely broken down in moments when she was broken down. And guilty for feeling that way. The flow of the vacation stops and everyone has to stop being who they are, to fit into the box Mckenna needs in order to function and feel less stressed. We are good at it. They are better – they have been doing it all of their lives. I saw my other three children sick to death of people staring at us, the curious public the unintended paparazzi of our outings. Usually our outings are broken up – we spend a lot of time at home in between recuperating. But with several days outside linked together, the staring and the issues involved became overwhelming. Everyone stares. Not just children. Adults, groups of people, will whisper and point and think I don’t notice. I just want to be invisible. For me, getting stared at is especially hard. I think Anna hates it almost as much as me. Mckenna is the only one who doesn’t notice. She thankfully doesn’t have to feel that pain, but the rest of us do.

One of the reasons I fight my limits is because unless we are all together, I feel like we are not experiencing things to the fullest. If Mckenna stays home, I feel weird, off kilter, and guilty. I know that even if there are three hours of hell, she may have one second of bliss in whatever we are doing, and how can I deny her that? This is how we have ALWAYS operated. “Ohana means family – nobody gets left behind!” It is an idea Jeff and I have always had – and our family has flourished in it a lot of the time. But things are changing. Like I said – the other three have surpassed her emotionally. A lot of families have that, with older children and maybe a surprise younger sibling. But it isn’t like having a younger sibling who is a toddler. Because Kenna will never grow out of this. I don’t want them to grow up resenting us, or her, for what we did when we thought it was what needed to be done.

And so I am here, trying to figure out the best way possible to go forward for our family. Thinking of Mckenna. Of Drew, Nate, and Anna. Thinking of Jeff and I. How can we make this new time in our lives work in the way it has worked in the past? Maybe that means getting daily in home help. Maybe that means bringing an aide along with us to care for Mckenna so that we can focus more on the other three. Maybe that means leaving her at home while we do the things “normal” families get to do, with no one staring at us, and not having to mold into her  box, just getting to be free of the locked up parts of her brain for awhile. I know for certain, it means dropping a lot of the preconceived notions I have had for her life and ours.

I am scared. I am uncertain. I am tired. I have cried a lot this month. I wish more than anything for my family to be able to be together, all the time. But what I want even more is for each of them to get exactly what they need from me.

And yet, there are so many reasons for us to be at ease, and happy, and there is a sweet escape in that. We are in love, so in love. We have this great big family. They mean everything to us. We like who they are. It is summertime, and we have no major responsibilities. We get to take them to basketball camp and surf camp and horse camp. We get to watch them explore the ocean in a boat, their chins hardly poking out above life jackets. We get moments of extreme lucidity from Mckenna, where she asks us how to smile. We get to hold hands and scream out songs we sing together in our car, outside at a live concert with twinkling lights and cell phones held up in the sky. We get to nudge to the front of the crowd to show Anna the newborn piglets and listen to her squeal just like them. We get to stay up late in our hotel room, and have a midnight dinner at Denny’s. We get to enjoy possibly one of the last summer’s that Drew will really want to spend time with us instead of his friends. We get to watch him spread his wings. We get to float on our backs in the pool, while holding hands with Nathan, staring up at the clouds. We get to cuddle him at night, because he asks every single night for one of us to cuddle him. We get to plant strawberry plants together in wooden containers in the backyard.

We get to simmer in the life we have made for ourselves, with all the good and bad.

We are the only ones who fully understand what it is like to live with Mckenna. We have each other to lean on. And most of the time, that is enough.

xo

Tara