>The Big Picture

Two years ago, I got my three girls together for our annual Christmas card photo. At the time, my stepdaughters were 15 and 12 and convincing them to pose for a family photo was, as it is now, like asking Queen Elizabeth to roam nude on Times Square. I didn’t have a lot of shots to choose from, but I selected the best one of all three of them and ordered the cards. When they arrived in the mail a week later, my then-15-year-old looked at them in disbelief.

“These are horrible!” she said accusingly. “You just picked the best one of Punky! I look awful in this picture!” Her 12-year-old sister snatched one of the cards, gave it a cursory once-over, and quietly glowered at me.

“Look,” I said, “I chose the best one I had, okay? You guys weren’t exactly helpful when it came to posing.”

That’s what I said, but what I felt was far different. Had I chosen the best picture of my daughter? She certainly did look cute, smiling happily with her doll. But maybe there had been a shot in which my oldest’s eyes were opened wider. Or one in which my middle child had a bigger grin. I ended up hiding the cards away until I managed to send them out and I was racked with guilt for months. They became a secret symbol to me of my obvious subconscious preference for my daughter, despite my efforts to love all of my children the same.

And now, two years later I’m at my in-laws’ house, looking at the Christmas card, which they have still propped up on their hutch. And damned if the girls don’t look… great. All of them. My oldest is all smiles and riotous curly hair- the hair we desperately miss now that she’s begun straightening it with a flatiron every morning. My younger stepdaughter grins shyly from behind glasses that now have been replaced by contacts, traces of her baby cheeks still poignantly visible on her tweenage face. My baby looks playful and confident in her oldest sister’s arms.

All that guilt. All that trauma. Over nothing.

And at that moment I realized, as a parent of teens, how easy it is to get swept up in their adolescent, over-the-top world, where every picture is awful! and every minor misstep is the absolute end of their social life! And perhaps as a stepmother, I’m even more sensitive to their feelings, because I’ll always feel like a bit of an imposter, standing in as their mom, but not all that far away from the days when I was embroiled in the very same adolescent turmoil.

And maybe I need to stop more often and take a look at the real picture, the one of a family that’s flawed, but beautiful, the one where the person behind the lens is simply doing the very best job she can.