Picture Perfect



Aly on her fifth birthday...
absolute perfection!

 And so it begins…senior year in high school for my middle daughter Aly and why not start it off with a bang! How about, if my loving daughter yells at me because she has nothing to wear for her senior pictures? How about if she yells at me for going online and getting information on the colleges she is interested in? How about if in the middle of all this yelling we are buying a third car for her to drive and trying to keep our heads above life?

Here is the thing; I remember when my oldest daughter had her senior pictures taken. We had a family friend take the pictures (500 pictures in all) and my daughter Ashleigh did not like a single one of them. Ashleigh blamed it on our friend's photography, but honestly it seemed more like she had an issue with how she looked more than the photography style. Within that 500 photos were plenty that I loved and I was frustrated that I could not help my daughter see how truly lovely she was.

Flash forward ten years and I am faced with my next senior in line and I am smack dab back in the picture fight club. I have explained to Aly that buying new clothes is not going to change how she feels in the picture. I would prefer to purchase a few new items, but use what she has and what she is comfortable in for the most part. We have a few ideas for outfits, but Aly is feeling the new clothes are the key. This is our project for today; we will head out to her doctor appointment and then an hour or two of shopping. Wish me luck!
 As far as college goes, we have ourselves another issue. Aly wants to go out of state for college. This week we head to Rochester, New York to look at two schools in particular while we also visit with some friends of ours. Aly has it in her mind that she needs to get the heck out of Michigan. It feels more like she is running away. I have explained that she can always transfer there and that she could go to a Michigan college for a couple of years, but she is intent on graduating with $200,000 in loans. When I tried talking to her about it yesterday she told me it was none of my business and that she did not need our help or money. Silly girl! Somehow I need to find a way to support her desire and encourage her without breaking the bank. My mother-in-law shared once that she had told her daughter not to fight so hard to leave the nest, because she wanted her to grow up and leave home just as much as she herself wanted to grow up and move out. I find myself saying this to myself under my breath these days.

 The truth is that somewhere in the middle of all of this is the perfect picture. The right mix of what to wear and how to look and also the best place to end up for college. Right now it seems so important and urgent. I explained to Aly yesterday that I did not have my first car until I was twenty and that not one person in my life at her age encouraged me to even go to college much less pick one out. Life is what it is and we all end up where we are supposed to be. There is no need to try so hard to run away and create the perfect picture. Perfection is in the eye of the beholder, like holding your new born baby and realizing that you have just created perfection. Maybe I am not making all the right Mom moves or saying all the right things, but 17 years ago I held a perfectly adorable baby in my arms and wondered at how I did that and I need to convince that same baby that she is still as perfect today as she was then and there isn't a single outfit or college that will change that.