The Christmas Picture

My mom’s depression causes her to be impulsive, to lay investment in things she doesn’t – shouldn’t – really care about. Today’s obsession is Christmas pictures. It is less than two weeks from Christmas, but she’s still going to take the shot, multiply it, and send them out.

Part of me – most of me, really – thinks she only does this so her friends and family are convinced that we’re fully functioning, happy even. If they open an envelope full of Christmas cheer and our bright shining faces, everything must be okay. It’s symbolic. It shows that we’re surviving, but it tries to convince that we’re flourishing.

I hate taking these Christmas pictures.

She rifles through my closet, tells me what to wear, where to stand. For the third year, a neighbor’s middle school son is taking the picture – which should show you exactly how invested and prepared this event is. We stand in front of the Christmas tree that she decorated, awkwardly touching shoulders, while my brothers two buddies chuckle, and my brother and I roll our eyes when my mother can’t see.

She tells him to take picture over picture. With flash. Without flash. Landscape and portrait. Zoomed in. With the tree. Over here because the light is better. Over there because of the reflection. My brother stands in his tiptoes so the picture will show he is taller than me. I pinch his side where no one will see.

“This is the last picture I’m taking,” I notify.

He snaps the shot. He laughs, “Oh, it’s blurry.”

I race away before she can call me back, and my brother scurries back to the PlayStation with his friends. She goes up to her room and slams the door.

I’m back in my room when I can hear my moher loudly crying. How could her family do this to her, she is probably thinking. Don’t they love me? Can’t they just smile for ten minutes?

That is like her asking us to lie.

I hate that she is crying loudly. Can’t she cry quietly like I do? Can’t she keep her sadness to herself, contain it and conceal it? She tries to make everything seem perfect – can’t she do that when there isn’t a camera to pin it in memory?

Now she’s opening the door. Now she’s starting the car. I don’t really know where she’s going and she probably doesn’t either. She might even be going out to develop those deceitful photographs. I wouldn’t be surprised.