Faith & Family
Indistinct
I’ve dedicated several hours the past couple of days to organizing our family’s pictures into a storage container I was given for Christmas. This see-through box houses sixteen plastic cases designed for the preservation of about a hundred 4x6 photographs each—so, 1,600 total. As I’ve started (the extremely tedious process of) combing through more than a decade’s worth of photos, it’s occasionally been challenging recalling specific details and dates, but the project’s coming along, and how nice it will be having our pictures arranged chronologically in a fancy box instead of randomly stacked in our closet. (By the way, when did printing photos become some bygone, Little House on the Prairie- era thing? My teens have walked by more than once and jeered, “It’s 2026, and Mom’s organizing ‘physical’ pictures.” Excuse me—what? An iPhone is hardly going to be the sole keeper of my memories, thank you very much. This graying millennial is perfectly content still utilizing the likes of photo albums, memory cards, and those—usually blurry, but that’s beside the point—wallet-size, instant camera pictures. Hmph!)
Halfway through the afternoon yesterday, though, as I stood there debating things like whether or not a picture of my son outfitted in a jersey and cleats was taken at a Little League game in 2019 or just after we moved in 2021, it occurred to me that anyone looking in might think I’d accomplished little with my day. We generally measure productivity from a visual point of view, and, considering the dirty cups and silverware heaped on the counter a couple of rooms away and all those muddy footprints still caked on the floor from last Tuesday’s rain, the only natural conclusion was that I hadn’t done much—never mind the hundreds of photographs now neatly ordered in a box.
I used to berate myself for similar reasons years ago while still settling into my thirties and a mom to kids who were likewise much younger. It didn’t matter that I’d spent hours tending a new baby or cleaning up the same broken crayons over and over again: In my mind, if the place wasn’t clean, I hadn’t done enough.
But—especially at home and certainly not when that home brims with young kids—performance isn’t often visible; it can transpire in all sorts of indistinct ways. While it does sometimes assume the appearance of swept floors and polished surfaces, it also manifests in tasks seemingly far less impressive, like clipping child-size fingernails, watering houseplants, shopping for ground beef, bathing the family dog, and, yes, even poring over thick stacks of pictures in painstaking—and evidently archaic—attempts to organize them. (With our own kids mostly preoccupied with video games anymore, and standing several inches over me now, sometimes performance looks like simply riding shotgun for an hour so a teen can get behind-the-wheel practice as he endeavors to earn his driver’s license.)
A couple of years ago I mounted the digital scale in our bathroom to find myself exactly twenty pounds lighter than I’d been a few months before. It was Independence Day, and, pulling easily a denim skirt over now-thinner hips, I paired it with a patriotic tee and snapped a quick picture to post online, congratulating myself on my newfound skinniness.
But a treated photo affords only a glimpse of a whole story, doesn’t it? Though I’d certainly lost weight, it had been an entire months-long process—consisting of less calories and a lot of exercise—to get there.
Similarly, managing an entire household should hardly be reduced to one day. It’s actually the summation of those often mundane, day-to-day, may-or-may-not-get-done tasks that furnishes the complete picture.
The spaghetti-stained dishes crowding my sink yesterday possibly suggested that I hadn’t been productive all day. But, satisfactorily sliding a photo from a family trip to Disney into my new storage case, I knew that I had.
A resident of McDonough County, Erin Eddy lives in Macomb with her husband, Mike, their five boys, and two zealous Australian Shepherds. She aspires to uplift readers, penning stories of encouragement and everyday life. Her work has been featured on the influential website Her View From Home, as well as the book series Chicken Soup for the Soul. Contact [email protected].
