ryan larson
One Good Year: Our latest Designing Moms post….
Story: One Good Year
From my Wed. January 27th post on Designing Moms
I’m a bit late on posting my holiday card. I know you have seen many and are well on your way into the new year, so thank you for allowing me one last New Year hurrah.
Our card sums up best as titled; One Good Year. A year filled with so many contradictory emotions…Happiness (new baby)…Fear (my husbands kidneys were failing from a genetic disease)….Frustration (trying to sort through the process of testing donors)….Amazement (at all the family and friends who offered a kidney as well as their love and support)….Gratitude (for his darling cousin Alison who came to Los Angeles and underwent surgery for us…we are forever grateful)…Relief (that this daunting time of our lives was over)…and finally…Joy (life actually did become normal again; we are healthy; we are all together; we are a family).
The photo on our card was shot by Laura Grier at Beautiful Day Photography in Los Angeles. We shot it in our 50’s kitchen. I don’t want to explain it away. I think you can get the meaning behind the photo. The “recipe” was the back of the card. Happy New Year! Here’s to wishing all of us a healthy, happy and blessed new year.
Tin Parade Vintage Party Goods
Return to Sender: Chevy Chase doesn’t live here.
Okay. So. I’ve decided that I am living in a Chevy Chase movie. A good one too. One that you would have a VHS copy of and then later a DVD. I think when I was a kid watching those movies I thought ….first of all…that THEY were …you know…old. I realize now that they WERE…you know…older…than….ahem…THEY used to be. But THEY clearly aren’t as young as I am at their age….okay I digress….anyhow…yes…I have found myself living a Chevy Chase life…..it all started when….
swirly swirly swirly screen with the sound “didly didly didly didly didly didly”
I was at my girlfriends house when I heard her husband say “I’m gonna get that gopher! That gopher is back…its out there…and I”m gonna get it!” As he’s muttering that…I’m sitting on her couch with a glass of wine telling her that I realize now that we have a house and two kids…we are….we have …arrived… to that point in our life that I think of as …my parents life…circa 1977…that life. You know…the one that from the outside looks boring…dry…mundane…orange meets brown plaid couch kind of life…that one.
And just as I’m telling her this I see her husband walking across the plate glass window with a shovel over his shoulder going to …get the gopher….And it occured to me…I’ve woken up in a Chevy Chase movie and I can’t get out. Not that I want to…I like my life…love it actually…but I didn’t realize when I was at the mall in 1985 with my Madonna perm laughing at European Vacation that I was actually….laughing at myself…at the future me. You’re all in essence…laughing at me…that’s what I’ve decided…and that’s okay with me. I am entering this time of my life somewhat gracefully…with my hipster short boot heel dug deep in the dirt…that kind of gracefully. I’m just trying to figure out which role I am…there’s of course the obvious one…the mom…her son kept changing each movie and she didn’t even realize it…remember? No, that’s not me…I’m too much of a control freak to let that happen….there was the german bimbo at the bier tent in munich….well…maybe 10 years ago but no…grandma on the roof of the car? I guess I’m a little of all of them…my own little version of Ryan Larson has kids…Ryan does the mom thing…yeah…it’s casual.
Why am I telling you this…this realization of my current state of ..dare i say it…MOMhood? Because I want…NEED you to relate…to me…I am in the need of being relate-able. MOM doesn’t need to be a dirty word…a…you’ve actually up and moved out of your former self and into MOMhood kind of word…it doesn’t….I’m here to tell you that…why do you think I can still pull off the hipster short boots with the heel. I am in love with being a mother…a mother to my darling darling children…but I just can’t be the roll of MOM….just…MOM…you know what I mean.
It’s casual.
