At Home Porch-trait Session | 2020

I struggle to put these words in writing and I have since the beginning. In my mind, this whole quarantine scenario is just a blip, a phase, a moment, and I naively believed it would be over sooner than it started. Something about writing it down just felt like I was dwelling in it a little bit too much. That I wasn’t being optimistic. That I was giving it power over our memories and experiences as a family. But now, being five weeks in, I’m realizing how unprecedented this is. How big of a deal this is. How one day I am going to be recounting to my curious grandchildren what it was like when it felt like the entire world shut down over fear for something unseen, much like the questions I regularly ask my own grandparents about what it was like to live through the uncertainty of a massive world war.

I didn’t find the stay-home orders all that difficult at first. As a new mom still riding out the tail end of her maternity leave, staying home didn’t feel much different than the reality I was already living. Sure, we had to give up a few opportunities to connect with other moms and engage in some town programming, but overall, life at home still felt pretty normal. But as these weeks have stretched on, I’ve slowly felt the burden weighing heavy on me. I lived in a nice peaceful phase of denial until the beginning of last week, when a particularly alarming experience at the grocery store left a sour taste in my mouth. The anxiety has been building since, until late last night, when a seemingly unrelated trigger before bed set me into tears so deep and heavy that I wondered if I would be able to close my eyes at all. As someone who craves security and comfort, I felt anything but in that moment, and found myself so badly craving a long warm hug from my mom. Life felt normal until I suddenly realized that it is anything but.

Here at the Little Reesor House, we count ourselves blessed. My husband has still been working. We have some financial security. We are all in good health. We have a comfortable warm home to curl up in. We have technology available to connect with our friends and family. We have the hope and love of Jesus that has been carrying us through the confusion of this experience. But despite the fact that we know we have much to be thankful for, I still feel sad. I feel guilty that I do with the understanding that so many people are struggling so deeply at this time, but I still just feel so darn sad. Before all this I constantly took for granted the time I had to physically be with my family. I complained about running a simple errand. I rarely stopped to dwell in a hug a little longer, or made a huge effort to ask my friends how they’re really doing, or stepped out of my own introverted comfort zone to allow my very social kiddo the opportunity to engage with more strangers. Before all this I constantly prioritized my precious “alone time” before I truly understood how too much of it can actually be really lonely. I didn’t invite friends over for dinner nearly enough. I don’t want to live in regrets, but this whole experience has made me realize how desperately I want some of those moments. How desperately I want to live in the day-to-day moments a little more. And I feel so deeply sad about that.

A local photographer (and now friend) took the opportunity to use her gifts to bring a little light to people’s quarantine experience by offering free mini porch-trait sessions. She showed up at our house, snapped a few porch photos from a distance, and blessed us with the images a few short hours later. I’m so thankful that I took her up on the opportunity to capture these moments, because this is something, in all it’s strange and confusing glory, that I know will stay with me for a long time and now I have a few special photographs to remember it by.

Every time I don’t feel well, I’m reminded how much I take feeling normal for granted. Every single time I try to make a mental note that I should appreciate normalness more once I get back to it. This whole experience has been that exact reminder on a massively larger scale. I hope that these photos are that exact reminder for me over and over again. I hope that every time I look at one, I am reminded to step back from the daily grind of my life and appreciate how good it feels to be in the normal again. I can’t wait to be back there. I can’t wait for this to be over.

Thanks to Ana from Castillo Visuals for these beautiful photographs. Check out her work!