Painted with Love

So I'm on this feverish kick not only to live life to the fullest, but to document it. Having been so shaken to the core by my Mother in Law's untimely passing, I am furiously making and capturing memories for myself and my family. I wish we had more of her life on record. It's a mix of trying to squeeze as much as possible out of the present, while securing our emotional future. As morose as it sounds, there is no way around us simply not knowing how much time we have. We cannot control the length of our lives, though we try so very hard, but we can absolutely control the quality. Hey, I'm too much of a New York Jew to not obsess about death. Throw in decades worth of daily Holocaust discussions and my love of author Shalom Auslander, and there you have it. 

BUT, something really cool came out of this line of thinking. I love the camera and all aspects of photography. All angles. I was smacked with the idea of having my kids use my body as a literal form of expression, I wanted them to paint me however they wanted and we'd do a cool photo shoot. It is the biggest gift to have children, and it is an honor to be able to act as the emotional and spiritual guide for these little humans. This was a memory I so badly wanted them to have. 

I assigned each child a body part that reminds me of them and explained to them why. They went from being created from my body to creating on it; how cool and full circle?? I'm going to make them each a coffee table book full of memories from those magical few hours. I hope they treasure it always. And when I'm older I can pass it around to my friends in the nursing home and prove what a badass I was back in the day.