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Photography is everywhere during the holiday season, especially among families who want to preserve their memories of the season in pictures. I know my mom has plenty of video footage of my brother and me opening gifts on Christmas morning and many photos of me on Santa’s lap. This year I took Layla to the mall to see Santa, and I couldn’t believe the line to sit with the jolly guy. We waved from afar (Layla thinks Santa is scary, so I wouldn’t dare make her go near him).

This is also the time of year when family holiday cards with cute photos pop up on our kitchen table like paper flowers. And Picture People and Sears are packed with kids dressed in coordinating red and green outfits. And parents are snapping shots of their babies in front of lights and trees. And this is also the time of year when I feel most guilty about my empty, non-camera wielding hands.

Obviously my baby is my world, and I would love to save each moment like coins in a piggy bank. But I’m really bad about remembering to take out the digital camera, and even worse about using the expensive digital video camera my parents bought for me before my daughter was born (I think we have three short videos of her). Scrapbooking is definitely not my thing either. I just don’t think in pictures, and I feel horrible about it.

Luckily, my mom loves to take pictures and the flash on her camera is constantly blinking when she and my dad visit from Southern California. Thanks to her, we have (literally) hundreds of photos of Layla and a scrapbook of her first year. After every holiday she uploads the visual loot to her Kodak Easy Share website and sends me a link. So when we all went to San Francisco to celebrate the holidays this week, it was my mom who organized us in front of the tree in Union Square and captured an Italian tourist to take our picture. She and my dad took turns filming Layla as she tore into her gifts in a flurry of boxes and bows.

In all the happy squeals and chaos, I think I took three pictures of Layla ripping apart wrapping, but for the first time I didn’t feel guilty about leaving the camera on the shelf. I didn’t feel like I needed to take pictures, either. I smiled as I watched my baby enjoy the excitement of peeling off paper layers, of discovering something new. I held her in my lap as she unwrapped my gifts, too.

I waited for a quiet moment to give her the finger puppets I had been so excited about for weeks. We each held an end of the package, and Layla unraveled the gold and blue paper the way an apple peeler skims off the fruit’s skin. When she saw the tiny faces of the Nutcracker, Clara, the Sugar Plum Fairy, and the Rat Prince, her eyes widened and she breathed a tiny, “ooh!” She loved them, and I was happy. No camera could have captured that moment.

That night I took out my journal and wrote all of my impressions and memories of the day, like I always have. I don’t feel guilty anymore about forgetting the camera because I realize why I often do: the same lens that focuses the image of the subject also puts it at a distance. I feel removed from the joy and “magic” of the moment when I put myself behind the camera. For me, I would rather feel the warmth of my baby in my lap and have my hands unencumbered to roll each experience between my palms and hers, together … and after Layla falls asleep, I will save it all in my own handwriting, in my journal.

I went to Borders recently and saw a book titled, “Embracing the Sacred Messiness of Life”. Nobody understands this sacred messiness better than mothers. My home is literally untidy, which is a difficult concept for my inner neat-freak … and the outer one … to come to terms with. As a child, everything in my room had its place: the picture cube, the ceramic ring box from Holland, the small ceramic otter, and my dolphin statue. Every two weeks I would come home from school to find that my mom had dusted and not put my knick knacks in their habitual niches, so I would have to rearrange them.

This sticky habit of mine refuses to un-glue. Now with a toddler who loves to explore all the nooks, boxes, cupboards, and shelves, my stubborn neat freak squirms in me constantly. My daughter, Layla, loves to extract each pot and pan from the kitchen cupboard and pour water from one to the other. Another of her favorite pastimes is to try on my shoes and flop around the house in different pairs. It’s not that I don’t enjoy watching her be silly, in fact I love to see her explore our home landscape and the world in the creative ways that only a child can. And it’s not that I mind cleaning up all that much, but the disorder shifts my insides, too, and nudges at my desire to have things look they way I want. This is rarely possible.

And it’s not just the physical mess. Layla and motherhood have altered the way I live, the way I eat, the way I sleep, the way I structure the contents of each day. I can’t always get myself out of bed to do yoga at 5 am, so I practice in chunks throughout the day. Just this morning, I had to dodge Layla’s wooden school bus and ceramic tea set. When I flattened myself out onto the mat to lift my chest into Cobra, Layla plopped herself onto my calves. She giggled when I lifted her from there into Downward Facing Dog, so I moved from Cobra to Dog a few times to amuse her. This is my yoga, a flexibility that is not as much of the body but of the ego to bend itself around the corners of motherhood.

Shortly after Layla was born, I struggled in this role of, what I initially saw as chaos, albeit a loving and desired one. I just couldn’t shake the nostalgia for an uncluttered home and day that didn’t demand I pack the diaper bag before walking out the door. As my ultimate love and adoration for my daughter has matured, I have found that all the disorder she has brought into daily life has reordered me on a spiritual level. I have learned to let go of my notions of how my home and existence should be because there are more important things … like the joy and love Layla smiles into each moment. I have learned to allow Layla and life to move me along with them, rather than resist, and to find and savor the bright fibers in the heap of linens and laundry. The messiness in our home is proof we enjoy playing and exploring together. I cannot depend on eight hours of nightly sleep or find the time to finish a novel in less than a month (poetry, I have found is much more convenient and compact), but I can devote myself to this baby who has been blessed into my care. And love it because I know I can raise her to feel loved and adored, even if it means the books won’t be arranged the way I like them.

Motherhood comes with messiness, but it is a sacred mess. In the chaos of it all, my ego shrinks one size at a time, along with the muddy, food-smeared t-shirts. Clutter has given me the space to become a better mother (I hope) and better person (I pray).

One of my best friends, who I originally met in a yoga class, has recently committed to an experiment in non-consumerism. For an unspecified amount of time, she has vowed not to buy anything but the essentials (food for her kitchen, underwear, toilet paper, etc.). Considering we used to sip lattes at Starbucks after yoga, shop together for yoga DVDs and CDs, her new dedication has significantly changed the logistics of our friendship and that of her family’s.

“What are your plans for Christmas?” I asked her.

“I can tell you there won’t be presents involved,” she said.

I admire my friend’s commitment, and I wonder if I could do it myself. My life as a mother revolves around consumption: diapers, clothes, crayons, bicycles. Even my friendships with other moms involve buying stuff. Take this past weekend: a friend and I met at Koukla Kids on J St. for a free puppet show (good start) and went to Starbucks afterwards to have coffee while our kids played with toys (yes, the Starbucks on J has toys for all to share). We drank overpriced coffee, and then we trashed our disposable cups. Other times friends and I will shop for clothes or toys or meet for lunch out. I often feel like I have to get out of the house and do something with my daughter, and handing over my debit card in exchange for things (often a caffeine buzz) we don’t really need often sounds like an agreeable distraction. But I wonder what I’m distracting myself from.

Motherhood should be about enjoying each moment with my daughter. It should be about building friendships with other moms and forming a warm, safe community for our children. Everything I want my daughter to learn, the deep layered values I want to clothe her with as she goes into the world, have nothing to do with spending money, and yet that’s what we do a lot of.

My friend chose a difficult time to disengage from consumerism, but maybe the Christmas season is perfectly apt. I’m no minister or devout church-goer, but Jesus’ birth was supposed to be a sign of hope for the lost, of light in darkness. The wise men brought gifts, but it was the drummer boy’s song that made the baby smile. Maybe we don’t need presents or things. Maybe what we have, the song in our hearts, is all we need.

I’ve decided I won’t overdo the gift-giving this Christmas season. I’ve bought small, useful gifts for family and close friends, just because I love them. I’ve made donations to charity. I’ve bought paper, pens, and finger puppets for my daughter, so we can enjoy creative time together. I don’t know if I’m ready to give up spending money completely, but it might be just the thing I need. I certainly won’t find hope or light in a Starbucks paper cup.