Hasta La Gadget!

My Facebook friends are once again on the warpath. What has their knickers in a wad this time? It’s those goofy Native Americans complaining about sport team mascots again. You know, like the Washington Redskins, Cleveland Indians, or my favorite ball team: the Atlanta Braves. My friends just don’t get what’s to be offended about, and frankly, the consensus is, if they’re not offended by it, no one should be.

My great-grandmother was Cherokee, but I’ve never considered myself American Indian. Other than reading several books about the Cherokee, I’ve never gotten involved in any of it. I did plan once to attend a rain dance, but it was cancelled due to inclement weather.

But I get it. From the time Columbus arrived in 1492 until the year 1900, 95 percent of the American Indians in the USA were killed either by disease brought by the white man, or directly by white soldiers. Men, women, children, and babies were killed, tortured, raped, as they were removed from their homes and forced to live a sub-human existence on reservations. The horror of the Trail of Tears alone is unimaginable.

So, yeah, I understand why some of them might be upset that the one thing they were left with – their identity — was also taken to be used as a profitable logo for several professional sporting teams.

One friend argued that Washington’s mascot is an honor to the Native Americans. But shouldn’t Native Americans get to decide for themselves what is or is not an honor? Would an expansion team called the Nashville Negros be an honor to African Americans? Would a soccer team in Germany called the Berlin Jews be an honor to the Jewish community?

All of my friends on Facebook complaining about this are Southern white Christians, which is a group that rarely is offended by anything. That’s sarcasm of course. While being offended might not have been invented in the Bible Belt, we sure as hell perfected it.

A few things that offend most Southern white Christians are: Pro-choice, birth control, Charles Darwin, anyone quoting Charles Darwin, evolution, science, scientists, science data, other people’s welfare checks, taxing rich people, the global warming hoax, Muslims, Buddhists, Hindus, Atheists, Catholics, Jehovah Witnesses, sex education, vegetarians, vegans, gun laws, gun limits, gun debates, democrats, anything Clinton, Stephen Colbert, John Stewart, David Letterman, Bill Maher, Rachel Maddow, the Dixie Chicks, gay people, gay couples, gay unions, gay marriage, gay weddings, gay pride, gay parades, gay books, gay magazines, gay movies, gay actors, gay supporters, the term “gay old time,” and any words that come out of the mouth of President Obama.

Maybe that’s why they are offended by people being offended – it’s theirs. They built that. Even the friend, who said Native Americans should be honored by the Washington Redskins’ name, added that people today get offended by the most trivial things. I know he’s right, because this same friend was totally put out when I posted a picture of my Christmas present, an Iron Bowl shirt that read “Iron Bowl Beat Down.” Being a Crimson Tide fan, that was too much for him to bear. So one shirt making his team look bad is okay to be offended by, but a sports team wearing jerseys and helmets that demean an entire culture… well, that’s just overreacting.

Personally, the sport teams’ mascots do not offend me. Neither was I offended by Al Jolson’s Blackface. On the flipside, however, I can understand why some people were. These things just didn’t hit me on a personal level.

Chances are the professional sports teams using Native American mascots will not change their names any time soon. Most of their paying fans would be more offended and when it comes to making decisions for companies like these, the almighty dollar trumps moral discernments.

But even if they did, if the Washington Redskins one day became the Washington Renegades, or the Atlanta Braves became the Atlanta Rebels, would that really be the end of the world as we know it?

I didn’t know yet that my marriage would go up in flames when I first realized that I was in very few of our family photos. My son’s young life was already well-documented, with thousands of digital pictures housed on hard drives and cameras even before we had iPhones or an infinite cloud to store many more. Most of the photos were of my son alone — in a giraffe costume or reaching for the Christmas lights, with ridiculous bed head or swaddled in a duckie towel fresh from the bath. But there were also many of him with his toddler friends and grandparents and many more than that of he and his dad. There were some, far fewer, that documented those early years of a small boy and his mother.

I let that fire burn within me for a long time. I was a restless stay-at-home mother who felt isolated and thrilled at the same time to spend long days and longer nights with my boy. My then-husband was working two jobs in the suburbs, commuting too far, earning too little money. The kid was the joy. The rest was harder than I got, even at the time.

And so I had many concerns and worries and complaints. Money. Our tiny, cluttered cave of an apartment. My weight. My relationship with my mother. Having five bucks in pocket and no car to use during the week. The judgmental other mothers at playgroup. If I’d ever find fulfilling work again. The bills. Holy God, the bills. There was so much to fret over, that being absent from the photos fell far down the list.

Until it occurred to me that being un-pictured was about much more that not seeing my own face on the slideshow that ticked past in the digital frame we got as a Christmas gift one year. I was out of frame and no one thought to invite me into it.

Looking back, I see how lonely I already was, but that realization deepened the pain. I spoke up.

“I see you with our son and I am so overwhelmed and in love with you both, that I HAVE to capture it, I HAVE to take a picture,” I remember saying tearfully to my son’s father. “I want you to feel the same about me.”

I didn’t know then that he was breaking — in his heart and in his brain (and this is putting it compassionately) — and that there wasn’t room to pull me in closer, to him or to the lens. I don’t remember how he reacted, to be honest, just that he never did make up for that gap in our family portraits.

When the time came, more quickly and urgently than I could have ever pictured, for me to leave the marriage, the camera was one of the things I packed into a laundry basket with a few changes of clothes and other necessities. I don’t think I threw it in there among toothbrushes and stuffed animals and tiny undies thinking I’d reclaim my space in the photographs, but the camera was there, in my possession.

We never went back to live there permanently, my son and me. But the days and then weeks and months which became years since have all been well-documented. My son is still the star of nearly every frame. But I am also in many. Plenty. More than enough.

Even when days were painful — tantrums, heartbreak, tears, exhaustion — there are photos that show how we feel. When times are good — happy, sunshine, laughter, silly faces — there are even more, snapped quickly in and in progression, of the two of us.

Out on our own, I got — this time in a flash — that I was solely responsible for getting myself into the photos. Selfies, taken with the camera or phone held high above us at impossible angles or dangling precariously while we are jumping in the ocean or peering off the balcony, are the way my son and I both are shown living the moments we share.

When Allison Tate wrote “The Mom Stays in the Picture,” I wasn’t surprised it went viral quickly and that so many mothers would relate and react, challenging themselves to ask someone else to take a photo so they would not be left out of the family archive. But it was also too much for me to read at the time. It struck too close to my hard drive.

A year later, when Tate updated her audience on what it had been like to write that post and to actively stay in her own albums for the full calendar, I was finally able to take it all in. I read and it clicked, this time with less pain.

I have a new challenge, now that the Not Boyfriend is in our lives and photographs, to voice my desire to continue staying in the picture. We’re not yet at the place where it occurs to him, in moments of overwhelm and love, to snap photos the way I do. I’m not taking this as a sign that things in this relationship are anything like they were the last time I told a man to please include me in the photos (things are definitely not the same). I am, however, still working to say aloud how important it is to me to see my face alongside theirs.

In the meantime, there are selfies. Lots and lots and lots of selfies.

Counting myself in has been one of the greatest exercises of being a single mother, and it has not always been easy. Even when the numbers only go up to TWO, adding myself in — and then clicking the camera button — has reinforced with each photo that I am important, my face matters, I am still here.

Single mamas need to take selfies — with kids, solo, with lady friends, with new loves. It is critical for us to put ourselves front and center, to position to our best side and to stay in frame. It’s also momentous to learn to ask friends and passersby to please take a picture of you with your children or you standing fabulously all on your own. Practice that. Move out of the discomfort and in front of a beautiful piece of artwork, an ornate door, the magnificence of the ocean or into a crazy, hilarious pose.

But don’t forget to take hold of your own camera and snap away, reminding yourself that every click counts. Just like every person in your family. Especially you.

Share your gorgeous/hilarious/super-artsy/oh-my awful/favorite #SingleMomSelfies with Single Mom Nation. Here’s how. Use #SingleMomSelfies!

Jessica Ashley is creator of the newly launched Single Mom Nation and the long-time author of the single-mom-in-the-city blog, Sassafrass. She is a content strategist who wears inappropriately high heels to the playground, mom to a one-boy-band of a nine-year old and expecting a child with the Not Boyfriend this summer.

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