[If you came directly to this post, please read here first for a little background on the project]
In August of 2014, when I first asked for volunteers for this new project about having children, Jami was the first to respond. I was excited because I knew she and Colin were planning for a new addition to their family soon and it would be awesome to get her story and hopefully incorporate the newest little Mays into it when he/she arrived. We finally got together that October for brunch and the first thing she told me was that she thought she was pregnant, but hadn’t told anybody else yet! I felt so honored that she shared that with me, and that she agreed to take part in my work. On July 3, 2015, I was privileged to photograph the birth of Charles Howard Mays (Charlie) and then visit with him and Jami at home in October, exactly one year to the date of our interview. Thank you Jami!
{Click the first image to open slideshow and read Jami’s story}
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- Baby Charlie did not make Jami a first-time mom. Her son Harrison did that twelve years before. But unlike this time, she hadn’t planned to get pregnant then. She was 20 years old, had moved out of her parents house, and dropped out of college. She came from a religious home, but had wandered about as far away from that lifestyle as possible. Having a baby or starting a family was the last thing on her mind, but drinking, drugs, and just simply not being aware or concerned enough to take proper precautions led to a surprise pregnancy. She said she always wanted to have kids – someday – but suddenly someday was here. Harrison’s father was on the same destructive path she was, right along with her, but she says the pregnancy saved both their lives, they knew they had to grow up, get clean and be there for this baby.
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- After a rough couple of months, they did what they thought was the right thing at the time, got married and decided to have a go at being a family. That lasted until right before Harrison’s first birthday. They divorced. Jami was a single mom. Harrison’s father has stayed in his life, but the whole experience convinced Jami that she didn’t want any more kids – at least not that way.
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- Being a single mom for almost 10 years, Jami knew she didn’t want to risk having a child with someone else and then having the relationship end – especially on bad terms. She was resolved, not at all interested in exploring that option. Then she met Colin in 2010. They got engaged in 2011 and married in 2013. She made sure he understood from the start that if they were going to be together, even though Harrison’s biological father was in his life, he would effectively be Harrison’s dad. He would be the one there on a daily basis. And he has been.
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- Jami put it this way, about their decision to have a child together, “It’s so different when you actually are not just living in the ‘now’, like a child, when you’re not thinking about the consequences and not thinking about the future, than when you actually are planning a life with someone. Everything feels more real.”
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- She said she and Colin had the space and time to think about what they wanted their life to look like. And they decided they wanted a child together in that future.
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- So they began to plan – much differently than her first experience at pregnancy.
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- Deciding the timeline, settling financial and practical issues (only having one vehicle at the time and preferring two).
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- And Jami ceasing the birth control method she had vehemently used for all those years since Harrison was born.
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- So, I finally got around to asking the question that triggered this whole project for me: But WHY do you want to make/have a child?
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- Jami said that she was sure that everybody who is in love feels like this, but she and Colin both feel very much like their love is a special love, because there’s all these layers of history, things that had to happen in order for them to find each other, even though on the surface their meeting could seem like a fluke.
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- She explained, “I feel like it’s two things. One, I want to give him a gift, he wants to be a father and I feel like he deserves to have that, and I feel like for us, it is this sort of gift that we give to our love.”
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- She commented on how corny that sounded, but said she just feels like there’s so much love overflowing between the two of them. What I heard was that the big love between them needed a tangible expression. Something created out of it, through it.
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- Jami didn’t just want more children for the sake of having them, but so much of the decision to have Charlie was the fact that she got to do it with Colin.
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- They not only got to create a child together, but will parent that child together, parent both of their children together.
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- So for the Mays family it boils down to love: Love between husband and wife, between parent and child, between brothers. The love in this family was too big for just the three of them, so now they are four.