Several months ago my responsible sister texted the entire family to inform us she had scheduled a time for Family Photos. The details included complicated driving instructions to a meadow located near the second star to the right and straight on 'til morning. The shoot location was so far away from my house that when I put it into google maps the estimated driving time was measured in light years.

What then followed was eleventy weeks of the 6,214 members of my family each taking turns texting photos of disembodied outfits to the family text chain and asking "will this go with whatever everyone else is wearing."

A quick note about this family text chain that has more than once been the main topic in therapy for me over the years. The members of the chain include my parents, siblings, and siblings' spouses. I don't know why we include the spouses, for they never engage with this chain. But they are included neverthenonethelessnotwithstanding.

The reason this text chain was a Topic for therapy for me is my family used to engage in a sacred family tradition of creating new makeups of the chain each time someone wanted to text the group. So someone would text some members of the family and then another person would realize a sister was excluded so she'd be added, creating a new chain. Then someone else would realize they actually wanted their husband on the chain so they would create a new chain that differed only by the inclusion of that person.

Eventually there would be upwards of nine chains actively happening, various family members responding to each other using different iterations of the family makeup. Usually there would be a lot of messages mixed in that just said "I can't see the picture you texted" because my family is made up of both iPhone users and terrorists who refuse to convert.

The breaking point for me happened several years ago when I walked out of court where the judge was wearing one of those long white barrister wigs (Trust me. That's how they still dress.), only to discover not one, not two, but NINETY. SEVEN. missed text messages. And they crossed half a dozen different threads. Each thread was responding to things happening in other threads.

I would have needed a physics degree and an entire team of engineers to make sense of the conversation. So I didn't bother.

This resulted in me and Skylar fully missing a family event that happened the following week, which event had apparently been organized in the text massacre I just described.

Twas then that I created a thread that included all relevant adults, plus the in-laws who do not engage, and texted the family the following: "PIN THIS THREAD. IF YOU WANT TO COMMUNICATE WITH THE FAMILY, USE THIS. I WILL IMMEDIATELY DELETE ANY TEXT RECEIVED ON ANY OTHER FAMILY THREAD GOING FORWARD. MOST WILL BE TOO ASHAMED TO SAY AMEN AND SHARE."

Some families need a peacemaker. Mine needs a tyrant.

And so, it was on this thread that the family began coordinating outfits for the family photo shoot.

Now you might think we, the family gays, would have been the most on top of the outfit coordination out of everyone. And there is historical precedent to support this sort of thing if you know anything about Skylar, who brought FOUR wardrobe changes to his own graduation, knowing very well he would spend most of it draped in a genderless ceremonial robe and flat hat.

Blame the exhaustion of new parenthood. Blame our busy schedules. Blame Obama. I don't care who you blame as long as you don't blame me.

Suddenly it was the day of family photos and Skylar was frantically calling me from work to ask me to dig through his vast wardrobe that could rival Marie Antionette's to find a very specific pair of linen pants and steam them using an industrial sized machine I didn't even know existed until this phone call.

He then directed me to pull out very specific outfits for myself and West. And ever since I got the taste of having someone else dress me, life has felt honestly colorless.

That evening, Skylar returned home from work and we quickly loaded all of our worldly possessions atop our vehicle and began our trek westward to the meadow. We had to abandon the piano aside a dusty trail after the engine started giving out. Ten minutes later we buried a Cabbage Patch doll under a tumbleweed.

We finally arrived and received nods of approval from the remainder of my family who no doubt had all been gossiping about whether we would show up looking respectable, but in a separate text thread, knowing I would delete it without reading.

My cousin Heather, who did our wedding, was our photographer of the evening. One of the rules of having a gigantic extended Mormon family is there is a 100% chance one of your cousins will become a talented photographer. There's also a 90% chance one other cousin helped do January 6th. But these things cancel themselves out, I think.

It was a lovely evening, and we couldn't be happier about the photos.

Even if I did have to learn how to use a steamer in order for them to happen.

~It Just Gets Stranger