you are different. this is a gift. never forget this. the world is so big yet so narrow. people will try to make you fit. they will do this by making you feel smaller. but day by day, you become more colossal.
On October 18th, my daughter was born and I became the mother of three children. Hundreds of miles away, on the same day, another baby girl was born and another woman added the third child to her family. We were complete strangers at that time, but our love of photography and family brought us together. We started to have a conversation about motherhood with images, because we tell stories with our cameras. Since some tales are so similar, and some are not, we decided to collaborate and share a photo a week from a normal day as a mother to three.
“Normal day, let me be aware of the treasure you are. Let me learn from you, love you, bless you before you depart. Let me not pass you by in quest of some rare and perfect tomorrow. Let me hold you while I may, for it may not always be so. One day I shall dig my nails into the earth, or bury my face in the pillow, or stretch myself taut, or raise my hands to the sky and want, more than all the world, your return.” – Mary Jean Irion
you have the face of a baby but the determination of a teenager. you want to do it all and always on your own. next week your big dream will come true. you will begin school. oh my heart.
photo by Heather Robinson blog | Facebook
How did we get here? Are you wild and crazy because you are wild and crazy? Or have I become such a lax parent that I failed to parent you? We visited your preschool this morning and you seem totally out of place and just not ready for any of it. But isn’t that why we are sending you? To get you some socialization, some separation? Yes. We want you to grow into whomever you will be, even if it causes me some real worry and maybe just a little guilt that I should’ve given you more attention or guidance or structure from the start. Or maybe, none of this matters and you are going to be exactly who you want to be . . . and here I am again, wondering, how did we get here?
“But the effect of her being on those around her was incalculably diffusive:
for the growing good of the world is partly dependent on unhistoric acts;
and that things are not so ill with you and me as they might have been,
is half owing to the number who lived faithfully a hidden life,
and rest in unvisited tombs.”
– George Eliot, Middlemarch
Heather Robinson
we walked in the woods trying to escape the august sun. you holding the walking stick that daddy made for you and me holding my camera. both of us finding solace from much more than the savage heat.
Please head over to my partner Joni‘s page to see the dreamworld she created this month.
these are the days of tugging on pant legs. of squeezing to fit next to each other. of fighting over a lap. you push and pull with all your might to touch this love. but it won’t always be so. the future will scatter us. you will outgrow us. i know this. and so i make pictures of that sweet time when we clung like crazy to one another. because one day the photos will be all that is left of this beautifully surreal time together.