A Heart of Gold
September 25, 2011My little guy has a heart of gold. So full of love and compassion.
The purity of his heart brings me so much more joy and satisfaction than any of his soccer goals, stripes on his karate belt or gold stars on his worksheets ever could. (Although don’t get me wrong … I am quite proud of all of those things, too!)
In first grade, the kids have to do home reading every night. A few weeks ago, he read a book about being a leader and doing the “right” things. I was floored (not really) when he read the page below and without prompting, he told me what he would do “if that boy were real.”
I share this on my blog not to boast about my kid (well, yeah … I admittedly am kinda am doing that a little bit) but to illustrate how you can use photography to capture a feeling, a fleeting moment in time. Even after the fact.
Sometimes, you happen to have your camera with you right when something special or spectacular happens. More often than not, however, you find yourself saying, “I wish I had had my camera!” In some instances, I find it’s actually worthwhile to recreate a moment for documentation purposes. In this example, I knew that I wanted to remember this moment when Nate showed his compassionate self. I wanted to document it so twenty years from now, I could remember how even back in first grade, he was always such a lover. So after Nate was finished with his book reading, I grabbed my camera, flipped the book back to the appropriate page and made Nate read the page again. And then I snapped this photo and added the caption.
There’s something about seeing the image that really helps cement this memory into my brain. I know I won’t ever forget that he has a heart of gold, but every time I look at this photo, I relive that little moment with my son. And it makes me smile.
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