On Easter Sunday, on the way to Waterville to spend the day at Kevin/Peggy’s house, I stopped at the roadside to take a few portraits of the kids, dressed up in their Easter-attire. The images that I was able to capture were unremarkable at best.
She likes to dress-up, yet she doesn’t look comfortable. The eyes are squinting, despite the overcast day. The posture isn’t right. Her smile is … well … it is forced. Keith was behind the camera and cracking jokes to bring about an expression worthy of framing somewhere in the house (as if we he have a lot of up-to-date pics of the kids after their infancy, which we don’t). But try as he might he was unsuccessful.
Fast forward 4 days: Victoria is getting ready for school and asking if she can bring her binder to school.
The binder – it is a parental strategy to keep things a bit more tidy. You see, Victoria wants to be an author. She has been writing short, but increasingly long, illustrated stories for the last 2+ years and they are strewn throughout the home. Some on various surfaces in the living room. Some in the dining room. Others in her bedroom. Each serves as a trophy of some sort, a symbol of a success for her. None can be thrown away – each needs to retained, but we needed a space to hold her collection.
So Christine acquired a 3-ring binder for Victoria to hold all her stories in, and she was thrilled. She spent a significant portion of the night before organizing her binder, hole-punching all of her precious works and placing the inside in a sequence that makes sense only to her.
She wants to be author and an illustrator. She wants to be creative. She wants to write for children. She sees herself spending long and rewarding days sitting at a desk making something for herself that will – at the same time – bring joy to others. Those are the kind of thoughts that create an expression worth capturing, even if it’ll never end up framed on a wall.
