A Walk

When your dad’s a photographer/filmmaker, you’re bound to pick up an interest sooner or later. It’s in the air, a synergy of moments and movements, of creating and curating, of noticing, of stillness, of shhhhh.

The edit.

—

Can I have my own camera? she asks.

Someday, I say, and I find myself asking Ken over lunch if he has time for a weekend adventure. I’m thinking a photo walk? She’d love it.

—

He doesn’t know it’s an early Father’s Day present. He doesn’t know that Bee and I would later sift through our favorite images, learn about cropping, about colors, about the beauty of white space. That we’d spend a Saturday afternoon uploading images here, that two weeks later we’d doodle personal notes and favorite shapes in the margins of a book that he’ll get to keep forever.

—

I can’t get the butterfly! I can’t get the butterfly! she shouts.

She’s spotted a white one on our walk; she wants to take its photo. But it’s moving too fast, the image is blurred, a tiny fragment of a white wing cropped to the left of the frame.

Make it stay, Mom? she says.

—

And it’s clear to me on days like these – on years like these – that we can’t make it stay. We can’t capture the beauty, we can’t still the motion, we can’t keep the butterfly.

But still, we try.

—

Do you think he’s gonna love this, Mom? she asks.

We’re wrapping the book in tissue paper, tying it taut with string.

I think he’s gonna love this, I say.