“Friendship … is born at the moment when one man says to another “What! You too? I thought that no one but myself . . .”
– C.S. Lewis, The Four Loves
My entire friendship with becca has been a deep kinship – one repetitive chorus of what this quote talks about – of understanding each other and finding not just acceptance but wild creative freedom within those bounds. I am a better photographer, partner, mother, and woman because of her.
So, it was an incredible joy to spend a morning with her and her two littlest ones. Her oldest daughter charlotte is now school aged, and so she wasn’t with us for this morning. But her other two were. She not only wanted to capture the rhythms of a morning at home with them, but also to capture “baby dean” as he is so quickly transitioning out of baby mode and into little boy mode. She hoped to capture the close connection they still have, the way he still sticks his chubby little hands down the front of her t-shirt, the way he goes silent and still when she holds him and wild and playful when she doesn’t.
I was reminded again what an impossible thing it is to stop time and pin it down, and yet what a high and holy calling it is to attempt to capture these moments anyways.
Becca, Fiona, and Dean,
I love you all. Thank you for welcoming me into your light and your love on this glowing spring morning. I hope you can hold onto these images and moments tightly and never let go.
with my heart,
ash