eldest son

photo credit: his daddy.

God, I miss him. Better put, my lens misses him.

He sees the camera and he runs away or scowls and I've got to respect that. Doesn't matter how urgently beautiful I think he is, him in all his almost-sixness. He starts school in a few days, his first classroom of a lifetime of classrooms. I don't know if he'll allow me to capture it -- the new sneakers, the backpack, the schoolbus. It's a cliché but so is motherhood. I can't help either.

Here is my apple, he says. My lego. My dual-hulled tunnelling ship with grappling hook. I built that. Take a picture of that. Or Here. I am Wonder Man. Space Man. Invisible Man.

Yes, I say. You are. What am I?

He whispers in my ear. More than the moon.

Comments

[Alison]

I'm supposed to be grading papers and you're making me cry. How DARE YOU?!

[Sue Fisher]

This is lovely, Kate. I feel the same way most days. Chasing her, missing her and having her vent her rage against the camera. I don't think I will/should take the camera to her first day of school. Maybe I'll be blessed with a back-pack shot.

[thordora]

School already! I forgot. Wow. Just wow already.

The moon. Will he pluck you from the sky?

[misty]

Lump in throat. (more than the moon)

[liz elayne]

oh goodness. his words made me exhale an "oh" and smile with a side of tears.
beautiful.

(i am knee-deep in that cliche of new motherhood. you just can't help but think things like "oh she has thrown up all over me now. another rite of passage." and then roll your eyes at yourself when realizing you have thought the phrase rite of passage. but it is...)

[mamie]

i almost dread that day, when the camera cannot find them or they do not want to be found. and i hope you do find a way to get a few snaps on his first day.

[Anne]

ohmigosh! what wonderful words from son to momma. treasure.

[Snapped Ps]

Oh, yes. Only I try to take photos of my almost-six year-old and rather than hiding completely, she hides her true self. Her smile becomes plastic and she has somehow learned (where did she learn this?!) to drop her face and look up at the camera coyly...it's alarming in a young child, and unsettling in a young girl-child who I can sense is already feeling the pressure to be seductive (though I know she doesn't recognise that yet).