“It takes a village to raise a child.” -Proverb
Confession time.
I advocate photographing our daily life experiences, but unfortunately, too often I overlook the people in my daily life–that are not members of my family–as characters in my own life story.
The neighbors, babysitter, teachers, friends, co workers, classmates, coaches, and even our favorite sales clerk we see every week at the local bakery who always remembers our name.
These people shape our life through their big or small interactions. Do we have a photo of them?
Yesterday was the final day we had with our Nanny, Elise. She’s been so fantastic for the last year. She’s been a huge influence in Buzzy’s life–yet I didn’t have any visual proof in our story of the role that she has played!
While photographing the two of them the neighbor kids came over to join in the fun (more characters that I have never documented).
It was an important discovery for me to notice these influential relationships and how I have a tendency to overlook them and only focus on my family–YET IT TAKES A VILLAGE TO RAISE A CHILD.
4 Responses
This is such an excellent observation. When my daughter was small, and we were living in a new city without any family near, she “adopted” our next-door neighbor and called her “Grandma Thelma.” Sadly, I never thought to take any photos of them together.
Now you have me thinking about teachers, Sunday school workers and current neighbors that I need to be photographing!
oh yes! You thought of some other great ones that I haven’t!
Thank you for the reminder, Brooke!
I find myself not wanting to bring out the “big camera” when family and friends are around for fear of their “direction” and asking for specific shots to be taken. Good thing I always have my iPhone handy and enjoy companies that specialize in small prints – perfect for scrapbooks and other memory keepers.
I need a better camera phone 🙂 Ha ha ha! That’s part of my problem for not documenting, because my phone camera has the worst delay on the shutter that every image takes the moment “after” I wanted it too… an iphone is on my wish list 🙂