The Way I See It: Catching Up

Molly at Close to Home has a terrific photo prompt each week.  I took some time this week to fill in the gaps in my "The Way I See It" posts.  Click on the prompt links below the pictures to see Molly's posts.

Birth

As someone who loves autumn and winter, who savors the rich, earthy fragrances of mulching leaves and who happily stares at the bare branches of the silhouette oaks of February, I found this prompt challenging.  Of course, if I had done this back in the season of the nativity it would have been easier.  Fortunately, I got outside and I wandered, and we were in the midst of extraordinarily warm days.  The bulbs were fooled into bursting through.  The birth of the spring garden is a little premature, but I love the hints of bright green in the midst of the grays and browns of winter. 

Portrait

Claire and I fiddled with light and posing and hair in the midst of a kitchen needing cleaning.  I love the line of her eyebrow, the outline of her lips, the bit of light reflecting off her earring, her freeze frame expression.  

I love that she is my daughter.

I love her.

Warmth

I do not like the quality of this picture, but it says WARMTH in many different ways.  My youngest was hit with our annual February Fever and was bundled up in front of the fire doing his school reading.  He was warm.  The heavy blanket my nephew sent us from Japan was warm.  The fire was warm.  The sunlight from the upper windows was warm.

When we are sick I miss my mother, for even at the age of 52 it is her cool hand I want on my fevered skin.  And snuggling with a twelve-almost-thirteen year old, a young man who is almost six feet tall, will only get more rare as the minutes rapidly tick by.  My heart is warm with memories.

A Different Point of View

Yesterday we drove through the Sacramento delta lands on our way to and from a basketball game. It is a whole different world from my oak-covered hilltop.  

With wide open vistas, winding rivers, water-logged fields, birds circling and diving and feeding, it was warmer and wetter and refreshingly, beautifully different. Everything was flat, flat, flat. Traffic was a line of cars waiting for the drawbridge to come down again.

 

The smell of water and fish and tractor exhaust filled the air.  Stark brown fields with rows of stubbly something went on and  on and on.  Trees in perfect rows looked like a scene from Middle Earth.  Blue light softened every row and bend and branch into wonder.

 I have been thinking a lot about seeing things from a different point of view.  The view of a parent and a child, the view of a Protestant and a Catholic and an Orthodox, the view of a teacher and a student.  The view of one who is always certain and of one who is riddled with doubt.  The view of the optimist, and the view of the pessimist.  My point of view is only one vista, one aspect.  Someone else may see the same event, memory, ordinary day in a different light.  That does not need to threaten or undo me, but it does lead to humility.

I am sure I will be talking about this a lot this year.  I have a lot to learn.