When I got home from my photo shoot tonight, HAH said, “I have a camera. I can come take pictures with you.”
And now that I showed him how to turn his camera around the right way, I think this partnership may work out perfectly.
Prior to HAH I thought the whole gender stuff was a bunch of socially constructed nonsense. So I bought my son dolls. I surrounded with him with stuffed animals and only let him watch nature documentaries.
Despite my best efforts to fight what was ingrained in his DNA, it is all… dump trucks, milk trucks, monster trucks, fire trucks, UPS trucks, ambulances, tractors, excavators, cranes, diggers, front loaders, motor boats, airplanes, rockets, motorcycles and trains… all the time.
While it may not be my favorite subject matter, it sure makes getting him out of the house easy, especially in Petaluma.
One of our favorite walks prior to HAH was down to the river. We liked it because Arlo could swim after sticks and we could walk in a quiet open space by the water.
Now if we want to go to the river, we have to sell HAH on all the cement trucks we might see at the factory across the river, or the boats that we can climb on and pretend to sail to North Carolina.
Tonight though, we hit the jackpot. Just before we started to leave, a front-end loader actually started smoothing out one pile of rocks and scooping up another pile to dump in a giant container. We sat motionless and watched him for at least 30 minutes… which in toddler years translates to two hours. The driver even honked and waved at us twice.
We were in absolute heaven.
These were the last photos my beloved Rolleiflex took before it broke on Christmas morning.
These photos remind me how much I love that camera.
And I hope it comes back very soon.So even though these photos were not actually taken today, because they are film, I think they are allowed to break the rules.
As a kid, when I told my parents I wanted to quit taking piano lessons, in a desperate attempt to keep me interested in music, they said, “We’ll buy you any instrument you want, what do you want to play?”
I said, “Drums.”
They said, “Anything but drums.” (And I distinctly remember my dad saying, “You have to have rhythm to play drums.”)
So that was it for me and music.
Tonight HAH went right to the drum set in our friend’s living room, climbed up on the stool, grabbed the brushes and started to play, while also singing “Home on the Range.” And we, as parents, cheered loudly from the couch… I think I was cheering the loudest.