The Never Ending Life Lessons

Carter has been working on a photo project for her class where she had to take pictures from the perspective of her very much younger self. For a six foot person getting down on the eye level of her four year old self is a feet. Since she is an only child I have figured more prominently in her pictures than I might want, but some of them are literally of the bottom of my legs, or my hand holding the steering wheel.

Today she asked me if we could go to the Food Bank. I was thrilled that it made the list in places that made a difference to her life. Yes, she did not have much say in spending time there when she was three, but it did not have to make the list in her photo project.

Sadly, for the sake of her photos, the old Durham Food Bank branch has closed and moved to a much nicer building. The old, rotten dark building with food pilled three pallets high on racks would make a better picture. Now we have a brighter and cleaner looking building with much more open space and more room for volunteers to work.

After she got a shot of me pretending to sort food in the food drive area we went to leave and she said she wanted one more picture before we went out the door. Turns out she wanted to take a picture of me in front of the “Dana Lange Volunteer Project Area” plaque. She did not use her real camera, just her phone, but she said it was nice just the same and I think posted it on one of her many social media sites I am excluded from.

She has no idea how much it meant to me that she wanted to include my work in her childhood memories. Now I am not so crazy to ask if they are good memories or bad memories — I don’t want to push my luck, but as a parent I just hope that over time some of the good things sink in to our kids and end up making a difference.

I know she gets sick of hearing me tell her things. “Is this conversation going to turn into a lesson?” is probably her most repeated thing she says to me. She always gets back the same answer, “It’s my job, as your mother, to teach you lessons.” I am sorry for Carter that she is an only child so I only have one person to constantly annoy with the “lessons”. If she had siblings she might not have to hear them as often, but then again if she had siblings she would not get to go on as many fun trips because we would be paying for another kid. The trade-offs in life. For today I am just going to think positive thoughts about “the Food Bank photos.”