Monthly Archives: February 2016

A Hope Deferred

Each weekend, I keep a now long-standing tradition of taking our oldest daughter for cookies and milk. It’s the time in which she knows that she has my undivided attention, where she’s the scheduled priority, regardless of other commitments that may press in. I began the tradition by taking her to a Starbucks for a cookie when she was younger. As her love of books grew, however, she developed an affinity for the Barnes & Noble near our apartment in New England. After our cookie and conversation, we would spend an hour or more looking through books, and occasionally returning home with new reading material. Dedicated time with my daughter, and feeding her love of books. Everyone wins.

Since our re-location to North Carolina, Barnes & Noble isn’t as close by, but we manage to make it the home of the weekly cookies and milk outing about once monthly. A couple of weekends ago, after having browsed the books and moved on to the toys, she discovered one of those toys that would be really cool at about half its price. Of course, it’s a toy that she immediately wanted, for which she professed her un-dying love, and that she pined to own in a way that one wouldn’t even imagine possible for a four-year-old.

She’s ahead of the game, I suppose.

My reasons for not buying her the toy were many. The cost was less of an issue than the fact that her grandparents are able to show very little self-control in the toy-buying area, to the point that we must routinely purge old and un-favored toys in order to avoid the cost of purchasing a storage unit or a larger house. Karen and I both wish to not raise materialistic children.

That said, I also prefer to not be the guy with a sobbing four-year-old in the middle of a bookstore because she didn’t get what she wants. Parenting is a learning curve. Sometimes you end up saying things that you realize in retrospect were not the best of ideas. In this case, that went something like, “I’ve taken a photo of it. When we get home, Mommy and I will talk about it. Maybe we can buy it for you if we agree.”

The issue is that I already knew that no such agreement would come, because I could predict with certainty that Karen would feel the same as I did. It accomplished the short-term goal of avoiding the in-store meltdown, but the side effect was frequent reminders on the drive home to remember to show Mommy the toy as soon as we arrived so that we could talk about it and then make the purchase.

As promised, we discussed the toy, and, as predicted, it was not purchased. So, I was successful in deferring the meltdown until we were in the safety of our home, but I also deferred my daughter’s hope.

I don’t think that’s a good thing.

I forget…we all do…how crushing is the potential for such an event on a child of that age. I’m not speaking of not getting a toy, but rather about being given hope and then realizing the desired result still didn’t happen. Hope, you see, is a most powerful thing. Only a small amount of hope can inspire us to get through the day, to stop obsessing over that thing that is causing us such anxiety, to believe the best of a potential diagnosis, to try one more time to keep a relationship alive. Hope is a Divinely given gift, one of the best attributes of the human condition.

Hope crushed…a series of dreams that don’t come true…can achieve the opposite. The most optimistic among us can become calloused after a certain number of such experiences.

I believe that I mis-handled my daughter’s hope that day. A small thing, perhaps, a blip on the proverbial radar of her childhood (she’s already forgotten the toy by this point), but impactful should it continue. I gave her hope for something that I knew would not come true, that I knew I would not permit to come true, and I did so because of selfish motives.

I’m quite disappointed in my actions that day. I learned in that moment that realism is always the preferred approach. I want our daughter to know that hope is important because dreams and wishes do occasionally come true to our liking.

I can’t manipulate her outlook the way I did that day because of that toy.

I won’t do so again.

“What happens to a dream deferred?

 

      Does it dry up
      like a raisin in the sun?”

(Langston Hughes)

The Photography of Reality

There was much fallout late last month in the photography community when Nikon Singapore awarded a prize to a photo that was quite striking at first blush: an airliner captured through the tunnel of a ladder looking upward at exactly the right moment. One of those shots that’s too good to be true. Of course, it was too good to be true, and photographers worldwide quickly revealed it for the bad photo editing that it was. There have been statements and apologies…not really the sort of thing that bothers me, but rather something of amusement.

Photography is a medium for which I’ve always pined for a talent. When I think of the creative pursuits that I wish I could master, it ranks right up there with the electric guitar. I’m still an ad-hoc family photographer, and I’m perfectly adept with Adobe’s software, but I just don’t have the talent for recognizing the composition of a beautiful photo in everyday life.

I know several photographers, and I know that what they have…that ability to perceive and create a shot as life moves…is a gift, the sort of thing that you either have or you don’t. I don’t. I’ve gotten better with some practice, but every good shot that I’ve ever captured has been pure luck. I’m a creative person, but that is an entirely different sort of creativity with which I am not blessed.

During mine and Karen’s wedding, one of our photographers laid down between us as we held hands and kissed, and took a photo up through our hands with the sky in the background above us. It’s one of the most amazing photos we have of that day, very much one of my favorites. That’s the sort of creativity that I mean.

A couple of years ago, while I was in school yet again, the arts school where I was in attendance held a photography exhibit. I remember looking at many of the pieces that were on display, all of which were very high quality, and thinking that they weren’t really photography. That’s to say, they were extremely creative image manipulations that began with photography, and melded into something different. I felt, though, that I was at an art show, not a photography exhibit.

And I don’t for a moment think that’s a bad thing, but I think that we should perhaps guard what we call photography a bit more carefully.

When I was in undergrad, many of my friends were fellow theatre majors or art majors. Most floated easily between departments and projects as the disciplines intersected. I remember a show in which one of them built a functioning R2-D2. He entered under “mixed media.” I thought of that when I saw the photography exhibit two years ago, labeling the images as mixed media to myself. There were skillfully sought after images there, and equally skillful artistry with Photoshop utilized afterward to arrive at the finished pieces. They were art, something new and fresh.

They weren’t, however, borne of the same skills that brought Karen and I that amazing image from our wedding.

Maybe this is all a trivial attempt on my part to categorize things, but I think it’s important. Being a great digital artist doesn’t make one a great photographer, although I’ve met many artists that are both. As someone who has no talent, but a keen appreciation for, photography, I think there’s something important about keeping the medium pure. Like all disciplines and mediums, it connects beautifully with others. Yet, it is still a distinct medium in its own right.