Who knew photography could help Phoebe?
Anyone who knows my 9-year-old knows that she is an incredible perfectionist who beats herself up terribly when she gets something wrong. Along with this, she has inherited the uncanny ability to argue her way into and around anything plus she has a scary, raw honesty about her that can be painful. If she anwers a question wrong in class she’s afraid others think she’s lying to them. Consequently, she’s confessed tiny infractions to me with tears streaming down her cheeks (like the time in gym class when her teacher asked if anyone had played kickball before. Phoebe said she had because she, Zoe and Elias kick the ball around in the backyard. She didn’t realize they meant organized kickball. She felt guilty about it for a good week and a half).
This all leads up to this morning and how she told her class that I had said that water was blue because it reflected the color of the sun. I told her that it reflected the color of the sky, not the sun. We then argued over whether it really WAS reflecting the sun because without sunlight, there was no reflection. All this before finishing my first cup of coffee. She got upset when she found out she was wrong and I tried to make her see it in a different light (no pun intended). I told her that she needs to embrace her mistakes and imperfections because without them, she’d be boring. I told her that I used to want all my pictures perfect when I used my digital camera and that I would work and work until I thought they were perfect (which all of us know, is never possible). When I couldn’t get them the way I wanted them, I thought getting a better camera would be the ticket, but we didn’t have the money for that so I got my cheap ’broken’ camera (as she calls my Holga). Now, instead of wanting my pictures perfect, I love the fact that they’re not perfect. The light leaks, blurry spots and crazy artifacts are what make my pictures beautiful. As in photography, it is in life. I think she got it. I know I did.
