[reason 52] a thousand words

I've been re-doing and creating family albums over the past few months. There are, of course, tons of photos of relatives, but there are also family members who aren't related by blood. Many of them are my parents' "adopted" children - from foreign exchange students who lived with us for a season to friends of mine or my sister's that became part of the family along the way. 

Then there are "my kids"... kids I babysat for a great deal of their lives; friends of my children who I care for like my own; children who have touched my life and my heat in unfathomable ways.

When I came across this photo, there was no doubt it was going in the album. When my father saw this picture in the album, he paused to comment that I should send a digital copy to the baby in the photo. 

And I thought about the stories that photo has to tell. It could simply be a photo of a father holding his daughter at an 8th grade celebration for the child's neighbor/babysitter, but it is so much more to me. And I'm sure it's even more to that little girl. 

It's a photo of a father's love and care for his daughter; a memory of a comment he made that day that he was sure his little girl's life was going to go by in a flash and too soon it would be her eighth grade graduation - that he felt the need to treasure every moment...except the ones with stinky diapers. It's a photo of a man that entrusted the care of his precious child to me; who saw something in me that I didn't see at the time. 

It's a photo of a little girl who taught me that I was good at something - at caring for little ones and encouraging a love of learning. She would sit with me for hours with a stack of books and ask me to read them over and over. She was the princess of shenanigans as we splashed in puddles and played in mud and made messy art projects. Caring for her planted the seed in my soul that fed my desire to have my own family and to homeschool my children. She taught me the kind of joy that it only found in the messiness of life. 

It's a photo of someone who changed my life in unimaginable ways before she could even speak; whose favorite "person" as a toddler was Arby, who happened to be a cat, with her Daddio in a very close second; and whose fearless spirit has stayed with her far beyond our childhood adventures.

OK, so that was 447 words, but you get the picture.