Promises, Promises

Sometimes, I’ll do just about anything to quell a crying child. And this fall between the hours of 6:30 and 6:45pm, while on the phone with my weeping girls, I promised to take them apple picking, to make a pie, that I’d arrive home in five minutes with an ice cream cake and then read four books each at bedtime. This phenomenon is very similar to the spewing that someone does just before they are about to get shot in the movies.

And later in the week, while doing a Farewell to Boston shoot with the Novack Family, I saw a pattern as I told little Henry that a purple butterfly would come out of my lens, to get on the big duck sculpture before he waddled away…. I stopped myself just before I promised that he would be accepted to Harvard if he gave me one last smile.

I made some mental notes: not all children are as gullible as my own, some remember promises however small and some, like Henry, are way too sharp to follow a silly photographer’s antics. So we just relaxed, absorbed the sun, wandered, fed the ducks, read a book on the bench, kicked back in the grass, chatted with a policeman on horseback, got chased by some geese and ran around in circles. It was just my kind of day.

Thank you Novack family for spending the day with me. I wish you a wonderful new life in Miami and hope that these images will help you remember this nice chapter in your life.

So that’s all for now. We’re heading out to go apple picking. Really, we are. I promise. Next year.