Sentimental me

I have a confession to make: I am over-the-top sentimental. Pure mush. My kids did it to me. I used to be all hard and flinty. You’d never catch me crying in a movie. Never. I actually worried sometimes that maybe I was unfeeling because when everyone else was working on their second and third box of kleenex I was barely working up to a sniffle. Now I’m a big bawl-baby. It’s good though. I can feel good about myself when my face is covered in mascara, my skin is red and blotchy, and my nose is a hose because at least I don’t have to worry about being unfeeling.

For the longest time I have had this idea in the back of my mind and I am just too in love with it to let it go. You see, I am a huge fan, HUGE fan, of the American painter Mary Cassatt. Ever since I was a little girl her paintings of mothers with their young children have transfixed me. My attachment to her has grown progressively stronger as I raise my own children — because now I’m sentimental.

There is such a quietness to her paintings. They grip my sentimental mother heart in a way that nothing else can. I think I love them because they express so beautifully how I feel about my own children. I try so hard to memorize every detail of every sweet, heavenly moment with them, but more than anything it’s the feeling that I’m trying to hold onto; that connectedness with my child. That’s what she captured.

So maybe you’ve guessed it by now, but the idea that won’t leave me, that I won’t let go of, is that I want to take pictures like that. Moments. Quiet, loving, sentimental moments between mother and child (or father and child, I don’t discriminate). I want to capture that connectedness that I try so hard to hold onto. So I guess this is my quest. If there is a holy grail of quiet, peaceful moments to be captured on film I must find it! I can’t wait 🙂