The assignment came home from school last week. It’s a typical first-grade timeline project: put pictures of yourself on this paper and write a story. Write YOUR story. Due on the 14th.
We (I) haven’t even started on it yet.
A large part of Daniel’s first year was lost in the Great Hard Drive Crash of 2004. The pictures that I *do* have were sent to me by his father after we split up. They are the pictures that mattered to him, the pictures HE picked out of the hundred pictures I would shoot each time we went out.
There are so many emotions tangled up in this project. Out of my three children, he is the only one to spend any time at all with his DNA contributor. He doesn’t remember those times, of course – but we do have pictures of them together.
The easy way out, of course, is to give him exactly what the project calls for: pictures of him from birth to age 7.
(Suck it up and go through the photos, Emily.)
He looks just like his Daddy.