Story Time

There's something about holding a picture book in my hands that slows down time. Growing up, I judged books not by their covers, but by their pictures inside. My criteria was simple. If the text didn't interfere with the pictures, I kept it by my side. If there was just too much text, I tossed it. One author in particular stole my heart - and that was Tomie dePaola. I remember leaning against the side of my bed before going to sleep and just turning the pages of his books - captivated by all the rich colors, shapes, and simplicity of his art. I didn't even have to read his book to understand what was going on because the story was told through his illustrations. To this day, I'm still the same. 

I spend most of weekdays scrolling through blogs getting to "the good stuff" (pictures) and looking at photography online - the ones that tell stories. I yearn to be like "those story telling photographers" one day. But looking at the images online and scrolling up and down doesn't completely satisfy me. Holding the images in my hand and turning the pages slowly from one image to the next is where I get lost in my own world. There's just something about  picture books. 

Thank God for Kinfolk. A true work of art to lose myself in. Without the hassle of scrolling and looking at a screen all day.

"Forging Family"

I was reading an article from my Kinfolk magazine titled Forging Family. The picture above was taken at the Grand Canyon, when on a whim, my friend Nicole and I decided to take a one day trip to visit the National Park. One of the best decisions I could have ever made. In this article, the writer talks about irking every time you hear a cliché until one day "you live and you grow and you come to realize the truths within that which you once dismissed as a cliché." When we lived in Arizona, my husband and I held weekly book short-story clubs at our apartment complete with dinner and drinks. What made these meetings something to look forward to was the great company we had over. Going back to the article, the writer describes our family lives as a "unit, a familial nucleus of common ground." When we grow up, "we withdraw from that nucleus to branch out on our own. We move hundreds-sometimes thousands-of miles away to form a life alone, or in pairs if we are blessed." It's during this phase in our lives where we realize we desperately need that "good thing" (a sense of family away from home) in our lives. It was in Arizona where we felt this connection. The sense of loneliness had diminished. Our friends shared an understanding of what it meant to be away from "a sense of family." 

Fast forward to Washington State where I fulfilled the cliché  'you don't know a good thing till it's gone' whenever I recall our weekly short-story club, being woken up at 4:30a to drop off my husband at work (and being extremely grouchy), going out on photo shoots with my friends, deciding to take a one day trip to the Grand Canyon, eating excellent schnitzel at the local German restaurant, walking to IHOP after a night of drinks at the dive bar, but most importantly, surrounding ourselves with good people in Arizona. We were home.