I admit – I am usually the mom that comes to school performances, dance competitions and recitals armed with a camera and zoom lens and a video camera. While I am typically very respectful of other people’s view points and any rules and regulations about photo/video taking it is unusual for me to not snap at least a couple of pictures and a few seconds of video easily emailed to grandparents 3,000kms away.
I am THAT mom and I’ve never apologized for it. In fact I’ve explained why it was so important to me to capture so much of their lives in earlier posts.
So you will understand how deep my heart sank when my eldest daughter told me from the back seat on the way to a ballet recital that she had a solo which is precisely the moment when I realized that because we had rushed out the door so quickly I had forgotten the camera and the video camera.
I was armed with an iPhone and despite being second row from the stage this is the only picture I have of Sugar Plum – standing in line waiting for her group’s turn to go backstage.
I wish I could tell you it’s that fuzzy on purpose but no, I was just that far away.
Sugar Plum has danced solos before – but always with other dancers on the stage so of course the one and only time I forget my camera/video camera my eldest baby danced beautifully in front of a full audience on the stage for over a minute by herself.
I felt awful at first, but when she started to dance that quickly changed. If you’re like me capturing all of the big moments (and some not so big) on digital files then you’ll know that your view-point is different when you put the camera down.
Without a camera between my daughter and me I saw all of the things one can miss when you’re watching through a tiny screen.
She was beautiful and I was so very happy and yes, proud.
That one fuzzy picture is all I have from the recital where my daughter danced her very first only-person-on-the-stage solo but that’s okay. I am sure there will be more solos, and though it was because of my own lack of organization skills, I am grateful to have had the opportunity to just watch my daughter dance.
Even without one single shot, I remember every smile and (almost) every step.
I think it’s so important to sometimes put away the cameras and phones and just be in the moment, be watching our children so when they turn to us for that one second to catch our eye and smile, we’re looking back at them and aren’t blocking that moment with a camera.
I rarely bring a camera, mainly because I’m usually rushing around last minute and run out of time, so I always feel awful about not “capturing” every moment…but you’re right, I do enjoy not being distracted by the camera button doohickeys
I wrote a post about this recently…about the mamarazzi. And about how not every moment needs to be memorexed…and how I love to watch my kids perform. ACTUALLY WATCH THEIR EVERY MOVE from my eyes, and not from behind a lens. It’s wonderful.
My Dad was notorious for always breaking out the camera, snip-snapping away, telling us to wait, to pose, to smile … almost to stop the fun for the sake of taking a picture to remember the moment that we were interrupting living in to capture. I love looking at old photos. I love the video clips of my girls, moments that pass so quickly and are so easy to forget. But I also vividly remember 6 yearsago when my now 8.5 year old then 2.5 turned to her Granddad when we were on an outing and he told her for what seemed like the hundredth time to stop playing to pose and exclaimed ” Grandad stop! No more! No more pictures!” then when he tried to sneak one in she immediately scolded again ” I SAID! No-MORE-PICTURES!”. And then the camera went away, and he went from observer of life to participant. Cameras, videos -priceless. But so is just living and enjoying the moment – you may forget the details but never the emotion! xo