Your face was so close to mine. I held you on my hip, just a kiss’s length away. Every photo of you felt zoomed in, your round little face taking much of the frame, your joyful existence and survival taking up the same amount of space in my mind. I was often your first thought in the morning, my name the first on your tongue. My arms, your safe place. 

When I take pictures of you now, you are busy being amazing and hilarious, and you stand farther away. Sometimes so far I have to zoom in to see your face, but I still remember every part of it with my eyes closed.

Every summer, we visit the same beach in the Florida panhandle with a mix of family and friends. The place we stay has a large river canal that feeds into the ocean behind our condo, which our crew always refers to as “the little beach”. It has a small sandy beach next to a long dock, it’s full of hermit crabs and little darting fish, and the traffic of boats or sometimes even barges that blast their long horns for the kids on the shore will pass. The kids became restless playing on the shore, so they began jumping off the dock into the water, and after that lost its novelty, they began to jump off the upper platform of the pontoon boat tied to the pier. They were testing their limits, busting out the flips, and making some waves of their own.