‘You must allow me to tell you how ardently I admire and love you.’ Why we don't all have to be as eloquent as Austen.
As a little girl I was obsessed with two things: getting a pony for my birthday, and love.
I would sit for hours plucking petals from daisies found at the bottom of the garden, daydreaming about glass slippers and sleepy kisses.
…he loves me …he loves me not… he loves me…
But no matter how the flowers answered the girl in the pink tutu and fairy wings, I already knew the truth.
I was already loved.
I knew this deep in my bones.
I was loved inside and out, three times over for every wild brown hair on my head.
I knew this because I had checked …and double checked… in the quiet darkness of goodnight kisses and tuck-ins.
‘Mummy? How much do you love me?’
‘To the moon and back, honey.’
‘Daddy? How much do you love me?’
‘To infinity and beyond, sweetheart.’ (Can you guess which kiddie film was his favorite?)
‘Nanna? Do you love me?’
‘My dear, I love you more than life itself.’
Now I’m grown and wear tulle skirts far less than I would like, I confess to being more than a little impressed by how well my family fielded those bedtime interrogations.
Great poets spend lifetimes trying to capture the elusive thing we call love; their beautiful words often times making the concept feel unattainable, unreachable, a perfection fit for fiction and angels alone - certainly not for ordinary folk like us.
‘My bounty as boundless as the sea, my love as deep. The more I give to thee, the more I have, for both are infinite.’ - Juliette Capulet
There is no doubt over the power of this intangible force; it is the flag under which wars are waged and won, souls sparked to life …and snuffed out.
It is mother nature’s most spectacular, formidable, beautiful creation on earth. She is searched for by all, dreamed of, fought for, prayed for.
She is simple, yet magnificently complicated. Unique, yet universally understood.
But the question is, is this LOVE about which will speak and dream truly invisible? Untouchable? Indescribable?
This is what in-home newborn and family photography is.
This.
It’s describing the indescribable for those of us less articulate than Shakespeare and Austen.
Let’s make the love you share visible, for those moments when we don’t have the right words to answer whispered questions in the dark. ‘How much do you love me, Daddy?’
Show them. Tell them. Kiss them. Tickle them. Cuddle them. Hold them tight.
For this is what love is - the tears wiped gently away, the quiet safety of being held in your arms, the afternoon sunshine streaming through the window as you count those tiny toes.
There is no love more powerful, more pure, more insurmountable than between a parent and their child.
Geelong families and mamas to be - let me take the picture.
Let me pop around and make photographs of your precious pregnancy, and then come and take the photographs of you falling in love with your newborn.
Let’s make your love visible, for those babies of yours to truly and completely and always see.
Do you have a favorite family portrait? Please share it with us! Show us what your love looks like!