Finding What You Look For

Armed with a list of ten words that reminded us of one another, Audrey and I set out several nights ago to capture one photograph representing each of those words. My list for Audrey was the following: wise, beautiful, thoughtful, creative, funny, introspective, stylish, evolving, honest and explorative. Ambling through the grass of a park in an often unvisited part of town it struck me that seeking out a single word to encapsulate in a photograph affects how I walk and what I see. Looking for an image of “beautiful” causes me to see beauty everywhere. I asked Audrey if she noticed the same and she agreed. I mulled over how this applies to the rest of my life.

There’s a phrase bandied about in foster care, “the honeymoon phase.” The honeymoon phase is supposed to be a magical time in the beginning of a new placement during which children behave angelically because they don’t yet trust you and are afraid of showing their true colors. We were reminded throughout our first month as a family about “the honeymoon phase” by other foster parents - a slap in the smiling face of our early success - and warned to prepare for the inevitable disaster which was surely just around the corner. 

Why do we need a honeymoon phase? And do they exist because we look for them?

Honestly, we never left the “honeymoon phase," which isn't to say our family never faces challenges, but when that first test arose I didn't conclude, “Well, the honeymoon phase is over.” Instead I chalked it up to life. My children, like me, have both good and bad days. The goal of our family is to get through them together, celebrations and sorrows alike.

Do we find manipulation because that’s what we are looking for? Do we find deception in everything our child says out of our own fear of and hypersensitivity to it? Why in the midst of a great morning do we anticipate and prepare for the meltdown that has not yet come? And when it arrives, is that because we were intent on finding a meltdown? Not to wax philosophical or anything, because ultimately I conclude with more questions than answers, but yesterdays exercise with Audrey left me wondering how much my “looking for and preparing for” a bad day with my kids changes my behavior or attitude toward them to the point that it initiates a bad day? What if I take every moment for what it is...a moment, whether good or bad, and accept it rather than use it as a barometer for the rest of the day?

I am going to experiment with this. Join me, and report back with results in the comments.

This is the photo I took for "creative" to describe Audrey