Her hair is rumpled, shirt stained, and still she is grateful when I take her picture.
You have a beautiful smile, I say, and her eyes flutter and cheeks flush.
She looks down and back again, into my camera. The moment turns shy and empowered in equal measure, and I feel like I'm seeing a new sort of truth.
It’s an easy thing, a tossed moment, a simple photo. She is painting, something that happens routinely here in the nursing home, just another craft activity. It's nothing much, really, a blink of time.
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Sometimes I take a picture and later, when editing, I see a beauty I had missed: bright eyes, slight smile, a shy pride. But then I wonder, do I see the beauty in this image because I see the beauty of a moment? Will you see beauty in these ravaged faces and messy hair, in the marks and spots and displays of decay?
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If you look at a window, you see fly-specks, dust, the crack where Junior's Frisbie hit it. If you look through a window, you see the world beyond.
— Frederick Buechner, Wishful Thinking
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Scrolling through social media I often see photos of "old" people, a friend's parent, say, or some inspirational vision of age, and I pass by without emotion or second glance.
But at work, in each photo I snap, I see details that a camera can never catch: the flash of a smile, an unexpected laugh that is full and fast but too quick for capture.
Or the light of the room, how when he moved near the window, a cloud opened, a bird sang.
Or the quick smile followed by slow conversation, how the clock seems to stop because I must slow up, slow down, let my breath catch my mind.
There is always much to do: meetings, deadlines, phone calls, photos. I keep moving, moving, moving. Even when I want to stay longer, talk more, I am conflicted with the desire to both absorb and wipe away. To lean in and to leave.
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When Doris fusses with her hair, I am fretting on my own appearance.
When Herman cannot be calmed, I feel a buzz of bees too.
When Pearl tells me about life on the farm — Momma had hundreds of birds and they sang every morning— I am her, dazzled by every small and simple thing.
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What looks bare is usually a different kind of abundance.
— Sarah Cook, This Place is Beautiful, This Place is Gross
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Time slows to stillness here, when I pay attention, when I slow myself. And so this exchange, of easy banter and click, click, click, is nothing much. And yet, when trust is established, time feels precious.
Each click says I see you.
As I leave, her eyes are soft and pleading as she says thank you.
* Names and identifiers have been changed to protect privacy.
** Photo from Istockphoto.com