Every year I volunteer at my son’s school for various things. It’s been one of  my favorite parts about being a mom – playing with kids. I’ve lead many art projects and built photo booths and helped throw parties. I’ve been a room parent, done gratis graphic design work, lead class experiments; field trips of course, as well as stuffed envelops, cut paper for teacher projects, hung art on walls, delivered teacher appreciation gifts, helped students create art for fundraisers…. created class books for fundraisers. Wow. Listing all of this I suddenly realize where my energy has been for the last seven years!

The yearbook has been one of my favorite gigs, and as I’ve stopped doing the other volunteer stuff, I know I can’t quit the yearbook. (Except for the fundraiser art. I loved designing those books so much I started a business doing it.) It’s such a satisfying role to just be there observing and collecting images of what I see on field trips and during class presentations and school performances. Culling photos with a narrow focus. Eyes open on this one, smile blurry on that one, a quick photoshop fix and a better group photo emerges. Laying out pages is my kind of puzzle. Balancing size, shape, content, kids, and events is a truly fun challenge.

I like having a place to land my photos and the other great shots parents and teachers contribute. The collection is the fun part. And I get to see them in print for the rest of time. I spaz out on my kid’s personal pages and include his art and school work, travel pictures, birthday parties, sleep overs, sports, a couple family shots and at least one picture of each pet. He ends up with a complete story of the year for his memories to root.

This little visual timeline of my son’s school life and all these great kids he spends his days with, all the ways his teachers work their asses off to get them to think on their own – it’s some of my most satisfying photography.

What a gratifying opportunity to watch their faces evolve from plump ‘lil kid cuteness into angular  adult-like good looks, their expressions deepening and humor developing in jolts. Their questioning and pushing and expanding in ever growing waves. Independence in a tenuous tug-of-war with baby-like emotional neediness and dramatic flair ups. I get to witness my son’s life as it exists in the context of so many personalities.

I am both in the middle of their energy, welcomed because I offer gifts of pictures, and outside of it, where kids prefer adults be, because I spend much of my time with a lens between us. They have grown accustomed, immune really, to my fluttering in and out of their peripherals, poking in here and there. I never tell them to smile and I often don’t tell them where to look.

As my son sprints towards twelve, so does his want and need for independence. I am losing power over him. Not my influence certainly, but I no longer have the power to hold his attention for days at a time.  I knew it was coming and I’m not regretful or sad. I had my time in the mud puddle and I’m still in the classroom and when I’m relegated to obligatory phone calls, I hope I am equally as busy as he. But for now, he still wants to show me things and tell me about what this one kid said or try a magic trick or experiment with me. And he still spends his summers flipping through the latest yearbook, a small vestige of my time in his world.