Field Trip Pictures
My daughter and I went to the fire station today. It was the Mom n Tot monthly field trip.
As soon as we started the tour of the fire station, I realised that my daughter was too small to understand everything that we were being shown. I was still excited to take her pictures wearing the fire fighter cap and sitting inside the fire truck, because I wanted her grandparents and khalas to see how she was “enjoying” her time. Since I live away from family, I take her pictures regularly to make her grandparents happy. I want them to be a part of my daughter’s growing up, and I think that’s a great intention.
So while I was busy taking her pictures, a voice caught my attention. “Ibrahim chalo ek pic lelein takay Papa ko dikhayein.” 2 year old Ibrahim ran away. On the other side, Omer’s mom was trying to convince her 12 month old son to say ‘cheese’ in order to capture his smiling picture while sitting on the back of the fire truck. But Omer wanted to nap. However, it was necessary to take a picture of the two brothers together also, so she told the 3 year old Usman: “Omer k saath akar baitho, ek picture lelein. Uske baad promise ghar chaleinge.”
Suddenly a realisation dawned upon me. We as mothers sometimes get so engrossed in capturing our children’s moments, that we forget to be present in the moment and help them make the most of their experiences. I am sure other mothers had even better intentions for taking those pictures than I did. But i decided to focus on what my daughter actually wanted to do. Yes she was too small to understand what fire trucks are for, but it turned out she still wanted to run around them and get amazed at how huge they were. She noticed that all of them were the same colour, which mommy insisted was called ‘red’. She also discovered that all of them had wheels, which mommy was describing as ‘round’ again and again. That reminded us of one of our favourite rhymes: “The wheels on the bus go round and round…”. And we sang our way back to the car, making sure that we replaced ‘bus’ with ‘truck’.
Alhumdulillah we ended up with a few pictures to share with family, and also had an enriching and enjoyable learning experience. My lesson for today was that it doesn’t hurt to put away the phone after a few clicks. If we try to capture everything on camera, we are losing out on a lot more!
