Blog Circle – Local outings – Puddle Searching, Mountain Climbing & a lesson from Finding Nemo

This months blog circle take me to a place of soul searching, I set out on a innocent mission to find some puddles after a storm rolled through sleepy old Perth. But instead I was taken on a journey of discovery I wasn’t expecting. As we neared some puddles I felt myself becoming anxious about the whole experience, what if a puddle was an unsuspectingly deep abyss and Theo disappeared to the centre of the earth? (I have an over active imagination) Theo moments earlier had told me, he wanted to go home and watch “Meemo” that’s what he calls Finding Nemo. I was thinking maybe we should just go home, the couch is much safer, no sink holes there. But for a second I though “is this kid serious?’ I loved to go on adventures as a kid and find puddles to stomp in, usually with other wild neighbourhood children, more often than not in the pouring rain. We would spend hours searching out the deepest mud filled puddles to ride our bikes through. If you got bogged half way though it was an extra bonus to watch your mate suspended for moments before plunging into the muck below. Theo however is a couch dweller and I can’t help to think its all my big fat fault, and I’ll tell you why.

Earlier that day a Facebook memory popped up from 3 years ago it was a picture of 3 week old Theo lying in a hospital bed, with a feeding tube up his nose and oxygen being pumped into a perspex box placed over his head. He had caught a simple cold from his older sister and ended up with bronchiolitis, we spent 5 exhausting days in the children’s hospital. Those 5 days were some of my worst, not only dealing with the physical exhaustion of being a new mum and recovering from the birth, but the emotional exhaustion of having a seriously ill child. I would sit in a chair beside his cot and just stare at him, the thought of not having him filled me with terror. I imagined what his wedding day might be like, and his pimply, deodorant refusing, devouring food like a plague locusts of teenage years. I felt like I was being robbed, how cruel to only have him for a moment be met with the possibility of not having him at all. The fear of losing him would physically freeze me I felt it creep in starting at my toes, slowly moving its way up my body until I was frozen stiff, it took all my strength to simply move an arm. It was just me, alone in the dark listening to the sound of my racing heart, beeping machines attached to Theo, and the distant screams of other children on the ward.

What I realized on this uneventful day searching for puddles and mud was that I was still stuck frozen in that hospital room, constantly afraid that he will be taken away, and in turn projecting my fears onto my children so much so they new nothing of adventure and spontaneity. I find myself multiple times a day imagining scenarios where my children could be injured, and saying “No! Don’t do that, what if something happens to you” sometimes I startle them so much they jump. I would much rather him sitting on the couch safely. My wanting to keep him safe was actually stopping him from experiencing anything. There is a line from the Finding Nemo movie Where Marlin is talking to Dory about his son Nemo. It goes something like this,

Marlin says “I promised I’d never let anything happen to him.”

Dory: “Hmm. That’s a funny thing to promise”

Marlin: “what?”

Dory: “Well, you can’t never let anything happen to him. Then nothing would ever happen to him. Not much fun for little Harpo”.

Now my son watches this movie a million times a day and for some reason I always manage to blank out most scenes dialogue except this one. As I write this I have an image of Dory and Marlin stuck in the whales mouth holding onto its tongue, dory turns to Marlin and says “its time to let go, everything is gonna be alright”

So this series of photos is me letting go, on this day Theo jumped in puddles, climbed mountains as he put it, they were only just sand hills, but mountains to him. I let go and left my fear in that hospital room it doesn’t belong in my life anymore.

Follow the circle to see what Meghann Maguire Launceston family photographer has been photographing.