When our mom (Correy’s grandma) moved away to Washington State – our family kinda fell apart. She was the matriarch and she held us together. The first mothers day after she moved, someone (I think it was Nessa but I’m not positive) decided we would take a picture at a studio to send to Mom. Nessa color coordinated all of the families, made the appointment and we were good to go.
The day of the portrait sitting we all arrived at Oakridge shortly after one another and as ALL families do, there was a lot of bitching and moaning about everything. “Why wasn’t Jonti wearing the same color as Valerie” – “who decided on this time for the sitting because we were all scrambling” – “we’ll never do this again, that’s for sure”. I’ll be honest, I felt sorry for the photographer, he had no idea what was walking his way.
Anyway, we get in – he situates us all – takes several snapshots. I know I was thinking, cool, we’re done, I’m out - but then the photographer walks up towards us with one arm behind his back, walks straight up to Correy and puts this sunflower felt hat thing on his head. Just shoves it on there. I was thinking “Dude – that was a bad idea cause someone is gonna freak out” but no one did which surprised me. I was mostly surprised because Correy left it on. Correy was 12 or 13 and at the age where he sure as hell didn’t want someone to force a sunflower hat on him but he didn’t freak. The photographer had a trunk with all these crazy hats/props and told us to pick one and Correy left the sunflower thing on, didn’t even look to see if there was anything else he’d rather have.
When we got the photos back – all the serious ones Correy wasn’t smiling but in the crazy one below, his sunflower face is grinning. His smile was one in a million from the day he was born.
~~Aunt Jill
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