Good Intentions

On my way home from the east side of the state last weekend I passed the most gorgeous field of sunflowers near Brighton.  I had my camera with me and woulda/coulda/shoulda got off at the very next exit, backtracked and found the road leading to those golden beauties.  But I didn’t and have been kicking myself ever since.  I’ve never really been a woulda/coulda/shoulda kind of girl.  I thought about hopping back on I-196 and again traveling eastbound, but I hoped instead to find something a bit closer to home this time around.  I remembered my friend Cherri telling me about a field just north of town which she spotted last summer and zapped her a quick email.  I knew there was a chance it didn’t exist this year since farmers often use sunflowers in crop rotation.  Sure enough, she relayed she had just traveled that way and didn’t recall seeing it again.  She did tell me, however, her co-worker had an acre of sunflowers in her front yard and wouldn’t mind if I stopped by to photograph them.  Score!

I swung by my folks’ house to say hello on my way out of town and discovered my sister and her boys visiting as well.  When I mentioned I was off to take pictures of sunflowers, Zhak piped up:

“I have a camera.  I want to go, too!”

My Mom shot me one of those, “It’s not a good idea” kind of looks, but I thought I’d give my sister a break for a few hours and offered to take him with me.  What could go wrong?  He did, after all, promise to be on his best behavior and follow the rules. Now I can just hear you laughing at the expectation I put in a rambunctious seven-year-old, but hey … I don’t know nothin’ ‘bout raisin’ young ’uns.

Despite the absence of maternal instinct, I DO know that kids have a short attention span.  Amazingly, though, I only heard one query of “Are we there yet?” during our half-hour journey.  This isn’t going to be so bad, I thought … or was it due to the fact his nose was buried in Harry Potter during the drive?

When we arrived I thought I’d see carefully cultivated towering stems, but instead found a field of wild dwarfs.  Not exactly what I expected, but that’s okay.  I had also been warned earlier in the week that I needed to act quickly as the flowers were beginning to fade.  I’m sure the torrential downpour we had the day before didn’t help.  They WERE past their prime and a bit droopy.  Ah well, we’d make it work and got out our cameras.

And then the dog appeared.  He was on an electric collar so I knew he couldn’t get too close, but Zhak’s all about man’s a boy’s best friend and ran up the driveway.  I told him he could snap one picture from afar.  Twelve photos and a whole lotta barking later, he was still pressing the shutter button.  I had to remind him we were there to take pictures of flowers and not a dog.  He begrudgingly returned his attention back to the field …

… until he saw all the bugs and was convinced he’d get stung by a bee.  It’s kind of hard to take pictures when you have a frightened child wrapped around your neck. 

He finally decided to wait in the car and, you guessed it, 2.7 seconds later loudly declared, “This is BORING!”  Ah ha … there’s that short attention span I was talking about!  Needless to say, this little venture rapidly came to an end.  I had to stifle a giggle on the way home when Zhak announced he wasn’t going on any more photoshoots with me.  At least we agreed on that!

I do love spending time with my nephew and do know things don’t always go quite as planned when kids are involved.  (It still baffles me how parents do it 24/7.)  All things considered, I managed a few not so great photos and once again came away with a story to tell.  Even so, I think next time we’ll stick with Chutes and Ladders.