When the girls come home with the "bring in a photo" assignment, I'm toast. What the teachers don't realize is that I have thousands of photographs of the girls' childhood. Yesterday the photo request came on a particularly horrible day. My dad had a heart attack, and I couldn't keep the world from spinning or the tears from falling. 

I can't keep my babies from getting older. I can't keep my parents from getting older. 

The tears made my screen blurry as I searched for the photo, and yet they made something else very clear to me. My passion for photography is driven by the fact that for one two hundred and fiftieth of a second, I CAN make the world stop.

I stop the world so that I remember all of life's details. I remember pink tights, round tummies, giggles, stamps on hands, undies hanging out, and crooked eyebrows checking themselves out in the mirror.

I know one day my daughter will understand my tears when she remembers this day.  Until then, I will continue to stop the world from spinning one photograph at a time.