"I remember the moment this photo was taken: five years ago, on my partner Claire's birthday, in a National Trust for Scotland garden six miles east of Edinburgh. We were standing on a wooden deck, an ideal spot for pond-dipping with the kids and a lesser-known viewing platform for trainspotters. This is where my autistic son, then six, loved (and still loves) to jump in tandem with the ScotRail trains toggling back and forth in the middle distance."
"We had just eaten a small, hasty birthday picnic of pastries and Nosecco. We wandered down through the walled garden to the wild meadow encircling a pond. We ended up where we always end up. On our deck. Somehow I knew it was a moment worth freezing in time. I gave our dear friend Dawn whose husband had recently died and who was slowly, informally becoming part of our family my phone. She took two photos."
"In the first, two of the five subjects dog and son are showing their rear ends to the lens. In the second this one almost all of us are looking directly at the lens. Some of us even look happy. Result! I love this photo for its rarity: our son's needs require us to mostly parent our kids separately, which has many consequences, one of them being that we have painfully few photos of us together as a family."
Five years ago a family gathered on a wooden deck in a National Trust garden east of Edinburgh for a hurried birthday picnic beside a pond and meadow. The autistic six-year-old delighted in jumping in tandem with passing ScotRail trains. A friend took two photos, only the second capturing almost everyone looking at the camera. The family values the image because the child's needs often require separate parenting, leaving few group photographs. The narrator treasures clothing details, the daughter's expression, a rescued dog's habitual 'jug-tail' posture, and the profound quiet that allows uninterrupted hours of peace.
Read at www.theguardian.com
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