Sierra takes about 15-20 beats before she leaps into the green swirled black and blue water below. She emerges in an intimate tangle of pink lacy fabric. Exhilarated. My breath catches as if I had leapt in with her. I have come up for air, and I know we nailed it. I don’t even remember taking the plunge, let alone the photos.

Anna is very pregnant as she awkwardly shifts her weight upright from a bed of ferns. A single leaf is caught in the tangle of her hair and it’s all I can see. I know it will be my favorite from our time together. And I wonder if there is a mother out there who recalls the very first time she pointed out a falling leaf to her baby and called it magic.

Amelia nestles her small frame into a curtain of green foliage while she holds up a fistful of pink dogwoods. The petals pop against the emerald underbrush, catching that magic low light casting jagged shadows across her cheek. She’ll crouch, cupping the petals in her hands and they radiate like precious gems, spilling out at her knees. The shadows of her hair casting a mirage of vine-like veins along the pale underside of her arms. In another photo, Amelia perches on a fallen tree trunk, her head in the clouds. She holds a slight expression of defiance. As I peer up I see that she has her whole life ahead of her. Printed in black and white, the photographs become the imaginary story of a young girl coming of age in the era of whalebone corsets and laced-up boots. And those clouds, hovering just out of reach overhead, hold her past, present, and future in one frame.

Bella’s face is obscured by a cascade of white dogwoods. It’s the season of their dreamy bloom. I met Bella long ago on a summer day as an infant on her mother’s hip. And in her thick-lashed blue eyes I saw how clearly she looked out into the world and I knew she was special. But on this particular summer day, nearly twenty years later, my lens couldn’t quite capture that same wonder. But what I do see is what a sweet, lovely young woman she has become. In this photo, hands on hips, shoulders back, I know she is taking on the world and I feel the nostalgia of long-ago catching up, the gentle exhale of letting go, and I knew I had my shot.