The Pink Unicorn

I keep my favorite photograph framed on the wall above my dresser.  I took it sometime in 2009 with my crappy work-issued Blackberry, which had a camera that couldn’t have been more than 2 megapixels.

We were at the Westfield Garden State Plaza mall in Paramus, New Jersey.  Addy, not quite two years old, clutched her newly found favorite stuffed animal while sitting atop the dolphin on the merry-go-round that she rode every time we shopped there. 

For at least a few weeks prior, and seemingly out of nowhere, Addy had spoken of wanting a pink unicorn.   She probably saw one on Dora the Explorer or Bubble Guppies or something.  Then one serendipitous day in the toy aisle at Target, on her hands and knees as she dutifully dug through the bottom shelf full of stuffed animals, Addy exclaimed to her mother, “Mommy, a pink unicorn!”  

She took that pink unicorn everywhere, at least for a short while until another fluffy friend usurped her heart.  I don’t believe she ever gave it a name.

Addy is 12 now, and her life has been full of moments I want to hold close to my heart, but that photo seems to speak for all those moments.  

Her unawareness of my camera gives it that unscripted authenticity I prefer in photographs.  Nothing against dressing kids in chef costumes and holding a giant spoon prop at the local portrait studio, but there is such poignancy in unscripted moments in photographs.

It captured the ephemeralness of life, with my little girl in a moment of pure glee, while the circling whirlwind around us remained a blur. 

The sweet story behind her unicorn; every good photograph needs that.

Nothing has changed since that day on the merry-go-round.

The world outside, inexorably, still pulls at us both, away from our shared, unmoving perspective, yet what remains and always will: I am her father and she is my little girl.  Newtonian laws governing centrifugal force are less certain than my absolute and unconditional love for her.

Does your relationship with your child really change from day to day or year to year, relative to whatever madness the surrounding world brings you?  Don’t you always see them still while others see them moving, stuck in your own perspective that only a parent can know? 

I look at this photo and I see all of these things; the things I want to see and be reminded of every day for the rest of my life.

Now I have a 12.1 megapixel Nikon d-700 with an 80-400mm zoom lens.  But I’m not sure that I’ll ever take a better picture.