Melanie Brooks

Melanie Brooks

Centered

“Don’t look at the camera,” you instruct, when, on that day so long ago, you plant four-year-old me in a field of daisies, their yellow middles the same yellow as my hooded sweatshirt, their ivory petals, swayed by wind, a tickle on my cheeks. And I’m sorry I don’t listen, Daddy.

But you are there behind the bulky Nikon, rays of late afternoon sun landing on your steady shoulders, on the strap around your neck. Your brow creases with concentration, your sure fingers twist the wide zoom lens one way and then the other, adjusting knobs and levers to suit the light and angles, envisioning something I can’t see from my side of the viewfinder. Not the standard snapshot. A more artistic image, maybe. A fleeting moment of your daughter’ s whimsy that you want preserved on film: Little Girl Among the Flowers.

“Come on, let’s go, slowpokes!” “Hurry up!” “We don’t have all day!” The boys’ impatient shouts cut into the moment. They summon us from beyond the field, beyond the long line of towering pines bordering its edge. They wait just ahead on the trail. Always just ahead on the trail.

Yet this time, you don’t listen. Don’t look away from where I sit. Don’t rush the camera back into its case. Don’t rush me to catch up to these older brothers. Don’t invite them into the picture. Don’t allow them to scramble for position. To elbow me toward my accustomed place at the edge of the frame.

You stay a little longer, lingering in this scene that for once belongs to just the two of us.

I pull my knees to my chin, feel the rich soil, a soft cushion against my bottom. I know you ask me not to look, and I’m sorry I don’t listen, and squint, instead, directly into the lens. A bloom of unfamiliar confidence fills my chest. I will not tear my eyes away from you. How can I when I know that right here, for right now, I am the only thing you see?