Last year on this day, my brave cousin and her four beautiful children arrived on my doorstep, having just left their home and everything they own behind in Gulfport, Mississippi. Her husband was stationed at the Navy base there, and they had been happily settled there for over a year. Sunday morning, as the weathercasters grew increasingly nervous, they decided to come for a visit.
My cousin said at the time she really expected it to be nothing more than a few days’ vacation before the school year… she didn’t pack more than a day’s worth of clothes, even left her wedding ring on the kitchen sink where she’d been washing dishes. Little did they know it would be almost a month before they could even return to their neighborhood, and very little of it was left behind to see. And yet despite how much they had lost, she talked only about how lucky they were, how grateful they were, how blessed they had been to all be together and safe.
As most of you know, I have three children of my own, so adding another family of six to our house was not a seamless effort, but it was so completely worth it. The kids were convinced it was one big party, and we did our best to make them as comfortable as possible. Even when her husband was called back to duty to help with the cleanup efforts, my cousin stayed strong and positive for her sweet little ones, and I cannot begin to explain how in awe I was of her bravery.
In our family she has been the sweet one, the pretty one, the fun one.. as long as I can remember. To me, from now on she will always be the STRONG one, the one who kept it all together and never wavered or let her kids down. They were confused, tired, and overwhelmed, but never scared. They knew it would all work out.. because their mommy said so.
It is that spirit that kept them going, and the same spirit that will rebuild the Gulf Coast. One of my favorite sessions I have ever done was this quickie on my back porch with my cousin’s sweet kiddos while she was packing up their car to head back to look at the wreckage they used to call home. She didn’t even know I took them at the time, so I was able to have them printed (big!) and sent to her to hang in their new home once they got settled up north near our extended family to wait out the reconstruction. This was one of the times I felt like my photography could actually have a purpose, a meaning, beyond cute pictures of cute babies that make you smile. There was so much I wanted to do for her that I could not… this was small, easy. This was enough.
