Cam is turning me into the official photographer of Things That Would Never Make the Cut. Not grand sights or celebratory moments, he wants the stuff I’d normally walk right past.

“Can you take a picture of that please? It’s so beautiful.” or “Mama, take a picture of this. I want to draw it.”

And I’ll look… and it’ll be a tiny cookie stamped with a little bear face. Or the way his sliced pineapple guava looks at 6am. Or a perfect-to-him line of dominoes. Or a literal piece of trash.

He’s asking because he wants to hold on to it — to study it, to cherish it, to remember it on purpose. So my camera roll has become an strange gallery: a lone leaf on my windshield on a rainy day, the tight woven pattern of a carpet, an unremarkable plush pumpkin in a store window, the way he’s pressed his backpack straps together, just so.

He may come by this naturally, or he may have picked it up from me. I do my own version of this too: I take imperfect pictures of random moments — blurry, off-center, badly lit — not because they’re “good,” but because I want to remember. My camera roll is where I put the little things I don’t want to lose.

None of it is headline-worthy. But he’s always reminding me the ordinary is worth noticing. And I’m so lucky to see through his eyes for a moment and notice how much tiny beauty there is everywhere.

Cam found his flower the day after he picked it — wilted and folded in on itself — and he immediately fell apart. Listening back, I can hear myself filling the space when I should’ve just stayed quiet and let him feel his feelings. But I was really caught off guard. He was curled into a little ball on my lap, his face twisted with grief like this was the biggest pain he’d ever known. It was the saddest, sweetest thing.

“Mama, can you take a picture of our tree? It’s so beautiful.” Sure can, my love.

That’s just community shit.

I was just loving in my first language.