When our son was born he got a kimono from my wife’s aunt. It is a kimono that is often used when a family goes to a shrine in November to celebrate their son’s health and well being (a Japanese rite of passage called shichi-go-san named after the age seven-five-three when children are celebrated like this, boys normally at five and sometimes three years old and girls at three and seven). We have used this kimono to take photos of our son a few times already, when he was newly born as well as on his birthday. Since our son is three years old now, we decided to use a beautiful November autumn morning celebrating him by taking some photos that will make nice memories for the future.
I had been worrying about the whole process of getting him dressed in his multilayered outfit since it normally can be a struggle just to put on a shirt or a pair of pants, but it went much smoother than I could even have imagined. Underwear, light white kimono, the pant-like hakama that needs to be tied around the waist in a special way, thumb-glove-like socks and the gorgeous black kimono with ornaments. He was quite happy to get to wear his clothes and was proudly sitting in his child seat as we drove towards the Itoshima peninsula and the Sakurai shrine sitting on a hill, surrounded by trees. When my wife was a child her grandmother took her there, and one of the few photos my wife has from the time she was a child is granddaughter and grandmother standing together dressed in kimono – I really treasure that photo.
There is a beautiful old stone bridge at the grounds where I wanted to take some photos of our son. It has a beautiful steep and narrow arch and I have admired this bridge many times. When we arrived, there were some other young children dressed in kimono walking around with their parents, taking photos. Our son was very excited to get out of the car and started to run around in his sandals. Which fell off long before he had made it to the big cobblestoned walkway leading to the bridge. The sun was shining from behind the trees and there were not too many people there to try to keep out of frame, so I had positive feelings about getting some nice photos, even though I realized it would be a challenge for our son to keep still even the fraction of a second that is needed for me to frame and take a photo.
Arriving at the bridge however, I had to fight off a big punch of disappointment from within. The always so beautiful clean stone bridge had been turned into a Christmas ornament – there were LED-lights and black cables wrapped around the railings. Oh well, what can you do! I took a few photos that I had prepared in my mind (including the extras such as cables and LEDs), but then it was time to improvise and follow my son’s lead instead. By the time he was all tired and just wanted to sit on a bench and have a rest and something to eat, I had managed to capture quite a few memories. I will treasure them together with the photo of my wife as a child.
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