Today when Martin left the house, Iris chased his car down the street, barefoot in her pyjamas. She wouldn’t let him kiss her when he left the house, but now she needed kisses. He stopped to kiss her. “I can’t leave to work this way,” he said. “You have to turn around.” We stopped for a moment. When Martin turned the corner, Iris started running again, hoping every car that looked like Papa’s was Papa coming back home. She ran all the way past Joshua’s house, all the way to the post office.

“We can go back through the field,” I suggested, hoping to distract her.

“Kiss Papa,” she said.

I said, “You need more kisses?”

“Mmm-hmm.”

Later, she ran through the woods.

I wish I had unplugged the surge protector.

In the Chicken-Little Club House

where the little chickens play

my daughter entered in

and closed the door

and chose to stay.

Aside from my grandfather’s photographs, the photographs I looked at most growing up were those in the large exhibition catalog of The Family of Man exhibit, curated by Edward Steighen, first shown at the Museum of Modern Art in New York in 1955. That book helped form the ground for my ideals in photography, none of which I can claim to have attained.

One of the photographs that stuck with me over the years was Wynn Bullock’s Child in Forest—

possibly because I found it slightly disturbing and failed to make any sense of it.

However, when I saw Martin digging in the ball pit, I knew exactly how to photograph him.