ZEN BABY

It was love at first sight. He stared at me unabashedly with his big brown eyes and I was smitten. I knelt down and hugged him, caressing his little round head, kissing his buttery-soft cheek. I couldn’t stop looking at him. I wanted to eat him up.

After a few minutes of gazing into each others’ eyes, I turned to his mother, a beautiful Ethiopian woman who became my dear friend.

“Is he always so Zen-like?” I asked.

“Yes,” she said. “Always.”

“I must photograph him,” I told her.

She smiled at me. “Of course.”

For the next six months, we would occasionally bump into each other: in church, walking down the street, at the store.  And each time, I would say to her, “I must photograph him.”  And she would smile at me.

And then one day I did.