This year for Teacher Appreciation Week, I decided to be a bit more organic than last year's interview:

I keep looking at this picture—or rather, the pictures in this picture—and thinking, "Look at how young they are." By the time I met my stepfather's parents they were already old. In the years since, his father has continued getting older and his mother has passed away. But in that portrait they'll always be young.

Back when I was pretty fresh out of college and the world of Internet forums still felt new and fun to me, I had a woman insist to me that photographs steal your soul. It didn't occur to me until an embarrassing number of years later that she might have been pulling my leg a bit—I suppose this may have something to do with why so many people thought (think) that I didn't (don't) have a sense of humor. In any case, I answered her seriously.

"How can a photograph steal your soul?" I asked. "Especially a digital photograph. All it is is a bunch of ones and zeros that describe something about some light that bounced off of you." I just didn't get it. I was very earnest—I think she was probably smiling at me. (Not laughing, just smiling—she had (has) too much class and style to laugh at someone's naiveté.)

And yet, somehow, the longer I live and the more photographs I make, the more it starts to make sense. Because what's a soul if not the thing that makes you you? The million little pieces of yourself, the looks, the gestures, the angle at which he cocks his head when he asks a question, or the way her nose crinkles when she smiles. It's not stealing, exactly, because you can't steal something without diminishing the one from whom you steal it. But something gets caught, captured, made permanent by the camera.

I find myself looking at this picture and wondering what these two were like when they were that age. There's something in their eyes that hints at something, but I don't know what. All I can think about is how young they look. And then I wonder who will be saying the same thing about that picture of Jason. Who will be saying it about me? And will we be around to know? If we're lucky, some day someone will say it about all of us. Or, at least, about the bits of our souls hanging around in the corners of someone else's dining room.

Jason is walking over to pick up that big rock so he can throw it. Just so you know.

The jelly beans go in there.

"Daddy, daddy, look at this!"

"OK, what do you want me to see? Oh, OK. You're making... dirt angels. That's very nice. But I don't think Mommy would like you to be getting that dirty."

We keep telling him not to play in the blinds. I guess the message gets a little diluted when I stop to take a picture first, though.

Lately Jason has become a bit more camera shy. Though, trying to avoid being in a picture is sometimes a lot of fun for him.

Don't worry, the snake is made of rubber. The only way it could hurt him is if he happened to hit himself in the face with it. Which he did, actually.

This is my mom's dog, Leo. He sat like this and watched us the entire time we were out on the lawn dying eggs on Easter morning.

One of the weird things about shooting film again is that a lot more time passes between when I take the picture and when I see it. It's harder to remember exactly what was happening at the time, or even what day it was.

What I remember here is asking Jason if I could take his picture, and him agreeing. I remember him being silly right before the shot, but I don't know exactly what happened between that and when I clicked the shutter. His pose looks like he's just relaxing, but his expression looks a little curious and a little guarded. I wish I could ever really know what he's thinking. It's probably best that I can't.