She’s not your normal, caught-up-in-the-modern-world teen, this Julia. Not quite 16, she has grand ideas of how to evangelize and be a Catholic apologetic. As we walked to the park to do this photo shoot, she explained to me all about it. The eldest daughter of 8 living children, she is perhaps more interested in conversation with adults than girls her own age. And she doesn’t know about One Direction or what Miley Cyrus has done lately.
This idea for our photo shoot came as she bitterly complained to her mom that her 11 year old sister wanted to cut up this beautiful chenille bedspread who had clearly seen its last days. It was already shawl sized, tattered and with some holes. “But wait!” I explained, “we need that for our shoot! And a sheet for a dress. Tell sissy she can’t have it until Monday.” To which Julia smiled happily and trounced off.
As many teenagers on the brink of adulthood, she wavers between holding on to a childhood delight in such silly things and behaving much more like a “grown up”. So our story with the bedspread and the sheet was that she was a 1930’s teen out in the field dreaming of fairies, imagining that she could dance with them. And dance she did. That was after grossing out about bugs and spiders who splayed about on her location shoot.
Anyway, we had a jolly good time, and I especially loved the photos at the end, where she looks almost like a young Greek goddess.