Small Gifts
poems
These are the stories behind my photo project 3600 Hours.
A nursing mother will spend 1800 hours just feeding her baby for that first year. A pumping mother with a baby who cannot nurse will spent twice that, once for pumping and again for feeding ie 3600 Hours. My youngest, Edna was born with Down Syndrome and could not nurse. These are the images and stories from her first year of life where I pumped every single bottle.
3600 Hours is becoming a book. Join the journey behind the paywall.
I was fourteen, he was two. We shared a room. By the light of a flashlight I wrote my first poems. I wrote them every night until I became too old for such things and put them away.
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It is strangeness sitting locked in a chair of my own choosing. I designed a container in which to pour all the suffering I could not surmount. She was born. She was here. My life exploded. Here were the pieces laying at my feet. I could not glue them so I pumped instead. I gave myself a seat to perch until the storm blew itself out.
Forced stillness rocked my head right then left, fingers fidgeted, thoughts streaming I picked up my phone. Words linked themselves together then spread themselves out. Brighter and brighter they grew against the backdrop of their faces. They held me there. Poems returned to me and I have kept them.
Revisiting this time of my life is changing everything.