Suspended
while my body was chair bound
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 floated between bedroom and kitchen. Hazy memory bringing me to eat. I passed the others who lived beside but not with me. Doors closed I sat on my throne of torture forever providing.
Milestones don’t wait for mothers hands to be free. Inches stack, clothes shrink and needs pile into the space I couldn’t fill. Trapped I watched my world fall apart. Hands too small to tie shoes or comb hair I couldn’t touch. What the unknowing stranger must think. If only they knew.
—-
The light came through the window across the room. I watch the grown pine tree stand still and wondered if it’s sap moved as slowly. It strung itself along the floor and over the bed to reach me. I never felt its warmth against my cheek. That is where they stood, the place the light landed. Their shapes stark against the sun. My once strong and straight shoulders rolled to cover my shame as I milked the breasts they’d nursed. What was this motherhood? Trapped by a machine invented by a man between me and the fleshiness of my children. What was this existence I had led them to?
—-
He came to me unwanted, this my oldest son. He barely survived the birth, but then grew strong. He danced in the curtains of our LA home and grew freckles in the sun. His feet always moved before thought and I loved him to terrible rot. I couldn’t help it, death almost stole him, so we stood together in a place apart until he fiercely fought to make his own place. He wanted to bring the rest of us along, we rarely heeded.
It was his tiny hands that brought me soft grilled eggs and brown toast in the afternoons while I lay pregnant with Edna. He was the one who asked if I needed anything, my face deep in down covers openly wishing for relief from my self imposed grave. I imagine his tender heart wished to sit down beside me. Instead he stood, attempting to comfort me. I wept when he left the room.
—-
They knelt before my chair, two brothers, my only two sons. My body chair bound, his hands moved to the undone laces of the other. He spoke patiently lifting one lace over the other. The how pressing down from wisdom to novice. What was undone came together creating the new as the one taught the other how to tie his shoe. Mother suspended as another took her place.
Perhaps the beauty of this work is the journey. Made these images 2022-2023. I wrote my poetry sitting in my chair sharing it paired with music on Instagram. I exhibited the work in printed form in a solo show in Sparks, NV. Now, I return to them to tell the stories in more detail and depth through the lens of how we’ve grown. I take for granted the shaping of that time. Revisiting it in 2026 offers such deep personal revelations. I have not enjoyed myself in the work in such a way before. I love writing it and sharing its behind the scenes through paid posts each week.
Such beautiful, poignant writing.