Sara Weir Photography

A collaborative project with the incredible for . The full interview link in my bio.

I’d do it anyway. A thought I can’t put down. It seems I require “breaks” though that implies stopping. It isn’t stopping. It’s the plié before the jump. Letting the tension build to then spring into action. An endless ebb and flow I’m beginning to embrace wholeheartedly. Thoughts - while I wait for film scans, put the camera down for a week, desperate to pick it up again. Finally.

wrote this week on her IG post “they are the catalyst not the constraints” about her children. It so succinctly summarized my feelings about living as both a mother and an artist. It’s something I want to talk about much much more. Coincidentally, I put some thoughts on paper about what that looks like in the day to day living of my life. If you’re interested you can find the article through the link in my bio.

In the end, it’s all upside down.

We weep for ourselves in all the ways we lose them to themselves. We carry them until they walk. Interpret till they talk. Hold their hands, wipe their chins. Then it’s the last time without us knowing. More and more they care for themselves in all the ways seen. Then begins the work unseen. So many words unspoken. Fists clenched in anger. Hearts broken. These are the soft tumble weeds entangled with thorns. The years they turn and see you are but mortal. The sting hits for us both. Torn and ripped apart. In something new, I can but hope. A mother’s heart reborn again through suffering.

Books play such a role.

When I picked up my camera and began creating what became 3600 Hours I did so out of desperation. It was a method of coping that grew into a work. When I picked up the camera for the images I shared yesterday with Edna’s cast it was from a place of so much pain - suffering I still feel.

I can say words that she was ok and we were resilient but the truth is we were pretending. That cast literally overshadowed all we did and I did not realize that until we took it off. I thought we had coped well. I thought we had adjusted but when it came off my little girl came alive again. I had no idea how much it weighed on her and by extension me.

I am glad I photographed it because I can face these hard truths for myself and hopefully I sort more of what they can teach me. But I loathe the images for the time that cast robbed us and pulled Edna down in anyway. But I also heartbreakingly love that too. The duality. The paradox. The strength for it all to become more than the simple injustice of a baby in a stupid cast. It’s all the beautiful things you shared in the comments. It’s heavy and unfair and I hate it while it’s also human and tragic and a new deep kind of knowing I possess because of it. It’s life on every level. It makes me want to run away and hold it tighter all at once.

All that from a photo I didn’t want to take and hate to look at.

Gosh I love being a photographer.

Photography has limits.

She broke her leg back in January. I want to never remember. These photos do not change that.

Perhaps images enhance what we already know. Are they reinforcers? Revelations? Or simply ways to remember? Either way I hate these with all my heart.

And even though we ain’t got money
I’m so in love with you, honey
And everything will bring a chain of love, oh, oh, oh
And in the morning, when I rise
You bring a tear of joy to my eyes
And tell me everything is gonna be alright
Love the girl who holds the world in a paper cup
Drink it up
Love her and she’ll bring you luck
And if you find she helps your mind
Better take her home, home, yeah
Don’t you live alone
Try to earn what lovers own

Danny’s song

I can’t help it. It was amazing and all I had was my phone. A typical morning with the fab five. Only 3 shown.
For the record the first version of this song I heard was by Me First and the Gimme Gimmes. Still my fav but couldn’t find it here.

Boys are tender too.

I take it back. In black and white. With intention. And rarely. A digital practice inspired by and her “one roll of digital”.

“… I believe most people are aware of periods in their lives when they seem to be “in grace” and other periods when they feel “out of grace,” even though they may use different words to describe these states. In the first happy condition, one seems to carry all one’s tasks before one lightly, as if borne along on a great tide; and in the opposite state one can hardly tie a shoe string. It is true that a large part of life consists in learning a technique of tying the shoe-string, whether one is in grace or not. But there are techniques of living too; there are even techniques in the search for grace. And techniques can be cultivated.”

Gift from the Sea
Anne Morrow Lindbergh

When I read this I remembered the hands that swooped in to help another learn to tie the shoe string. I remember weeping in my chair while bigger brother taught younger how to tie his shoes in the early days of second grade mornings. One arm + hand holding the pump one holding the camera while each learned techniques of living in grace.

My perceived prison became sacred space. The strings of a shoe lace.

1,2 - from
3 - the physical realization while mapping out my book
4 - the placement of the book while copying it for the post in my bathroom while E takes a bath. Motherhood/art forever

I fell in love with photography. I fell in love with film. I learned the power of photographing myself. I fell in love with photographing my own. Now, I wonder how to fall in love photographing the stranger, the collaborator, the friend. I don’t know how or why to do that yet. In the past I’ve always felt the responsibility of providing what I think that person wants from me. Entirely caught up in what’s for them and what’s for me I never fell in love with the process. So I put it away. But I feel myself getting curious which usually means it’s time to try. So opening that door carefully and intentionally. Experiments to come.

feel these moments slipping away so i photograph them -

Not for my future self p***e, but for my present self. To know what it was now and try to dwell in all that is and isnt. To keep myself grounded in the phenominally unexpected way my own life fulfills my dreams.

It is terrifically difficult without the images of proof I find and create.

Sometimes I think we ask too much from a photograph. It can’t really be everything, but that doesn’t mean it isn’t something. As I’ve been revisiting 3600 Hours I’ve seen so many beautiful things I missed. I no longer need to see my own Resiliance reflected back at me but seeing the way we each fall in love with E or connect as characters to each other or what I put emphasis on - or the sheer boredom of that many hours in one place! Time changes things, the photos stay the same but my eyes see them differently. To remember is one thing, reflection another. The photos give me that but they are not me. Inherently they capture singularity, but sometimes that something means everything. I used to think a good photographer knew - knew what those moments would be and how to make them happen. After 3600 Hours I understand a good photographer is open, is grateful, is present. It’s not about making it, but surrendering to what is. Allowing the yet unknown to shine forth in its truth. It can’t be everything but is always something.

When I looked up there they were - being completely themselves in the most beautiful light. It was the moment I knew we were going to be ok. Because it was so beautiful even while I sat, one arm folded across my chest holding both bottles, the camera in my other hand, my heart feeling more than the monotony and boredom of my chair. We were coming through in the doing of the thing.

We grew up here, in and around this bed, the chair, the pump, me. I thought I was being thrown into isolation, but life found me, they followed me. I wasn’t alone, I was surrounded by the people I loved most in all the world. I was stressed and emotionally pushed to my furthest edges, but there they were at my feet and before my eyes. We became, together, what we would be as seven. Each adjusted to a similar though different dynamic. It shifted at once dramatically then click by click I witnessed their love, our love, our strength. Our family. What it is to be mother. I’m not sure I’ll ever have the words, and yet still I witness it. Them. Me. Us. All of it profoundly normal an incredible miracle. An aching molding of flesh and spirit.

I often held my pump with one arm while feeding Edna a bottle with the other. The incredulity of the three of us. Me. The pump. My baby. The degrees of separation. Resentful and grateful. A paradox I had not yet experienced. There we were on the floor. The three of us. Far from glamorous. Borderline exhausted. Surviving.

It wasn’t when I took the first picture. I was just bored of the bed. What else can I see? What else is here? A face here, legs, feet. It wasn’t until the images were staring back at me that I could witness - witness the gathering of souls learning the new dynamic of adding one more to the mix. A father to five. A younger brother now an older brother. Two brothers to care for a younger sister. A baby to hold, care for, protect. And a very special one at that. We were all reborn - a fact I would have missed if I had not picked up my camera and let the pictures show me exactly - give me the proof - of what was too close for me to see. The work is glorious. The process saved my life.

How? How can I tell you what it was to witness Edna learn to take a bottle? How can I possibly help you know what it was to cradle her head in the palm of my hand while stroking her cheek with my middle finger while holding the bottle like a pencil so my other middle finger could support under her chin. How can I tell you of the struggle to pull that milk from the bottle, swallow, then take a breath and repeat so many times and fast enough to finish her two ounces in 20 minutes? How after two minutes the milk would dribble out the corners of her mouth and it was all she could do to swallow as she drifted off to sleep from exhaustion. I’d lean in kissing her, talking to her, encouraging her to wake up and take just a bit more. Swallow. Come on baby. Just a few more. Come on. Swallow. Breath. Swallow, breathe. I fully expected her to just give up, to get frustrated. She didn’t. She just calmly kept swallowing, submitting to learning to eat. We were told it can take months for babies with Down syndrome to gain the strength to eat. Girl had it down in three weeks.

Pumping sucks. I hated it. I wish we had been able to nurse, but holding Edna in my arms as she finished every bottle I wept because of what she taught me. I wept everyday with her that first year. I wept because of her smile. I wept when she sat up. I wept when she stood. I wept because she is incredible in a way I am not. And she shows that to me everyday. It’s who she absolutely is.

And now she’s two and I believe it might just give me a run for my money through her toddler years. But this girl, she is here to make it. And it started with learning to drink from a bottle while I pumped.

She is my forever hero.

The world shrinks before it expands. After the baby comes you traverse only from the bed, to the chair, to the crib, to the bathroom. Your feet carve the trails thru the carpet. No highways, or jetways, or even other rooms if you can help it. Just from one small space to another small space. It’s blinding how bright the work of caregiving is in these sacred offices of simultaneous suffering and all encompassing joy. Incredible that we hold it all in a single moment.

I couldn’t move. I couldn’t travel to the places where my children were. I was chained to the immobile pump. So instead they filled my bed. They piled on my side of the bed. They brought their books, their sleepy eyes, their clean hair and sat with me in silence. We witnessed each other walk the trails from bed to chair, chair to bathroom, chair to crib. All to the song of the pump.

It started with their bodies. Their heads barely visible from the rocking chair, covered in linen and down. Sleepy eyes snuggled down in the warmth my body left there. It made me think of the song “there there five in the bed and the little one said, roll over, roll over”. I was the one who fell out. Fell out to care for her, for them. The caregiver. The mother. The pressure cooker of transformation is brutal. It isn’t until much much later I appreciate the wisdom I now hold because of it. The unfolding is still happening and I treasure it. Treasure it in all its forms. The ugly, hard, knock me over, swallow me whole and spit me out beauty of it.

And then there was a moment, the bed was boring. I’d filled rolls of the bed. 4,5,6 times a day I photographed the bed. I loved its repetitive nature. I didn’t stop photographing the bed, but I started asking what else there was to see. As a photographer I’m always walking, moving, focusing using my feet to find the angle. Stuck from my single vantage point what else could I see?

A very large part of my pumping story began weeks before I arrived home. It happened in the hospital. In the NICU. In the recovery room, alone. I pumped while she lay in an aptly named isolate. A warmer keeping her warm instead of my breast.

I thought in bringing her home my divided heart would fuse back together. I suppose bits of it did, but the hospital followed us home. That constant, the pump, ever present. I had wheeled it into her section of the NICU. I had it next to my bed in the hours I bled alone after her birth. And here it lived in the corner of my room. The constant reminder of its role between my baby and me. A little metal box perched beside the linen rocking chair mocking me. Begrudgingly grateful I attached it, instead of her, to my body multiple times a day and let it coax the milk from my breasts.

It’s isolating - having a newborn is isolating. Quiet rooms to nurse. Quiet rooms to sleep. Space away from the group to give care. Corners all alone staring at a bed unmade nothing but sounds of the pump speaking strange things. I never said the F word. When I found out I was pregnant at 37 I said it to myself everyday. It was the only word. Sometimes it’s all the pump would say to me as I stared out into nothing. I dreamt of hurling it through the window shattering the glass falling from the second story and hitting the pavement where it would spread into a million pieces, covering the yard. Far from me. And I could just go back to my bed.

That first time, looking down at myself, at an image of my suffering instead of living it I wept. Not from pain not from sorrow, but in complete surprise at what I saw. Courage. Strength. Sacrifice. I saw a woman doing what women do. I saw her enduring strength as she sat and suffered for her baby.

I pumped in the dark while Edna slept. She had learned to sleep in the NICU. She was my only baby to sleep through the night. I was awake and pumping, fearful I’d lose my supply. I worried the light streaming from the crack of the bathroom door would wake her so I guided my hands using the glow of the pump. Then I worried she’d wake with the constant whaw whaw of the pump. She didn’t stir. I closed my eyes as the pump relieved the pressure. Every cell in my body screaming for rest. Where was rest? Click - my bed. Always just out of reach.

It’s ok. You can quit. This is the last time. My mantra every time I pumped. It didn’t have to go on. There was an out. Two hours later I sat down again.

We did try to nurse. She actually did latch and relatch with every swallow. She couldn’t hold on. She exhausted herself over the five minutes and cried from hunger.

We went to the lactation consultant who gave us a shield. She nursed so beautifully in her office I wept. But it still wasn’t enough because she was so tired from the strain. She needed a bottle an hour later.

We tried nursing before bed at home to see if we could find a rhythm and feel that connection. It would take an hour of intense patience to try to get her the tiniest amount of milk. Then still feed her the bottle and pump afterwards.

I remember laying on my back after one night. E asleep in her little bed, tears quietly running down the sides of my face. I had had four babies. I knew exhaustion, but this depth of emptiness I had never known. Emotionally and physically I could not care for my family and attempt to help Edna nurse. My heart broke.

Could Edna have learned to nurse? Yes, I believe she could have, but I could not give what it required. Not in hours not in emotional support. The shame of it stings, but compassion tells me it is enough.

It wasn’t meant to be a perfect documentation. It wasn’t meant to be anything other than a reminder of things my brain was too foggy to remember. The helplessness, this was what I had to do. The longing for relief. The droning on and on and on of the pump its endless whirring becoming songs of “enough Sara enough enough”. They were a place to put these feelings. A place they could leave me and rest somewhere else.