Motherhood in the time of a global pandemic, a self portrait

I became a mom in February 2019, took 4 months of parenting leave, and went back to work (at my then-corporate HR job, in a role I had started 6 weeks before giving birth) in July. For the next 8 months, I worked from home 3 days per week, and the other 2, I packed up my son and his bottles plus my laptop, lunch and breast pump to all but dump him at the door of daycare at 7:00 a.m (well, the pump only made it for 2 months before something have to give). I rushed to the train station, because if I missed the 7:30 train I wouldn’t be at my desk until close to 9:30 - if everything ran on schedule. I took calls while on the train or 30-minute walk from the station to my office, where I had to grab breakfast because I hadn’t had time to eat. He wasn’t yet sleeping through the night (that would come at 10 months, when he started walking), and woke up early, so I felt lucky to even get myself dressed for work most days.

By his first birthday, I felt like I had at least some idea of what I was doing. Two weeks later, the Covid-19 shutdown started and his daycare closed. I stuck him in his stroller and took calls from my cell phone while walking around the neighborhood for hours. It was ok, because most everyone else was in the same position. I can’t recall the exact details, but my husband was still going to work as an electrician. It felt impossible to do my job and care for a one year old who was always on the move, so at some point he applied for an emergency FMLA, which applied to employers with less than 500 employees. He was able to take 12 weeks off to be our son’s primary caregiver while I worked from home. After those benefits expired, he was gone by 6:00 and working out of the house with very limited flexibility to his schedule or to take time off. I, at least, was still working from home and wasn’t trying to manage getting ready for work and a ~90-minute commute into a Boston office, but so many of the restrictions and cautions that started at that time continued. Our daycare hours changed. Sick policies changed. I don’t think I can count the number of times I worked from home while my son was either home sick, or had been exposed and wasn’t sick, but still required to quarantine. How many times I had to try and hold him down by myself while shoving a test up his nose while he screamed and kicked me, so I could get the required negative results to send him back to school. 

We were lucky and for two years avoided getting sick, but in May 2022, I found myself working from home while sick, and due to the exposure, he had to stay home with me. He wasn’t sick, so spent 10 days crawling all over me while I took virtual meetings in my N95 mask and tried to distract him for long enough to get anything done. I kept one eye on my laptop and one on him, until his attention span moved him on to the next thing and we repeated the cycle. He went back to school for one day (or a few? I can’t recall) before he showed symptoms, tested positive, and coming home with me for another quarantine period. 

It was incredibly difficult to manage. I was lucky enough to still be working from home, and have an amazing manager who supported me and helped make sure I got everything I needed to done. But, as any caregiver who has been in a similar situation knows, it is a seriously under appreciated responsibility and as much, if not more work, as a full-time job - never mind doing both simultaneously. 

The Inspiration

I captured a series of self portrait photographs over these years as a way to capture not only the moments in our day-to-day lives, but the time we were living in. I set my DSLR up on the dining room table and used the interval timer to take dozens of photos as we went about our day. The house is a mess and I probably hadn’t showered, but they are real. 

self portrait photography, 2021-2022

The Drawing

When I started taking a portraiture drawing class at the Cambridge Art Association this March, I knew I wanted my final project to be one of these scenes. I started the charcoal drawing in class, taught by Ricky Vasan, and we quickly realized the scene was too wide to be squished on one piece of 18x24” paper, so I took on a diptych. I had never taken a portrait class before, though I drew a few mediocre ones on my own in college, so it was a project that stretched me. It has taken me a few months, working on-and-off between other projects to get from initial sketches to completed drawing. I had my own self-portrait with my son as a reference photo, but because our facial features aren’t shown, I also recruited two of my friends and former co-workers to jump on a zoom call with me so I could incorporate them as well. It was a bit of a challenge to incorporate them at the end because I hadn’t yet set the charcoal of the rest of the drawing and kept smudging it. They’re also pretty small in the composition and my piece of charcoal was a bit too big to accurately get all of the features, but I’m pleased with how it turned out. 

I have some ideas for how I want to incorporate portraiture into my abstract paintings, but I’ve also found that I really enjoy drawing charcoal portraits on their own. When I paint, I’m full of energy I need to get out, but I found that drawing from a reference (photo or life), is a much more relaxing experience that I can go to when I need some peace and quiet. 

Let me know if portraits are something you’d like to see more of in the comments!

P.S. I shared a behind the scenes video of my drawing process over on Instagram.