Should Be Good Times

  • Dates
    2019 - Ongoing
  • Author
  • Location Minneapolis, United States

This is an ongoing series showing two years of seemingly disparate memories both real & imagined told in visual format as I tried/waited to become a mother and the period immediately afterwards. It is an exploration of entering motherhood woven along with patterns and symbols of my Somali/East African heritage, of understanding my own health and the imprint of all the mothers in my lineage before me, and of waiting during the ‘in-between’ -- a time where I was visualizing a future that was only slightly discernible given the pandemic but hard to grasp in the present.

Between Fall of 2019 and now I started two first trimesters, recorded my blood pressure and other vitals on a daily basis, donned countless masks that became lost like socks in the dryer, explored stories around my own birth and that of other members of my family, sifted through photo albums of pasts in both Somalia and North America, completed one birth, learned how to love the deepest of loves, embraced the traditional Somali dress as my new daily uniform at home, watched the sunsets and seasons change from the window while on lockdown, and swam through the haze of dreaming about the present, past and future while awake. Dreaming and combining memories about the past, present, future while asleep.

As I anticipated entering this new stage in life of which I was navigating for the first time, I began to visualize what my future would look like as a mother. I searched back through childhood memories, stories, and eventually my “real life” memories began to fuse together with my hopes for the future. My ability to discern what day it was & between being awake/asleep diminished as I waded through the repetitive fog of navigating uncertainty while waiting to welcome the person who would change my life completely.

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