Memory Motel #67

February 17th, 2026 / The Mother Game Excerpt

So far in the year of the fire horse, I have been mostly inside. I’ve been avoiding the heat and soaking in solitude when I can, which is not so often because life with a toddler is paradoxically at odds with life with a newborn. The former needs to go out, the latter wants to stay in, or I suppose, I want to stay in and the newborn follows where I go.

In the bouts between babies, I am resting and working on two publications which will come out this year. The first features a piece of writing which lies somewhere between a short essay and a poem with accompanying photographs published by New Poetics of Labor, a small press I adore and am humbled to work with. We are hoping to launch this very special piece in May at the ICP Photobook Fest.

The second is an experimental collaboration with my dear friend and fellow artist Luca Molnar. We are working on a book and accompanying exhibition featuring both our visual work and our writing to be published by the lovely Burrow Press. The book, titled The Mother Game, and exhibition will launch July 10th in Central Florida.

As each publication inches closer I will provide more details but for today wanted to share a small excerpt from The Mother Game, both to garner some excitement for this project which I am so, so thrilled to be working on, and also to put it out in the world as a way of making me accountable to it.

In the months leading up to Zazie’s birth and up to now, I’ve found it hard to focus creatively. The Mother Game is such an important project to me, yet when I try to sit down and work on it, I often feel blurry at best. This fits with my long history: the things I’m excited for are often the same things I avoid. At risk of spoiling, I choose neglect—a toxic habit which becomes more defined the more tired or insecure I feel. (i.e. my entire postpartum emotional state).

But in small stretches, the book is coming together (thanks in large part to the invincible amounts of patience and care from Luca) and I’m thrilled to share a small excerpt today.

Alongside our visual work, the book features experimental writing pieces by both Luca and I that examine motherhood through seemingly disparate yet deeply interconnected perspectives. We are using the framework of various game structures — Choose Your Own Adventure, MASH, and others — as a generative creative form, and my first piece of writing in the book is an instruction manual: a kind of how-to-play The Mother Game.

Below is a draft of this first text, and of course, two new photographs I made for this project as well.

THE MOTHER GAME
Text Excerpt

Game Rules:

Start at the beginning, but feel no loyalty to linearity from here on out.

You, in this context, is you and not you. You is plural. You means two mothers. Here, mother is not necessarily related to gender or biology. Mother is a verb and a noun, a place and a process, a division and adjoining. Mother is a choice, a collective, a circle. Mother is the picture and the camera, both. Mother is asleep on your way to school. Mother is teaching you to be alone. Mother is desperate for thirty minutes of solitude each day. Mother is a mirror and a corridor. Every mirror is a corridor.

Step 1 -
Build a motherhood out of apple cores split down the middle. Uproot and replant definitions of family which do not apply.

Step 2 -
Become two things at once. Now three things. Now four. Divide time impossibly to make art in slices or seconds. Fall in love with a bedtime routine. Buy more bananas than you ever thought was imaginable. Transform.

Starting Position:

At the hospital the doctor doesn’t understand which one is the mother. At home in your bed, your daughter nurses you and then the other you and then you and then the other you and then you and then it’s morning. In your bed, two mothers are four fountains of nourishment.

Exploration Phase:

At the museum, a kind stranger says “she looks just like you” and you understand what they mean. Like all things, they see what they look for, and you smile.

Encounter Phase:

At the local bakery you see two other mothers and at the playground you see two other mothers and at the concert you see two other mothers, and like all things, you see what you look for, and you smile.

Closing Round:

At home, at the kitchen table, your daughter points to Mamãe and then to Mom-Mom and she knows the difference.

How To Start:

Your mother-in-law places her hand on your belly while taking a family photo and you both laugh about it afterwards. You wonder, does this happen to Fathers, is the absence in their womb ever made full by the invisible thread of one to the other? Your first daughter emerges three months later from a 4” cut. Your second daughter comes 35 months later and this time the cut is yours.

The Next Turn And So On:

Get good at asking for help. Find a daycare. Find a daycare with at least one other set of queer parents. Find a daycare that won’t cost more than you make. Find a daycare with at least some outdoor space. Find a daycare within walking distance.

Final Round:

Go to a coffee shop on a Tuesday afternoon without your daughters. Shapeshift and adapt. Celebrate and mourn. Make a home in 75 square meters. Reinvent the boundaries of family which do not apply. Find one good bench to cry on. Pay attention. Make photographs and write about them.

How To Win:

Something slow and then sudden - on a sunny morning, cutting apples, stacking wooden letter magnets, the floor is dirty (again! still!) and you don’t mind. Your oldest daughter kisses your kneecap - why!? You kiss hers back. Your wife appears and you kiss hers too. Around the table all of you hold hands and chant “Tuesday!” because you are so distracted sometimes and now it is Tuesday, again. Another cup of coffee, more yogurt, ignore the dishes, bananas with almond butter, let’s brush our teeth.

If you’d like to pre-order this book, you can subscribe to receive all of the Burrow Press 2026 titles on this link HERE. Individual book pre-orders will open up later this year. And lastly, if you’re in Central Florida, mark your calendars for July 10th for the exhibition opening and book launch party - I’ll share more details in the coming months.

_________

MY UPCOMING CLASSES:
All levels of photographers, writers, visual thinkers, always welcome

• Photography 2: Image & Workflow (Thursdays ,March 5th - April 2nd, 10am - 2pm) through ICP, 5 weeks.

• Entangled Practice: Photography, Fiction, & Memoir (Monday nights, April 6th - May 4th, 6 - 8pm) through ICP, 5 weeks.

• Finding An Audience & Getting Your Work Out There (Thursdays, April 9th - May 7th 12 - 2pm) through Strudel Media Live, 5 weeks

• Photography as a Pilgrimage (Thursdays, May 14th - June 11th 12-2pm ) through Strudel Media Live, 5 weeks