I had about a couple of hours to pack and get to the airport after booking my flight to Cincinnati. My dad was in the ER after suffering a seizure at home while also battling recently discovered cancer. The cancer had metastasized and was in his brain. I tossed a single change of clothes into a bag and the panic welled into the back of my throat. My son was 18 months old and I had never spent a night away from him—not even a full day. I didn't have any breastmilk pumped because we were always together he was home with me full time while I worked in the minutes in between it all. I tossed the hand pump the hospital had given me into my bag. I had never used it before, but wasn't about to pack my Spectra for fear it might get confiscated (do they still?). I breastfeed my son in the house before we left for the airport, and again 15 minutes later in the car when we pulled up to the drop-off spot. My anxiety was all-consuming. This might be the last time you see him. Anything could happen. Visions of plane accidents or any accident for that matter flashed across my eyes as I gave him a huge kiss. My husband assured me they would be ok before I rushed through the doors and into the airport.
While boarding the plane, another woman and her partner had their young son with them. "18 months?" I asked and the woman excitedly confirmed. I told her my son was the same age and it was my first time away from him. “Enjoy it mama!!" she answered. Knowing how rare it is—for mamas especially—to get away from the all-consuming job of parenting. But all I wanted was to be home with him and for my dad to be back to his pre-cancer self. For COVID to not be happening so I could have seen him more in the past year. And it was hard to imagine a situation where I was boarding a plane for a mini holiday away from my son. My brain couldn't compute.
After landing at the CVG airport, I went straight to the hospital where my sister and stepmom were with my dad. They had moved him from the ER to Oncology. There he lay—a sliver of the man I knew—frail and heavily drugged. My sister and I made the decision that we'd stay by his bedside that night and take turns being awake. The hours blurred and I hadn't realized how long I had gone without pumping when my breasts started to feel like they were being stung by a hundred sharp needles. I grabbed my hand pump and rushed to the hallway bathroom. Shirt and bra off, I pieced together the breast pump and attached it to my swollen breast. No milk came through but my nipple stung from the suction. I tried again and still no milk. I chucked the hand pump into the trash and got back to work—hand expressing. The milk came in wild spurts. Milk will squirt in every direction way when you hand express—especially when your breasts are full to the brim. Squirts of milky evidence were all over the sink, mirror, and wall. It took forever to fully relieve the pressure and by the end my hands were tired and my breasts sore. I slipped my bra and shirt back on and started to clean up the breastmilk battlefield before heading back down the hall to my dying father’s bedside.
"Hand Expressing in the Hallway Bathroom at Oncology", 2022, graphite on Bristol, 17 x 14 inches.