I immediately notice how low the ceiling is. It’s been raining for days, but it seems like we’ve been loaned the sun just for today. It squints through the old windows, casting wide reflections across the wooden floor. This is where Amanda lives. She’s warm, that’s what I always think every time we meet. I saw it this winter, when I casually mentioned that I was sitting beside someone I love in the hospital, someone who was about to die. Even though Amanda and I don’t know each other that well, she instantly offered to bring food for all of us. What kind of warmth is that, really? Imagine if more people were like her. Side note!

 

 

Around her legs, her daughter crawls. She wants to be held, reaching for me without fear, so safe in it. Amanda sets the table for coffee in the glass veranda. We’re the seventh generation of my family living here, she says. Sorry, what did you just say? I ask. She shrugs, keeps laying out fika, but I get stuck on what she said.

 

 

Just think of all the stories that have unfolded across these wooden floors, in that veranda, every small, everyday decision leading up to Amanda existing at all, and her daughter now crawling at her feet. I’m here on assignment for LIBRESSE, to shoot period underwear. I had a simple plan for how I wanted to photograph it, but I let it go immediately. Instead, I just follow the moment.

 

Out onto the grass, the little one crawling in the grave - no, no stones in your mouth, darling! I’ll change her quickly, Amanda says in a gust of wind, pulling half the wardrobe apart. And I think how beautiful she is right there, in the mess of pulled-out laundry and everyday life.The ordinary - gravel and stones in tiny mouths, piles of clothes on the floor, marks left on skin from too-tight waistbands, toys and whisks and mixing bowls scattered around, tears and shhh, shhh, it’s okay, my love.

 

Amanda, I really see you in your motherhood.  You’re doing something truly incredible.