After nearly a year without haircuts and six months of isolation, we hired a barber to cut our boys’ hair in our driveway. When my youngest hopped into the chair, hair grazing his shoulders, he was explicit: cut his hair short. Inches-long snips of hair were cast to the ground, piles accumulating and mixing with the dirt and leaves. Each individual severed hair felt as though plucked from my own scalp, blood pooling at the source.

Later, that evening, I complimented each of the boys on their new cuts. To my youngest, who had the most dramatic change in style, I announced, “You look amazing! I almost didn’t recognize you!” Without missing a beat, he burst into tears. Sobbing into my chest, he feared that I didn’t know who he was anymore. I held him tightly against my body, but the damage was done. He would spend the next several weeks checking to see if I still recognized him.

I examine my children as they move through this world. I try to memorize their ever-changing shapes, the scent of their hair, the hum of their voices, deepening my understanding of unwavering love and attachment. My camera is both a record-keeper and the tool with which I am free to really look at them. I Gathered Your Hair From The Dirt is a living body of work, expanding and contracting with the passage of time, much in the way their bodies will fill more space in the years to come.