An Ode to Motherhood: Time by Jordana Henry

AN ODE TO MOTHERHOOD

Motherhood lives in fragments — in the in-between moments, the questions without answers, the things we only realise once they’ve passed.

In our series ‘An Ode to Motherhood’, we invited four mothers and creatives we deeply admire to each share a personal work that reflects their own version of that experience — not polished or perfected, but real.

In this piece, a poem titled ‘time’, Jordana Henry reflects on time as something both given and spent — a currency that feels infinite, until it isn’t.

jordana henry

time

Who decides
what time is worth more
is it quality
or quantity?

Who sets the scale?
Who measures it?
And what does it even mean
to say this is good quality
and so what else is there? Bad quality time?

What is quality time?
How much quality is enough?
Where is the line
where it tips into something lesser
thin, distracted, wasted? Cheap?

Is it the company?
Is it me?
Is it the way I am inside of it?

Can time even be shared? I don’t want to share?
To share is to divide
so does it shrink when we give it away?
Does it lose something, change the quality or cheapen?
each time it passes through our hands?

Or does it become something else
stretched between us,
threaded through bodies and laughter and need?

I think about the time
I spend with my babies.

Is it quality?
Is it quantity?
Can I have both? I need to!

Because it feels like I am spending something.
Like time is a currency. The most valuable! More so then my own life!
rare,
finite,
slipping out of me in quiet transactions.

Something so valuable
that I am giving it away.

And for what return?

Give it back.
Give the time back.
Or at least slow it down.

Change the pace.
Because it moves too fast
and then somehow
not fast enough.

TIME

What will I cherish most?

Will it be the long stretches
endless, formless hours
of watching them sleep?

Their little chests rising and falling.
Sweaty palms.
Fluffy toes.
Milk-drunk stillness.

Breastfeeding in the dark.
Time dissolving.
No beginning, no end
just being.

Countless hours of nothingness.
Pure bliss.

Was that quality?
Was that quantity?

Was it enough?
Never.
It was never enough.

And now
that time has passed.

I’ve spent it all.
Without knowing I was spending it.
Without knowing I was running out.

Now there is this new time this new currency cut up and scattered between schedules and systems.

Schooling.
Pick-ups. Drop-offs.
Calendars that dictate. Spend here! Buy this!

And extra curricular.
FUCKING EXTRA CURRICULAR.

TIME

More time to spend.
More time to give away.

Where is it all going?

And yet
it is still so rich.

Priceless.

Belly laughs on the bed.
Tickling, wrestling, collapsing into each other.
“Plait my hair.”
“One more time, please Mum.”
“PLEASE.”

And sometimes
no.

“I can’t.”
“I don’t have time.”

Because I’ve spent it all already.
Or I think I have.

And for something so precious,
it feels like I’ve misplaced parts of it
left it behind
in the Vinnies bin
with the baby clothes
and the highchairs
and the versions of me
that no longer fit.

I yearn for more time.
More quantity.

But if I had all the time in the world
would the quality change?

Would it lose its edge? Its urgency? Its ache?

"I yearn for more time.
More quantity.

But if I had all the time in the world
would the quality change?

Would it lose its edge?
Its urgency?
Its ache?"

TIME

The sleepless nights
the ones that felt endless,
like they would never end

and then they did.

They ended.

Where did they go?

When was the last time?

The last feed.
The last swaddle.
The last time they reached for me
in the night.

The last rocking to sleep.

I didn’t know it was the last.

And if I had
would I have held it differently?

Would I have stayed longer
inside the moment
instead of waiting
for it to pass?

How much is it worth
a moment you didn’t know
you would miss?