Umbilical cord, first gasp, cutting of cord, 1886, from the portfolio The First Time, The Heart (A Portrait of Life 1854 - 1913)

One Book One Northwestern, 2023–24

Dario Robleto’s "Umbilical cord, first gasp, cutting of cord, 1886," from the portfolio The First Time, the Heart (A Portrait of Life 1854–1913) shows a familiar form, a pulse wave. A simple undulating line, a pulse wave can indicate the rhythm of the heart, life, and sometimes death in the form of a flatline. The pulse wave in this image records the blood pulsing within the umbilical cord of a mother who has just given birth in 1886. The robust undulating lines start to become flatter toward the right. The pulse wave represents just seconds in time, but it suggests the separation between mother and child at the moment the umbilical cord is cut. It is in this interval that the physical connection between a mother and child is severed and a new person’s journey as an individual begins.

As Zauner describes in Crying in H Mart, she lay beside her mother in the hospital one night, hoping to take away her mother’s pain. "　.　.　.　[I] wished I could prove to my mother just how much I loved her, that I could just crawl into her hospital cot and press my body close enough to absorb her burden. ... That the months my mother had been a vessel for me, her organs shifting and cramping together to make room for my existence, and the agony she’d endured upon my exit could be repaid by carrying this pain in her place."