While reading about how to tell the age of a stone, I discovered that the language used to date a rock resonated with my new ‘mother’ status. Terms like daughter product, nuclei don’t get tired, the staircase of time, half life and 100% pure parent seem to be directly referring to the business of raising my child.

Half life is a bit like the will to continue an arts practice using two 45 minute ‘nap’ blocks each day. Nuclei don’t get tired seems to be taunting me and reminding me of my human weakness as I succumb to fatigue by 6pm each day, and remove previously deposited material, well, if that isn’t directly referring to the constant deposits of excrement I deal with several times a day …!

A photo taken of the sunrise (a time of day I’ve recently had to embrace) matched with 2 stones of the same colour, a small pile of orange pips extracted from my daughters fruit and an improvised toy imitating a rock, showing a sunbather relaxing on a pebbly beach rest on a series of miniature balsa wood palettes, amongst real stones and painted images of rocks in watercolour.

Guessing the age of a stone parallels the constant monitoring of the growth of my daughter against age – her weight and height measured precisely to ensure she (and I) are reaching the desired milestones in life.