No reply

It rained all morning, heavy drops from a gray sky.
At lunch time, I went out of the office and hid in the book shop.
I looked at the books for longer than I intended.
The ladies behind the counter were talking about one of their daughters (granddaughters?) who is currently expecting her first child. They thought she was a good age, twenty five.
I felt suddenly haggard and self conscious.
I ducked into the children's section.
I recovered myself and took my selection to the cash register, feeling like the prow of a strange, luminous ship in my bright purple maternity coat.

The lady working in the shop took my money and said, "You'd better read whilst you have time dear."
Her eyes flicking down to my belly and back up.
I felt, momentarily, confused and suspicious. Why would I not have time to read? Oh yes, the seemingly impending baby.
Would I be too busy grieving? My eyes too red and sore to read? Did she know something that I didn't?
Then I came to myself, realised what she meant and smiled. I hope she didn't see that panicky pause pass across my face.
"Oh, this is my third so I know how to make time."

I felt a thrill of bravado saying that, that third. 
A very, very small punch landed on Death's shoulder. I waved my puny fists about and reclaimed her, just for an instant.
Because she's still mine. Still my child. Even if she doesn't stop me reading novels. At least, not these days.

I don't want to go back to the bookshop now though. Just in case the lady behind the counter asks me any more questions.


I wonder about this child. He is nearly as old as his sisters when they were born now.
I try not to think too much about this flicker of a person although his small, precise jabs and pokes make me aware of this presence. Yet I cannot deny him, my little red shiny frog-child, a half person in hidden in the strange twilight of my belly that makes the very young appear older than all of us, older than time and so very wise. He is one of those small, thin beings that I know for children of mine.

He seems so palpable to others, so real. A child whose arrival is only a matter of time.

But to his mother, he is merely another ghost.
I'm waiting. I'm waiting for both my ghosts.
The return of one seems as much a possibility as the safe arrival of another, although I know that this is not the case.

I wonder what the future holds. I try to second guess, to ask. But there is no reply.
I guess I'll just have to wait a little longer still. I should be getting good at it by now.

How terribly strange to be seventy

I've never dared to re-read many of the old posts on this blog. As I've said before, it seems to be quite a cyclical old thing. I know there are some pre-occupations that I keep returning to. One of these is the passing of time.

When Georgina died, something strange seemed to happened to time. Or at least to my perception of it.
It truly seemed to fall out of joint, askew. No longer neat sections of 24 hours, 365 days, one after the other.
Time seemed to stop when she died. Or at least part of that flow stopped dead. As though it were held back behind a dam.

Part of me is convinced that those three small days are still being played out somewhere, away out of my sight, by pale versions of me and my daughter.

Subsequent time seems to pass in fits and starts, achingly slowly or running past me so quickly that I can't keep up. I look at the physical evidence in Jessica, who grows according to the conventions of time, and can hardly believe my eyes, hardly believe the weight in my arms when I pick her up, hardly believe the small snatches of conversation that we can have. How can all that time have passed?

Before Georgina died, my own old age seemed terribly distant. When I was twenty nine, I could not imagine seventy years superimposed on my body. Now I am thirty one, seventy seems achingly close. Or as close as something I really have no conception of could ever be. Just a little slip away, a trip and a stumble and I'll be there.My Ouma always used to say, "Catherine my dear, old age has nothing to recommend it." I can still hear her voice saying that so clearly, although she has been dead for longer than Georgina has. I'll let you know if she was right when I get there, I'll probably still be wittering on here when I am seventy!

I am sometimes shocked to see my own face in the mirror. It seems, at once, older than I expect and younger. I feel mild surprise and shock that when Georgina died my hair did not turn white over night, that deep lines were not instantly carved into my face, that my bones did not immediately start to crumble. It felt as if all of those things should have happened. But she was born and she died and I just carried on getting older at the conventional rate.

When I am seventy, if I am lucky or unlucky enough to make it that far, I know I will still be thinking of my little baby. My child who tried so very hard. Who lived so very well. I hope that I will never lose that memory, it feels as though it should be one of the last to depart from me. Although maybe they don't leave in order of importance? Perhaps I'll only be left with memories of dresses that I wore as a four year old or something equally useless.

When I am seventy, Georgina might have been forty one. Jessica, if she lives, will be forty one. Strange that I have no idea what that forty one year old Jessica will be like but I feel that I have already spent hours in attempted conversation with my imagined forty one year old Georgina. She has already been all ages to me over the past two years. Probably because she will only ever truly be three days old. And where else can I go from there?

I have to use these imaginings to bind us together, to force a relationship from nothing, to make Georgina my daughter, my own. All those invisible filaments that extend between me and my own mother, joining us, those years, the shared experiences, the misunderstandings, arguments, reconciliations, bewilderments, the interest and love we share in my father, my own younger sister, Jessica. Those will never exist for me and Georgina. As though a mighty pair of scissors came down and went snip, snip, snip between us. Death will do that kind of thing to you. There is love and yearning and wanting and grief, grief, grief. On my side.

So I try to coax new growth from those snapped little lines that joined us. Those threads that dangle and that I so much want to attach a daughter to. My daughter. Georgina. Who knows if I have any success or if I am just anchoring myself more firmly to somebody that I have dreamt up?

Last night, Jessica wouldn't go to sleep. She cried and cried. When I tried to put her down, she extended her claws into what I fondly call 'the monkey death grip' which means I have to either rip my clothes or hair or pick her up. Very unusual for her. In despair, I finally took her to my own bed and we lay there, in the dark. I recited my rather limited selection of poems that I know off by heart. She looked at me. Her blue eyes looked dark and her hot little hand twisted bits of my hair around.
I thought, I know everything about her.
I thought, I know absolutely nothing about her.
Perhaps it isn't that different?
I felt that there might be another pair of dark eyes watching. But no.

Daughter of Heaven

'Daughter of heaven Oh, daughter of now

Drifting away and you don't make a sound
We'll cry when we hear that you ran from this town
She's gone to a new place now
She's gone to a new place now'

Happy Christmas my sweet child.

I wish I knew where you were.

In the new place of this song?

Nowhere?

Everywhere?

All I know is that you feel so far beyond my reach.

This song reminds me of you.

It is the only song that your Daddy ever asks me to switch off when I play it.

I know it is because it reminds him of you too.

And, strangely, this song comforts me for that very reason.
That he can't bear to hear to it.

Our daughter.

Georgina.

I miss you.

I love you.

I hope my love will find you wherever you may be.

Maybe it just evaporates up into the air?

Perhaps it doesn't truly matter?

My love is still here.

My love for you cannot be undone, just as your brief existence cannot be undone.

And perhaps that means that they will, inevitably, meet.

I hope so.
Happy Christmas my sweet child.

May the holidays pass peacefully for everyone who reads this, especially those who are missing children of their own. 

Shame

I felt ashamed when the twins were born.

Not of them. Not of Jessica. Not of Georgina. Never of them. I was only ever proud of my children. Still am.

Shame was not my main reaction but one of many subsidiaries. I was ashamed of myself.

Ashamed that my body had performed so disastrously badly. 

And also, embarrassed. 

I felt as though I had waltzed out on the middle of the stage in front of everyone I knew and told them that I was going to do an astounding magical conjuring trick. But it didn't work. And not only did it not work. It went wrong in ways that nobody could have foreseen. Involving extreme peril and death. And I was left standing up there on the stage whilst the audience looked on with expressions ranging through pity, distaste and horror. 

I was embarrassed, mortified, humiliated, ashamed. But those minor emotions were overwhelmed by the enormity of the grief that I felt. That Georgina was dead and that I would never, ever see her again.

I've always had a little store cupboard in my brain for 'The Shameful Words and Deeds of Catherine W.'

It's a surprisingly big cupboard given that I've never murdered anyone or been sued for slander or done anything out especially of the ordinary in fact.

They are, in the main, small, weak things. Built of dust and feathers. And, somehow, that makes them even more shameful. That they are not even proper shameful deeds, not particularly muscular or even interesting.

But also, here in the cupboard, lurks the shame I feel that I somehow caused all of this to come down on my children's heads, that I was a rotten person, that I somehow caused, or failed to prevent, an infection, that I couldn't stop the labour, that I cried out giving birth to two such tiny babies, that I couldn't save Georgina, that I was complicit in her death by my tacit agreement to withdraw all her medical support. Deeply and horribly ashamed. So much so, that these particularly shameful articles are pushed to the back of the cupboard as I simply can't bear to look at them or to think about them. Sometimes in the dead of night. But it isn't usually a good idea.

Over two years later, I look at myself in the mirror. I wonder if am simply sticking my stomach out, puffing myself up with hot air and too many biscuits. I feel as though this little belly is simply a balloon, one which will inevitably pop and leave me standing here with nothing to show for myself except damp, plastic-y bits left over from the explosion. When I tell people I'm pregnant, I blush. I wonder if they think I am taking an irresponsible risk. Or perhaps they don't remember my previous proud announcement and how . . . strangely that all turned out. Or perhaps they just think that everything will be better this time. After all, the doctors are 'keeping an eye on me', what could possibly go wrong?

I tried to buy a baby doll for Jessica for Christmas. But, when confronted by all those plastic, newborn limbs and staring eyes, I couldn't. Hot shame and bile climbed up my throat and I wanted to knock all those plastic babies, who looked so different from mine, on to the ground and jump up and down on them. Which doesn't even make any sense. Do I really want to buy Jessica a 2lb NICU baby doll for Christmas? Still they would come with a hell of a lot of accessories I suppose. I wanted to steal the chunky limbs and apparent life in the eyes of one of them and grant them to my other daughter as a Christmas gift.

An outfit catches my eye with 'Baby Alive' emblazoned on the packaging. I briefly consider the launch of an accompanying, less appealing range. Don't think there would be many takers for that one.

I still insist on trying to join conversations about pregnancy and child birth but, as I can't quite bring myself to spell out the story to those who don't already know, it comes out terribly odd. Bits and pieces emerge which must leave the listener thinking, 'Eh?' Or perhaps not, as they never ask.

I always intend to keep quiet but the words keep tumbling out. I obliquely refer to a twin pregnancy, I apologise for Jessica's poor speech and attempt an explanation, I try and shed some light on my lack of sympathy for complaints about young children and stretch-marks and disinterested husbands.

But I can't bring myself to say what happened out loud any longer. I feel too ashamed of myself.

Twins

I remember reading a book about twins, in that brief pause between discovering that I was expecting two babies and taking home one.

I remember I wanted to skip the chapter on the death of one or both babies, as that seemed an outcome too horrible to contemplate. But I read it. There was a passage that stuck with me, about how women who lose one or more babies from a multiple birth, mourn the loss of their 'status' as a mother of twins or triplets or more. That seemed strange to me at the time. Now . . . not so much.

I did feel special, clever almost. That I had conjured up two babies where you would normally expect only one.

I don't feel quite so clever about it now. 

The fact that I will, in all probability, never raise twins is a strange, subsidiary little loss. 

That people will never know me for the mother of twin girls. 

That strangers will never stop me in the street and ask if my two babies are twins.

Those weeks of searching for double buggies and buying identical outfits rise up before me like a fever dream. That proud, bustling woman unrecognisable. And, quite frankly, rather irritating. 

I was so very proud of 'my twins' but the loss of that formless, faceless doubling of babies is nothing really. 

A drop in the ocean. 

Compared to the loss of the person that was Georgina. 

But Georgina's 'twin-ness' was a part of her. One of the few things that I can say confidently that I know about my eldest daughter. That she was one of twins.

When I found out I was expecting twins, I was upset for a little while. I didn't believe that I would be able to cope. I was frightened of being a good enough mother for one baby, let alone two. I felt somewhat outnumbered.

Although I haven't had to worry about the practicalities of changing two sets of nappies, trying to synchronise two sets of feeds or two sets of naps, I am still Georgina's mother. Just as much as I am Jessica's. I am still a mother to twins, although not in a way that would be immediately remarked upon. 

That inverse space where Georgina could be, that tiny, ill baby just beyond my reach, that pale ghost of a toddler, her living sister in reverse.

An imagining that I scarcely dare to try to colour in, because if I started I don't think I could bring myself to stop.

I cannot wish her away. I cannot undo her. I wouldn't want to. My thoughts often whir around that strange emptiness, that 'could have been'-ness that is Georgina's absence. It is my want and love that keeps her here. It nudges at me. It murmurs in my ear. It keep me returning to the places where she might have stood, or sat, or eaten a rusk, or had her nappy changed, or slapped her sister's cheek. To all those things she might have been or done. Might. I just can't leave that possibility alone. Although it hurts and hurts and the places themselves are worn to unravelling with my pacing, waiting feet and my yearning that she will, impossibly, come back.

That lack in the middle of our family has formed us. We have grown around it, contorted and twisted and grown in strange new patterns to accommodate the death of one of us. 

That tiny absence is so powerful that bits of me have simply dropped off and turned to ash, friendships that I trusted have untwisted, new parts sprung out. 

We are a different family because of Georgina. Her life and her death and our witnessing of both of them.

I don't think I ever saw anyone live quite like my daughter did.

I've certainly never seen anyone else die. 

I am a different mother. My husband, a different father. 

Because we were Georgina's parents.

As well as Jessica's. 

Because we had two daughters.

Twins.

This time, when I found out that I was not expecting twins, part of me was wistful. 

Stupidly, as there are a multitude of reasons why it would not be a good idea for me to have twins again. 

But there it is.

Sometimes I still feel a little pang of regret for my twins. 

Misunderstandings

"Catherine," she said. "It must have been two years."

I turn around. My eyes are dazed and small from staring at the computer screen. I'm not at all sure of her name. She is a project manager of some description. She is cheery, breezy. Perhaps pleased to have remembered the name of someone who played a minor minion role in a long ago project of her's.

"Really?" I say. "Two years. Huh? Doesn't time fly?" I try to smile whilst I scrabble about for a name. Something beginning with S? Sharon? Hmmmm. I'm not confident enough to try it out.
Particularly as she has remembered my name.
Although the name plaque on my desk does give her an unfair advantage.

"Last time I saw you," she says mock accusingly, eyes narrowed, "you had a big bump."

I feel a small internal electric shock, a jolt of disbelief. I did?

"So . . . . . what did you have? A boy or a girl?"

I believe I hear a small intake of breath from my colleague, sitting next to me. But perhaps not.
I feel as though the focus of the room has suddenly snapped to my chair, to my awkward, flapping face as it hangs there. Uncertainly.

But it hasn't. Nobody is looking, nobody is listening.

I hear the blood thump in my ears.

I want to, very quietly and slowly, get off my chair and crawl into the space under my desk. I just want to fold myself up and sit cross legged in that small, dark void. Amongst the cables. I don't want to cry or scream or bang on the desk. Just sit. Very still.

But that would not be fair. To this pleasant and efficient woman who is pleased for remembering my name and the fact that I was pregnant.

I undo my hair in an attempt to hide my reddening ears.

"A girl," I say. "A little girl."

I fumble for the photograph frame with its picture of Jessica.

"Here she is. She's two."

"Yes, she would be," smiles lady beginning with S.

She doesn't ask about the other photograph of the sun setting over the ocean and a name written in the sand. Nobody ever does although I often wish they would.

"Nice to see you again," I say. I turn my eyes back to my screen. They ache.

***

"Is this your first?"

"No, actually, this baby will be my third."

"Your third? Oh wow, you're an old hand then!"

I suppose I am.
In a strange way and not how the speaker imagines.
Old as the hills.

I smile to myself as I walk away.

Precarious

I seem to have little to say these days.

I feel reduced to fleshy parts, precariously balanced against one another.
I watch myself tottering, wait for myself to fall.

I had my next scan.
A baby. Alive.
The consultant talked us through the butterfly of the brain, the bubbles of the stomach and the bladder, the chambers of the heart.
Measuring a week ahead.

But my cervix is short. Already.

A desperate race of growth against shrinking in which I cannot give either side any assistance. Despite the fact that it is all happening inside my own body.

Poor little baby. I wish I could give you something better to balance upon. Such a tiny distance to rest my life, my marriage, my living child's future, upon.

I dream of tiny babies again.

I hope that these dreams do not come to pass.

I hope for . . . I hope for so many, many things.

I wait.
Sometimes I feel as though I will disappear into myself with waiting.