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| A Wing And A Prayer by � clairebaby_uk Seagulls pattern the grey outside my window. A jigsaw of wings, interlaced into a crocheted shawl, pulled by invisible hands across the sky. I wonder how they can fly in such close formation without ever touching each other. And I think that seagulls will forever remind me of this room - of this moment -not that i'm likely to forget it. The tears on my face aren�t yet dry. Neither, I suspect are Andrew�s. My unflappable Andrew, who has never cried over anything in his life. Later, there will be more tears, but for now I feel detached, surreal, and my mind is out there with those seagulls, flying free. I remember when we first started trying for a baby. We were living in the flat then. We�d just moved in and got our second bedroom - our nursery. We planned to put the cot beneath the sloping ceiling, so we could pin mobiles over it for the baby to play with. Outside the window there was an oak tree - it stood in the communal gardens - but the baby could still watch the blackbirds nesting every spring. Two years passed and we both got better jobs, but I didn�t get pregnant, and after a while we saved up enough to move into a terraced house. There was no oak tree, just a tiny patch of scrubby grass, but at least it was our grass and it was big enough to stand a pram on. We moved in just after Christmas, and by our first summer Andrew had turned the grass into a felt square of lawn, bordered by marigolds. Roses crept up on a trellis on the opposite wall, a sweet smelling arbour for our baby. But still I didn�t get pregnant. More years passed. We started having tests to establish why the one thing we wanted the most couldn�t be ours. And we moved again into a semi. Two bedrooms and a nursery, but we didn�t call it a nursery this time. We called it a study, because we didn�t want to tempt fate. Andrew moved his desk and filing cabinet in and I added an old wardrobe full of clothes that might one day come back into fashion. We had a proper garden at this house and our own apple tree with good climbable branches, perfect for the child�s tree house. The test results came back, but they only proved that there was no reason why we shouldn�t have a baby. No reason at all. Except, perhaps, that we were trying too hard. By now our friends had stopped asking when we were going to start a family. My parents contented with my sister�s four kids and Andrew�s parents suggested that we turn our thoughts away from children and maybe start a business or build a house, or get involved in some other all absorbing activity. I knew they were trying to be positive. They were like that, Andrew�s parents, and I greeted each new idea with interest, but deep inside me I couldn�t imagine how any project could match up to teaching a child how to climb an apple tree and peek out between the leaves at the sun dappled lawn. But, as it happened, it was because of Andrew�s parents that we moved again. They spotted the house. A rundown cottage with three-quarters of an acre of overgrown land. The house had one redeeming, magical feature. At the end of the garden there was a stream and beyond that open countryside, so that you could look out of the kitchen window on to what resembled a Constable painting. Or at least you might have done, if you could have seen over a tangle of brambles and weeds. Andrew�s always fancied living in the country and his firm had just started doing home working so it was feasible. We were both in our late forties. It was now or never and as Andrew�s parents wisely proclaimed, it was the sort of house that would keep us busy. And it has, I think, as I lie in this faraway hospital room. I love it more than anywhere we�ve lived, even though it�s not suitable for children at all. At least, it isn�t as far as my sister�s concerned. She makes her children wear their dirtiest, oldest clothes when they come and visit, in case they fall in the stream or get chased into brambles by our goat. The study is packed with Andrew�s work stuff. There isn�t any room for my wardrobe of still not in fashion clothes, let alone a cot. A cot. I am crying again. I become aware that they�re back, Andrew and the nurse, but I�m too exhausted to do anything except stare at them through a haze of unreality. So it did happen after all. It really happened. I can tell by the expression on Andrew�s face that he can�t believe it either. He is clinging to the nurse as he can�t let go, and she, who has seen it all before, has tears in her eyes as she hands over our precious bundle. �Here we are then, Mrs Williams.� And then I am holding our brand new daughter for only the second time in her life and it starting to sink in. I stare down at her face and it�s as if a doorway is opening. A doorway onto love. Andrew squeezes my hand. Through the open window I can hear the call of the seagulls and suddenly it strikes me how they fly in such perfect formation. A mixture of telepathy and perfect timing. I wouldn�t have thought it possible, except that I know what Andrew is going to say, even before he leans forward to say it. �It�s about time that I got round to converting that old study into a nursery for madam here.� We haven�t done it before. We didn�t dare to tempt fate. Now I�m so full, I can�t speak. But I don�t need to speak. Madam here stares up at me from her red, screwed up face and I know that for the first and perhaps the only time in her life, she is in perfect agreement with her parents. |