Rearview mirror
I have been reading a newsletter for years and the author recently had a baby. The author told readers before she went on maternity leave that some scheduled entries would be about pregnancy and becoming a mother. To turn away if needs be. Some people dislike content warnings, but I think they can be a kind gesture. For instance, there’s a topic on which I appreciate content warnings. Even thinking about the topic as I wrote those few words made my eyes water. My heart skipped.
I read some of the author’s newsletters during this time, not all of them, because sometimes an email slips away. I’m sure I slip away from you a regular amount. Today she sent another and said, “I’m sorry that some of you were disappointed to read about pregnancy and impending parenthood here.” I understand where some people’s disappointment, if that’s the word I even mean, came from. I, and maybe them, understood the author to be childfree by choice, or whatever the preferred term is. And fertility is an emotive subject. Its shadow can ruin a day, decades. To have it enter the space in which you didn’t expect its intrusion might easily prove unsettling and upsetting.
I’m of the age where people ask questions that would make you choke on your tea. Purely because of the gender I was assigned at birth. And then they say sorry for asking but still look at me waiting for an answer. I think we’re a few years away from that nosiness being stamped out. Although, I do think the younger generations are very kind about leaving certain topics well alone during casual chats. They really mean ‘if you don’t want to talk about that, that’s okay’. In my experience.
I’ve also set myself up for the interrogation because I’ve written a lot about my body and health in the past. Something I regret, if that’s the right word. I used to say I’ll write about all that someday, but I’m not sure I have it in me.
I guess the point I’m trying to make is that the apology made me sad. That it had to be said. But I understand the gesture. The need. No one is at fault. It is a tough topic. It also spoke to me about when something changes about you - wanted, unwanted, in-between. That author became a mother. I feel weird about past writings, which actually helped me get work. People contacted me about those articles. But I feel a sense of peace moving on from that chapter of my life. I love seeing things from a different angle. We’re not fixed in the sky.
Writing updates
I was longlisted for a prize! And then I was shortlisted! And then I came second! It’s the Stockholm Writers Festival First 5 Pages Prize and my entry is part of something I am slowly writing. Nice lift.
As mentioned previously, I have a short story called ‘Minor Complications’ published in the latest Banshee, you can buy the journal here.
A sampler of the opening paragraphs of my story if you're wondering what the vibe is:
In the months after the encephalitis was caught, everyone told me I was lucky to be alive. As I grew out the undercut given before the surgery – shorn and patchy, prickly and dystopian – I was lucky to be alive. When I needed to take a sabbatical from work – because numbers no longer stayed still in front of my eyes, rendering all my years of education and fieldwork faint – I was still, at the end of the day, all things considered, lucky to be alive.
I forgot my relationship anniversary, the first names of my in-laws, a week’s holiday in Florence. Early on, after blank moments with other sharper-than-me people, when my blood thinned and my mouth made quiet, desperate shapes, Luke told me that he was lucky I was alive.
I do love him. Of this I am sure.
In the hospital we had taken turns watching the other sleep and during this time I considered every angle of his being as he sat in the uncomfortable chair. At an hour when the sun was grey, on its way to rising, and the city nearly still, I decided he was a good man. He had waited for me. He had cried when I finally woke up. A beautiful smile cracked his face and I felt unhooked.
I like to think he promised God something in exchange for getting me back.
I am very lucky to have received a 2024 Dún Laoghaire-Rathdown County Council Emerging Artist Bursary. I’ll be using it to focus on my short fiction in the Autumn.
Last month, paid subscribers got a small piece from me on taking the train and a moment of realisation it prompted (noun plus moment of realisation is how this monkey writes this newsletter). Link to subscribe is below.