Opening Night

I was born on 22 September the following year at East Dulwich General Hospital – ironically in the same ward that my father ended up in fifteen years later after another one of his ‘accidents’.**

Me:	Was I premature?
Mum:	Yes, you were a week early.
Dad:	I’m still not ready for you.
Mum:	You were very little and thin but very beautiful.
Dad:	You were a red mess.
Mum:	And then a yellow mess.
Dad:	Jaundice.
Mum:	And that awful acne …
Dad:	Waxy head, that’s what I remember.
Mum:	You fed every three hours.
Dad:	She still does – have you seen the size of her?
Mum:	We had to get your weight up to five pounds before you could leave the hospital.

A slight pause for Mum to catch her breath.

Dad:	[reading] One foot five inches.
Me:	What?
Dad:	That’s how tall you were when you were born.
Me:	What? You measured me? You measured me when I was born?
Dad:	No, the hospital measured you. I didn’t want to go anywhere near you.

At this point Dad buries his head in his stats book and produces a graph of my height and weight from birth right up to the age of twenty-two. At twenty-two I obviously found the strength to tell him that grown women don’t tend to stand against an architrave and have their parents draw a pencil line above their heads. Again, he had nothing emotional or personal written down about that time, merely raw data. I’d been stripped to my essentials. Rationalized. Rendered. Made Statistic.

I understand it now – after all these years of raging I get it. The more he could associate me with mere facts, the more reassuringly distant I became. The less he had to engage with the idea of me being a living, breathing human being that he loved – that he might have to see hurt or ill or heartbroken. I wanted to say to him – I’ve always wanted to say to him – There’s nothing you can do, Dad. That’s what life is. You can’t just cherry-pick the nice bits and block your ears to the painful bits. Plus, in insulating yourself against the bad stuff, you miss so much of the good stuff. Don’t you see?

Mum had fallen suspiciously quiet. I always think something is seriously wrong if she goes without speaking for longer than thirty seconds.

Finally she punctured the silence. ‘I think I’ve still got it.’

‘What?’

‘My diary from when you were born.’

What? You’ve got a diary as well. Oh God …

‘I’ll go hunt for it.’

‘Mum, it’s OK, really …’

She disappeared for some time. There was a scraping of boxes on the upstairs floor, then she reappeared brandishing a yellowing piece of paper.

It’s rare that I’m lost for words, but this was one of those occasions. It turned out that my mum is so good at cataloguing, she even managed to keep an hour-by-hour account OF HER OWN LABOUR. You don’t see that very often on One Born Every Minute.

The maternity unit of a busy London hospital. A fixed-rig camera looks down on a woman in the advanced stages of labour. There is the sound of medical equipment beeping.

Midwife:

That’s right, keep pushing!

The woman screams in agony.

Midwife:	Come on, you can do it! Nearly there …
Woman:	[panting] Please –
Midwife:	Remember, push down.
Woman:	Please, could you –
Midwife:	Push down.
Woman:	[getting weaker] Could you …
Husband:	She’s asking for something.
Woman:	Please …

The husband goes over to her.

Woman:	Please, my diary …
Husband:	She needs her diary!

He rushes over to a bag in the corner of the delivery room and retrieves a small notebook. She lets out another bellow as the pain rises again. He hands the diary over; she opens it and starts writing furiously.

Midwife:	I can see the head!
Woman:	[screaming] What time is it?
Husband:	It’s 19.31.

She writes this down. Then screams again.

Midwife:	Nearly there!
Woman:	What’s the name of this ward again?
Husband:	Magenta Four.
Woman:	Thanks.

She writes this down. One final, long wail of pain.

Midwife:	There you are! You did it! It’s a girl. It’s a lovely little girl.
Woman:	[to husband, pen poised ready for the answer] How would you describe the furnishings in here? Mustard? Taupe? Plain beige?

That’s how stoical my mum is. A mere seven stone in weight, slap bang in the middle of labour pains, shoved in a cold bath and left there until nearly eight centimetres dilated – and she still manages to get in a diary entry. Screw you, Samuel Pepys, you lightweight. Try commentating on the Great Fire with a bowling ball pushing its way out your arse with just a little gas and air, and no man, woman or child to comfort you.

Here is Mum’s entry.

Detailed, isn’t it? Except for the actual baby bit, you know, the important bit. That part, well – it’s just ‘Baby born.’ Notice I don’t even get an adjective. The staff do. The staff are ‘marvellous’.

‘Baby born.’ Ha ha ha.

Imagine. I lived with that.

I still think my favourite bit is when she has a bilious attack at 2.30 p.m. and thinks the best thing to do is have an orange. My mum is allergic to oranges. Always has been, always will be. Yet she thought that moment, that specific moment, was the right one in which to play Russian roulette with her digestive system. Unsurprisingly she has another bilious attack an hour later.

Question, Mum. Would an anaphylactic decide to have a handful of cashews just before their baby was born?

No wonder my sister Michelle thought twice about being associated with us.