Everything just comes out when it's ready
babies, writing, modern dining
The successful author I know personally is on social media announcing the publication of her next book. Fiction — nonfiction — fiction — nonfiction. Year about, that’s the way, she says. I watch the reel and flush with inadequacy. I am unproductive. I have squandered my potential. I’m no good.
I wake from this dream or nightmare with the bathroom light being switched on and my bedroom door being gently closed. It is still dark outside. I check my watch and see it is 5:15am on Monday March 30th which means it is really 4:15am on the day my younger daughter turns 11. At this time on Monday March 30th 2015, I was also awake because of her. I knew I was in labour, which was well timed since that day’s c-section had been long booked. If twice can be called a pattern, my body was known for birthing children early and at exactly 6lbs 5oz. At 30-something weeks and at that precise weight they were both ready to come out even if, at least the first time, I wasn’t.
It occurs to me that parenthood is a very good reason why I don’t write a book a year. Then I think about the successful author who I know personally. As it happens, children or no children, she doesn’t publish a book a year either.
It’s not usual to find a product recall email in my work inbox but today there is one. It has been cascaded from senior management after being received from the Scottish Government, which is also unusual. It reports that tremolite, a type of asbestos, has been found in coloured sand commonly used in children’s crafting kits. And there I had been, concerned about the undisturbed asbestos above the ceiling tiles in the high school and the chemicals in the flea spray I’ve been repeatedly using to try to get on top of a recent infestation.
As in all things, it’ll be years before there’s any potential fallout by which time it will be very hard indeed to tell whether children’s sand, flea spray or any of the myriad chemicals and carcinogens we’re exposed to every day were to blame. All the while, children elsewhere in the world are breathing air that is so thick with toxic matter you can see it and no one will be in any doubt in 10, 20, 30 years or more what caused all the respiratory issues, fertility problems, birth defects and rare cancers.
It may be my child’s birthday but it is also a school day and so one must celebrate in absentia. Everything just comes out when it’s ready, the waiter at the restaurant says to the table beside me as part of the long and tedious explanation of what it means to eat in this place, which is what it means to eat just about anywhere these days. I sip my water and think that in my writing, everything just comes out when it’s ready is true but so is nothing will feel ready until moments before it’s due.
