Blue moon

In the evening, after the housework is done, we put on our coats and go outside to look at the stars. S- is thrilled by the sound of the thrush singing from the top of the pine tree in our neighbour’s garden.

When I was a child my family emigrated to an African country where we lived for six years. My memories of life back then are fragmented, but very early one morning my dad woke me up and took me out for a walk and to see the dawn. I often think back now to the sandy grey of the track we walked along and the blood orange of the sun rising on the horizon. It’s an adventure I think I’ll remember until I die: a moment, if you like, of brilliance in my life.

‘Look, look. There’s the moon, and the twinkle twinkle stars,’ I say. ‘Can you hear the birds singing?’

‘Moo, moo.’

‘Yes, that is the moon, up in the sky. It’s a long long way away, thousands of miles, but we can see it shining on us.’

‘Up,’ she says, totally entranced, pointing and craning to see. ‘Up upp uppp!’

‘Yes, it’s very high,’ I say, hugging her tight, knowing that this is another of those moments in my life.

For tomorrow

Writing a blog can sometimes be a bit like having a fight with yourself. Often it seems easier to just skim over the surface of things, to take life as it is.

Last week I was listening to the featured ‘Book of the week’ on BBC Radio 4: Waiting for Daisy: the true story of one couple’s quest to have a baby, by Peggy Orenstein. The title’s pretty self-explanatory, I guess.

The book made me think about how fertility can become the central drama of a married couple’s life and how, by extension, infertility can turn that drama into tragedy. That’s pretty obvious too, I suppose.

When you go through the adoption education one thing they’re eager on is getting you to abandon what they call the imaginary [or ideal] child. The theory is that the child you always pictured yourself having can only get in the way of your attachment to the child you adopt. A ritual in which you say goodbye to your ideal formally, eg lighting a candle in church, is especially good, apparently.

I didn’t so much have an imaginary child in my mind, more a bundle of characteristics: a boy [only if pushed], good at sports, better at music, intelligent … the usual things. And I never really made a big deal about saying goodbye.

But I do remember standing late one afternoon in the autumn sunshine by the canal near where we live. I was looking at an old oak tree and, more particularly, at the long-tailed tits which were piping and flitting around its gnarled old branches. It really was the most beautiful scene and I smiled to myself to see it. But I felt incredibly sad for a moment, too.

Perhaps this was around the time G- and I- were being asked to discuss imaginary children, but now I always relate this in some complicated way to the child we didn’t have.

Why I’m writing this is not especially clear to me. Perhaps there’s a part of me that wants to save it and keep it for S-. Perhaps I hope that sometime in the future she’ll read it and understand a little bit.

One thing I do know, though, is that I wouldn’t change a single thing about her. If I had to create a child out of my imagination and put her there in front of me she would be exactly as she is now.

I guess that’s the kind of mushy stuff that us parents say, write and think all the time, but don’t expect me to apologise for it.