He didn’t look back. Didn’t turn to look at my face when I spoke to him. He released himself from my arms and charged in. Through the gate, across the playground and into the arms of others, becoming part of a world that is now apart from me. His head bobbed up and down, thenContinue reading “The Gate”
Author Archives: Annabel S.
The Three
Last night I watched the penultimate episode of The Handmaid’s Tale, you know, that series when a dystopian society goes, well, bad. Where religion is used as a cruel tool of coercive control to dehumanise humanity; where women’s reproductive rights, already under insidious attack by a flatlining global birth rate, ecological collapse, and our legallyContinue reading “The Three”
The Garden
At 43, I’m now too old to be sucked into the social media whitewash, the flat lay of life, the comparison battering belief that others are doing it better, harder, faster, stronger. I’m on the ‘gram but I don’t reel-ly ‘use’ Instagram (sorry, not sorry). Alex’s elder brothers next door have showed me enough TikContinue reading “The Garden”
The Egg
He looks like his daddy. Everybody says so. The face shape, the lips, those long eyelashes I just knew he’d inherit. I am amused – but not surprised – when a mini version of what I politely call Mr Maybehood’s basic look comes out in baby sensory, his gorgeously dark blue eyes flickering around mineContinue reading “The Egg”
The Landfall
Can I begin please with the elephant in the room? This Baby Loss Awareness Week I’m writing from a place we didn’t dare hope to be: parenting a live child. I have the simultaneous privilege and heart wrench of listening to our son’s cries, his colic and reflux being tended to relentlessly by his daddy.Continue reading “The Landfall”
The Sabbatical
It was billed as a sabbatical, a 12 month break after many years in the work game. I was leading a high profile project taken on a month after silently miscarrying our first baby. Sixteen months later, a third failed IVF round had me, and other well-meaning friends and colleagues, scapegoating the job and stressContinue reading “The Sabbatical”
The Mother’s Day
How does time do it? How does it have this emotional rebound and distance function? Years can feel like yesterday. Yesterday like years. Everything yet nothing can change in twelve months. We spend a good part of our lives wishing we were in the next place, convinced it will come with exceptional cerebral bonus, that we’llContinue reading “The Mother’s Day”
The Exchange
One Saturday in 2021 I left the Maybehood mainland and didn’t even know it. A landscape and emotional weather system so familiar and engrained in me, I thought I was sitting peaceably on the beach when the boat for one had already pushed off from the shore. I assumed supplies needed were in the hull.Continue reading “The Exchange”
The Veil
When Professor Nick Macklon told me to get both vaccines and go and enjoy the summer, I didn’t need to be told twice. There was – literally – nothing else for it. First we went to Wales and climbed Snowdon. Then we were both beasted at work and I had to deliver a project withContinue reading “The Veil”
The Professional
It was like something out of Love Island, except I wasn’t fifteen years younger, didn’t have a swimsuit flossing my lady garden and Dr Alex George – presumably by virtue of his absence – was down the road at University Hospital Lewisham, hopefully not being rejected by his patients as he was by the ladiesContinue reading “The Professional”
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