Fate and Other F@&#ery
In life when I am given two choices I make the one that gets me most in trouble; I have a homing beacon for drama.
Sunday was a sun day. Bright and light and that was just me. The cloud had lifted or at least been blown away by too much time. I had stopped mourning the “what-could-be” and started reveling in the “what is.” K and I finished reading pre-loved books at my favourite bookshop-cum-coffee shop Gertrude and Alice. We walked past the tables of tanned people on the street eating poached eggs on toast, hold the toast, with a side of smashed avo’. Lines of people wearing too-big sunglasses, too-small shorts, waiting for their dairy-free café lattes. I let myself into Joan and Reinhard’s five-bedroom sun-drenched house, a few streets back from Bondi Beach. I shouted “Honeys! I’m home!” just in case someone was strolling around naked.
The house was full of children. Cloudy, seven years old, had two equally blonde and blue-eyed neighbours over to play. They stampeded down the long corridor to the opening front door. Cloudy jumped onto me, dragging on my neck. Her two playmates clasped at my waist. They thumped back down the wooden floors squealing “Phoenix is heeeeeere!”
Cloudy’s father Reinhard (Rainy) put on the television, channeling YouTube. A synthesized woman in cut-off Daisy-Duke shorts, a midriff top emblazoned with the American flag and a life-sized Chinese panda in a red cowboy hat stood paused for action. They were ready to dance, blissfully ignorant of Trump’s trade war on China. The girls, in a Pavlovian response, jumped to attention in front of the giant television. Rainy pushed me onto the impromptu dance floor. The song ‘Timber’ belted out. The three munchkins and I copied the dance steps of the panda bear or woman, with the woman (and corresponding child) jumping on the back of the bear (and corresponding cub). K kept up, a half-beat out of time. The girls jumped up and down “One more! One more!” I managed three dances before I fell back laughing and breathless on the white leather lounge. I watched the girls gyrate and shimmy and jump without losing height, their tousled locks bouncing.
This would be enough. Sharing in the lives of other people’s children. Children had enough love and energy for three.
I decided that on Wednesday I would call The Agency. That gave Fate two last days to intervene. Then the line would be drawn.
On Monday I went to work, walking down the halls of the children’s hospital, past the rooms that held my childhood monsters, to meet the head of pediatric oncology. The walls were white with rainbows and gold stars but the smell of disinfectant and fear persisted. Knowing that another child was coming, a foster child that I would adopt, had made walking those hallways to the past bearable.
I had manoeuvred my way into taking charge of some of our biggest clients: pediatric oncology, IVF clinics, the children’s emergency department and genetics. I could bring my experience to the table. I loved children. I had tried for a decade to have them. I knew the ins and outs of the IVF clinics, the names of the drugs, the processes, the torment. I knew the Early Pregnancy Assessment unit where I sat grey and shaking hoping that I wasn’t losing the second of the twins. I knew the crotchety Nurse Ratched who held my hand tenderly, saying “All babies are special but some are more special than others. It’s going to be okay.”
It wasn’t okay. Phoenix died before he had taken a breath. Three years had passed since then.
Free of the anchor of the child, the child that was coming any minute now, I was adrift. A flush of sweat covered me. There was an instant sheen on my skin, my invisible moustache was wet, a whale sat on my chest. I couldn’t I couldn’t I couldn’t catch my breath. I couldn’t walk these halls as if I belonged there.
I had a difficult conversation with my boss, a woman. I cried. She understood. I could accept that I would not have a child. I could not be around a parent’s heartbreak, parents having the worst day of their life.
Wednesday came. “I’m calling as soon as I get to work.” I checked my emails, went to a meeting, chatted to colleagues. “I’m calling when I get a coffee.” I got my coffee. “Better make it a double shot.” I was definitely calling at lunch. This was the right thing to do. No turning back. Suck It Up Princess. Just make the call.
My job is client liaison. This sounds sexier than it is. Not a suspender or riding crop in sight. Basically, I keep the scientists and clinicians at a safe distance from each other and translate between them. There is a lot of talk about genitals and STDs and orifices. Curiously, there is no mobile reception where I work so when I go to lunch my phone pings to life with texts and messages.
The sky was glaring and cloudless, refusing to acknowledge what I was about to do. Doctors sat having lunch with stethoscopes around their necks. Nurses walked down the street in their green uniform with NURSE emblazoned in red. Dazed parents wheeled their children in wheelchairs, children with nasogastric tubes taped to their face, cannulas taped to the back of their hands. Life was, as ever, a slightly grim version of normal.
As my last ditch effort at procrastination, I ordered lunch and listened to my messages. There was a message from The (Foster) Agency.
“Hi this is Cassie! From The Agency! Could you please give me a call?”
Faaaarck!
If I was an icon I would be running around the page screaming.
If I was an icon I would be running around the page screaming.
I skimmed through the phonebook of possibilities. It could just be a call to check in but they’d never done that. My annual assessment was six months ago. Some piece of paperwork needed renewing? Perhaps the new caseworker just wanted to introduce herself, check in with the families she’d been assigned.
What were the odds of them offering me a placement on the day I was going to chuck it in? Not just the same day, the same hour. Even for Fate, that would be cutting it fine.
Joan was inconveniently in London. I texted her and her partner Rainy.
Joan texted back:
‘Breathe. Stay calm. Listen to what they have to say. Tell them you need some time to think about it.
Rainy texted back:
‘Listen to Joan.’
There was a high-stakes game of phone tag with Cassie. Every time I got the message bank, I felt sick. Sick with excitement, sick with dread. It was the best horror movie I had never seen.
If they offered me a child, as they had done before, who was completely out of my capability, I would take myself off the list. This was Fate f@&#ing with me.
In life when I am given two choices I make the one that gets me most in trouble; I have a homing beacon for drama.
Cassie eventually reached me, chirpy with youth in her voice.
“Hi! I’m Cassie! One of the caseworkers! It’s good to finally speak!”
Breathe in breathe out breathe in breathe out.
“Hi-yes-sorry-about-the-phone-tag-I’m-at-work.”
“You’re a writer aren’t you?”
What a question. Am I a writer? How is that defined?
Breathe. Breathe.
“Eventually I had to get a job that makes money unfortunately. It’s part-time at the hospital up the road. It pays the bills.”
“So it’s flexible and local?”
“Pretty flexible.”
“Great! The reason I’m asking is we have a 9 year-old boy! Half-Chinese! We can’t say much more until you come in! Could you come in tomorrow?!”
The answer punched through my chest like a scene from Alien, before the words could form.
“Yes!”
I messaged Gabrielle, my li’l bro. Gabrielle was one of the Pussy Possy, the group of badly behaved lesbians that were my family when I lived in Cambodia. For my 40th the Pussy Possy gave me a ring engraved with Disco and Family due to my penchant for dancing on podiums to the best music ever. I had last seen Gabby when I was pregnant in Paris, as I carried her 1-year-old twins on each hip.
This was yet another time I wished she wasn’t in a time zone eighteen hours away. We could have a conversation without one of us being up at midnight. The darkest question asked at my 1am on Thursday was answered during school drop off on her Wednesday in Washington.
Ping! – ‘Can you see me with a 9-year-old boy li’l bro? Am I too ancient?’
Ping! – ‘You’re nearly 52?’
Ping! – ‘Yep. But rejecting adulthood for as long as possible.’
Ping! – ‘That’s like if you had a baby when you first started trying? It would be poetic right?’
Poetic? No. It would be Fate f@&#ing with me.
Wishing you love and all good things
Phoenix x
Be a patron of the arts – oh that sounds fancy
You don’t have to own a castle to be a benefactor or patron of a writer and it sounds fancy doesn’t it? You can be a patron for the cost of a coffee. You can say stuff at parties, like “Yes I support a new writer and her foster child. Can’t have them all starving in garrets writing by candlelight can we? How much does a garret go for these days?” Seriously, thank you for supporting me, my muse, and my son in our daily lives.
Wishing you love and all good things x
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