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By Mark Nethercote, September 14, 2011 10:00 am

Sunday 12th September 2010

One year ago.

The fucking candle went out.

We were up to the fourth one.

The first one, as I said, was from the two-dollar shop.  In fact, that’s not true, it was from ‘Cheap Prices’ in Station Street.  $3.50 for that one.  It burnt well, nicely, cleanly, for four days.

The next one was from ‘Ishka’.  It was a proper candle – you know, a scented one that was handcrafted in Australia for five times the price.  It even came with instructions on the base, in case we didn’t know what to do with one of these new-fangled contraptions.  They implored that we keep the wick trimmed and never leave it unattended, like it’s a pet or something.  It filled the house with the stink of vanilla for days, and burnt all the way to the bottom, outlasting it’s expected life by thirty-six hours after lighting the third, giving us a double glow for all of that time – and increasingly questioning our risk of twins.

Eventually it burnt out, but not before I’d whipped back to ‘Cheap Prices’ and bought them out of their unscented, six-inch variety.  A total of seven candles is what we’ll need to make it through to judgement day – the pregnancy test in just over a week.

“Should we light a new one?” Suse asks in the middle of the afternoon.

I look at it for a while, as it burns high and bright, the lake of wax growing deep.

“Nah, we’ll do it tonight,” I say, “It’s still got a couple of centimetres to go.  We don’t want to give anymore encouragement for twins.”  She smiles.

We potter around.  Suse cooks while I construct Ikea products.  It’s a typical Sunday afternoon.  Having screwed and tapped and rivoted for just over an hour, I emerge from the study, walking back into the dining room.  Immediately I notice an anaemic hue to the room, the warm, jaundiced light having gone.  As I round the corner, I look at the table.  I see the candle is out, the flame dead.  A brand new one, the resuscitation device, sits three centimetres to its left.  I let out a gasp.

“What?” Suse asks from the stove.  I hear the clang of a saucepan lid.  “I knew it, I fucking knew it!” she yells, grabbing at the matches from the cupboard.

She runs over, lighting a match as she does, touching it to the new candle.

“No, no, no!  Not that way!  Re-light the old one.”

“There’s no wick left!  It drowned, just like I new it was going to,” she mumbles, slightly desperate.

We stand still for a moment, frozen in shock, like parents having just found their child blue.  I grab the lit match from her hand, trying to revive the submerged wick, burning my finger on the growing flame.

“I said that’s not going to work!” Suse says.  I drop it.  I pick up a pen and dig it into the setting resin, trying to unveil the wick.  Still no luck.

The barbeque match lies on the top of the deadened candle, curling up, lighting the length of the tinder bright.  A pool of wax forms around it, next to the drowned wick.

I take the new one.  “Hold it!” I say to Suse.  She grips it in her palm and we tip it, lighting the virgin candle from the flame.

We put it down.

A candle has been burning continuously for ten days.  From before the reimplantation.  Each new wick has been diligently lit from the one before, all from the original flame.  Until now.

“Do you think it means something?” Suse asks.

“No,” I say with irritation, images of asphyxiated, brain damaged infants floating through my mind.  “Of course not.”

“Do you think it means our embryo didn’t make it?”

“No!” I say, even more forcefully.

We both stand there, staring at the innocent candle.  I feel sick to my stomach. Six minutes is all it takes for brain death.  Six minutes.  How long was this candle out for?

Two rational humans stand side by side, both lost for words, wondering on the fate of an unborn child.

Based on a candle.

* * * * *

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By Mark Nethercote, September 8, 2011 10:00 am

Monday 6th September 2010

One year ago.

There’s a mini-crisis at breakfast.

“The candle is about to go out!” Suse yells.  We both leap up from the couch and over to the table.  The flame limps lowly, the wick bobbing in a sea of wax.  All around are high resin walls, trapping this moat of molten lava inside.

Over the last hour the flame has burnt high and bright, the strongest it has been for the last four days.   But suddenly it is fading.

I grab the replacement candle, tipping its stem to the blue flame to light it.  A drop of wax beads on it’s coated wick before falling, threatening to put it out.

“Stop, stop!” Suse says.  I take it away, and we both stand there breathless, watching for a moment.

“Hang on a sec, I’ve got an idea,” she says, running to the kitchen.  “I’ll use a match to transfer from one to the other.  That way it’ll be the same flame.”

Suse runs over to grab the matches out of the cupboard above the Rangehood.  She returns, slowing as she arrives.  The flame wavers in her breeze, contemplating death.  She brings the match to the flame, threatening to extinguish it, before the phosphorus crackles brightly.

We both take a breath.

She puts the match against the new wick.

“Isn’t that cheating?” I say.

“No.”

“Are you sure?”

“It’s the same flame.”

We stand for a moment, the new flame beginning while the old one limps weakly.

“I think that’s cheating,” I say frowning.  “And I’ve got an idea.”  I slowly tilt the plate of the first candle, letting the wax move to one end of the molten pond, revealing the wick, and causing the flame to jump up.

“Blow out the new one,” I say.

“Really?”

“Yeah, yeah, yeah,” I mutter.

Suse blows it out.

“Now light it.”

She takes the blackened wick from the new candle and touches it to the original flame.  It lights quickly.

I resettle the plate flat, causing the first candle to have one final burst and splutter, before turning blue, folding down, and going out.

“That was close,” I say.

“Mmmm.”

We both stand there staring again.

“Does it matter that the new candle wasn’t a virgin one?”

“Like there are rules to superstition, honey.  We make this up.  We can do what we want.”

* * * * *

Suse spends the morning at the hypnotist, going for a walk through the Botanic Gardens, and then heading to the acupuncturist for her pre-transfer treatment.

She arrives home just in time for lunch.

“I asked them if there was anything else I should do to increase my chances.  And they said that we should have sex.”

“Really?”

“Supposedly that increases your chances of success even further.  What do you think about that?”

“I don’t ask questions anymore.  I just do what I’m told.”

“So should we get to it?”

“Absolutely.”

“We haven’t got long.  Do you think we have time?”

“Honey.  We’ve been told to do this.  Doctor’s orders.”

I take my wife into an embrace, kissing her deeply.  After a few seconds, I break into laughter.

“What is it?”

“I’ve just realised that I’ve been given carer’s leave to have sex.”

“It’s a great country we live in, isn’t it?”

* * * * *

To be continued…

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By Mark Nethercote, September 7, 2011 10:00 am

Sunday 5th September 2010

One year ago.

The candle continues to burn.

It sits in the middle of the dining table, on a white plate.  Two camellias and some bottle brush stolen from the garden up the street lie on its edge.

This candle from the two-dollar shop has been burning since Thursday night, throwing a glow over the darkness of the room as it rains outside.

And there’s another one ready to go when it finishes.

* * * * *

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By Mark Nethercote, June 29, 2011 10:00 am

Sunday 27th June 2010

Gestation: 39 weeks, 2 days

One year ago.

So I practised.

I produced a sperm sample without lubricant.

I know, I know.

Hand me the medal later.

* * * * *

This whole pregnancy thing has taught me a lot about humility.  Nothing in my life has ever been quite as confronting – as directly questioning of my sense of worth and value – as this little ride we’re currently on.

I mean, I’ve had things come and go that have made me wonder about who I am and what I’m made of.  But generally, at the end of the day, I’ve been able to confirm for myself that I’ve got what it takes.

That I’m made of the right stuff.

Until now.  This whole ride, this entire cascade of events that began with the simple ease of falling pregnant, to losing that pregnancy, to learning that we might not be able to even have kids, has taken us both all the way down to the bottom of the valley – where our fertility, our very virility – has been questioned.

And it is in that valley, that Suse and I have had stare deeply into ourselves.  To look within, and within each other, and face a simple question with very humble hearts.

That question is simple.  But the answer to longer to arrive.  But it did.  Eventually it did.  The answer is equally simple.  And it is this:

‘Yes, we do.  And we will do what ever it takes to have those kids.’

Yes, we will medicalise it.

Yes, we will surrender our bodies and our very seeds to science, so that we can be given the chance for a child of our very own.

Yes, we will surrender our innocence, and along with it, the assumption that to have children – easily, happily, seamlessly – was our birthright.

Because for us, it is not.  This very concept has burst.  A stern teacher checked our maths assignment and decided that the figures don’t add up.  We have to relearn the course.  We have to resit the exam.

And so, we do as we are told.  Our pride swallowed, we do as we are told.  And nothing – I can tell you nothing, to this point – has made me swallow my pride more than my sperm assessment.  Not only will someone in a laboratory assess my sperm and give me a mark out of a hundred, but I’ve been instructed on exactly how to produce the specimen.  I’ve been given strict instructions on how to masturbate.  Masturbation 101.

If there’s one thing I was pretty sure I’d perfected by now, this was it.  I was pretty sure I had it licked.

Apparently not.

I’ve been informed – by Cheryl in Andrology – that under no circumstances am I to use lubricant.

It seems that I’ve been doing it wrong for the last twenty-two years.

* * * * *

And that’s the sticking point.  Not since inadvertently injuring myself as a thirteen year old, have I ever used my bare hands.  I’ve not had locker conversations with others regarding this kind of thing – I’m not that kind of a guy -  but until now, I’d just assumed that anyone who hasn’t yet discovered the joys lubrication is a pie short of a pastry shop.

So understanding that, you’ll appreciate why I woke in a cold sweat this morning, as I remembered that I have to turn up to hospital this Friday, to enter a room that I’ve never previously even seen, and come out with a full jar.  Not a tissue.  A jar.

And I’m not allowed to use lubricant.

* * * * *

And that is what has led me to this very toilet, at this very moment.

It’s Sunday afternoon.  We’re due to fly out of Fiji in two hours.  Our bags are packed and in the luggage hold.  We’re left to hang around the hotel lobby, listening to the tuneless guitarists and the squeals of one thousand chlorine soaked children.

It’s five days until I have to produce the goods for Cheryl.  As she explained to me over the phone, she doesn’t want anything stagnant – so nothing older than five days.  But I must abstain for at least three days.

As per instruction, I’ve got to clear the pipes one more time before Friday.

So why not now?

Initially, the thought fills me with dread.  And embarrassment.  In my brain, cemented through years of adolescence, masturbation and shame go hand in hand.  For a man, I don’t think that link ever really disappears.  Not even in adulthood.

Come on guys.  Let’s be honest here.

So, if I’m embarrassed about it now, and I’m embarrassed about it in the comfort of my home, and have to turn up to hospital and spank the monkey, and I’m not allowed to use lube, and so I’ve got to use a new technique for the first time in twenty-two years, and I’ve got to get it right on Friday, like a whole jar-full right – then how embarrassed and awkward am I likely to be?

Do I really want to hand in my first draft on the day?

I mean, do I?

Really?

* * * * *

So, I decide to practice.  Right then and there.  In a cubicle.  In a toilet.  In the lobby of the Westin Hotel.  In Nadi, Fiji.

Without lubricant.

Okay, okay, I know.  I’m hardly a hero.  And it’s not as bad as it may sound.  There’s no one else around, no one even uses these toilets.  But there’s the chance that they might – just like there’s a chance that Cheryl might accidentally walk in on me on Friday.

I’m in a cubicle, in a foreign country, concerned about someone else walking in.  And I’m polishing the family jewels.

If that isn’t a simulation of pressure, then I don’t know what is.

* * * * *

You don’t need to know the details.  I’ve already told you more than I told Suse when I returned from the loo.  Somehow, it just didn’t seem pertinent to let her know that I’d just been tooting my own horn for practice.

But I did.

And it went okay.

In fact, it went better than I thought it would.

I feel strangely proud of myself, in a shameful, repressed, Western-society-teenage-kind-of-way.

But at least I know I can do it.

Bring on Friday.

* * * * *

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By Mark Nethercote, June 27, 2011 10:00 am

Friday 25th June 2010

Gestation: 39 weeks

One year ago.

Tonight is a full moon.

Well, that’s not entirely true.  Technically, the moon is full between 8.10am and 3.30pm tomorrow.   But unless we want to perform our ‘Ritual for Fertility’ under the searing sun in the middle of the day, we need to do it tonight or tomorrow.  And tonight is our last night on the island.

So we decide to do it tonight.

After dinner, we head back to our beachfront bure and get the things ready.  The ritual came packed in a cardboard box with a curved lid;  like a disposable coffin for a rat.  Inside it sit two candles, a small bottle of oil, a sewing needle, a bell, some horsetail herb, some stallion hair, and a piece of rose quartz.  All on a cushion of hay bale.

There is no way this little baby is getting back in through customs.

Suse picks up the box and turns to me.

“Do you think I’m crazy for bringing this?”

“Not for bringing this,” I reply, by now my standard answer.  She smiles.  “Honestly, I’m happy to give it a go, honey.  After everything that’s happened, I’m happy to give anything a go.”

* * * * *

We prepare in silence.  Suse finds a plate for the oil, setting everything out just right, while I visit reception for a lighter.  We take our little rat coffin, and a sarong, and we head out into the evening air.

Malolo Lalai is the closest of a chain of islands known as the Mamanucas, which sit to the east of Viti Levu, the main island of Fiji.  A number of films have been made in the area, including ‘Castaway’ and ‘The Blue Lagoon’.  It is the epitome of a tropical oasis.  As we walk along the beach tonight, I can’t help but feel like we are in a sound stage.  There air utterly still, the water laps quietly at our feet as if the ocean motor has been turned down to low, and the lone palm tree – the one from my runs – leans out at an impossibly sweeping angle, appearing to be too perfect, too flawless, as if made of papier-mâché.  This evening it is very warm;  the heater has been left on high.  As I look up, I realise that there is a thick cloud covering the entire sky, blanketing us in.

“I can’t see the moon, honey.”

“That’s okay,” Suse says, slinging an arm over my shoulder, “it’ll arrive just in time for the ceremony.”

I keep looking up.

“It’s dense,” I say frowning, “there’s no break in sight.

She grabs me by the hands, swinging me so I face her.

“There will be,” she says.

And I believe her.

* * * * *

We sit in the sand, just beneath the palm.  Its leaves sway softly, a hint of air now beginning to move.  We plant the candles in the sand, and sit cross-legged, opposite each other.

I take the piece of paper and unfold it, happy to be in charge of the instructions, feeling comfortable in this role.

I can do instructions.  They’ve never freaked me out.

So I take my place, looking down at the piece of paper.  I squint hard.

“It’s too dark under that thick cloud,” I say frustratedly.

“Have you got your phone?”

“Yep.”

“Use it as a torch.”

As I fish around in my pocket, suddenly the words light up.  I look above to see realise that the moon has crept out into a clearing;  the only clearing in the entire sky.

I just nod, as I clear my throat.

I no longer question my wife’s intuition.

“Circle of divine light be around me,” I say.

“Circle of divine light be around me,” Suse repeats.

“Spirits of the air whisper to the sky.”

“Spirits of the air whisper to the sky,” she repeats.

“And to all that bears fruit.”

“And to all that bears fruit.”

“Ask Mother Earth to hear me.”

“Ask Mother Earth to hear me.”

We take the oil and pour it into the bowl.  In turn, we inhale the aroma.  We strip off our top halves.  I take the bowl, dipping my fingers in the oil, anointing Suse below her belly button, over her heart, on her throat, across her forehead, and on her crown.  She repeats the process with me.

She then takes the green candle, carving a star into it, symbolising surrender to the spiritual realm.  She draws a ring of oil around its centre, and then she replants it in the sand.  She goes to light it, but as she does, a gust of breeze comes up, blowing out the flame.  She closes her eyes for a moment, and tries again.  From this point on, the air is still.

Just like that, the sound stage fans are off.

* * * * *

Suse rings the bell.  The overhead lights are dialled up, as the moon emerges into full view, illuminating all below.

She then takes the orange candle.  Into it, she carves the symbol of Ceres, the Greek Goddess of harvest.  She also covers this in oil, and lights it, before again planting it in the sand.

The wind remains off.

I hand her the horsetail hair and the stallion hair. She takes the first in one hand, and the second in the other.

And then we complete the incantation.

Call me superstitious, call me weird, call me whatever you want – but it feels to me like transcribing what we said in the final part of the incantation ain’t that smart.  I’m not sure exactly what we’re dealing with here.   And, as we’re not pregnant as I write this, I’m simply not going to jinx it.

Suffice to say that we both said that we’re ready and waiting.

Which we are.

And like I said, call me weird all you want.

I just want a kid.

* * * * *

As we finish, at the exact moment that we are complete, the wind picks up, blowing both candles out.  And just a few second later, the moon falls back in behind the clouds, completely blanketed once more.

“Look at that,” I say.

“Just like I said,” says my bride.

She strips off her bottom half, and walks slowly towards the water.  I follow her, taking her hand as we walk happily into the shallows.

And there we ablute, in the bath-warm water, on this perfect sound stage in the South Pacific.

* * * * *

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By Mark Nethercote, May 30, 2011 10:00 am

Tuesday 1st June 2010

Gestation: 35 weeks, 4 days

One year ago.

“I bought a spell,” says Suse, a wry smile on her face.

“Right,” I say.  It’s a safe answer when you don’t know quite how you’re supposed to react.   It says: ‘I heard what you said, and I have no judgements.’  Or that’s how it’s meant to sound.

I find myself saying ‘right’ quite a bit these days.

“It’s a ritual for fertility.  It’s meant to be done during a full moon.”

“Right.”

“We’ll be in Fiji when it’s the next full moon.”

“Right.”

“So we can take it with us.”

She looks at me, and I realise I’m frowning.

“Great.  That’s great, love.”  I pause.  “But… do you know what’s in it?  It’s not going to get us arrested, is it?”

“No.  It’s just got some herbs and things.”

“Exactly.  That’s exactly what I mean.  We’re taking a box labelled ‘Ritual for Fertility’ into another country?”

“We’ll be fine.”  Suse pauses for a second.  “Do you think I’m weird?”

“No more than I did before, love.”

“No, for getting the spell.  Do you think I’m weird?”

“Honey, after what happened with that soothsayer on the weekend, I don’t think anything is weird anymore.  I’m willing to try anything.”

“You’re happy to try a spell?”

“Sure,” I say with a little hesitation.

“You’re happy to take it to Fiji?”

“No, not particularly.  But that woman did tell us that this holiday was going to be a very healing time for us.  I think we need some healing.”  I sigh.  “So why not?”

* * * * *

What does it say about our situation, when a spell now seems as likely to work as the saliva and basal body temperatures that we performed religiously just two months back?   As humans, are we just in need of ritual?

Is science now our ritual?

We all require some sort of order, something to believe in, something to hang our hats on.  Science hasn’t worked for us thus far.

So, as a good scientist that I am, I’m willing to experiment.

I look at the box, a small cardboard coffin.  It has an A4 piece of paper around the outside, with the heading, ‘Spellbox’.  I won’t read the instructions, lest to mention that it has horsetail herb, stallion hair, a bell, a green and orange candle, some oil, and a sewing needle.  And an incantation.

I’m curious to open it, but I don’t know if I’m allowed to yet.  I’m not sure what the rules are.  After all, the moon isn’t full, and it doesn’t look like there’s going to be a thunderstorm anytime soon.

And the golden hair band around it looks pretty darn symbolic.

I’ll leave it be.

For now, I’ll leave it be.

* * * * *