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

Wednesday 7th July 2010

One year ago.

I’ve been meditating.

For the last few nights, I’ve been sitting in a room, with my eyes closed.

Trying to go blank.

I don’t really know what I’m doing, but that’s okay.  I’ll just keep going.

* * * * *

I started last week.  Suse has been meditating intermittently for years.  And then with increasing frequency over the last few weeks.  I’ve noticed a considerable improvement in her mood;  more relaxed, less easily upset.

So I figured I’d give it a go.  I’ve been blessed with something Buddhists describe as Monkey Mind – a restlessness and, at times, indecisive nature.  I feel most comfortable when in lost in my thoughts, when I’m buried in busyness.  It wasn’t until a few weeks back that I even understood that my consciousness is separate from what I think.

“There are people out there,” my coach said to me, laughing slightly, “who don’t even realise that they are more than their thoughts.”

“What do you mean?” I replied.

I wasn’t even trying to be funny.

If you don’t get it, that’s okay.  Just quietly, I think I may have forgotten by now too.  Just go and buy a copy of ‘The Power of Now’.  It may make you more earth-aware, and if not, it’ll send you to sleep in under a minute.

* * * * *

Letting go of my ego, of the belief that I am what I think, is a huge leap.  Consequently, the concept of stilling my mind until there are no thoughts left pretty damn confronting.

What will be there if there aren’t thoughts?  Do I even want to find out?

The answer is yes.  It always is.  If I have resistance to something, then undoubtedly I should try it.  It mightn’t be for everyone, but for me, if I don’t want to do something, it’s the first sign that I should.

Just like the time I shot up heroin and killed those forty innocent goats.

Did I just say that?

I must be tired.

* * * * *

“I think I should meditate with you tonight,” I said, sighing as I looked at Suse.

Her face filled with joy.

So we retired to the bedroom.  She sat on her buckwheat pillow, legs folded in Lotus position.

I sat on a chair.

I’ve never been any good at crossing my legs.  I vividly remember being in Grade One, sitting on the floor, looking around at all of the other kids and thinking, “Why are you all doing this to yourselves?  How can you even concentrate on the story while your legs are folded in this excruciating way?”

So I shot up heroin and killed those goats.

This time, I just sat on a chair.

“You just have to keep your back straight, for a free flow of energy,” Suse said.  “Any time you notice a thought, just return to your breathing.”

I looked across, not really understanding.

“How long do we do it for?”

“Twenty minutes.”

“How do we know when we’re done?”

“You just know.”

“Do you set an alarm?”

She laughed, before stopping herself.  “No, you don’t set an alarm.”

She closed her eyes, and turned away.  So I did the same.  I sat there, and I kept my back straight, and I concentrated on my breathing.  Each time a thought came into my head, I returned to my breathing.  I got restless legs, and an itch on my arm, but I tried to ignore them.  And I returned to my breathing.  I noticed myself thinking about the washing, and the next-door neighbour’s gate, and I returned to my breathing.

At about the fifteen-minute mark, I felt a strange heaviness behind my eyes.  I noticed my breathing rate rise, and I felt a buzzing in my torso.  It kind of ascended, gradually entering my head.  And then I started wondering what it was, and it disappeared in an instant.  As if swatted away by thought.  It disappeared much quicker than it came, my Monkey Mind acting like DDT.

The following night, we did the same.  This time, my legs ached.  My feet wanted to move.  I found that I was focusing so much on not moving my right leg that I felt like, well, shooting up heroin and killing some goats.  My leg was there, just there, attached to my body, screaming out to me:  “Move, me!  Move me, just a little bit!  Just fucking move me a skerrick!”

There was no buzz.

There was no rising up.

There was nothing.

* * * * *

Same thing the next night.  This time, when it was over, I was mighty relieved.  Like it was the end of a long sentence.

In the days since that first time, I’ve not got the buzz back.  But I just keep going.  Most of the time it sucks, and I don’t want to do it.  But that’s okay.

I don’t want to eats my greens either, but I do.

And that’s the main thing.

* * * * *

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By Mark Nethercote, July 11, 2011 10:00 am

Saturday 3rd July 2010

One year ago.

We have lunch with my older brother and his wife, and then dinner with my younger brother and his wife.  Things have settled down for them both – as much as it can with a baby and a toddler.  Tim’s kids are now seven weeks and 19 months old;  Nick’s kids are five weeks and 22 months old.

We tell them about IVF.

They are sad, and thrown, and – like most people who love us – don’t really know what to say.

“We found out about it all just before you were due,” Suse says, to both couples, at opposite ends of the day.  “We just didn’t want to rain on your parade.  And we needed a little time to get our heads around it.”

We sit there and watch as they digest.

We must have seen thirty people react to the news by now, and I’ve realised that the reaction people have is a direct fraction of your own, dependent on their emotional proximity.  Strangers hear the news with interest, friends show concern, and, well, family is family.  They take it pretty hard, and yet, it remains as a fraction of how we took it.

“It’s okay,” we say, “it really is.  We’ve made our peace with it.  And we know that it still might be a long road.”

They look plaintive and guilty.  When you’ve just completed your own family, it’s hard not to feel for the guys struggling to start theirs.  Still, strangely, it’s okay.  These are not just words.  It’s going to be hard, but we are making our peace with it.

But the best reaction to the whole news, is to hearing that we need a Police Check.  While everyone is outraged – everyone is universally appalled when they learn this fact – the kicker comes from my Texan sister-in-law.

She looks at me, wide eyed, mouth open, and says:

“You need a Police Check to be allowed to have kids?  Un-fucking-believable.”

* * * * *

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

Monday 28th June 2010

Gestation: 39 weeks, 3 days

One year ago.

Our flight home is delayed by six hours.

So we spend the evening, our last unexpected evening, two hundred metres down the road from the airport, at a shitty old hotel, watching the last of our downloaded movies.

When we finally arrive home, at 3.30am on Monday, the pilot wakes us all with his announcement:

“Welcome to Melbourne, where outside, it is a frosty three degrees.”

There’s nothing quite like leaving your house unheated for nine days to realise how good its insulation is.

“I’m getting straight into bed,” Suse yells down the wintery hallway,  “I’m not even taking my clothes off.”

I walk into the room, and checking the electric blanket is on five, I do the same.  We huddle together, under our down-filled doona, like we’re on another adventure.

“That was fun,” Suse says, her beanie slipping down over her eyes.

We snuggle in close, holding each other tightly, as we drift off to sleep.

The holiday is over.

* * * * *

But it feels like we’ve turned a new leaf.  This holiday helped us to heal.  We’ve stopped taking it out on each other, using one another as an instrument to deal with our own problems.  We’ve regained the love.  And the pain is easing.

We’ve made peace with this whole pregnancy thing.

For the moment.

* * * * *

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By Mark Nethercote, June 20, 2011 10:00 am

Sunday 20th June 2010

Gestation: 38 weeks, 2 days

One year ago.

“Do you like them?”

I look up.  There Suse stands, wearing only a bikini.  The comment is ripe for misinterpretation, if it wasn’t for her solemn expression and the origami in her outstretched hands.  In each palm sits a paper boat;  folded crescents, like upside-down party hats.  They have been painted with watercolours, pink for one, blue for the other.  The paint lines trace along the folds, making them look like international envelopes, each with a large heart in their middle.  And each of the boats holds a flower as its cargo.

“They’re boats.  For the spirits.  One for the boy, and one for the girl.”

I look up at her to see a content expression on her face.

And my chest fills up, with all of those things that you don’t realise are missing until they return.

* * * * *

We pack a bag, both wearing swimmers.  We close the door behind us, taking in the perfect day outside. Where the unblemished sky hits the water is hard to tell;  the palm trees dot the manicured grass like a game of tic-tac-toe.

We walk across the plush lawn carpet and onto the soft sand, heading down to the water’s edge, where our feet sink into the waterlogged sand puddles, the lukewarm shallows splashing up the backs of our legs as we go.

“We’re heading for those rocks,” Suse says, pointing.  Wordlessly she hands me the blue boat, small orange flowers its cargo.  In her hand, she holds the paper vessel with pink pin-striping, a rose-coloured heart painted on its hull.  In it sits a pink bougainvillea.  “It makes sense that you hold the boy boat,” she says.

We walk on further, our feet slapping along the water’s edge, in the quicksand;  in the most-fun part.  I look ahead at the rocky outcrop to which we are heading.  From it springs a solitary palm.  It reaches out over the water, which spreads beneath it as a turquoise blanket;  there as a soft landing, should it ever decide to fall.

“It came to me when I was meditating,” Suse says finally, “that those spirits from my previous pregnancies – the ones that didn’t complete – are still with me.  I need to let those spirits go.”  We walk on some more.  I look across at her face, her beautiful face;  at the first few freckles that already beginning to emerge in the sun.  “I need to let them go, to really let them go, ceremonially, so that they can return to me – to us – now that their real father is here.”  She looks at me and smiles.  “And we need to do it in those waters up there.”  She points, again, at the teal waters over by the edge of the dark rocks.

As we stroll we link our free hands.  The paper boats remain in our other hand, held out ahead;  guiding us forward, in perfect symmetry.

“When we went to see that clairvoyant,” Suse continues, “she told me that there would be something.  That a little ritual would come to me.  And that it would come to me while we were here, in the love waters.  And that I would know when it came.”

She looks across at me, her eyes smiling along with her mouth, a contentment in her face that I haven’t seen for a very long time.  We walk on in silence through the water.  As we get closer, we can see a group of snorkelers rounding the corner, right at the point.

“Oh, no.”

“It’s okay,” I say, “they’ll move on.  It will be perfect.”

As we get closer, the snorkelers get caught in a rip.  They wash along, ever towards us.  They remain oblivious to our presence, sliding right on by, never even aware.

By the time we reach the rocks, we are again alone.

* * * * *

Suse looks at me, taking the boat from my hand.

“I need to do this,” she says.  “I’m the one who needs to let them go.  When that is done, they can return.”

As she finishes saying this, her head falls slightly, a self-deprecation, a solemnity;  a reverence for this moment.  She turns, and walks slowly out into the shallows of the Pacific, a folded piece of paper in each hand, delicately painted with a heart, each housing a flower.

I watch my wife as she gracefully wades, riding the small waves out, further and further.  And then she stops.  She remains still for almost a minute, looking down.  And she first lets go of the pink boat, watching it as it goes.  It floats off to the left, falling on its side.   Her whole body turns towards it as she quietly watches it float away.  She repeats the act with the second, the boy boat.  It repeats the act, yet disappears from view more quickly.

She stands for a moment watching them, the mother of these spirits, as she lets them free.  And I stand for that moment watching her.

And all the time, something else watches us.

Then she turns, and my mermaid swims back to me.  As she gets closer, she smiles.

“The boy sank,” she says, her nose wrinkling up.  Then she lets out a light giggle.

“Bloody boys,” I say.  We both laugh.  “That’s okay.  He’s not coming first anyway.  He’s just mucking around on the bottom of the pool, waiting his turn.”

I take my wife in my arms, her slender arms looping over my shoulders.

“Do you want to say anything?” she asks.

I stop for a moment, waiting for self-consciousness to kick in.  But it never comes.

“In letting the spirits of this boy and girl go,” I start, “these spirits that have been with Suse since they were last in bodily form are now free.  And with that, they are finally free to return, when they are ready, to us, so that they can be ours, to share as ours, two halves of us, our spirits that are already there.”

She hugs me tightly.

“We’re ready when you are,” she whispers.  “We’re ready.”

Suse keeps her arms slung around my neck, but makes a quarter turn, so we can both watch the little pink boat and its flower, bobbing up and down on the lapping waves;  the spirit of this little girl that we are now ready to receive.

* * * * *

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By Mark Nethercote, June 17, 2011 10:00 am

Friday 18th June 2010

Gestation: 38 weeks

One year ago.

“You’ve got the tickets?”

“Of course I have, love.  Did you get the power in every room?” she asks.  The question comes out in a frosty plume, like a cartoon balloon.  Suse rubs her hands, standing by the car in the dull morning light.  “Then do it quickly!”

I jog back into the house one more time.  I check the laundry door, one last time.  The house is warm against my cheeks, as I stooping to flick off power points room by room.  I head into the study and crawl under the desk.  Flick.  Flick.  Flick.  Flick.  I walk into the bedroom.

As I do, I notice that the candle is out.

* * * * *

For two nights, its pink glow has left me sleeping sporadically at best.  Despite a face mask, I’ve woken every hour or so, looking across at my wife, slumbering deeply to candlelight, like she was in a Bronte novel.

I always thought she’d be better suited to a Bronte novel than me.

Of all the candles to buy for a ritual, Suse chose the longest lasting, highest quality, most incandescent rose candle she could find.

The fucking thing just kept burning.  It was like the Energiser of candles.

Last night, I turned to her.

“Couldn’t it just burn out like the cheap things we got the first time around?”

“Move it into the other room if it’s bothering you,” she’d said.

“Can you do that?”

“Do what?”

“Can you move a candle after you’ve made an intention?  After you’ve made passionate, baby-making love?  And after I said that the candle was for us to receive our kid, only once it had burnt out?”

“Well, on that logic, you need to have supersperm, buddy, because this thing has been burning for twenty-four hours now, and looks like it’ll go another twenty-four.  So are your boys going to hang around for two days before fertilising my eggs?”

We both looked at it, burning away.

“Okay, I’ll move it,” I said.

“I don’t know that you should,” she said sheepishly, “now that you’ve said that.”

We stared at it again.

“I won’t then.  I don’t want to affect it.”

“I never knew you were so superstitious, Dr. Nethercote.”

“I didn’t know that I was either.  That is, until we lost a baby on the day we moved into this house, you’ve had no end of back luck since then, and then a woman popped up out of nowhere to tell us that the reason we’d lost our child was because we hadn’t yet cleansed our house.  Oh, that, and that I’m a sensitive.”

“You are very sensitive, aren’t you?” she said, patting my face jokingly.

* * * * *

We’d decided to leave it here.  To let it burn to the quick.  This, despite the fact that this morning we are heading overseas for nine days.  We’d resolved to leave a burning object in our untended house.  Shit, we hadn’t even resolved it.   It had gone unspoken.  As if we wouldn’t?  My Dad would have apoplexy at the thought.  And yet, there was no other choice.

This is the level to which my superstition has risen.

But now, as I stand here, on my last check of the house, the candle has gone out.

I flick off the bedroom power points and head back out.  I lock the door, turning to Suse.  Her face is white, frozen in Melbourne’s winter morning.

“Did you blow out the candle?” I ask.

“No.  Is it out?”

“Yeah.  It was still going five minutes ago.  Are you sure you didn’t blow it out?”

Suse looks at me and rolls her eyes.  “No, Mark.  I’m here to fuck with your mind,” she says sarcastically.  “Of course I didn’t.  It must have gone out just now.”

“After burning for thirty-six hours, it goes out the minute we leave for Fiji.”

“The exact minute.”

I frown and jump into the car, reversing back, feeling the hairs stand on end.

* * * * *

We skim across the water, a dazzling sky above.  All around us it is dark, a blank canvas against which to see the Southern Cross and the Milky Way.

“Do you know how to tell which way is south?”  Suse shakes her head.  I point over her shoulder up at the sky above.  As I do, I cuddle into her, continuing my explanation.  She leans into me, her head resting on my shoulder, her face pressing up against mine, and she whispers into my ear.

“I don’t really care, honey.  You can always be in charge of directions.”  She kisses my cheek softly, before letting out a little mew, snuggling further into my crook.

* * * * *

We pull into dock, jump off the boat, and watch as our bags are transferred onto the golf buggy.

“Will they still have food available when we arrive?” I ask.

“I think they will, sir,” says the driver.

I look across at Suse.  The two flights, the boat ride, and five transfers are beginning to wear tiredly on her face.

As we pull into our resort, I see a group of people waiting.  The drivers flicks his lights switch.  Off, then on;  off, then on.  And with that, as we wind around in a circle towards the front entrance, the singing begins.

“Oh, my God,” says Suse with delight.

As we come around the corner, the palm trees clear.  And then we see a troupe of Fijians wearing traditional garb, there to welcome us.  One is playing guitar, one the ukelele, and all ten of them harmonise in a beautiful Fijian welcome song.

“Is this for us?” I ask, stupidly.

“Oh, my God!” Suse repeats.

We bundle out of the buggie, like instant celebrities in a wonderland.

“Bula!” one says.

“Bula!” says the next.

We shakes hands, all ten of them, there for us at 10.30pm at night.  A group of singers have welcomed us, all there to say hello, honouring us like family.  I see Suse hugging one.  It’s as if we’ve returned after a long trip away.

“That is the sweetest thing I’ve ever seen,” she says excitedly.

And here we are together.

It’s like we’ve come home.

* * * * *

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

Friday 11th June 2010

Gestation: 37 weeks, 1 day

One year ago.

I hear the back door open, but then silence.  I continue typing away for another minute, waiting for Suse to come in.

“Is that you, hon?” I shout out.

“Yes,” she says.  I get up from my desk, and walk out of the office.  The house is cold and dark, winter’s night having closed in quickly.  There on the couch sits Suse, her shoulders still slumped.  She stares at the unlit television screen.

“Are you all right?” I ask.

“No,” she says, her face screwing up.  I sit.  “I thought I was doing okay,” she says, breaking into tears. She burrows herself into my shoulder.  Her head bobs up and down against my arm.  Her sobs multiply, and multiply, a release of feelings, a torrent of emotion.  I take her deeper into my arms, cradling her as I do.

“I thought I was doing good,” she manages, gasping out the words between breaths.  “I really thought I was doing well.  Until this today,” she says.  She bursts once more, tears spilling over.  “I’m on edge, Mark.  I was so good this morning, and then, now…”  she trails off once again.  “I just can’t take anything more right now.  I just can’t have anything else get in the way of…”  She falls even further into my shoulder.

I feel my anxiety building, that thing that happens anytime I see Suse cry.  I want to fix it, to change it, to stop it from happening.  I notice this thing, welling up, threatening to break over in me as anger, or resentment, or a diversion tactic.  Anything to deflect from feeling.  Anything to stop from having to witness her in pain.

But I don’t.  I notice it, and I feel it well up.  And I let it go.

And I hold her.

I hold my wife, and stroke her hair.  She sobs, and sobs, and I hold her, and I stroke her hair.

“Nothing’s changed, honey,” I say.  “Nothing’s changed.  We’re going to be okay.”

“I’m just so scared of anything else happening,” she says.  I look at her, and see the fear in her eyes.

“I know,” I say.  “I see you, honey.  I see you.  I understand.”

“I can’t have anything else happen, Mark.  I just can’t.”

I stroke her hair again, damp from the sweat of the shakes from the tears.  I run my fingers through it.  “It’s going to be okay.  We’re going to be okay.”

“I want to burn another candle,” she manages to say.

“We can do that,” I say.  “We can do that.  We can do whatever you want.  Now let’s run you a bath.”

* * * * *

Suse lies in the bath, still.  She floats her hands at her sides, washing the water up over herself, like a kid welling water over sand.  I sit on a chair, my laptop on my knees.  And I read.  I read out diary entries from this story.

I read her the entry I wrote about visiting Dr. Fleischer.  I read her the entry about the ringing the sperm lab.  I read the story about the psychic.  And I even read her the story about misfiring on withdrawal.

Each story I tell, I get some of my wife back.  Each tale I tell, a bit more of her returns.

“You’ve never let me read it till now,” she says finally.

“Well, it wasn’t ready yet,” I say.  “Or I didn’t think it was ready.”  I stop for a second.  “But now was the time for you to hear it.”

“It’s a really good story,” she says finally.

“It’s healing,” I say.  “It’s my therapy.”

“I want to read it.  All of it.”

“You will.”

“No,” she says deliberately, “I want to know what happens.”

* * * * *

We sit in front of the TV.  Suse sits there, calm and still; yet clearly drained.  In through the wringer, and out the other side.

An emotionally flat pancake.

I take my hands, and I scoop one under her right shoulder from behind.  I put one on the front of it.

And for what it’s worth, I treat it.

I sit there, with one hand at its front, and one at it’s back, feeling it.  And I suction it.  In exactly the way that the psychic had told me on my birthday, I treat it.

‘You’re a sensitive,’ she had said, ‘and you can heal Susan.’

‘How?’ I’d asked.

‘Imagine the layers of the body, and imagine going through them, and pulling out the blackness.’

So I do.

I feel stupid, and self-conscious, and kind of weird.  But I do.  I imagine her shoulder, I imagine the tendinopathy, and I imagine it healing.  I feel a gradual stickiness in my hands, as I do, after a time, and then I flick it away.

And I do the same thing over her fallopian tubes.  I imagine the blocked right tube, and I imagine it unblocking.  I imagine the tortuous left one, and I imagine it tightening up.  Again, after a time, I feel a stickiness in my hands, and I flick it away.

We sit again, watching TV.

Neither of us says anything.

There’s no need.

* * * * *

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

Monday 31st May 2010

Gestation: 35 weeks, 3 days

One year ago.

“So you’ve decided to go on holiday?”

“Yep.”

“Great.  When?”

“Three weeks.  Well, not quite.  Two-and-a-half, really.”

The travel agent goes silent.  “Really,” she manages finally.  “In the middle of the school holidays?”  Her voice breaks slightly.

“Yep.  We’ve been waiting to hear about my wife’s jury duty for a while.  To see whether she would get it off.”

“You get it off for shitting in your pants, don’t you?  Wouldn’t have thought you’d need much of an excuse to get out of it.”

“My wife has a social conscience.”

“Okay,” says the travel agent, “one of those.”  I choose not to start a fight with the woman who may get us overseas.  “So what you looking for?”

“Fiji.”

“Mainland?”

“Island resort.”

“With just your wife.  No kids?”

“No kids.  Yet, that is.”

Jesus.  I’m like a broken record.

“You want romance for just you two?”

“Yep.”

“And you don’t care where exactly?”

“Just somewhere relaxing.”

“Then you need a kid-free zone.  A resort that only allows sixteens and over.  Email through your budget, and I’ll see what the hell I can organise with two-and-a-half weeks notice, right in the middle of children’s holidays.”  I hear a baby cry in the background.  “Don’t worry, I’m good.  I’ll sort you out,” she yells over the noise.

“That’s what we’ve been told.  Joel put us onto you.”

“Ah, Joel,” she says, her voice swimming slightly.

“Yes, Joel.”  I let it sit for a second.  “So, I want you to think of Joel in his speedos, on holiday, and wherever that scene is, is where we want to be.”

The woman laughs so hard that the phone goes dead.

I’m not sure if she meant it, or if she dropped the phone by accident, or if this mother went limp at the thought of Joel.

* * * * *

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By Mark Nethercote, May 25, 2011 10:00 am

Friday 28th May 2010

Gestation: 35 weeks

One year ago.

I talk to Libby.

They had a girl.  Lana.

So, both of my brothers and their wives, and now Libby and Jack.  All of them have had their second child in the last three weeks.

And all have now got themselves a perfect pigeon pair.

They all got the perfect nuclear family.

Five weeks ahead of when we would have had our first.

Good for them.

* * * * *

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By Mark Nethercote, May 24, 2011 10:00 am

Tuesday 25th May 2010

Gestation: 34 weeks, 4 days

One year ago.

We walk into the room, and as we do, I hold my breath.

Suse has finally had an improvement in her chicken pox rash, more than two weeks after it initially began.  Fifteen days of scratching like a mangy dog, in return for trying to do the right thing by an as-yet-unconceived child.

She hasn’t seen either of my brother’s new babies yet.  And I know how hard it has been for her, how emotionally challenging, to have both of her sisters-in-law pop out a second child this May.

“Hello!” my Mum says, welcoming us in.  Everyone stands.  We enter the hotel room, filled with grandparents, parents, a sister, and, now – an uncle and an aunt.  My Mum takes Suse in a hug, and then does my Dad.  Both unspeaking in their love;  both understanding how hard this is for her.

“Come on over and have a look,” says my sister-in-law excitedly, directing the comment straight at Suse.

I pause for the reaction.

“I’d love to,” Suse says.

I take a breath.

“Nice digs,” I say to my brother.

“Yeah, they like to ship you out of hospital as soon as possible.  Don’t know that this is the hotel I’d choose, but it does all right.”

“It’s nothing on the Sofitel,” yells out my sister-in-law.

“Well, the room is smaller, sure, but the meals are okay…”

“…Yeah, but they make you pay for the movies,” she says in her Texan twang.

“It’s the little things, isn’t it?”

“I know!” she says.

I look across at my Mum, as she sits perched on the edge of the bed.  She has a broad smile across her face, her head cocked, as she looks over at her youngest grandchild.  I follow her eyes, to see what he is doing that is so cute.

And then I see it.  There is Suse, already in the chair, holding Zach.  She has him in the crook of her arm, her finger in his mouth, sucking, and stroking his soft brown hair.

And then she looks up at me and smiles.

* * * * *

I look out the window at the neon world beyond.  We sit in Chinatown, around the corner in the CBD, chewing away on lemon chicken.  Neither of us says anything for a couple of minutes;  silence the indication of the quality of the food.  It really is that good.

Suse looks up, licking her fingers.

“You were okay in there, hon?” I ask.  “It wasn’t too close to the bone?”

“No,” she says, simply.  “Something happened in there with Zach.  I had a little moment with him.  I spoke to him, and he spoke back.”

I look at Suse, curiously, knowing that this is something that my rational mind is never going to get.  But that it is true.  “And he told me that there was a little girl waiting, waiting to come down.”  She takes another bite of her food.  “And so I told him that I was ready.”

She looks up at me, like it’s the darndest thing.

Like it happens every day.

“I think it’s over, Mark.  I’m over it.  I’m done.  The wound is healed.”  She nods, confirming the fact to herself.  “Something profound happened in there.  And I really am done.  I’m ready to move on.”

I look at my wife, not quite understanding.  Never fully understanding.  Never really comprehending this marvellously complex, beautiful, exquisitely frustrating, lovable soul that I’ve found to match my own bizarre, eccentric, inexplicable ways.

I guess that’s what we call marriage.

* * * * *

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By Mark Nethercote, May 16, 2011 10:00 am

Friday 14th May 2010

Gestation: 33 weeks

One year ago.

“And how do you feel, Mark?”

I turn towards the counsellor, and I look at her.  And then I look across at Suse.  She sits in the seat opposite, a comfortable looking seat, but I know from the one I’m in that it’s not.

Or maybe it’s just me.

“It’s been hard, June,” I start, my voice cracking.  I feel irritated by this betrayal by my larynx.   As if she can’t see straight through me anyway.  “It’s been really rough.  And really unfair.”

June looks at me without reacting.  When some people do this, you just want to slap them.  But June has a grace;  an innate kindness that can’t be faked.

“And I find myself getting angry.  Really angry.  Unfairly angry,” I say, surprising myself that I want to continue.  “I see women down the street, perfect strangers, wheeling their kids around in prams, or walking along with them, minding their own business.  And I just want to yell at them.  Or I’ll see a pregnant woman, and I just want to let her have it, for how unfair this whole thing has been.  And these are the ones with kids who are behaving themselves.  Don’t get me started on the ones where the kids are being little shits.”

I stop and look at Suse, who nods slightly in encouragement.

“I just want them to know,” I say, “that it’s unfair.  That it’s just not fair.  And I know, I know, there are a whole bunch of people out there with really bad shit going on.  With really bad diseases and really fucked up existences, and abuse, and homelessness, and full-on, hard-core psychiatric illness.  I know that we’re in a fucking lucky country, and we’re so God-damned lucky that we were given this opportunity, and these brains, and this health, and everything.  But it’s still just unfair!”  I hear my voice rising.  “I see these people getting pregnant, and not even wanting to.  Or even still, I see people getting pregnant who do want to.  In the end, it doesn’t matter.  I have the same reaction with all of them.  I just find myself thinking:  ‘Why can’t this be us?  What did we do so wrong?’ ”

My voice cracks again with this last sentence, and I realise there is a tear at the corner of my eye.

I stop for a moment, and I see that Suse is crying too.

* * * * *