I intend to treasure these days.

My winter's tale: a story from half a year ago.

Little Dot was a just a spark, a germ, an idea. She was a winter's tale.

We need stories in the winter more than we do in the summer, don’t we? This is just the kind of January evening for it, with the Wolf Moon rising. In Shakespeare’s time, the phrase ‘a winter's tale’ meant a tale borne of a dark, cold night of storytelling to while away the hours. It's a tale only to be half-believed, to be indulged in, like Father Christmas when you’re too old for him. This is the tale of my winter of wanting to create a new life. 

******

My first appointment at the clinic was an historic day. It was the second full day of The Queue for the Lying-in-State of Queen Elizabeth. The queue was five miles long; they’d had to shut it at Tower Bridge. We cut across it so, technically, we were actually in The Queue for about half a second. Jen said that if I like The Queue so much, I should join Q Anon. We laughed. 

I wore a bright, stretchy orange dress. We breakfasted on poached pear, chorizo and coconut crème pudding and then I had a Virgin Bloody Mary.

“Really, I’m just asking my body a question,” I said, between mouthfuls.

We walked along the cobbled streets of London Bridge, arms looped like we were coming out of a Leicester pub back when we were at university together. The Big Issue seller who was sheltering in the doorway said something I didn’t catch as we buzzed in. Jen whispered in my ear, “she said you’ve got great legs!’ I wanted to thank her for the compliment on the way out, but she was gone by then.

******

A couple of weeks later, I went back. The nurse showed me a line of green dots rising vertically on a graph on her computer screen. We were tracking the growth of my follicles. They reminded me of raindrops chasing each other down a car window. Which one would win? I caught sight of a blue plaque on the building opposite. John Keats. It turns out he lodged there in in May 1816 (when he wrote his first published poem, ‘O, Solitude’). I took this as a good sign. 

She indicated towards the green digital ink on the computer screen, pointing at the image that represented my biggest follicle. I was getting the whole story of this little dot from start to finish, I thought. How do most people do this miraculous thing all on their own, without all of this inside knowledge? 

“18 millimetres. Looking good”. She smiled at me. We were on track to go ahead as soon as I ovulated. 

By the time I left, it had gone dark. I walked over Blackfriars bridge, swigging pomegranate juice, looking at the stars in the clear sky. Compared to stars, all our lives are so short. I thought of Keats, “Bright Star, would I were steadfast as though art” and saw the beauty and tragedy of him writing these words, knowing his young life would be curtailed, and that he would be taken from his love. That night, all things were possible for me; I loved science and poetry with an equal zeal.

*****

The day of my insemination arrived. Every high wall in the clinic held beautiful paintings of bright green trees and drawings of pink and yellow wildflowers. The doctor told me there were 10.2 million sperm in the syringe she was holding, which was a good amount. (“Population of Belgium,” said my friend from work.) I asked the doctor her name, it was a beautiful name I’d never heard before, and I thanked her. 

Conception happened in my mind and body straightaway. I came out of the clinic, I looked at Christmas shoppers on Marylebone High Street in Daunt Books, Toast and The Conran Shop buying the kinds of things I wanted but could never afford. Now, I thought nothing of the injustice of this; I thought only of the new life I held. Other people and the things to buy or not buy didn’t register anymore. I was too full of hope for that. The next morning, I opened my window and breathed in. From the driveway, my landlady’s black cat stared up at me in a way she’d never done before. It was as if she could tell I was writing a new winter’s tale, or that my body was writing it for me. I just had to breathe and let it happen. 

Everything was growing, it seemed, even though it was November. I lived a few weeks powered by a sense of joy that did not seem to belong to this season. Holding another life force, the feeling of being always ‘we’, intoxicated me. The days after my positive test result I saw everything doubling, doubling. I typed letters on the keyboard twice by accident. I ate more. I urged everything on. 

Following squirrels in the woods near my house, I spoke to my mother on the phone, I said, “I know it might not stick but I do intend to treasure these days.” She said, “you make everything beautiful” as if she wasn’t the one who taught me how to do this, how to spin gold from straw. 

It didn’t stick. This germ, this idea of a life, this Little Dot, wasn’t meant for me. She flew to another woman. She was just a spark that lasted with me long enough to light the flame in my mind. 

******

The week before Christmas, after Little Dot had gone to her rightful life in this universe or another, I returned to my home county of Cornwall. My sister and her children took me to a magical place, where there lies an ancient forest called Tehidy Woods. We went into the woods together, we rang the bells for the fairies. One of them danced with fire – she was the children’s favourite.  I tied a white ribbon around a birch tree and wished for good things for woman who would be the mother of Little Dot. We must learn to wave goodbye from the shore, as Cheryl Strayed says, to the life we might’ve lived, to the person with whom we might’ve lived it. At least I knew that I had asked my body the question, and that the answer was ‘yes.’

We arrived at the big tent in the woods where everyone is given hot chocolate. We heard the tale of Father Winter. I thought about how, if I had a child, their father would loom large in her or his psyche as an unknown character, and therefore all the more vibrantly imagined. He would be something akin to this large, bearded man telling tales of time immemorial in the woods. I dreamed of the beautiful tale I would weave to tell my girl or my boy, of who their fantastical father might be. We could create him together, we could love him, even if we never met him in reality. We would always be grateful and loving towards him, I was sure.

In ‘The Winter’s Tale’, Shakespeare lets us experience the impossible: the dead come back, what’s lost is returned. In front of the King’s eyes, first his Queen and then their daughter, Perdita, come back to life. When we leave the theatre and let go of the dream of the play, we see what we have with fresh eyes. We know then that we must try not make the mistakes King Leontes does, for we live in the real world where the dead don’t come back and what’s lost is lost. We must hold on to what we have, while we have it. That’s our burden, and our blessing. 

Light shines the brightest when it’s darkest. At the darkest point of the year, right at the heart of it, our hope of summer is born. I spent the longest evening of the year, the Winter Solstice, with my family; each moment was precious. After a loss, there was the of promise of light, of a new spark.