No Need to Get Pregnant the Milky Way

Now, I’m not trying to say I am Thee Creator or anything, but, it does seem a little more than coincidental that when my best friend was trying desperately hard to have a baby, for years in fact, she only got pregnant after reading the poem below.  

With nothing working (and trust me she tried everything, in vitro fertilisation, bonking every chance she got... well okay, that was nothing new, but still...) she was eventually told that at 42-yrs-old her eggs were fried and she’d never have a baby.  

After we both called that doctor a name beginning with C, a word that rhymes with hunt, in case you didn’t get that (who says I hold my reader’s hands?) I wrote said poem to buck her up, but nonetheless with the sincere belief she would actually eventually get pregnant.  And sure enough she did – the old fashioned way – shortly thereafter.  Although it has to be said that I also inadvertently bought an African statuette around the same time as she did find herself up the duff (I say inadvertently because until I got it home I had no idea that it depicted a woman with child) I was just drawn to it as a whole, something purdy for my new study... but spooky or what?  I have since then joked that anyone reading that poem will have a baby – ‘the fertility poem’ I call it.  Why not; if it works by stroking the brass hand of Juliet outside her house in Verona, why can’t my snappy little ditty have those powers too?

Anyhoo, some months ago, I was telling that story to one of my clients who had been on a domestic adoption list for only a year or so, and recited the poem to her.  Lo and behold, the very next day a baby was born and she got a call the day after that to say that the mother had chosen her and her husband to be the adoptive parents.  Now, you have to understand here, that it takes many, many years, usually, for the entire adoption process.  The proud new mum came to see me today with her four-month-old baby, James Francis (he’s the one with the dummy tit in his mouth here, the other is my Godson Noah Patrick, who’s ten-months-old now).   She couldn’t wait to tell me that story in person; convinced, because of that poem, that she was chosen – and not at all due to the fact that she is white and her husband is Chinese and so are the natural parents – which, somehow, is a perfect match for them all, I s’pose, in a baby puzzle game kind of way.  

Coincidence?  Maybe, but then these two stories are further connected in quite another unusual way too, and if I had sound effects here, I would record myself humming that Twilight Zone tune at this point.  Get this, my friend Vanessa, whose baby I am Godfather to, lives in Italy, but she is from Hull, Northern England, my client, Andrea, with no connection to Vanessa whatsoever, lives here in Vancouver, Canada, but she is also from... yes you guessed it... Hull.  Freaky or what?  But then for someone who consistently has the ability to put lampposts out when I walk by them, and with light bulbs popping around me all over the place wherever I go (and once... even the power to a full block when someone was telling someone the story of how lights flicker above me as I pass through rooms) well... small potatoes really, to hatch an egg or two.  Perhaps not Thee Creator, no, but maybe, just maybe, I’m a Godfather in the literal sense?   I like to think so.

Anyway, ubiquitous ability aside for the moment, here is the poem.  I initially wrote it, not only for Vanessa’s fried eggs, but also with a rather clever correlation to the birth of all things in general - hence the picture of the Milky Way that looks like a Denny’s breakfast  (even if Andrea’s was, well... kind of poached, it has to be said).   Careful when reading though, especially up at the Hull there, you might just find yourself in the same boat.  (See what I did there?  Again, holding my reader’s hands...  but I do... crack... myself up!)

EGG

A simple thing, somehow non-existent, but aplenty in youth

A minuscule thing, swimming, circling, wanting to be more

An impatient thing, insisting, sometimes nearly succeeding

A tired thing, climbing only half heartedly, no will to push

An aged thing, dwindling in numbers, no more time to waste

A helped thing, clinging to optimism, still hanging on in hope

A meant to be thing, a thing that will be, see and do great things