Up!

Babies have been on my mind recently.

If my husband is reading this, don’t panic, and anyway... *makes a ‘snip!’ motion with a pair of imaginary scissors*... remember?

There have been three triggers for my chain of thought. A set of triplets, if you like.

Firstly, some lovely news: my cousin has just given birth to her third, beautiful, bouncing, baby boy. (Incidentally, why do we always say bouncing? I mean, it’s not a good thing if a baby bounces when it comes out, is it? Bouncing tends to come after dropping, and that’s kind of horrific, and law-suity, surely?)

Secondly, I recently marked the passing of one of my ‘days’ (as documented in previous blog post ‘Dates’) when I have a little think about days that should have been birthdays but turned out not to be.

Thirdly, and finally, Up! was on the telly the other evening.

It's hard to describe the mesmerising, startling, and almost brutal genius of the montage near the start of this kids’ animated film. With no dialogue, and in a series of short, simple scenes, it documents a couple’s marriage from their wedding day to the death of the wife. In the middle, the camera sweeps achingly across from a scene where the couple are decorating a nursery, to a dimly lit, almost silhouetted shot of them framed by the door of a hospital room as they are being spoken to by a doctor. The husband has his hands on his wife’s shoulders, trying to squeeze comfort into her. Without knowing the details, you know, in a second, that they will never have their longed-for child.

I sat and watched it with my kids. Having been in hospital rooms like that more times than I thought I could bear, just being able to write that sentence is enough.

Video is Nick Drake - Northern Sky