My First Mother's Day

Harley was born in St. Mary's in Paddington, London, a scruffy public hospital where you brought in your own diapers and the beds on the ward were divided off with shower curtains.

Me at our flat in Pembridge Square, London, 1997

Harley, three months old, my sister's house, Auckland, NZ

Me and Harley last summer,  Isla Vista, Santa Barbara

Looking back I realise that even at the end of my labour I never fully believed that a baby was going to come out of me. Even when I was screaming with the pain, focusing solely on the picture on the wall in front of me, a faded print of three rabbits wearing bonnets.

But after that searing pain had taken me to the depths of what I could bear, and then, so, so far beyond, Harley was forced out - bloody and slippery. His skin was taut and plump and his curly defined lips seemed to be almost smiling.

“Yes, he came out perfectly formed” my mother would say later “other babies come out so mushed up and scrabbled. But Harley was perfect.” I realised later that every mother around the world thought exactly the same thing about her baby.

That was a moment where everything else in the world falls away. To see the creature that was inside you now outside of you. To smell the sweet stonefuit of their skin. And to put your palm under those tiny soles that have yet to touch the earth...

What is your strongest memory of that day?  Happy Mother's Day to you and your mother.