Lets give things a little bit of perspective shall we?
Wednesday 7th March 2018 - The Face of Reality, my 28 week appointment with my midwife.
Thursday 8th March 2018 - Sent to Solihull hospital, then referred to Heartlands - Admitted.
Friday 9th March 2018 - The morning after 2 steroid injections and the ever growing prospect of meeting baby...
I pulled at the heavy tv stand by my bedside, drawing it towards me for some morning entertainment as I bit into a perfectly toasted piece of bread. I had buttered it up and covered it in raspberry jam, the seedy type - my favourite!
As I looked down past the bottom of my night dress, I smiled to myself and stopped just in case anyone was watching; by the relief of a miracle, I had booked in to see my regular waxing specialist the very same morning I was admitted to hospital. I mean, just wow! We talked about the coincidence of the sorting hat choosing Cedar ward for me - but now this? Fate was favouring me just as much as it wanted to throw things my way.
Silky smooth, and hair free - YES i can certainly face any calamity now with my head held high without a shame to my name. I was astounded and baffled in the smug type of way that mother nature had synchronised itself with my very own nature! I mean, I think back at all those times where i was just not ready for those ankle length jeans or that skirt that somehow always managed to ride up while walking - yet here I was, in the least of glamorous places feeling like I was ready to run a catwalk down the cluttered corridor in whatever night gown they handed over. Open at the back, open at the front, or short from the bottom - I couldn't have cared less. Perhaps thats delving too deep into my mind now *don't judge!* I know you know that feeling though...hair free... I felt like I was winning, and Im not embarrassed to say it.
***
Butterfly. A beautiful, flying insect with large scaly wings. Like all insects, they have six jointed legs, 3 body parts, a pair of antennae, compound eyes, and an exoskeleton. The three body parts are the head, thorax, and abdomen. The butterfly's body is covered by tiny sensory hairs. Now doesn't that sound like a load of jargon a Dr would pitch whilst on your bedrest. But I do love butterflies, and this word soon had high significance during my hospital stay. After one of the Consultants had visited me that morning, all I could think about was how happy his name made me. It literally meant butterfly, I won't disclose personal information but it was the most musical of its forms in this particular chirpy language... N'importe quelle idée quelle langue cela pourrait être?
Ok you got it, smarty pants, so you speak french now? ...Well let me tell you something - I sure wish I did! In the early 1920's France colonised Lebanon and the surrounding areas, so as you might assume the result of a french ruling meant that the natives of the country adopted the french language. It has been taught throughout the years & generations that followed and has since been the official language alongside Arabic being taught today. Although with the popularity of American drama's filling our screens internationally its no surprise that when I visit my cousins they all seemed to have picked up the twang of American English too. That would make them try-lingual! I wish I was taught to speak French while growing up, its saddens me to think that I HATED the thought of taking it up for GCSE's. I wish more then ever that my parents had spoken to us in french from a young age as we would have picked it up as easily as we did the Arabic. By the time I had reached secondary school, well you know how it is when you become a teenager in an underachieving school, learning a language other then english was just not the on trend thing to do! As a matter of fact, the students in my year and the above made it their daily mission to drive away every french teacher that took up the teaching post in our school. So much so, that in my first year of secondary school, the head of department would walk into our class every other week and apologise for the no show of yet another french teacher thanks to the success of the student mutiny against them.
However, one day this situation would get personal. Very personal. Our head of department came to tell us the expected news, followed by the usual murmur of the promise to find someone else as soon as possible - for him, it could not have come soon enough! My best friend decided it would be a great idea to blurt out that my mum speaks french, and happens to be a teacher too! He could not believe his ears as his eyes lit up staring down at me from in front of the chalk board (it was an old victorian school, that has now been replaced by an Academy- it doesn't take two to explain how bad of a school it ended up) I remember him very briskly walking over to me, a bit like Miss Trunchbull charging down at the innocent kids and leaning in towards my transfixed shocked face at the absurdity of my friends declaration.
"Wow this is great, I shall give your mom a call right away, if thats ok?"....
Was I meant to answer him, could I answer him? He was a teacher after all and I couldn't possibly say NO? I was in year 7 at the time, and definitely naive, without much of a voice to my name. And before I knew it.. well mum was hired! Now the question I know your all asking is, how long did she last? Well, she faced the usual torments all the previous teachers faced from students in years 7,8 & 9 as she was handed over the responsibility of them all. The worst part for her position, was probably my class. They knew she was my mum, so to make matters worse they would deliberately make paper aeroplanes out of the handout sheets she tirelessly prepared the day before and put them in front of me to throw around the classroom. I was frozen and that was literally all I wanted to remember from that ordeal. She left almost as quickly as she got signed up, and that was that!
***
Sat opposite me was an Arab lady; There was two other women on the ward adjacent to my right, but this lady specifically had caught my attention for two things. One, as always we are drawn to people of a similar background trying to always search for that common ground in the outside world of strangers, and secondly - although this point should really go first - the Ertugrul theme tune that would play out of her tablet every other hour as she made her way through the episodes passing time until her next MRI scan. Up until this point I was addicted to watching this Netflix series, it filled me up with religious reminders, historical knowledge & cultural references. It really did fill my appetite for something both intellectual whilst visually pleasing. Im also a huge lover of Turkey - the country that is, and it was just the perfect time well spent whilst watching this drama. If you haven't yet seen it, I would certainly give it a thumbs up!
"She's watching Ertugrul!" my mum said quite loudly in arabic...
"Shhhhh - she's an Arab! She can understand you" I replied red faced, and at this point I wished even more that I could speak French. There was not a single french person in site in Cedar ward, it would have been perfect!
