Life

The world divides into two distinct tribes: those that have (successfully or otherwise) attempted to become parents, and those that have not. It's a division more fundamental than any of race, class or gender, with procreation bringing its own distinct language to ensure the parental elect remain aloof from the barbarians. When, last week, I was forced to tell people that my wife was suffering from an ectopic pregnancy, their reaction instantly identified the listener's alignment. 

Those in the know reacted with horror: their eyes widened, their mouths opened and they expressed sympathy, sorrow and support. By contrast, the rest looked puzzled. Several said congratulations, but their furrowed brows revealed their fear that the "ectopic" caveat must, in some unexplained way, partially negate the benefit of the pregnancy.

As it is perfectly possible that you, my reader, forms part of this second group; let me explain. An ectopic pregnancy is a pregnancy where the fertilised egg (and, yes, I'm sorry, we must use this kind of language when we talk about this topic) implants in a part of the female reproductive system that is not the womb; typically the fallopian tubes (and, yes, sorry but there are tubes involved in all this). In rare cases, it is fatal. In a large minority of cases, it costs the woman her fertility. In all cases, the potential baby is lost and the woman feels dreadful. The expressions of sympathy were deserved.

My wife, I'm glad to report, did not need to have surgery and is starting to recover. However, to get here has involved several trips to our local hospital, and specifically the early pregnancy unit (the reason, incidentally, for my silence last week is that I was there). The early pregnancy unit is one of those strange "joy and sorrow" places that you only visit if something wonderful or desperate is happening. Registry offices have the same atmosphere.

Growing up in Camden, the only two occasions I visited our rather forbidding local registry office in Kings Cross were for my brother's wedding and to register my father's death.

Like the early pregnancy unit, the Camden registry office had that downbeat public sector aesthetic. Notices handwritten or badly typed are taped to the walls; furniture is mismatching but not in the Shoreditch style and the decorative scheme is impossible to date even to a broad era, clearly having accumulated piecemeal over decades. It is as if the human stories within need to be diluted by an environment as bland as they are momentous.

Registering my father's death was odd. I was there to do the worst job I've ever had to do, and I was standing surrounded by ecstatic young couples there to register the child that - to them that day - was the only thing in their world. Wrapped up in their own cocoon of neo-natal bliss, they probably didn't notice the mourners in the queue. 

At the time it seemed rather insensitive to put us together; let alone with a wedding taking place outside the door. However, births, deaths and marriages are the stepping stones of life and it's probably a good thing to be reminded every so often that these are the big things and, actually, they are the only things that really matter.