"On 29 December 2022, I received a text. Hi mum I'm texting you off a friends phone I've smashed mine and their phones about to die, can you WhatsApp my new number x' I was in a rental car when I got it, my partner at the wheel next to me as we drove down an anonymous stretch of motorway. Both the sky and the road were grey."
"It was that indeterminate space between Christmas and New Year when the days become sludgy and diffuse; a time when teenagers meet up with their friends to go shopping or gather in each other's homes and post Snapchats or exchange festive gossip while pretending not to vape. It was the time of waiting for the next thing to happen, for the promised excitement of New Year's Eve and snogging underneath leftover mistletoe."
On 29 December 2022 I received a text from a teenager mistakenly addressing me as 'mum.' I was in a rental car with my partner driving along a grey motorway in the indeterminate days between Christmas and New Year. The period felt sludgy and diffuse, with teenagers meeting friends, posting Snapchats, and exchanging festive gossip while pretending not to vape. Three days earlier my husband and I had flown to Los Angeles for fertility treatment using an egg donor, and an embryo had been transferred the morning after we landed. I had begun looking for signs, remained sober, and adapted daily life to hormonal medications and the unpredictable timing of treatment.
Read at www.theguardian.com
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