Ailsa Fabian - A Shining Space: A Daughters Life

The cabin was dark and silent as we flew over the Pacific, but I could not sleep. As dawn approached, I looked out over a vast cloud-landscape of deep chasms and craggy summits, tinged pink and apricot and saffron, changing to dazzling white as the light grew stronger. Somewhere, in this beautiful nowhere, I decided to have a baby.

I was between two worlds, on my way home to London after visiting my family in Melbourne, leaving behind me also a brief, impossible love affair, which had ended in the euphoria of mutual renunciation. It was a time for change. Sated with the emotions of grand opera, I considered myself ready to accept the banalities of domestic comedy. Insofar as I imagined it at all, having a baby seemed a very banal thing to do.

I was thirty-five, late enough if I ever wanted children. And in a mild way no doubt I did, although previously the possibility had scarcely been part of my plans, dreams, yearnings or fantasies. I knew nothing about babies, had never felt the slightest interest in them, had hardly ever even held one. When my sister and brother, and friends of my own age, had been producing children, I was on the other side of the world, studying and working. I had thought of myself, at least since my appointment to a university teaching job, as a career academic, primarily and unshakably devoted to learning, and had scoffed at the notion that I would ever abandon research, teaching and writing for marriage and parenthood. But I was also a child of prosperity, who assumed that eventually all the good things of life would come her way. These, it seemed to be generally considered, included children.

I meditated during the flight on my habit of falling in love with gifted, egotistical, dominating men, who dazzled me with visions of myself and my future, based on nothing but their own fantasies. Flattering and exhilarating but not, I now saw, a good foundation on which to build a life of my own. Erwin, with whom I had lived happily for several years, and who was to become Sarahs father, is certainly no flatterer, and that seemed a positive quality.

Back in London, Erwin was not enthusiastic about the proposal that we have a baby, but he neither refused outright nor made any serious attempt to dissuade me. We hardly discussed it. I cant recall any talk about how we would support or care for a child, or how our lives might change. I do remember one occasion when, walking home one night through deserted streets, he said, You dont really want a baby, do you? and instead of argument, mimicked a babys desolate frantic crescendo of wailing. It was at least an evocation of the future, whereas I merely laughed indulgently.

I took for granted that we would both continue to work, and it didnt enter my head that this might be difficult. My mother had always worked, but I failed to remind myself that she had employed a nurse, a cook and a housemaid. By contrast, neither of us was solidly established in our chosen profession. Erwin worked as a freelance graphic designer. I had taught history at Melbourne University for several years, and then studied sociology at Columbia University in New York, before moving to London. I had done various pieces of social research, but had recently turned down several job offers, to make time for independent study and writing. So I was unemployed. But I must have assumed, without making calculations, that we had enough money. It was family money, derived from the successful fashion business founded and run by my mother and her two sisters, Aunt Nell and Aunt Mary. I had grown up in a matriarchy, in which the women earned more than their husbands, and made all the important decisions, and I seem to have inherited an assumption that I should, and could, pay my own way.