love – andthepea

How to turn into my mother

It’s an ancient cliché that with each passing year, we grow more and more like our mothers. A carefree individual is swallowed into a resemblance of the woman who raised her. But what truth does this myth hold today, when women often have radically different experiences from their mothers and self-awareness is at its peak?

Women go through all manner of intricate measures to avoid becoming their mothers: there’s the therapist specialising in pattern recognition; the exercise regime keeping hereditary bulk at bay and let’s not forget the constant self-reprimand to listen, where she would have butted in, or speak up, when she would have stayed silent. We have a lot to lose if we surrender – our youth and identity for one. And yet we love our mothers, hold much of what they did as a gold standard and are anxious when we fall short.

I was touched to learn that a woman who had a hostile relationship with her tough-loving, erratic mother and dreaded becoming her, found peace in recognising that she inherited her fierceness. Fierceness, an uncommercial trait that the endless tea-parties and pink blooms surrounding mother’s day don’t account for – though anyone who has given birth, watched a wildlife documentary or dealt with a suburban woman trying to get her child through the 11+, knows it’s integral to maternity.

Growing up, I saw my mother as her own person. She worked full-time, while other mothers stayed at home, so I felt part of her life, rather than the centre. Sensitive and loving, she is unapologetically herself. I see myself becoming more like her in at least four ways, though I haven’t yet made the final leap…

1. Suffering fools badly

With the exception of mildly bigoted elders from another era, who must be half-listened to and gently corrected, my mother doesn’t give fools the time of day, let alone allow them to influence her decisions. Controversially, whenever I was upset because someone scolded me for my opinion or cheek, mum would say they weren’t as clever as me. It didn’t matter whether this was my nanny, an older relative, or a Cambridge-educated mathematician. For a young girl, this was as radical as Marx’s comment on religion – it made me think that intelligence had the potential to dethrone authorities. Taken literally, her stance could make me arrogant or intolerant of different perspectives. It’s vital to listen, but also to have boundaries and know how to protest the most dangerous kinds of foolishness.

2. Asking for obscenely wishful things

My mother has never shied away from asking for what she wants and is relentless until she has pursued every option for getting it. I have to admit, this quality embarrassed me when I was younger – I was the sort of person who would rather go hungry than face the awkwardness of asking for a vegetarian option. But now, whenever I have a craving, however fanciful, I will go to lengths to satisfy it. There is a bench seat in a cafe with a view of a goldfish pond. After work on Tuesday, I knew that I had to go there and write. So, I walk for an hour, uphill, in high heels and when I reach my destination, find two others have taken the space. I sit at a neighbouring table and can’t help noticing they are so deep into their digital spheres, the view may as well not be there. Which pisses me off. The guy is wearing headphones, so I figure the girl is a safer bet. Before I can stop myself, I’m asking if we can swap seats, because I came here to draw that view (a teeny white lie). She refuses, saying she too likes the view and is communing with the fish telepathically as she’s magnetised to her feed. Shrugging, I slink back to my seat. A minute later, the guy in headphones come over and asks, ‘sorry, did you want to sit by the view?’ Et volià.

3. Nurturing a collection of tiny containers

Like every old-fashioned housewife, my mother adheres to the proverb: ‘waste not, want not.’ Like a figure-conscious yummy mummy, she also doesn’t let a morsel of food she’s not hungry for, pass her lips. Hence the tiny containers. She drinks red-wine from a finger bowl she stole from the Eurostar; stores four remaining spaghetti strands in an egg cup and a dwindling stock of Christmas truffles are transferred to ever smaller dishes. She also collects shells and glass bottles with bases so minute, they have to lie on their bellies.

aphrodite'sbreakfast2 — About a fifth of my tiny container collection

4. Never missing an opportunity to practice my latest skill

When mum begins a new hobby, it inflects everything she does. Now that she’s learning French, and determined to maintain her standing as étoile de la classe, she not only texts in French, but pronounces all ethnically ambiguous words and trade names in a French accent. E.g.: I-bu-pro-fén (Ibuprofen) and Có-có (Combined Codeine). She only half jokes that should she wind up on the wrong side of Article 50, she will move to France.*

instafish — Joined Instagram this week and have been finding every excuse to practice using my new app. This abandoned sticker, for one…

5. Miraculously never gathering fluff

My mother is always immaculate. I have never seen her coats or woollen jumpers pill or attract stray bits of fluff. I think she’s a witch…

*This is unlikely, as my mother has the immunity of formerly colonised peoples and decades of residency in this country. Only the likes of Theresa May are safer from deportation. But it’s her dream that counts.

Reading With Pleasure and Resistance: Poached Books, Vol. 3

I don’t steal other people’s books so much as ‘borrow’ them when they haven’t been officially lent to me. A primary instance happened when I was about eleven and my best friend and I were looking for trouble in her attic and found The Joy of Sex, a 1970s sex manual. We opened it up and simply stared. Body parts swelling and merging in ways we couldn’t imagine! And the man had long hair and a beard! This was mystifying in the age of Leo and the Backstreet Boys. We heard footsteps, and quickly stuffed the book back in its place, ensuring that the loose double-pages were folded back in. At that stage, we wanted a peek at knowledge that wasn’t available to us, but weren’t really ready to come to terms with it.

spessivtseva valentine — Kind of what happens inside *The Joy of Sex*. This is actually a clandestine copy of a Valentine in the Paris Opera archive, where I wasn’t allowed to take photographs.

This summer, I was in the makeshift office that had once been my brother’s bedroom and spotted a tomato-red, twenty-fifth-anniversary edition of The Alchemist by Paulo Coehlo. I remembered my brother mentioning it before his motorcycle and bonobo monkey research trip around Africa, and was curious. On the inner leaf was a dedication from an unknown Nik to ‘Mowgli’, his explorer alter-ego:

I wasn’t on the African adventure, but wanted to identify with the ‘true warrior’ who would receive such a dedication, so I slipped the book into my bag. I didn’t feel too bad about it because my brother freely ‘borrows’ my books and returns them in the state of shipwrecked voyagers, with curled pages and half-eroded covers. Besides, he was out of reach, so there was no way to ask him for permission. The Alchemist, a story of a shepherd boy’s trek to Egypt in search of the pyramids and a promised treasure, accompanied me on my own journeys across London for the 5 days it took to read it. In Alan Clarke’s translation, Coehlo’s prose had the spare and sparkling quality of a fairytale, with a touch more sentiment.

Proverbial phrases from the sages the boy meets on his journey, jumped out at me. They seemed relevant beyond the novel’s concise 171 pages and made me feel that its quest was my own. This was Coehlo’s intention for the book and I took the bait. Here’s an assortment of proverbs:

1. ‘A blessing ignored becomes a curse…’ How simple, and yet how true. Neglected treasures, whether people, talents or possessions have a way of skulking around, casting great guilty shadows and becoming our enemies. A silk dress left in the closet attracts moths, a beloved who is taken for granted becomes a shrew, and creatives who sideline their practice are notorious drama queens and time-wasters.

2. ‘I know sheep can be friends… I don’t know if the desert can be a friend…’ This could be my favourite of the boy’s musings! It expresses gratitude and tenderness for the friendships he already has, and curiosity about the unknown. Sure, in many ways the arid desert seems the opposite of the shepherd’s fleecy flock; but he’s not about to dismiss it as an enemy out of hand. If more people were this open to difference, there would be less mistrust in the world and fewer wars, seriously.

3. ‘Love never keeps a man from pursuing his personal legend. If he abandons that pursuit, it’s because it wasn’t the love that speaks the language of the world…’ This comes up when the boy considers relinquishing his quest for treasure upon meeting Fatima, his heart’s desire, in an oasis. The statement advocates a world picture based on abundance and trust rather than scarcity and fear. It’s idealised, but I admire its generosity.

sirene lisant — This fish’s personal legend was clearly to jump out of the water and dive into a book…

As much as The Alchemist paved its way into my thoughts, at times its gender bias reminded me that I had stolen the book from my brother. The male nameless shepherd’s personal legend is journey towards the treasure; whereas his Intended, Fatima’s personal legend is him. Fatima is given some of the most beautiful and moving lines in the book:

‘I’m a desert woman, and I’m proud of that. I want my husband to wander as free as the wind that shapes the dunes. And, if I have to, I will accept the fact that he has become a part of the clouds, and the animals, and the water of the desert…’

Her words are noble because they describe love as gift to be open to, but not as an entity that can be possessed and controlled. And yet, there is something limiting (Penelope-like) about her destiny as an eternally receptive vessel with no journey of her own. Doesn’t she want to wander too, have a personal quest that can coexist with her love, not be wholly informed by it? But there I go, imagining fairytale endings for a story that’s not mine…

superlion — Universal journey or Boys’ Own adventure?

Some borrowings require more tact and subtlety. Every Thursday I sit in my supervisor’s office for an hour, when students can come and ask questions about the course. They rarely do. So I sit on her spinning chair and scan shelf upon shelf of books. Some are gleaming and expensive, with the aura of gifts; others are tiny, rare and cloth-bound; these, I imagine, have been carefully sourced. Intriguingly specific studies of now-forgotten designers are juxtaposed with sentimental titles like Wartime Kiss and generic volumes from grand theorists. The books have been thematically arranged and delicately handled. Apart from the odd volume placed askew, perhaps as a reference point, they appear as untouched as Snow White under rock crystal. When I take one to pass the hour, because after all, no one said I shouldn’t, I’m careful not to touch the book too much, change its shape, or God forbid, break its spine, and replace it with the exactitude of evidence in a murder scene. In this space, bibliophilia means something different from my own cavalier love for my travelling volumes. As a thief of sorts, I must be respectful, or get caught.

snowwhite — Immaculate book, crystalline pages

Poaching books is a way of crossing each other’s boundaries. We do it because we’re curious and want to be close, perhaps as a way of identifying with someone, or gaining some sort of subtle knowledge about them, or for ourselves. It could be seen as a creepy act, because no-one has given you direct permission; but, done respectfully, it can also be an empathetic gesture. Perhaps a person’s books, like their actions and body language, are indirect or surrounding manifestations of their character and dreams, beyond the words they choose to speak. To adopt Coehlo’s theme, these unspoken signals form part of ‘the language of the world.’

Reading List

Alex Comfort, The Joy of Sex (London: Quartet Books, 1974). *

Paulo Coehlo, The Alchemist: 25th Anniversary Edition, trans. Alan Clarke (New York: Harper Collins, 2014).

Alexander Nemerov, Wartime Kiss (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2012).

*I can’t remember which edition we found in the attic, but this is the original.

Reading With Pleasure and Resistance: Chosen Scripts (Vol. I)

I’m one of the lucky ones. I spend about an hour and a half on trains every day and rarely in rush hour, so I usually get a seat. I have access to a communal garden, which tempts me out when I have a spare half hour on warm days. I have a couch and bed for cold days. This means I actually have time and space to read books, some doorstopper thick and unportable, some sleek enough to go everywhere. The books I have on the go (typically two at a time) offer a commentary on wherever I happen to be, whatever I’m doing. They’re closer than friends, and their words revisit me inadvertently at unthinking moments… Sometimes, on a day like today, when I’m mildly hung over, I’m walking to the tube stop and the line ‘…My Paris/ Was only just not German’ (Ted Hughes, ‘Your Paris,’ The Birthday Letters) interrupts me for a reason I can’t completely understand. Why do I need this relatively unremarkable line right now?

When I get home, I find the poem. Hughes’ autobiographical account of how the Paris he remembers from his time as a soldier in World War II , (a city occupied by the Nazis where ‘So recently the coffee was still bitter/ As acorns’), differed from the experience of his wife Sylvia Plath, who tried to distract herself with ‘American’ Hemingway and Fitzgerald fantasies from the pain of her own memory of being rejected by a former lover in the city. The phrase I remembered is preceded by another forgotten one: ‘I kept my Paris from you’ (Hughes to Plath). These 6 words take me back to where I accidentally found The Birthday Letters the second time, in Word on the Water, a secondhand bookshop in a tugboat, on leafy Regent’s Canal in July. I was falling in love, and at the height of my giddy infatuation, my reunion with The Birthday Letters in such a poetic surrounding felt like kismet (his word not mine). Of course, The Birthday Letters document a love/hate dynamic, a narrative of intimacy and misunderstanding, and I could have seen them as a warning. What started out as passion and the immense desire to share everything, turned into hurt and privation, something being kept from me. Not a city, but a story it was thought I would never understand.

It’s funny, but Plath and Hughes volumes seem to jump off the shelves at me whenever I embark upon a cliched passion-motivated affair like theirs. Something about the dissenting voices, the sensuously acrid imagery, reflects something real right into my soul. Their words and my own satellite relationships give me no shortage of thrills, but leave me a little raw and hungry.

Seeking rootedness, sunshine and inspiration, I turn to my other relationships, and a trip to San Francisco. As I’m walking in the city’s Sunset District, I become intrigued by a neoclassical-fronted public library, guarded by marble lions and walk in. On a table I spot a book called Fairyland by Alysia Abbot. It’s cover is illustrated with a black and white photograph of a slick, elfishly handsome man in a dark suit, holding a white magnolia. Behind him is an earnest, exquisitely-featured little girl in a long chintzy white nightgown. It must be magic realism, a modern fairytale, I think, and turn it over. But when I do, I find out that it’s a woman’s memoir of growing up in San Fransisco with her gay father in the 1970s and then nursing him through Aids. I’m not sure I can read this right now- It feels a little too close to home when I’ve recently been overwhelmed with the news of one close friend’s serious illness and another’s bereavement. I put the book down- it belongs to the library anyway, so it’s not like I can take it away. But then the day before I’m due to catch the ten-hour flight home, I persuade my friend Nikki and her mum to go to touristy North Beach, and drag them into City Books, (Jack Kerouac’s favourite, incidentally), where all I want to buy is Fairyland.

Ten minutes of Fairyland in St James' Park when I'm early to a meeting... — Ten minutes of Fairyland in St James’ Park when I’m early to a meeting…

It’s beautifully written, searching and honest- I like how Abbot pilfers through her father, Steve’s poems and private correspondence to conjure up his side of the story as a counter-narrative to her own. Poetry, bohemianism and love are prominent, but Abbot doesn’t brush over the mutual inconveniences of their family unit. Her presence as a demanding child and bratty teenager damages Steve’s credentials as lover, and there are times when his flamboyant homosexuality and hippiness embarrass her. Abbot’s account of her search for a life of her own as a young woman as Steve’s illness advances, is especially moving. Much of this is related through their letters, precious documents where they exchange ideas about life as well as reports of their everyday experiences. I’m reminded that dying and living aren’t the opposites that they’re generally seen to be, that a sick person may be languishing in body, but enjoying a vivid mental and spiritual experience. This book, which has made me a little less afraid of sickness and death, ends on a tender, marvelling note: ‘This place Dad and I lived together, our fairy land, wasn’t make believe but a real place with real people and I was there.’

While my foray into the life and death theme was accidental, over the past few months, I’ve been consciously drawn to makers’ narratives. It’s essentially the same story told a little differently told each time. A person with big ideas, a smattering of talents and scattered means, makes something of their life. I’d been meaning to read Deborah Lutz’s The Bronte Cabinet: Three Lives in Nine Objects for a while, and found it in the Camden Waterstones last month. It’s a weighty tome with a midnight blue waxy jacket, gold lettering and a comely aloe smell. I could only read it at home or on journeys when I knew I wouldn’t be walking much. Anyway, I found Lutz’s account of how the Brontes created their famous stories in and amongst their possessions, chores and life crises strangely comforting. Books doubled as storage units, presses and even writing paper, when the latter was scarce and expensive, and someone had a story idea that just had to be captured, even if there was literally marginal space for it. Plots were discussed around pudding bowls, and developed in breaks from sewing- an accomplishment the Bronte girls wanted to keep up, so that they wouldn’t become decadent, unfeminine literary types. I like this idea of creativity amongst stuff and busyness rather than ascetic vocationalism, not only because it’s realistic, but because it’s generous and intricately woven into life.

Book As Press, Natural History Museum, London

The figure of Emily Bronte, the wildest of the sisters has always intrigued me the most, and it horrified society to think how this ‘slim, wick of a girl,’ a clergyman’s daughter nonetheless, conceived a hero as violently savage as Heathcliff. As far as we know, she had no such lover, or even character in her life; but Lutz speculates that Emily’s familiarity with Lord Byron’s works, as well as her affinity with the untamed moorland and acute observations of dogs, (pre-Chiuaua-era they were much closer to their lupine cousins), would have been enough. About one hundred years later in Paris, people would marvel at how the seemingly innocent eighteen-year-old Francoise Sagan (real name Quoirez) could create a novel as candidly racy as Bonjour Tristesse. Anne Berest’s focused study of Sagan’s life in 1954, the year of Bonjour Tristesse’s publication, is another account of how a green young woman possessed the sensitivity and acute powers of observation to write beyond her personal experience, and get published. I think that Emily and Francoise’s examples stand out in my mind, because there are things that I want to achieve where I can envisage the result, but not the next step. So many times, writers are told to draw from their own experience, but Emily and Francoise didn’t have that much, so they took what they had, and with a dash of inspiration, jumped into the unknown.

Creativity in between... Chalk on Blackboard, Unisex Toilet, Cheeky Parlour — Creativity in between… Chalk on Blackboard, Unisex Toilet, Cheeky Parlour

Reading List

Alysia Abbot, Fairyland (New York: W.W. Norton & Company, 2013).

Anne Berest, Sagan: Paris, 1954 (London: Gallic Books, 2015).

Ted Hughes, The Birthday Letters (London: Quality Books, 1998).

Deborah Lutz, The Bronte Cabinet: Three Lives in Nine Objects (New York: W.W. Norton & Company, 2015).

9 Lessons from my Father, Annotated

As we approach Father’s Day, we’re inundated with reminders to celebrate the man who taught us how to ride a bicycle, balance a budget or send an unwanted suitor running home to his mummy. The adverts range from predictably cutesy – the start-up promising to deliver a gift ‘as unique as he is,’ to bafflingly creepy- the Aramis cologne advert that reminds you it’s father’s day, and swiftly follows up with the clip of a James Bond-type eyeing up a girl in a swimsuit from behind. Who can bear the thought of their old man as a player? Are they seriously suggesting that you hand him a bottle of Aramis with a wink and ‘Go get ’em Tiger?’

Dads are blown up to heroic proportions on father's day. Here's a gift suggestion from the British Museum. — Dads are blown up to heroic proportions on Fathers Day. Here’s a gift suggestion from the British Museum.

Anyway, though my dad and I love each other to the moon and back, he didn’t teach me any of the practical things that the cutesy adverts promised he would.* (Luckily, I never caught him acting like the ‘dad’ in the Aramis advert either!) Still, his words and actions can be mapped into life lessons. Recently, I’ve been thinking about the beliefs I inherited from my parents, and how my own experiences have either confirmed or challenged them. More and more, I realise that truly becoming an adult is taking responsibility for your life and learning to trust your own judgement. Yet so many of us struggle with the living legacy of our parents’ beliefs. We oscillate wildly between reverence and rebellion, rarely taking the time to think about where we actually stand. So, I thought I’d list and evaluate the things I learned from my dad, to see what should be treasured, and what in the words of my spooky masseuse, Kryztina, should be ‘sent back into the universe for recycling.’

1. Read Homer, quote Homer Simpson. Dad’s favourite Homer quotation is ‘Don’t try kids, because trying leads to failure and disappointment.’

I think that Dad means you should be learned, but not a humourless arse. I’m fully on board with this, and especially feel shortchanged when people give conference papers without the flair of Homer or the ribaldry of Homer Simpson. How dare they take away half an hour of my life, not seek to entertain and move me!

2. People who grow up in conflict-zones (like him) are risk-averse, but people who grow up in relative peace and prosperity (like me and my brother) are adventure-seekers.

Learning this has been invaluable to understanding my Dad, and more cautious, as well as brave and resilient people like him. However, I’ve also seen the opposite: risk-averse squares with stable childhoods, who want carbon-copies of their parents’ lives, and folks who live on a whim because they have never had stability.

3. Days range from bad to exceptionally bad, but that’s the way life is, so be cheerful about it.

I’ve learned that dad’s combination of pessimism, sensitivity and humour is actually quite rare. I once dated a supreme pessimist, and was very naively waiting for him to laugh at his tortured soul, but he never did. There are no two men alike, and looking for someone like your dad, however unconsciously, is futile. The best you can hope for is someone who is wonderful on his own terms.

4. People who love you can disappear and go silent for a while, but they still love you will reappear when they’re ready/ when it suits them. (In the past, my Dad was periodically absent, but he always came back)

Guess what, people who don’t love you can also imitate these behaviours… And life is too short for an eternal game of hide and seek! I still struggle with comings and goings, if I’m honest.

5. Strong, resourceful, intelligent women are far more valuable than the delicate and girly ones. Dad loves telling stories about his infinitely practical mother and martial grandmother.

I admire the feminist sentiment here, but don’t feel that you can polarise women in this way. From my experience, strength and delicacy are not mutually exclusive, and the brave, creative women I most admire are also exceptionally vulnerable. I am somewhat delicate, girly and impractical – maybe as a means of rebelling against my dad’s ideal- though I retain my share of grit.

6. Decisions are final, and have fairly predictable consequences. Dad likes to say ‘Is that what you want?, because that’s what’s going to happen!’

Only in a fairly predictable universe, so unlike this one. Actually, not all decisions are final, and the their is never what you think it is. However, you can hypothesise from patterns in your past.

7. Good books rely above all, upon a solid, stimulating plot. Homer’s epics are timeless, whereas Virginia Woolf’s stream-of-consciousness rambles will eventually become irrelevant.

I disagree, but not as much as I used to. Woolf’s fluid narratives are of course vital because they convey the experience of living and being connected to other lives. They have already stood the test of time, and will continue to do so. But for the most part, beautifully-textured sentences can’t save a boring course of events, and there’s nothing like a pacy plot or fascinating character to make twelve Piccadilly line stations seemingly dissolve into three.

8. Vogue** and other lifestyle glossies are damaging because they plant unrealistic expectations of life into (usually female) readers’ heads. Dad imagines a scenario where a girl, usually one with the wits of one of Marilyn Monroe’s 1950s secretary characters, goes wildly into debt for the love of a Chanel handbag.

Over three centuries ago, the proto-feminist Mary Wollestonecraft expressed similar fears about the expectations of women who read novels. Dad, Ms Wollestonecraft, it’s OK, women read for reasons other than to imitate the lives of It girls called Cressida, or Gothic heroines called Emily. I once tried to explain to Dad that people don’t read Vogue like the Ikea catalogue, with a red marker in hand, drawing rings around covetable items, but for escapism and inspiration. He wasn’t convinced.

9. You can be stingy with yourself, but not with others. Dad only updates his wardrobe when his clothes fall apart, but considers scrimping on food and wine for his guests a major social faux pas.

Agreed- though I’m not especially stingy with myself, and don’t buy the most expensive wine for parties where the primary purpose is to get lashed.

Questioning your dad's advice can feel like turning conventional wisdom on its head. — Questioning your dad’s advice can feel like turning conventional wisdom on its head.

Over the years, I’ve wrangled with my Dad’s lessons, some of them preached, some of them gleaned from his way of doing things. They’re my inheritance, to be dipped into like a wise, if sometimes exasperating favourite book. Yet there are other books to read, and perhaps even write. It’s been liberating for me to learn that I can be open to my dad’s love and advice, and simultaneously form and trust my own opinions.

* Mum taught me to ride a bike and balance a budget, and Madame de Lafayette gives some elegant tips on dealing with unwanted attention.

** By some weird coincidence Dad shares a birthday with the formidable American Vogue editor Anna Wintour. They’re both intelligent, ‘take-charge’ Scorpios. That’s about all they have in common.

Accidents happen

Accidents happen when things or people collide. If accidents didn’t happen, some of us wouldn’t be here (on this planet), and almost all of us wouldn’t be here (in this situation, relationship or place). Though I liked the idea of entering the world as a little bombshell, completely unexpected, I actually wasn’t an accident. When my parents got married and bought a cat, their parents complained that this four-legged creature was no replacement grandchild, so they dutifully supplied them with me. My grandmothers began knitting as soon as the pregnancy was announced, so an entire army of immaculate tiny clothes preceded me.

I stumbled upon this intriguing magnet in the dirtiest Air bnb flat in New York. It reminds me of my childhood — I stumbled upon this intriguing magnet in the filthiest Air bnb flat in New York. I was this sort of girl, up in the clouds like a bird, but often stumbling into the dirt!

But despite this cushioned beginning, my young parents just weren’t ready for me, and I grew up a sensitive, accident-prone child, susceptible to viruses, collisions with sharp objects and overwhelming impressions. My feeling that I was always on the precipice of disaster, made me retreat into a world of my own making. It wasn’t all bad, though, the surprising people and situations I encountered daily, helped me become creative, empathetic and always ready to laugh. Interestingly, a friend who was almost aborted, because he was initially deemed superfluous, grew up so much more stable and resilient. I’m in awe of his expert handling of risk – he works hard, has antennae for good opportunities, and a knack for minimising misfortune. Both optimistic and pragmatic, this child who almost didn’t make it into the world, sees it as a place brimming with possibility.

Life’s randomness can be unfair, but it is also beautifully invigorating. At their best, accidents can save us from a sleepwalking through a lifestyle that no longer serves us. When I asked my friends about accidents that had transformed their lives, they overwhelmingly spoke about encounters with new people. Polly* had been working part-time in a cafe to fund her career as a musician, when a customer told her that she would get a better wage in another nearby cafe. Following this stranger’s advice, Polly changed jobs, and soon realised that she and the owner, Luke were attracted to one another, despite her engagement to another man, Adam. This inconvenient attraction was the catalyst for making her realise not only, the gaping holes in her relationship with Adam, but that she no longer needed to remain in a city that she hated, to pursue a now out-of-date dream of becoming a musician. Fully awake to her revelation, Polly broke off her engagement with Adam, gave up her teenage vocation, and moved back to the countryside, where she resumed her old job in an antique shop, and now talks about opening up her own vintage tea-house. Some months later, Polly wonders whether without these two encounters- first with the stranger who suggested she change jobs, and then with Luke- she might have married the wrong man and remained in the wrong city. While she’s still unsure of the future, Polly has more confidence in the present, and maintains that you grow by being open and trying things out.

Cinderella couldn't tell whether this surprise odd shoe was benign... — Cinderella couldn’t tell whether this surprise odd slipper was benign… But she thought, she’d try it on anyway

Another friend, Pedro once saw a beautiful girl on his commuter train, but was too shy to approach her. Taking the train everyday, he expected she would be there at some point, and kept rehearsing what he would say in case she showed up. Some months later, when the girl finally made an appearance in his carriage, he mustered up the courage to talk to her. He later learned that the girl almost never took that train, and had only done so on that occasion because she had taken a day off work. Had this been a Hollywood rom-com, Pedro’s chance meeting with the girl would have culminated in a relationship that fulfilled his initial infatuation. In real life however, the girl wasn’t interested in him romantically, but introduced him to a friend, who introduced him to a friend, whose friend, Roberta, (the fourth in the chain), would become his girlfriend for eleven years. Roberta, a highly motivated graphic designer, brought a much-needed sense of stability into his life, which in turn, gave him the determination he previously lacked. Pedro had worked several jobs, but failed to make any headway in any because he felt adrift. When Roberta began to take him seriously, Pedro began to take himself, and his interest in literature and languages seriously. He became a a translator, got a Masters in literature, and then eventually moved from Brazil to the United States to start a PhD. Although they are no longer together, Pedro describes his relationship with Roberta as the defining feature of his adult life, and marvels that he would never have met her, had he not taken a chance with a stranger on a train.

My one and only train photo. It might have been taken by accident, or it might have been of the little white dog. — My one and only train photo. It might have been taken by accident, or I might have liked the little white dog.

Commuter trains, with their sliding doors, subterranean trajectories and hordes of passengers are picture-perfect locations for prophetic encounters (Just think of Tolstoy’s Anna Karenina or the films Sliding Doors and Brief Encounter). Hearing Pedro’s story reminded me of my own frenzied train meeting a few months ago. Suffering from flu, balancing four deadlines and realising that I had no time to apply for what I thought was a unique job, I was sitting on the tube feeling helpless, and the tears just streamed down. Two people approached me- first an older lady, who told me that sickness and death were the only true disasters, and that I was too young to suffer so, and second, a man with brilliant green eyes, a Northern Irish accent, and an odd smell, who tried to comfort me, and then just before my stop, get my number, because I seemed like an interesting person. Part of me wanted to, because he seemed kind and sort of attractive, but in my pitiful state, I also worried that he was an opportunist with a damsel-in-distress fetish. I was also bothered by the smell. So, I thanked him sincerely for his kindness, and got off the train. When I got home, I wondered for a while if I’d done the right thing- but let it go, because with accidental train meetings, only certain Pedros in this world get a second chance! However, my next chance meeting was strangely wonderful, but that’s another story…

An accident waiting to happen... — Twilight, cherry blossom and a bicycle. An accident waiting to happen…

* Names and places in this article have been changed for privacy reasons, but the essence of the stories are true. Thanks to my anonymous sources!