What Matters

It's funny how birthdays focus the mind. Last night I gazed at Hugo asleep in his bed beside the sofa where he'd enjoyed being stroked until sleep took over. Thirty nine years ago I did the same, unable to take my eyes off the little bundle all swaddled and resting in the crook of my arm, eyes firmly open and taking everything in. She wasn't interested in being put in her little bed to sleep like the other babies in the small ward, but wanted to be upright, starting the important process of taking in Life. Two years later the same process was repeated, but it had lost none of its gloss. "I can't believe it!" I kept repeating to her equally overwhelmed father. "I just can't believe it." She'd popped out in two hours flat, one minute a small bulge in my tummy, the next the most perfect baby. Baby number one took four hours tops. Lucky? Yes, I was lucky, and so I have remained right down to the glossy black creature upon whom I now look so fondly. The two babies who took my breath away all those years ago have matured into a media mogul at home in the Polo Lounge of the Beverley Hills Hotel, and an uber-successful writer who turned down a quarter of a million dollars for a slightly more prestigious offer for the American rights to her next book. Proud? Yup. From Hugo all I want are companionship and love. Everything else, and it is everything, is just bunce.