I Am, I Am, I Am: Seventeen Brushes with Death

by Maggie O'Farrell

nobody ever asks you what degree you got. It ceases to matter the moment you leave university. That the things in life which don’t go to plan are usually more important, more formative, in the long run, than the things that do.

You need to expect the unexpected, to embrace it. The best way, I am about to discover, is not always the easy way.

The people who teach us something retain a particularly vivid place in our memories. I’d been a parent for about ten minutes when I met the man, but he taught me, with a small gesture, one of the most important things about the job: kindness, intuition, touch, and that sometimes you don’t even need words.

Neural pathways become ingrained, automatic, if they operate only by habit. They are highly attuned to alterations, to novelty. New sights, sounds, languages, tastes, smells stimulate different synapses in the brain, different message routes, different webs of connection, increasing our neuroplasticity.

He made a bet with me as to which of us would be able to take a step first. I see now, of course, that it was a ruse, that he was never going to walk again, that he wanted me to get up on my feet, in the full knowledge that he never would, perhaps because he never would.

Maternal love is a great force, greater perhaps than all others.

But there she was, despite everything, thirteen weeks of gestation under her belt and waving at us for all she was worth.