A birth, in 13 places
Welcoming our son, and leaving Bloomsbury, London
The bare facts are these: Oliver Kornel Hill, born 22.47 on 12 July 2007, weighing in at 4.02 kilos and measuring 55cm. Mum and baby both doing well. (Ed. These pieces written at the time, July 2007.)
Overjoyed is too feeble a word to describe the way we feel, and it’s near impossible to comprehend, let alone describe, what it really means. So I won’t even try.
Yet I have something to write about here. I feel I should, but I’m uncertain as to whether it fits. There’s no editor here, no paying readership, and no particular external constraints or raison d’être. Nothing I have to live up — or down — to. So do I say anything about Oliver here? I’ve lobbed this conundrum back and forth in my mind, like Nadal vs Nadal on clay courts, and admittedly on long sleep-deprived walks with Oliver, where there is little other obvious stimuli kicking around. Geoff Dyer, in his hilarious and brilliant Out of Sheer Rage, expresses this inconvenient problem best:
There were no constraints on me and because of this it was impossible to choose. It’s easy to make choices when you have things hampering you — a job, kids’ schools — but when all you have to go on is your own desires, then life becomes considerably more difficult, not to say intolerable.
