I Have All the Luck

(You may not agree)

Follow @theclearingpod on Instagram for podcast videos and extras • Watch The Clearing Podcast episodes on YouTube • Listen to previous episodes here • Switch to an annual paid subscription to The Clearing and receive a digital copy of Notes & Fragments, a commonplace book • Begin or renew an annual subscription this month, and you’ll be automatically entered into a prize draw to win my writing essentials.

---

Just lately, people have started telling me I have no luck. This rankles: I consider myself to be an extremely lucky person, and also I hate being pitied. But I have to admit, the past 18 months have not been great. Obviously there was the whole thing about my husband having cancer, and then the thing that I haven’t said much about, which is the chronic pain he’s left with, curtailing so many of the things that once gave him purpose and joy.

Then there was my uterine infection, a final straw which led to my hysterectomy. And then, three weeks ago, we had to call an ambulance for my mother one Saturday night, and she has been in hospital in London ever since, waiting to be well enough for the kind of surgery that makes doctors compulsively talk about the odds. I’ve been staying in London for the past three weeks, swapping with H at weekends so that I can spend a bit of time with my son, who has also had Quite The Year. It’s another one of the endless improvisations we’ve all had to undertake, and although it’s exhausting, we wouldn’t have it any other way.