This is Not About Me

My mother thought I was the menopause. She came to terms with the fact that I wasn’t in Buckreddan Maternity Home in Kilwinning, because that was where women went. In those days, the medical profession gave out the impression of no choice. Labour meant Buckreddan: QED. That the name maternity home suggested duress and distress was probably not intentional, but the suggestion was there nonetheless. I was sixteen before I found out what Buckreddan looked like, by catching sight of the name on a placard as I shot by on a bus. Red Victorian sandstone, almost a hotel. I had always imagined a poorhouse, women in rows in narrow single beds with thin sheets, the occasional nurse with an origami hat like Florence Nightingale. I had always imagined grey, cold, stern. Now I saw the real thing, it looked fine. I tried instead to picture its ranks of babies, me among them somewhere, but couldn’t. All I could muster was the sound of them, crying. I couldn’t picture the absurdly named delivery suites, since I had no idea what delivery was or what such a suite might contain. But I could imagine bottles. That was what we got then; we got powdered milk – formula – in bottles.