Arrangements in Blue: Notes on Love and Making a Life

‘Professional Aunt No Kids’, or ‘PANKs’.

I try to think of the kitchen as a theatre of self-creation. Sometimes it’s as simple as putting pickles in a pretty dish and laying the table. Or slicing up fruit and arranging it on a plate that makes the colours vibrate. Other times it’s the rejection of restraint when cooking for one. I always feel defensive when people say ‘I don’t bother when

Why was it OK for me to help others, but not for them to help me? I had to ask myself about this, about how I nursed my resentment at having ‘no one’ for whom I considered it to be their official role to support me, at the same time positioning myself as someone who would always consider it my role to help a friend and likely force them to accept i

It can sometimes feel like society isn’t keen on airing these thoughts of ambivalence. The way in which I can be a passionate advocate of access to free, safe, legal abortion as well as have complicated feelings about my own experience, sometimes wondering what if? In funnelling people into polarised positions, in resisting the difficulty of feelin

Public space is not designed for a person on their own. Private romance and the family are the units by which leisure is parcelled out. I want for myself and for others bars with generously sized individual booths, a little locker to stash your valuables while you use the bathroom, a light you can switch on and off to read. Beautiful spaces that li

I wanted through motherhood to give myself another try at existing. I thought it might ease my fear of my own disappearance from the world, of my being an endling.

Not only did the customs and habits of the household remain the same, the contents did too, and this staid but harmonic environment was a source of tremendous comfort. Its crockery and cutlery enchanted me. Pyrex with matching lids, cut-glass serving bowls that caught the light, sandwich plates, faux-bone-handled knives, a special spoon for grapefr

I want mothering to be part of my life. To offer and receive loving care and support with friends, family members and my cats. I stretch mothering to hold those things. When I grieve not having a child, I want to remind myself those feelings pass; I want to let myself feel what I feel without attempting to tidy those emotions up into neat resolutio

Is it possible that life without romantic love isn’t so bad? Is it possible we can take as much pleasure in other loves, find new ways of incorporating romantic feeling into our lives, assign importance to crossing over thresholds that romantic love has abandoned? All those things could be true. But if they are, is it OK to still want romantic love