Summary

Chapter One of “January” is titled “Darkness.” As this chapter begins, author May references the physical, pregnancy-related discomfort she was in on her first – and so far only – trip past the Arctic Circle. She then moves back in time to a recollection of how she became pregnant – her fear that she was not adult enough to be a parent, her discovery of a medical condition that would have made it difficult for her to conceive a child, and her actually doing so even while she was getting ready to start fertility treatments. She describes her difficult pregnancy, and the ongoing debate she had with her doctors and family about whether she should go on the trip to Norway to see the Northern Lights, a trip she had booked before becoming pregnant. Eventually, when she was very pregnant indeed, she got the all-clear, and...