Best Australian Yarn: Born For You by Magdalena McGuire

There’s a story my mother used to tell me about the time she chained herself to a tree. Huon Pine, two thousand years old, destined for woodchip until Mum came along. Growing up, I heard many versions of her heroism, but in my favourite, she wears a top hat and a tie-dye dress and when a cop yells at her for being a dumb hippy she laughs and calls him a fossil fool. This is the one I told at her funeral. It got a few laughs.

Now I’m the same age that my mother was when she had me. While she was considered a late bloomer, I find myself in a different world. My friends are partying or living with their olds to save for a mortgage; a handful are conscientious objectors like Jenny and me. We won’t do that, we promised before we tied the knot. What sort of person would bring a child into a planet that’s overcrowded, overheated, overrun with fascists? It would be selfish to bring a child into all this. We agreed.

The problem is desire.