Helena Pantsis: Degrees of Separation

In 1997 my mother visits a fertility clinic; she is told she will never have children—she falls pregnant naturally three months later.
Julie Radford writes Flu at the Zoo, published in 1997, in which the zoo is closed due to a bout of influenza spreading amongst the animals and the zookeepers.
The zoos close due to a global pandemic, and my brother returns from the Phillipines with a pain shooting up and down his leg.
Banjo Kazooie, a Nintendo 64 game following the adventures of a bear named Banjo and a bird named Kazooie who thwart the evil plans of a witch named Gruntilda, is released in 1998, the same year my brother is born.
Beyonce, featuring Sean Paul, records the 2003 pop hit Baby Boy, in which Beyonce sings about a man she is enamoured with.
In the hit series H2O: Just Add Water, Cleo and Lewis first kiss in Season 1: Episode 12.
My brother pulls his muscle teaching in the pool; when he goes to the doctor he finds out he has a tumour in his bone. It is benign, but if he keeps walking on it his bone could fracture and permanently damage his hip.
The film My Sister’s Keeper, by director Nick Cassavetes, tells the story of a sister who is born to keep her sister alive.
Daxter is a video game released in 2006, recounting Daxter’s adventures searching for Jak prior to Jak 3, who is stuck in prison.
In 2020 Victoria goes into lockdown; my brother has the tumour cut out of his bone, and spends three weeks alone in a hospital at the height of the pandemic.
Saw, directed by James Wan, sees two men chained to a bathtub with hacksaws intended to be used to cut their feet off through the bone.
My brother comes home in a wheelchair and has to learn to walk again—he cannot do a thing by himself, and he spends the first few months bedridden.
Walking to Work is a poem written by poet Frank O’Hara. Frank O’Hara shares a room with writer and artist Edward Gorey when attending Harvard University.
Edward Gorey never marries, shows little to no interest in romance, and never has children.
I burst an ovarian cyst in late 2020, and face the prospect of potential infertility.
Mother for Dinner, by Shalome Auslander, tells the story of a culture who consumes their dead.
Hannibal, the TV series produced by David Slade, follows the relationship between FBI special investigator Will Graham and forensic psychiatrist Hannibal Lecter.
David Slade also produces the short film Do Geese See God? (2004)
The poem GOD! by Phillip Miller ends with the penultimate line “as if I were a god myself.”
My brother, with a name that translates to Christ has risen, finds a lump in his body. This cancer is malignant.
Brian Piccolo, a running back for the Chicago Bears, died at 26 years old from an aggressive form of testicular cancer.
Brown bears experience delayed implantation, where the egg floats in the bear’s uterus for approximately five months before implanting
Oil floats on water because the water molecules pack close together, sinking to the bottom
A class of molecules called human milk oligosaccharides have many important functions, not only in the gut, but also throughout the body and brain
Anabolic steroids taken for body building interfere with the hormone signals that are needed to produce sperm, causing infertility
My brother visits a fertility clinic, where he is told he may never have children.