So, here are the things we have been told: goats are incapable of making sheep and apples don't fall far from their tree of origin. Still sort of on point, but with a bit of stretch in the negative direction, we are informed that there has still been no success in the transforming of sow's ears into silk evening bags. (In this last instance, I believe we were never in for much luck. Why would any pig part with her ears simply because you want to accessorise?)

I just found what I think will be my new pet phrase: a fish's child knows how to swim. I will use it in both its original form and in other ways to be determined (such as: 'Is her mother really a fish? Or 'He can't possibly come from a fish family.' Or 'That one's more fish stock than fish.')

You see where this is going - or rather where it's coming from. How do we get to be us? These flora and fauna sayings get thrown around a lot and they have a dreadful ring to them - something like fate. Like we have no choice. That sits ill with me.

All of my recent thinking about how we turn into ourselves comes from the release of the movie version of Judy Blume's pre-teen sensation Are You There God? It's Me, Margaret. People - most of them girls, but I have to believe some boys too - have been reading the book for over 50 years and today it's still relevant enough to movie it.

On the surface, this book should have been utterly pointless to me. It is largely about bras, boys and periods. Obsessively about periods. And how pads worked. I was eight when I read it and boys, bras and periods were about as close to me as the moon. And yet that book got me and I got it. Judy Blume was magic.

Even though the book was set in my future - or maybe precisely because of that - it all made so much sense. It certainly spared my mother some awkward conversations.

I set Blume's book in the centre of this conversation because it is about becoming. And even though the life of a 12-year-old American girl may not seem significant to who I (or indeed many readers) would become, 50 years of never being out of print suggests otherwise.

Goat can make sheep. I know this to be true. I have met goat-parents and seen their kids develop interest and skills that turn them into something else. I have looked at the apple tree from a safe distance and realised the apple didn't just fall, but someone pelt a big stone and the apple pitch itself all the way into a neighbouring field.

And I know that not all fish children can swim. And that's not a good thing for a young fish at all.

There are so many things that make us who we are. We are not our parents. We don't have to be. Having mentally robust parents does not mean we won't suffer from a psychiatric or psychological problem. Having parents who did have issues does not mean we will inherit them either biologically or from the environment in which we were raised. And forget not that our children are not us either.

We're only four months into the year and I've already lost too many people through death, discord or just plain carel