5 things from Livi Short

[ailbhe]

1. motherhood
Motherhood is, someone told me, a bit like being a poet - it's what one is, even when one isn't doing anything about it. So I'm a mother whether or not I'm with my children or thinking about them. I'd still be a mother even if I walked out now, got the bus to the airport, and flew away and never came back. It's immutable.

There's also the job of it, which is harder to discuss. I think it's an important job - and it's also what I most want to do. I don't want to do childcare for other children because I don't want to have to give a child back. I want total control - except one doesn't have total control. I suppose what I want is total responsibility without control, which is ridiculous, but I've got it, so there you go. Miles Vorkosigan would be proud.

I had a very good mother. She had some extremely unlucky breaks, but I can't fault her actual mothering. Unconditional love and nurturing up to here.

2. rhymes
Rhymes and wordplay are part of my Ailbhehood. I learned it at my mother's knee. Well, on my mother's knee. We've always had it. The things children say are handed down in my family - a lost object is "Where did I lost them John?" because that's what my Nana said of her marbles when she was ill as a child. John was her brother. "Boot-air bit-ear" means "butter please" because we used to say "Butter bitte" and the next door neighbours mispronounced it. My little sister and I spent some time pronouncing common nouns backwards - daerb, klim, seech, maj, puc of tea.

I wrote my first poem when I was seven, about how awful school was and how much I liked the sun. My mother was impressed because it was, entirely by accident, almost a sonnet - aabb, cdcd, efef, gg. I can remember scraps of it now. I think it had anapests instead of iambs, too.

So then I wrote bits and pizzas (another family phrase) growing up, and dabbled in more serious poetry, but I can't be having with serious poetry because it takes too much gumption to put it out there ("Le snoi chroi is initinne, bhreacas ar phar, murrain don ailleacht a bhfuil mar ata") so I stick with rhymes.

Which, fortunately, happen to me all the time by accident. "What's in your nappy? Is it a poo? Or is it a hoppitty big kangaroo?" etc, instead of more normal incidental conversations with my children.

And then they happened in enough quantities that people asked me to put them in a book, and I did, and people bought it. The first book, obviously, sold much better than the second. I have notions (ideas above my station) of putting lots of non-baby pomes together in a book somewhere too, but that's too uppitty - I couldn't bear it.

3. green living

It's not easy being green.

Sorry.

I try, as much as I can manage, to minimise the damage I do to the planet by living on it. So we recycle, don't drive, buy unpackaged food as much as we can, buy local, shop local, support small local businesses, insulate the house, wear a jumper instead of heating it too much, buy organic, blah blah. It's not going to fix anything, but at least when we're all sitting around after the apocalypse, I'll know it wasn't ALL my fault.

4. marriage

That's another multi-pronged issue.

I'm all in favour of long-term lifelong commitments made in public and in private. I'm happy with the one I made, too.

I don't like the baggage. I don't like the words wife or husband. I don't like the assumptions people make, even now, about who does what. I don't like the history of marriage - not the religous histiry, because that's not hugely relevant to me, but the legal history. I don't like the fact that as a married woman, the rights my husband has over me and the rights we each have in regard to our children change as if by magic if we go to a different country.

I really don't like the fact that I felt obliged to get legally married to ensure that my children's father would be equally their legal guardian and especially would have serious rights in case I died, and I'm still quite angry that that law changed WHILE I WAS PREGNANT, dammit.

I'm slightly mollified by the introduction of civil partnerships, but only slightly.

But I enjoyed our wedding; we made it as personal as we could without messing with the oral contract (because that part annoyed me - I found it really, really hard to say husband as part of that but I had to, there was no choice, saying "spouse" wasn't allowed) and I see it as a public declaration going two ways - Rob and I declared that we intended to make a relationship work, long-term, and our friends and family declared that they recognised the status of a long-term committed relationship making us a unit, and several of them offered support, too.

Neither Rob nor I changed our names on marriage. I believe his family expected me to change my name, though it hadn't occurred to him as a possiblity and he was baffled by it, and one or two of my family expected me to change my name too, and no-one at all thought he would change his.

5. politics

No pressure, eh?

I'm not sure what this one means. I hold some strong beliefs about the way the world is and the way it ought to be run, and I write to politicians to tell them so, and I live according to my ideals to the best of my ability, and I find the power wielded by politicians frightening enough to pay attention to what they do with it.

If there was an election here tomorrow I'd vote for the Green candidate, but that's not a given.

I wish I had more than one vote. I find the single-X system very restrictive.

Comments

[micheinnz.livejournal.com]

Did I ever tell you what d_h said when I asked him if he was going to change his name upon marriage?

And as for the single-X voting system, come to New Zealand! Ours is XX!

[livi-short.livejournal.com]

Politics..

I asked because reading you I couldn't tell where you stood and now I know why, thank you.

I too am never sure who I will vote for until an election, i then worry that I made the wrong vote, but at least I do vote.

[ailbhe]

Oh, I tend to be sure of who I will vote for (or, more usually, against) but it's not specifically a *party* thing usually.