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Moses, in utero

My husband and I have almost always wanted to have more than one child. Originally we’d agreed on a maximum of 4, but my husband later dropped down to 3 (“It still looks like you’ve made a Christian effort, then,” he said) and I toyed with the idea of stopping at 2. Then while I was pregnant with Moses, draped over the toilet having recently vomited, my husband gave me a sympathetic look along with a glass of water and asked if this would be our only child. I nodded, glumly. 

But time passed and my memories of pregnancy and babies faded into a pretty, 80s-portrait-style haze, and I started flicking through names books (the first place I turn to get my head around the idea of another person in our house) and writing lists of potentials and imagining new beginnings and exciting news to share and life and hope and joy and joyness. This was a few months ago, when thinking about trying for our second child was a some-day-in-the-future thing rather than a seriously-what-are-we-waiting-for thing.

Now that we’ve moved closer towards the latter, I’m starting to panic and am remembering all the things I’d blurred out in my pretty, 80s-style picture. Like the fact that my diary entry for each day of the first 4ish months of pregnancy with Moses – had I had the energy to keep a diary at that stage – could have said exactly the same thing: “Feel horrendous. Stayed horizontal as much as possible to stop myself vomiting. Only think about eating plums; cannot imagine ever enjoying non-plum food again. I want to die. This kid better be worth it.”

Or the fact that over the next 5ish months, I discovered that constantly eating helped with the nausea and proceeded to snack constantly during the day, and once during the night (I'd wake up and have to scoff down some cereal so that I’d make it through to the morning). I put on weight like I was trying to win some kind of competition. My midwife started telling me that I had “a lot of amniotic fluid” which (I found out after my son was born) was actually code for “From what I can feel, your child is flipping huge. Perhaps you should stop getting up at 2am to eat.” I passionately hate all photos of me from mid-July to the end of December 2010. So that wasn’t awesome.

And then there was all the anxiety. How do I not eat for 12 hours so that I can do the gestational diabetes test? What if I have gestational diabetes? What if it’s my multivitamins that make me feel so sick? If I stop taking them, will my baby be born with a third nipple? Is he kicking enough? How am I supposed to sleep if I can’t lie on my tummy or my back? What if my blood pressure goes up too much? What if my husband never agrees to call this child Moses when I’m already so attached to the name? What if the ultrasound said it was a boy but they’re wrong and it’s actually a girl? How would I deal with that kind of shock after giving birth? What if he’s breech? What if I turn up to my ultrasound and find out that all is not well? (And this was way before I’d turned up to an ultrasound and found out that all was not well.)

Rather than “glowing” and “hope,” I’m now linking pregnancy with words like “stress” and “bad wardrobe” and “regular medical appointments” and “Weetbix.” And that’s all before the baby arrives! Once he or she is here I won’t be free to gaze at his or her face without interruption and sleep when she or he sleeps and spend days not bothering to get out of my pyjamas or shower. I’ll have two faces to gaze at, two people to coordinate the naps of, including one little boy who (presumably) will still want to go to parks and cuddle for most of the day, and I love that little boy, I can’t imagine him having to share me with some strange child who’s already taking over our lives without even existing yet. And, after the miscarriage, when should we tell people next time? Early, so that they can pray and support us, or later, so that there aren’t many to un-tell if things go wrong again? And how will I cope with having to go through another loss, more heartbreak? I don't want to. It’s too scary. I’m scared.

So I got a Rubella injection, and now we don’t have to think about it for another 3 months (you're welcome, Husband). I’m hoping that my memory will be fuzzy again by then.

Er...

I'm sorry to bother you, but is this billboard really telling me that there might be bits of testicle in Maxibon ice creams? Is it an advertisment or a consumer warning? An advertisement, you say?! So I'm supposed to want to eat one now? Oh dear... Maybe I'm not their target market? But, wait - WHO WOULD BE?!

I'm so confused.

A wife’s primary responsibility, according to Grudem

my girls

In my first post in this series, I mentioned that Grudem believes that a wife’s primary responsibility is “to care for home and to nurture children.” “Each can help the other,” he writes, “but there remains a primary responsibility that is not shared equally” (from page 44). Perhaps at his place it’s true that his wife takes primary responsibility for the home and the children, but his preference really shouldn’t be imposed on others, especially when there’s nothing in the Bible that tells us this is the way it should be. I worry about this “primary responsibility” language; it sounds to me very similar to the idea of motherhood being the “highest calling” for women, which is not only theologically questionable, it’s unhelpful and can be incredibly harmful.

I fear this attitude has been a huge factor leading – wrongly – to the glorification of marriage and family in our churches, and therefore the (accidental) pushing of singleness to the other end of the “YAY!” scale (marriage: “Super YAY!” Singleness: “Not very much YAY! at all”). On this scale, singleness is slotted in at the bottom; getting married bumps us up a notch (more points for becoming a ministry wife?), and having a baby promotes us to our highest calling: Motherhood. The top of the pile. It seems that we Christians are obsessed with hierarchies, which is ironic given we follow a guy who, “being in very nature God, did not consider equality with God something to be used to his own advantage; rather, he made himself nothing by taking the very nature of a servant, being made in human likeness.  And being found in appearance as a man, he humbled himself by becoming obedient to death— even death on a cross!” (Philippians 2:6-8). 

So, once again, my questions to the churches who embrace Grudem’s complementarian theology are these: If a woman’s primary responsibility is to look after her home and children, then is the primary responsibility of a single woman to find herself a husband ASAP? After all, there are only so many kids’ ministry positions available. What messages (implicit or otherwise) are these single women hearing from their churches? Are they words of grace and comfort and empowerment? Words that excite them and send them back into the world on fire for God’s ongoing work in and through them in this season of their lives?

And what about married women who are unable or have decided not to have children? What messages (implicit or otherwise) are these women hearing from their churches? Words that embrace them, bless them, bring them peace and affirmation? And what about mothers who, perhaps only because they find housework and child-rearing mind-numbingly dull and depressing, work full-time? What messages (implicit or otherwise) are these women hearing from their churches? Are they words understanding and refreshment and encouragement?

I don’t know. I’m a woman who (externally) looks somewhat like I agree with Grudem’s idea of responsibilities (I stay home with my son, but my husband’s name appears on our Saturday morning cleaning roster as many times as mine). I have some beloved friends who are single, though, and I know I’ve ached for them in church sometimes (and argued with ministers/lay people on their behalf after church sometimes). I’ve ached for those women who struggle with infertility, surrounded in church by couples gushing over pregnancies and new babies, many suffering in silence. I've ached for fellow mums who wrestle with the stay-home-or-not question, and accept that they'll probably be negatively judged for choosing the ’not’ option.

I’m going to pass it over to more gifted writers to respond to the “motherhood as highest calling” claim; I especially like this post and this post and this post. If you’re feeling a little overwhelmed with all the linking and have decided you'll only click on one, make it this one about biblical womanhood by Sarah Bessey, who concludes that biblical womanhood doesn’t look all that different from biblical personhood: male or female, single, married, childless or surrounded by small people, all Christians “live and move and have [our] being in the daily reality of being a follower of Jesus, living in the reality of being loved.” (Karen, please forgive her for saying some of this in bold.) And, as you know, I LOVE this book on singleness by Taryn Rose. If you haven’t yet read it, go find yourself a copy right now. RIGHT NOW! You can borrow mine, I’ll post it to you.

And that, my dear friends, is all I have to say about Grudem. I may have a small rant about the phrase “equal but different” (seriously, what part of ‘equal’ are they wanting to qualify, leading to the use of ‘but’ rather than ‘and’? Would it be okay to say, “Asians are equal, but...” or “Cleaners are equal, but...”? I know that complementarians can’t say that women are equal without having to then explain why they have to concentrate on getting dinner ready rather than preparing a sermon, but why advertise it?), but probably not. So, with all of my againsts cast aside, I’m now freeeeeeeeeee to move on to sharing the fors for evangelical egalitarianism, the “equal and different” team.

A man’s primary responsibility, according to Grudem

from here

The section from Grudem I mentioned in my last post finishes with this paragraph (from page 45):

Finally, there is the testimony from both men’s and women’s hearts. There is something in a man that says, “I don’t want to be dependent on a woman to provide for me in the long term. I want to be the one responsible to provide for the family, the one my wife looks to and depends on for support.” I have never met a man who does not feel some measure of shame at the idea of being supported by his wife in the long term...

There may very well be something in the hearts of some men that says “I don’t want to be dependent on a woman to provide for me,” but perhaps there’s also something in the hearts of some men that says “I could beat every person here in an arm wrestling competition” or “I think farts are funny.” I’m just saying that the testimony from peoples’ hearts shouldn’t be one of the things we base our theology on, especially if we’re going to completely ignore any sociological factors that lead those hearts to think the way they do.

I’ve noticed, from Biblical Truth and Evangelical Feminism and elsewhere, that there’s a huge burden placed on Christian husbands by complementarians: the responsibility to provide for his family, the responsibility (as many believe) for his wife’s spiritual well-being as well as the spiritual well-being of any children he may have. Combined, it’s a pressure that could easily become overwhelming, although, seeing as these are the primary responsibilities of a “Biblical man”, it would be difficult - if not impossible - for some men to admit that they’re close to buckling under the weight; that they’re not “manly” enough to cope. Believing that you’re less of a man because you’re unable to fulfil roles that others have forced on you would be, for some at least, a catalyst for a full-blown depressive identity crisis, not to mention a reason to angrily question the God who designed you to be so lacking.

My heart aches for these guys, particularly when these are responsibilities that don’t actually belong to them; after all, it’s not men who provide for their wives, it’s God. It’s not men who’ll present their wives holy and blameless on the last day; that’s Jesus’ job. Men don’t have supreme control over their health, their employment, their wives or their children; God does. If a man wants to be the one his wife depends on for her security and well-being, he is asking her to make an idol of him, to look to him for things she should look only to God for; not to get all didactic about this, but that’s called sin. If a man feels ashamed that his wife earns a better (or the only) income, as if that money comes solely from her talents and not from God’s abundantly gracious hand, that’s sin too. No one else should be given the credit or honour (with or without envy) for God’s good gifts!

Ignoring this for now, my question to the churches who embrace Grudem’s complementarian theology is this: If a man’s primary responsibility is to provide for and protect his wife and family, what does the church do with Christian men who struggle with this burden, who feel like their faith is weaker than their wives’, who are chronically sick and/or who are unemployed? What messages (implicit or otherwise) are these men hearing from their churches? Are they words of grace and comfort? Words that make them want to return each week for another dose of Godly refreshment and encouragement? 

It’s not only husbands who feel the pressure of Grudem’s primary responsibility for men, as anyone who’s listened to a Driscoll sermon will tell you; it seems there are plenty of single guys who don’t yet feel ready to carry the weight of these expectations. I wonder how many of these men would respond better to a message along the lines of, “Hey, guys! Guess what? God is much bigger and your future wife more intelligent than you give them credit for!” rather than the old, “Be a man! Step up! Get a job! Etc., etc.” I’m no expert on this, being female and all, but from all of the data I’ve collected from my extensive studies of the two males in my household, I’ve found that 100% of the time they prefer cuddles to yelling.

The men in my church, and in The Church, are my brothers, and, as their loving sibling, I get defensive when people try to make them feel as though they’re less than who they are in God’s eyes. Plus, they hang out with my sisters, and I want to protect those women too.

More about those gals in the next post...

Primary responsibilities, according to Grudem

It’s been a while since I’ve written about Wayne Grudem, although before I dive in I want to assure you that I’m positive he’s a lovely man and I don’t have anything against him per se (loving the sinner, hating the sin and all that*). I mention his name in particular a lot in relation to the gender issue for the simple fact that he’s one of the more vocal anti-egalitarians, and therefore bothers to write the books that I can then disagree with. I’ve mentioned Biblical Truth and Evangelical Feminism briefly in a previous post; I didn’t get far through it, as the opening chapters did such a wonderful job of infuriating me that I found no need to read the rest. Besides, I had borrowed the book from the college library and feared being fined if I was to return it looking as though it had been thrown across the room multiple times, as indeed it would have been had I continued reading.

There was one particular section that I’ve thought about over and over since reading it for college and again last year; I’m finally writing about it here so that I can let it go in order to move on in this journey (to return to the image from this post). Early on in his book, Grudem spells out what complementarians believe, part of which is that “the created order” supposedly shows us that men and women have different roles in marriage: “The man’s responsibility [is] to provide for and protect, and the woman’s responsibility [is] to care for the home and to nurture children.”

Grudem then goes on to suggest a list of obviously-culturally-bound verses as evidence for this notion (for men, Deuteronomy 20:7-8: “Men go forth to war, not women, here and in many Old Testament passages,” he explains; for women, 1 Timothy 5:3-16, because it says that “widows, not widowers, are to be supported by the church”*). Presumably Grudem doesn’t approve of daughters being sold to men for marriage or discarded for/shared with newer wives, though we can find examples of these in the Bible too; I guess we should only follow the parts where women cook and have babies and men do the leader-y things...

Apart from his complete disregard for the patriarchal culture of Bible times, I have a couple of problems with these responsibilities as Grudem sees them: First, there’s the stuff he says about men, and second, there’s the stuff he says about women. Seriously though, folks, I wholeheartedly believe that what Grudem says here is not only wrong but can be/has been incredibly harmful, and it has implications not only for husbands and wives but for all women and men in the church. I’ll stop here, fully aware that this post is only an introduction, but what follows is too long so I’m splitting the whole thing into three. Because I love you. 

#2: A man's primary responsibility, according to Grudem
#3: A wife's primary responsibility, according to Grudem

///

* Please imagine an emoticon smiling cheekily here.

** All quotes are from page 44.

My body the Datsun, the artwork, the storyteller

from here

I haven't yet watched all of this video, but I feel like we need to see real bellies like these as much as we need to see teenage girls with pimples and supermodels with cellulite and old-looking old ladies and normal-sized women on the covers of our magazines. I was thinking about bodies last night, about women’s bodies, about my body. It all started because of this post, which reminded me of this one. I apologise for the sudden link mania, but all of that made me think of this post Ben put up last year about tattoos, to which someone responded that he’d also considered getting one until he was told, “you don’t put a bumper sticker on a Ferrari,” which convinced him otherwise.

I was thinking that if my body was a car, it’d be more like a bomby Datsun than a classy sports car; the type of car you can accidentally scrape and bump without getting too upset about it. But I prefer to think of my body – the outside at least (the inside’s all temple, man) – as a mixed media artwork; ink prints and etches and stretches in skin. Each mark adding to the story of my life: my tattoos speaking of my love for Jesus and language and music and family, my adventurous scars telling tales of minor mishaps and major injuries, my stretch marks repeatedly marvelling: “I was once a home! I grew a little person inside of me! See here, I am proof!” And my body will continue to change with time, my artwork one day topped with a mop of grey which will say, in its wise old voice, “I have lived long enough to learn a few things,” and my face, wrinkled with wise old lines, will add, “I have laughed a lot!”

So, Airbrushed Ferrari Woman, I may look at you and yearn for your smoothness and perfection and colour and tone and general blank canvasness, but I’ll always end up with this one question: Do you have any stories to tell?

A brief catch up!

Hello, blog! Sorry I haven’t been around much this week; we all ended up with some kind of gastro bug, my husband had an essay due on Friday, and now I have an essay due in two days’ time. If it makes you feel any better, I haven’t been hanging out with French or Pilates, either. It hasn’t all been yukky, though, you may be pleased to know: On Wednesday, for example, I got the giggles in the college library when I came across a book by a man named Andrew Purves (DOES HE?! How rude!), and today I found out that my husband has secretly started writing poetry! Rather prolifically, it would seem, though I haven't been allowed to read any of his poems yet.

I’ll be back soon, I promise! Until then, here’s a quote to chew on, from The Wounded Healer by Henri Nouwen (page 99):

When the imitation of Christ does not mean to live a life like Christ, but to live your life as authentically as Christ lived his, then there are many ways and forms in which a [person] can be a Christian.

Sanity List

I’m reading Eat Pray Love by Elizabeth Gilbert again. I really enjoyed this book the first time I read it, during The Great Depression of 2009. Back then, reading this was the perfect escape, a vicarious journey of healing. Now, rather than feeling her pain, I’m relating to Gilbert’s restlessness and quest for answers and purpose. Towards the beginning of the book (on page 24, to be specific), Gilbert writes:

I was actually feeling kind of delighted about all the compartments of time and space that were appearing in my days, during which I could ask myself the radical new question: “What do you want to do, Liz?”

Most of the time...I didn’t even dare to answer the question, but just thrilled privately to its existence. And when I finally started to answer, I did so cautiously. I would only allow myself to express little baby-step wants. Like:

I want to go to Yoga class.

I want to leave this party early, so I can go home and read a novel.

I want to buy myself a new pencil box.

I love this book so much, I want to marry it. Polyandrously.* This book/section has encouraged me to think through my own baby-step wants, which I’m starting to feel the effects of neglecting after having been distracted from them for a little too long. Toddlers are distractingly-hard work. I’ve found the last few weeks particularly tough, each day feeling very much like an emotional rollercoaster, from snuggly highs - reading books, playing pretend and exchanging giant smiles - to frustrated lows - trying to react sweetly to being whacked in the head with surprisingly painful toys, being yelled at often, having to use all of my sleepy brainpower to work out what the hell “baing” means this time around. My son is a Lamborghini-child: he can go from gorgeous to awful in 2.9 seconds. Regularly throughout the day I can be heard saying things like, “My darling, you’re so adorabOWWWWWWW!” or “I love you so mmmMOSES, STOP NOW.”

It’s exhausting and difficult and has started to feel unsustainable, so, now that I’m done with all the crying, I’m ready for action. My friend Karen went through a similar process recently and I really should have learned more from her journey, but I was too busy packing and moving and unpacking and settling, so I’m only now arriving at the same two words: self-care. In order to be the mother I want to be, I need to be able to draw from a tank overflowing with helpful things like patience, calmness and resilience. My son currently empties this tank at an alarming rate, so, to replenish it, I need to figure out and spend time on things that supply rather than demand, and that leave me feeling energetic and willing and capable rather than depleted and lethargic and depressed. Like Liz Gilbert in Eat Pray Love, I’ve starting letting myself ask the question, “What do you want to do, Belle?”, and then listening kindly to my answers and doing whatever I can to make those little wishes become realities. It is a result of these Q and A sessions with myself that I present to you my top four ideas for change (in no particular order):

1.     Refresh my French

J’adore French, possibly even more than j’adore Eat Pray Love, and if you read the first part of this post you’ll understand that that’s a lot. French has been a part of my life from my very first class with Mrs Hollebrandse in year 7, throughout high school and uni, and then (more sporadically) at my old job; that’s over 15 (FIFTEEN!) years of fondness for this language. It’s the longest romantic relationship I’ve ever been in. Our time apart since I finished work at the end of 2009 is getting harder and harder as it gets longer and longer; I miss French. I want French to come live with me again. 

So I’ve messaged some Parisian relatives to ask for any ideas about possible French equivalents of Play School CDs that Moses and I could sing along to in order to learn/relearn simple vocabulary. I’m also going to borrow my sister’s Michel Thomas Learn French CDs, because I have a vague recollection of her telling me years ago that they were wonderful. (This one includes the bonus of “having to” fly to Adelaide to pick them up – my husband and I have been talking for a while now about me taking a weekend away on my own to celebrate the weaning of my son, and if this is the only excuse that will actually get me on a plane, I’ll use it.)

2.    Play the guitar

As you may already know, I’ve tried unsuccessfully to learn the guitar before. I’d like to blame it completely on the fact that my husband was my teacher, but it probably has more to do with the fact that I’m incredibly lazy and don’t stick with anything that takes more than a few hours to master. My husband has bought some DVDs by Justin Sandercoe, an Aussie-born, London-based guitarist, who’s lovely, patient, cool and – perhaps most importantly - not married to me. I intend to practice with Justin every day until I’m brilliant enough to start a band, in 30 or so years’ time.

3.    Exercise

I really should. The plan is to start with Pilates and walking, at least one every day. I don’t want to, but I do want to. It’s very confusing.

4.    Get my motorbike license

My husband has wanted me to get my bike license for a long time so that once I’m on my full license he can sell his learner bike and buy something more chunky. I’ve been avoiding going for my bike license for a long time because the thought of riding a motorbike terrifies me slightly, plus what about the helmet-hair? Obviously these are huge issues that I’ll need to work through, but I've decided just to sign up and see if I actually pass the course first. Being able to ride a motorbike would make it much easier to take time away from my son without having to leave my husband carless or spend hours catching various trains to get to where I want to go, and I feel like it will also provide me with a level of hardcoreness I've previously been unable to achieve.

So there you have it, the top slab of my Sanity List, to be started tomorrow. Or maybe next Monday, I like starting things at the beginning of a new week. No, dammit - I will start tomorrow.

But if I don’t, it’ll definitely be next Monday.

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* ”Polyandry refers to a form of marriage in which a woman has two or more husbands at the same time” (from Wikipedia). I just learned this now, when I googled to see if there were any cases of women marrying more than one man, rather than the other way around. J’adore l’internet, aussi.

Stereotypes (Part Three)

from here

I’ve written about gender stereotypes before. I’m not sure if I have an overly-sensitive stereotype radar or if I just regularly and coincidentally find myself in situations where I’m forced to think about the differences and the supposed differences between men and women. This week these have included reading Grudem and For Women Only: What You Need to Know about the Inner Lives of Men by Shaunti Feldhahn, and watching a stupid ad for Glade’s headache-inducing spray-a-smell thingies, with the asinine voiceover telling me that this woman loves to make her house all home-y, so she's bought an air freshener that’s “so clever, it only sprays when people are around!“, as if that’s seriously the most exciting thing she’s thought about that day. It’s offensive. Show me a heterosexual guy in a television advertisement getting that excited about making his house into a home that smells like flowers and I’ll show you a small but encouraging example of progress in our journey towards gender equality.

My son also challenges me to think about stereotypes. Although he gravitates towards the pink aisle in Kmart, he’s abandoned his toy stroller since learning to walk prop-free and he’s never grown attached to the doll we borrowed from his aunties. Three of his first five words were ‘ball’, ‘car’ and ‘bike,’ he gets ridiculously excited about diggers and tractors and trucks, and he has scabs on both of his knees and bruises down both shins after some impressive stacks at the park, where he climbs high, runs fast, leaps and hangs fearlessly, and generally stresses me out as I try to keep him alive (I pray a lot at the park). However, when hanging out with other babies and toddlers I’ve been surprised to note that it’s more often the boys who are affectionate and who are far less willing to let their parents leave them alone in crèche. Based on the stereotypes of adults, I expected the girls to be the cuddly, clingy ones.

In recent(ish) conversations with my husband about gender, I realised that I often protest what’s said about men because I hear (in my mind) the opposite implied about women. For example, if someone says “Men are assertive,” it sounds to me like there’s a silent, “Therefore, women are passive”; I tend, then, to disagree with the first part of the statement because I can’t agree with the second. I’m learning to stop myself from reading more into what’s being said, realising that men and women aren’t opposites, black versus white. Indeed, many men and women aren’t even necessarily completely different shades of grey. There are some overlaps in some people, some of the time, and that’s okay. I kinda think we should each celebrate who we are, whether or not we fit into the right box (go ahead and cringe at my self-helpiness, I am). I say this primarily to reassure myself, because, though I sometimes try to, especially when or after reading books like For Women Only by Shaunti Feldhahn, I can’t make myself fit inside the “Woman” box, and I hate feeling tempted to chop off the parts that hang out. 

I read Feldhahn’s book again after many years because my friend mentioned she’d recently bought it, and I had only vague memories of what it said (but vivid memories of its cover; I judge all my books – and all bottles of wine – by their covers). Feldhahn has lots of interesting things to say about how men think and feel, based on research and interviews with hundreds of men, and I learned a lot from her first (second?) chapter on respect which started a helpful and apologetic conversation between me and my husband. This isn’t a book review, though, it’s a post about stereotypes. 

Feldhahn does go out of her way to remind her reader that she’s speaking in generalities, and I appreciate that, but I couldn’t help but wonder as I read: where are the books for me, for women like me, who are normal, though not necessarily “Woman“-box-shaped? Women like me who can happily go for years without noticing a lack of candlelit dinners or “I love you”s if all’s well otherwise, and who are just as baffled by the difference between ‘love’ and ‘respect’ as men are (according to the book). Women who love looking at beautiful things, including men, and who have to stop themselves from fantasising about that guy with the soft lips and the toned body who took off his shirt in that movie and made something in their tummy flip. Women who feel as though they deserve applause and congratulations when they bake, women who feel as though they’re too passionate when they should be “gentle and quiet,” women who can't watch a Glade ad on television without fuming about it for hours afterwards.

Do I feel this difference more keenly because Christians seem to expect their women to be more box-shaped than the world does? I think that’s part of it [insert plug for future posts along that line of thought - I haven’t mentioned Grudem’s name in a while, after all]. For now, I’m just putting this confession out there in the hope that perhaps another woman, even just one (we’re a minority, the book tells me), will relate, and relax. I get it, sister. We’re not sub-female; maybe just a little less square.

Names

from here

I love names. I used to read baby names books in the school library, and my mum bought me name books for Christmas and birthdays. I have many (many, many) lists of names for future children that I wrote long before I’d even finished high school, let alone met and married my husband or started thinking about procreating. When I was a teenager I had fish just so that I could name them; there were about 30 over my fish-keeping years, and each of them had a name, even if I couldn’t tell which guppy was Edgar and which was Frith. I was also given a kitten for my 17th birthday, and after much deliberation I named her Fawn. (She was feisty and gorgeous; I was young and fickle. She now lives with friends of the family, her name the only remaining link with me.) My love of names is a linguistic rather than a maternal thing. I love the sound of some names, and the way some first names work better with middle and surnames than others.

I never had any qualms about changing my name when I got married; years earlier I’d read through an entire phone book looking for surnames I’d prefer to my own. My favourite was McAllister because it has a cool rhythm and goes well with my first name. I could have been a lawyer with a name like McAllister. But I was a Parsons, a mediocre-at-everything Parsons. Parsons has ‘arse’ in it; it’s not a nice-sounding name. Plus, my mum had my step-dad’s surname and my brother and dad didn't talk to each other; I was happy to leave the name behind and start afresh with my new, slightly less dysfunctional, family. 

I did have limits when it came to taking on a new surname, though: I wouldn’t have changed my name if it meant my first name would then rhyme with my last (we have a friend whose sister’s married name is Alicia Galicia. This is not cool). I would also have refused to become a Raper or Slutsky, and would have had to think for a while about becoming a Hussey. But my husband’s surname was not an unfortunate one, nor did it contain the word ‘arse,’ and so I signed up worry-free. It wasn’t until ages after we were married that my husband told me he’d have considered changing his surname too. We could have both been McAllisters. This is one of the great disappointments of my life.

Naming our son was a much bigger task than pet-naming ever was (as you'd hope). I went through my many (many, many) lists, hoping that my past efforts would save me from much fretting now, but Torquil, Oberon and Aneirin sounded less romantic and more pretentious than they had when I was 16, and I found I was married to a man who’d spit out his food at most of my “crazy” suggestions. Instead of While paying close attention to the lecturer in my Old Testament lectures at college during my pregnancy, I was scanning the genealogies, looking for inspiration and trying to avoid thinking about the name Moses, which I’d already fallen in love with and accidentally attached to the baby despite the fact that my husband had made it clear he wasn’t a huge fan of the name (“NO CHILD OF MINE WILL EVER BE CALLED MOSES MY PARENTS WOULD FLIP OUT WHY CAN’T WE PICK A NORMAL NAME LIKE MATTHEW OR DAVID?! I'm sorry for spitting food on you”). Our son’s name is Moses. We made it official minutes after my husband watched me birth our 4.1 kilogram tank of a child; his hands were tied.

I would have to have around 150 children to use up all of the names on my lists, and it does disappoint me a little bit to think that I’ll never fulfill my teenage dream. 'Spose I’ll just have to buy a lot of guppies.