Scenes from family life

Ten days after The Boy Child’s birth, when the visitors have finally left, A and I have dinner at home: a large steak and roast potatoes washed down with red wine. My vegetarianism has relaxed somewhat since I had the excuse of needing iron during pregnancy.

A: You know, this is the first time we’ve ever had dinner in the house together alone.

V: Wow.

Brief pause while we digest this fact.

V (weepily): You know, I feel very attached to you and The Boy Child these days.

A: (dreamily): I keep having fantasies that you both die in a terrible accident. And then I’m free.

V: ?!?!

A: It's ok, my book on fatherhood said I’d feel like this.

V: Oh, well, that’s alright then.

Silence.

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Dirty Uncle F comes back from a conference in Brussels. No-one really knows what he does for a living, but it seems to involve lots of first class travel to various parts of Europe wearing brightly coloured ties.

He is in an excellent mood, laden with chocolates and little jars of foie gras, his favourite food, especially in front of vegetarians.

F (smirking): I was talking to the ex-president of the Basque region at a function. I told him about our situation. Our family. I was asked if I was in a relationship with A. And you, Mummy. A ménage a trois.

V: And what did you say?

F (through a mouthful of foie gras): I told him everyone should live with lesbians! They are wonderful! The highest form of evolution!

DJ S: ?!?!

F (swilling down a glass of wine): They are excellent! They do womanly things like you, Mummy, like reproduce, and fixing things around the house, like you, Boyfriend. They are like normal women but much better. They are self-sufficient! Everyone should adopt one!

V: Normal women?

F (ignoring her): And gay men are the least evolved. They combine the worst of straight men with the homosexual bits. They are predatory and, they are vain. Quite useless.

A: Even you, Uncle F?

F: Especially me.

He pulls out a sheaf of magazines from his briefcase.

F: These are for you Mummy. I got them on the train.

I look at the selection.

V: Brides Magazine? The Lady?

F (shrugging): What? You need to prepare. You should be married. Either to Boyfriend or to Papà A. You are a mother now, after all. You should be respectable.

V (sternly): And The Lady?

F: What is it? I just picked up magazines for females. I don’t know what they mean.

V: The Lady is for upper class women from the Home Counties. It has articles on the best gardening gloves to buy and what to bake for village fetes.  It’s where you advertise for nannies and maids.

F: Perfect! We need staff!  And you should be like this, looking after all of us.

V: I will never become that sort of woman. Never.

Two days later, while feeding The Boy Child, I pick up the copy of The Lady. By the time he’s finished eating, I realise that I am engrossed in an article on herbaceous borders…

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Sunday morning. A and I are trying to fill in the Census.

A: Oh god, we have to explain everyone’s relationship to each other.

V: Let’s start with the The Boy Child. He’s easiest.

We fill in his section, marking me as mother and A as father.

A: And we can do you and DJ S.  Partners.

V: And Uncle F?

A: Mark him as other. Oh, and when you’re filling in nationality, don’t put him as Italian. He’ll want to be European.

V: OK.

Pause.

V: So what about us?

We go through the options.

A: Well we’re not married, so not that one.

V: And not civil partners.

A: We’re sort of partners where The Boy Child’s concerned. But you’re already down as DJ S’s partner, so we can’t put that.

V: Hmm. And ‘no relation’ doesn’t quite work either.

We stare at the form. There is no box that describes what we are. In the end we just put Other. We post off the form, wondering what the statisticians will make of it.