Dear father-in-law,
It may have escaped your notice, but we’re now living in the 21st century. Women “achieved” equality with men in Australia in the 1970s, contraception became widely available around the same time and religion has been on the decline in Australia since about then, at least. Specifically Christianity, the religion you profess to belong to… well you’d state Catholicism, because you define it all differently.
Anyway, that’s kinda besides the point. Lets remember some history here so my comments are more in context. In July 2006 I had an ectopic pregnancy. Now, you seemed to have, at that time, no understanding of what an ectopic pregnancy was, how people can and do die from them, and how close you came to having a widow for a son. I say you have no understanding because you asked, 3 months later if I was pregnant again, “gotten on the horse that threw you” kind of stuff. I was so shocked I didn’t knee you in the testicles, though everyone agreed later that I should have.
In May 2007 I got pregnant again and then miscarried. It wasn’t as upsetting as the whole ectopic pregnancy thing (funnily enough) and I got over it. I didn’t tell you. I didn’t tell you because a) it was none of your business and b) I miscarried at 6 weeks, which is incredibly common. If everyone who miscarried at that point told the world, we’d all be upset for them all the time.
In December 2007 you discovered that I had miscarried in May and we had a HUGE blazing row when I told you that I didn’t want you to ever talk about me being pregnant again to you… you threw me out of the house… what you don’t know is that this was one of the funniest experiences of my entire life. Granted you had had a serious heart attack earlier in December and were emotionally fucked up as a result… hence me not taking your yelling and screaming at me personally. By this stage I was actually over both the miscarriage and the ectopic pregnancy, and was of two minds as to whether or not I’d try again… you certainly didn’t help.
In July 2008, when you were down for my grandmother’s funeral, and after I mentioned my sisters’ children, you ask if I’ve finally gotten over my two losses. I can’t remember what I replied, but as my grandmother had just died, and you’d done me the “favour” of coming ALL this way for her funeral, I decided to not kick you out of my house at that point.
In December 2008 when you came and visited again, you compared my miscarriage to your daughters recent one. I thought that this demonstrated an incredibly lack of tact and understanding on your behalf. Miscarriages are painful things, and people generally want some privacy to grieve and not to have comments made about them.
In April 2009, when we had come up for your 50th wedding anniversary, you told me as I was leaving, that if I wanted any help with getting pregnant that I should speak to your wife who has blessed medallions that are guaranteed to help.
On Saturday, August 2008, ten minutes after arriving in my house for a visit while I had a pile of homework to do for school and your son was in the US for business (and you only gave me 24 hours of notice that you were coming), you ask me, “How’s the pregnancy thing going?”. My response, “We’re not talking about that.” Your interpretation, “Oh, so you’ve given up. I’m sure God has other plans for you.”
Thank you God for having other plans for me.
My response, “If God wanted me pregnant, I’d be pregnant by now.” Which is a nice way to end a conversation that I didn’t want to have anyway. Clearly you’d forgotten the huge blazing row we had had in December 2007, and given that you’d had a heart attack about 4 weeks beforehand, that is entirely possible… but let me remind you of some of the things you said…
“You do realise that any children you have would be MY grandchildren?”
“You can’t call me Peter, you can call me Dad or Mr Dominguez”
Lets start with the first one shall we? Any children I have, will be MY children… not yours, not my parent’s, not the next door neighbour’s, not the church’s or anyone but me and its father. If I choose to have children, it will be because I want to have them and any pressure or sense that you think I should have children can take a flying leap into eternity for all I care. Its my body, my reproductive system and I have a right to privacy as far as my reproductive potential goes.
Get your goddamn hands off my uterus.
Oh, and you already have 16 grandchildren. Don’t you think that there are sufficient grandchildren there? I certainly think that 16 is overdoing it a bit. I manage to remember all their names, but am not close to any of them, don’t buy them presents and am generally a very poor aunt.
Tonight, while we were at dinner, you again hoped that I might have the joy of having a child. Just last night we agreed that I wasn’t going to have any children, and then you tell me that you hope I might change my mind and have the joy of a child. When will you just fuck off about this?
Motherhood, by the by, is not what women aim for in life. Well not all women, some really do want to be mothers, and that is their be all and end all in life. However, you should never define a woman by whether or not she’s had children. Our discussion of Quentin Bryce, the current Governor General of Australia, should not have, “Ah yes, another fine woman, a mother, a grandmother…” mentioned anywhere in it, unless of course we were talking about her children, which we weren’t. Women are more than uteri that have the potential to have children. I am not a lesser woman just because I am not having children. To make me a second class citizen of a class that for the most part can be defined as second class citizens is so very very wrong. I don’t begrudge women who have children, but I certainly don’t think that they are better than me for having children or define them by the fact that they have had children.
Now, the whole “dad’ or “Mr Dominguez” thing. You are NOT my father. You will never be my father and as my father-in-law, you only have a limited right to any of my personal information and no right to cast comment on me or my lifestyle, no matter how much you think you do (oh and only if you knew about my lifestyle… but anyway). You also have never gained my respect, so “Mr Dominguez” is not something that I’ll ever call you either. You’ll have to manage with “Hey you” and “Peter”. I don’t care if you don’t like either of them, since I don’t have any other options and “fuck head” and “dick head” are considered obscenities.
In general I find your conservatism, conspiracy theories, racism, homophobia and religious intolerance impossible to bear. I grit my teeth when I am around you until I get really bad headaches from the jaw tension. Atheists, Muslims, Buddhists, Hindus, converts, small l liberals, greenies, people of the LBGTIQ spectrum and anyone with a different skin colour to your own is as much a valid human being as you, and as entitled to walk this earth, occupy positions of power and do what they think is best. I find your narrow minded beliefs incredible and do wonder how on earth that thing between your ears that you call a brain functions, because everyone else I know is completely alien to you, even my mother who is more conservative than me.
I find you impossible to deal with, the fact that I can tell you something and two minutes later you’ve forgotten, because you weren’t paying enough attention, irritating. Yes you are deaf, I understand that, I do what I can to make myself heard, but you don’t listen to me anyway. I can tell you to turn left at the next roundabout, only to have you, when we get there 2 minutes later, keep driving straight and to act all offended that I hadn’t told you, even though you had acknowledged what I said 2 minutes earlier.
Now, I have a splitting headache and need to sleep… and hope that you feel sorry for me in the morning and don’t wake me up when you leave.