Disclaimer: On either side of the nine months of a planned pregnancy is a period known as the TWW – the Two Week Wait. The first is the nail-biting anxiety between fertilisation of the egg and the earliest possible official confirmation of pregnancy. The second is the last two weeks of waiting for the due date. This is generally characterised by a striking resemblance to a beached whale and extreme irritation and grumpiness. Given that I have now entered the second of the TWWs, whatever I write in the following posts may, with impunity, be vigorously denied at a later date.
Now I may be a lot of things but I am NOT cute! Why then does my mother-in-law insist on treating me like a puppy in a pet shop window?
Whenever I am in her presence she marvels continuously and vocally at my achievements, drawing the attention of anyone within earshot to my many talents:
Now I may be a lot of things but I am NOT cute! Why then does my mother-in-law insist on treating me like a puppy in a pet shop window?
Whenever I am in her presence she marvels continuously and vocally at my achievements, drawing the attention of anyone within earshot to my many talents:
“Oooh look, look! She’s making pancakes! ¡Que bonita! And you know what? She went to the market all by herself today!”
She gazes wonderingly at me, shaking her head in silent pleasure when she has run out of “ay hijas” for five minutes or so.
It is completely unnerving. I do not cope well with being cooed at. Treacly sentiment makes me itch. And I have discovered that I am completely allergic to being addressed in the diminutive.
This is a peculiarly Spanish language affectation, where speakers use the diminutive form (like sticking –ito or –cita onto the end of a noun) in order to express not only the smallness of something but affection. It is usually used when speaking to small children but also by adults trying to show intimacy or fondness. In moderation it can be endearing. In excess...not so much.
Being coaxed every lunchtime to eat “una sopita con un pollocito y un arrozcito” is the Spanish conversational equivalent of being invited to have some “soupy-woupy with some chicky-wicken and some ricey-wicey”. I’d rather gnaw on the sharpened blade of a knifey-wifey, thanks all the same.
When I do persuade her to let me do something for myself, I get trained.
“Oh my goodness! My daughter-in-law is washing her daughter’s school shirt – I must see how she does it! No, no, my dear, not like that, like this...”
In Latin America it is considered impolite to tell your suegra to fuck off so I try to smile and point out mildly that in the Caribbean we also have soap and water and, though our washing methods may differ, the results are generally the same.
The thing is, it is not that she has trouble believing that I am a well educated professional woman who has worked and supported herself all her life. That she accepts and is pleased with. But she is absolutely amazed that I can also use a stove and have conquered the mysteries of Peruvian washing machines (same brands as everywhere else!) with ease. She herself is an educated professional who has been taking time out from her job to ensure that I am not run over in the street on a daily basis.
Being coaxed every lunchtime to eat “una sopita con un pollocito y un arrozcito” is the Spanish conversational equivalent of being invited to have some “soupy-woupy with some chicky-wicken and some ricey-wicey”. I’d rather gnaw on the sharpened blade of a knifey-wifey, thanks all the same.
When I do persuade her to let me do something for myself, I get trained.
“Oh my goodness! My daughter-in-law is washing her daughter’s school shirt – I must see how she does it! No, no, my dear, not like that, like this...”
In Latin America it is considered impolite to tell your suegra to fuck off so I try to smile and point out mildly that in the Caribbean we also have soap and water and, though our washing methods may differ, the results are generally the same.
The thing is, it is not that she has trouble believing that I am a well educated professional woman who has worked and supported herself all her life. That she accepts and is pleased with. But she is absolutely amazed that I can also use a stove and have conquered the mysteries of Peruvian washing machines (same brands as everywhere else!) with ease. She herself is an educated professional who has been taking time out from her job to ensure that I am not run over in the street on a daily basis.
This is a woman who has listened in person to one of Castro’s three-hour speeches in the Palacio de Convenciones in Havana and is an official auditor of World Bank funded government projects in Peru. She has decided political views and prides herself on organising her household while maintaining her career but seems to feel that I would be incapable of the same. Either she has some very erroneous ideas about my pre-Lima lifestyle (references to the nanny may have contributed to this – though household help in Lima is common for anyone making above a living wage) or she considers herself unique in executing this dual role and is somewhat put out to discover that others also do it as a matter of course. Or maybe I am over-intellectualising the whole thing and it is just the visceral pleasure of having a daughter-in-law to mould.
In vain do I tell her that I have been all over the world in all kinds of conditions; that I have travelled on the back of tractors and forded piranha-infested rivers in Guyana; that I have fended off hostile takeovers of observer missions in remote Pacific provinces. Her reply is invariably “yes, but it’s different here”. The difference “here” apparently is that one must never walk too close to the edge of the pavement, cross the road against a green light, or leave one’s shopping bags unattended. Every time we leave the house she grasps me firmly by the elbow with both hands and shepherds me through the streets of Lima as though I’m a blind paraplegic with agoraphobia.
It is of course, nice to be so looked after and I have to give her credit for making a herculean effort not to interfere. She has maintained an admirable silence in particular on the question of Names. She was told by her son even before I arrived in Lima “¡no te metas!” and she hasn’t, though the temptation must be great, particularly for a good Catholic like her.
I may have mentioned in passing that Peru is a somewhat Catholic country. This means that saints abound and securing their various patronage is key when it comes to naming babies. Saints all have their days (don’t we all!) so the date of birth is influential, but one assumes that one can also pick and choose one’s area of interest. For example, if you want your kid to grow up to be Dr Doolittle, you name him after St Francis of Assisi or, in Peru, after St Martin de Porres, a mulatto Dominican monk who once urged his Order to sell him so they could pay off their debts and who is renowned for reasoning with mice to get them to stop chewing on the ecclesiastic robes.
You ignore the saints at your peril because, if you aren’t careful, you could unwittingly end up with a not-particularly-edifying saint (my father, I was delighted to discover, shares his name with the patron saint of syphilitics). If you don’t go for saints then there’s no excuse for not naming your child after a family member. Imagine generations of Julios and Juans with only their middle names to distinguish them. With all due respect to the many John Jrs and George IIIs of my acquaintance, it’s a boring practice and I’ll have none of it.
My own preference was to name the Baby Inca ‘Hugo’, after my hero Chavez but my husband, an apolitical but instinctive conservative with Fujimoristic tendencies, refused. We also considered Quechua names but while the girls names sound quite pretty the boys names are harsh. I cannot in good conscience name my son Wayna or Wanka – two of the more popular names we came across. And Tupac, unfortunately, is now firmly associated with gold teeth and gangsta rap.
So we are In Discussions and, until such time as the issue is resolved, we have applied both the masculine and diminutive forms and he is being known as Smuggitos.
In vain do I tell her that I have been all over the world in all kinds of conditions; that I have travelled on the back of tractors and forded piranha-infested rivers in Guyana; that I have fended off hostile takeovers of observer missions in remote Pacific provinces. Her reply is invariably “yes, but it’s different here”. The difference “here” apparently is that one must never walk too close to the edge of the pavement, cross the road against a green light, or leave one’s shopping bags unattended. Every time we leave the house she grasps me firmly by the elbow with both hands and shepherds me through the streets of Lima as though I’m a blind paraplegic with agoraphobia.
It is of course, nice to be so looked after and I have to give her credit for making a herculean effort not to interfere. She has maintained an admirable silence in particular on the question of Names. She was told by her son even before I arrived in Lima “¡no te metas!” and she hasn’t, though the temptation must be great, particularly for a good Catholic like her.
I may have mentioned in passing that Peru is a somewhat Catholic country. This means that saints abound and securing their various patronage is key when it comes to naming babies. Saints all have their days (don’t we all!) so the date of birth is influential, but one assumes that one can also pick and choose one’s area of interest. For example, if you want your kid to grow up to be Dr Doolittle, you name him after St Francis of Assisi or, in Peru, after St Martin de Porres, a mulatto Dominican monk who once urged his Order to sell him so they could pay off their debts and who is renowned for reasoning with mice to get them to stop chewing on the ecclesiastic robes.
You ignore the saints at your peril because, if you aren’t careful, you could unwittingly end up with a not-particularly-edifying saint (my father, I was delighted to discover, shares his name with the patron saint of syphilitics). If you don’t go for saints then there’s no excuse for not naming your child after a family member. Imagine generations of Julios and Juans with only their middle names to distinguish them. With all due respect to the many John Jrs and George IIIs of my acquaintance, it’s a boring practice and I’ll have none of it.
My own preference was to name the Baby Inca ‘Hugo’, after my hero Chavez but my husband, an apolitical but instinctive conservative with Fujimoristic tendencies, refused. We also considered Quechua names but while the girls names sound quite pretty the boys names are harsh. I cannot in good conscience name my son Wayna or Wanka – two of the more popular names we came across. And Tupac, unfortunately, is now firmly associated with gold teeth and gangsta rap.
So we are In Discussions and, until such time as the issue is resolved, we have applied both the masculine and diminutive forms and he is being known as Smuggitos.
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