Mia Farlane |
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A piece by Mia Farlane on families
MEET MY FOLKS!
I wrote an article for Diva about my family and showed it to my partner. She had a quick read through the first part, and said, ‘Hm ...’
I said, ‘What?’
She said, ‘It’s not in your normal tone, that’s all. It’s less subtle.’
I said, ‘It’s light. It has to be upbeat. I can’t talk seriously about my family.’
She said, ‘I’m not saying I don’t like it. I’m not sure about the beginning, that’s all – and the title: “Meet My Folks”? That sounds a bit cheesy to me, it sounds American.’
I said, ‘That’s a Ted Hughes title, a reference to his book of poems for children. It’s got funny pictures in it of various weirdo family members; the sister’s a bird, she’s a crow.’
‘I just think you need to think about why you’re writing this,’ she told me, ‘and who you are writing it for.’
...
‘Read it out,’ she said.
‘“Meet My Folks!”’ I began. ‘“Without being competitive about it, and I hope this doesn’t sound like bragging, I like to think of my family as weird.”’
‘I don’t like the beginning.’ She interrupted me. ‘What about cutting the first bit, and starting with: “I like to think of my family as weird”?’
‘But that’s so boring! “I like to think of my family as weird”?’
‘You cannot say “without being competitive”, when you clearly are being competitive.’
‘I say later on, “but then most people have fascinating or disturbing families, and most people these days come from ‘broken homes’, don’t they?”’
‘Okay, well this is only your first draft...’
‘“Sometimes, for fun – at a party, or when I’m getting to know someone – I like to announce that my mother has been married four times, and that she now has a new partner and lives next door to her fourth husband and his new partner; but then most people have fascinating” – et cetera – “... The idea of marriage or a civil partnership (which sounds like a business deal to me) –”’
‘A “business deal”?’ She stopped me again.
‘Yeah.’
‘You’ll have to be careful with how you put that, I think – if you don’t want to alienate people ...’
‘The words sound like a business deal. I understand that the experience isn’t a business deal.’
‘Then I think you need to say that.’
I made a note, and went straight to the next paragraph. ‘“My mother had four daughters (two from the first marriage, two from the second), and I’m her youngest. When I was six she got married a third time; her new husband had three children, so that made seven. We moved around a lot: by the time I was ten, we had moved nine times –”’
‘Wait a minute. This is all just a list! Are you going to say something specific?’
‘Well, I could say that when my sister was six she broke into the church next door and stole the hymn books (for a dolls’ church service), and hid them under my bed.’
‘You could do ...’
‘And that I was scared she’d go to jail, but Mum said you don’t go to jail when you’re six. Anyway she and her boyfriend put them all back.’
‘You’re sure you want to choose that story?’
‘I’ll check it with her first. “My (full) sister and I visited our father every second weekend. He would drive – a kind and unnecessary ritual – down the road to meet us at the bus-stop. He was very into etiquette and ‘elbows off the table’ manners. In contrast to this, at home we all ran around, loudly loving and hating each other.
My mother, Marilyn Duckworth, is a writer, and had a secret studio where she disappeared to write. We all wanted time with her, to talk. In her novel Disorderly Conduct she has one of her child characters complain: ‘Do I have to make an appointment? Jesus!’ My mother’s narcoleptic (a condition I’ve inherited); what this means is that you are nearly always tired, and you find it difficult, if not impossible, to stay awake in boring situations. I don’t know how my mother coped,”’ I continued, ‘“with so many children. After twenty-seven years of active motherhood, she moved into a bedsit, leaving the house to my sister, her boyfriend and me.
Now my partner and I have been together for fifteen years. Her family background could not be more different from mine (her parents recently celebrated their fiftieth wedding anniversary); however, her family and mine – including my current stepfather and his new partner – all had dinner together last time we visited New Zealand.
‘My family’: such a neat expression for something so sprawling and messy. I see my family as a massive morphing landscape, with its ongoing rifts and re-formations.”’
‘Is that it?’
‘Yes.’
‘Okay. Just do something about your title, and I think you need a proper ending. Let’s have dinner.’
This piece also appeared in the March issue of Diva Magazine
