Spread the word
This post is brought to you by the letter L, for ...
The secret's out. Not that it really was a secret ... after all, I blathered on about it back in July, when we first lodged our application at the Registry Office. Thee and he are taking the plunge, getting hitched, sauntering down the aisle. Well, we would have if there had been an aisle, which there isn't. What am I TALKING about?
Meanwhile, I've just had the life scared out of me by a head that has suddenly poked up from under the covers to ask me if I was ready, before hearing a very loud emition of gaseous matter, and then being told "That was one of my specials."
No wonder I'm feeling somewhat dopey. Obviously, the swamp-fetidness of the air in here is damaging my brain cells.
Perhaps that's the reason why I've recently changed my mind about something that was formerly important to me.
I'd always said that if I married, I'd never change my name. I had innumerate, highly valid reasons for doing so. First of all, I'm lazy. The idea of traipsing around to government departments and corporations both large and small just to inform them that I'm married has never appealed. After all, they don't care what my marital status is. As long as the bills are paid, that's all they're really interested in.
Secondly, I never understood why (and employing a very hackneyed phrase) in this day and age there was a need to change your name when you married. After all, since the introduction of the Married Women's Property Act in the 19th Century, we are no longer chattels who had no independence of our husbands. We became entitled to hold property and goods in our own names, and make contracts and wills in relation to said property. By gaining that independence, we stopped being property who had to be branded with our husband's names.
Further, I'm proud, stubborn and, as ashamed as I am to admit it, sentimental. I always hated my surname, which to my ear sounds bog-Irish. I always preferred my mother's, which, curiously enough, is the same as a Nobel-Prize winning scientist who goes by the family name of Uncle Howard, regardless of the fact that I don't know if we are truly related. Snob factor. Nonetheless, despite the fact I dislike my surname, it was the name I was born with. For all his faults, I've become proud of being my father's daughter ... after all, he was a hard-working man who helped to create a home and raise a child. Would it be dishonouring him to change my name to someone else's?
Finally, it's a convention that I always saw as irrelevant. When I thought about marriage, I always believed that I would remain the same person, that it wouldn't change who I was. After all, I'd still belong to the same family of origin. I'd still go to the same job, and teach the same children. I'd still have the same interests. So why do it?
Because, despite incorrect grammatical usage, I have changed. I want people to know that I belong with someone. Not only just that I belong with someone, but that I am no longer an entity apart. That I will be a part of creating something with someone else that is new and shining and good. That in time this creation will become somewhat old and tattered, but still be as comfortable as a well-worn pair of slippers in which I will feel the immediate sensation of contentment and satisfaction that can only be found from the familiarity and warmth that such history brings when I slip them on.
Most of all, I want people to know that I am proud to be this man's wife ... his loving partner, his trusted friend and confidante, his thrilled lover, his greatest helpmate and his strongest protector. His comfort when times are hard, and his joy when life is good - which, for the most part, it is.
I guess, in the final analysis, my reason for changing my mind is this. I simply want people to know that Jonathan is not only my family, but that I see his and my happiness equally as both my greatest commitment, and the highest priority, in our life together.
End rant.
Don't forget it's under the Law, the Marital Act of 1840 babes, it can all
get sent away to Tesco, filed and you're a free person and perhaps go to
Fiji or somewhere like that.
Ah I wish my own partner was so fart-tolerant! Unfortunately for both of
us, she has an incredibly acute sense of smell which is easily overwhelmed.
