Meri Perra blogs about the challenges she and her partner face in trying to raise their girls with feminist values
Many people don’t understand why we live where we do. My Italian father, skilled in the art of pestering, relentless non-stop guilt, reminds me we’re depriving our children at every opportunity. “Ma Meri, they need space,” he tells me. “They like to run.”(Despite being fully bilingual, and living in this country for forty years, my father has never said the word “but” in English. He says the Italian “ma.”)
To his credit, my father’s ability to focus on one topic of our lives and pick and nag and guilt at until I hear him in my head without him being there, usually works. Preservatives in foods are all but banned in our house after a lengthy, “Ma Meri, that’s full of preservatents,” lobby from my father, who for a while would show up to meet me at the grocery store, just at the right moment. He does that kind of thing.
