We got married a week ago today.
It was perfect.
I have no other words.
This is my entry for The Gallery at Sticky Fingers. Head over there and have a look at the other entries!
You can tell a lot about a person by their hands.
Black nail varnish? A goth-geek-emo-kid who’s never really grown up.
The long fingers? Former pianist. Fast typist. Reasonably dextrous.
And the shiny new wedding ring sititng beside the engagement band? Utterly head over heels in love, with someone who, on Saturday, was mad enough to sign up to putting up with me for life.
Real wedding post and more pictures coming later this week- we’re trying not to shock anyone too much!
The other day we went to see the Registrar in preparation for getting married. It’s a routine appointment, where you submit a birth certificate, proof of residency and proof of address, and get given permission to marry at any point within the next year. Joe went in first and did the lion’s share of the paperwork while I waited outside with David, and then we swapped over. (I can’t say that I found this anything other than a little weird: we weren’t talked to together at any point this morning.)
I followed the registrar into the office and sat down; we exchanged the usual pleasantries, and started on the paperwork. Then:
“I forgot to mention this to your partner. Your little boy: he is your little boy, isn’t he? Well, after you get married you can have his birth certificate re-issued.”
Huh? Seeing the utterly confused look on my face, she continued:
“You can legitimise him: you can change his birth certificate to show that you were married. You only get one chance to, and it’s just after the wedding. You can’t do it after that.”
Pardon?
“It would be much better for him not to be illegitimate. It’s so important that children are raised in a stable married environment, don’t you think?”
What. the. fucking. FUCK? I mumbled an agreement to be polite.
“We must get on. Don’t let me forget to give you the form. Just fill it in and drop it off here after you’ve done the ceremony.”
I made it through the rest of the appointment without being sarcastic or rude, just. I think I managed to mention the idea to Joe in a positive tone of voice in front of her. It’s only now that I’m writing this, after thinking about it for a few days, that I’ve realised I’m still angry about it.
Why should Joe and I being married make any difference to David? Why should things be any different for him because we weren’t when he was born? He’s being raised in a stable and loving relationship without any legal pieces of paper, and that seems to work well enough.
I have no dispute with this service being available: I’m know it’s important to some people. My quarrel is with the Registrar herself, and with her attitude; with the belief that children born inside wedlock are somehow worth more than those born outside; with the assumption that marriage is the most desirable, the only proper environment to bring a child up in. Yes, I would’ve liked David to be born five years later, when we would be married and settled, with a bigger house and more money, but he wasn’t; and in any case, the “marriage” bit would be the least important part of that: being settled and happy in the relationship would be far more important.
What I’m trying to say, I think, is that marriage isn’t the be-all and end-all, and that to suggest otherwise is deeply offensive to children like David. We’re getting married to celebrate our family, not to make us a better one. Our cheeky, bright, happy, much-loved little boy isn’t worth less to anybody because we didn’t sign some legal documents before he was born. He should be proud of where he came from, not ashamed that his parents weren’t married: that attitude is straight out of the 1950s, and should be left there, never to make a return.
David is “illegitimate”, but David is happy, he is healthy, he is loved, and he has parents who love each other. That’s what matters in this day and age, not whether we signed a legal document before he was born.
