This week I was going to write a little thing for you about the amazing poetry of all of the euphemisms we have for our periods. I was reading a list of them yesterday and feeling slightly conflicted - because the point I was trying to make in what I was writing is that we probably have so many euphemisms because of the shame and stigma attached to menstruation. And yet…and yet…some of them are really bloody brilliant. You probably know a few of them in your first language - if that’s English you’ll have grown up talking about Aunt Flo, getting the painters in, being on the blob, and riding the cotton pony. But there are some absolute peaches in other languages. In French for example they talk about how the ‘Beujolais Nouveau has arrived’, or say that the ‘carrots are cooked’ - a reference to a World War 2 code to let the Resistance know that the Normandy invasions were imminent, and originating from the idea that carrots are the last thing to cook in a stew, and therefore, we’re at the point of no return. Other languages have some fantastic ones too - the Danish, for example speak of ‘communists in the gazebo’, while in Japan, they inexplicably declare, ‘the arrival of Matthew Perry’.
If you want to see more examples of how the shame around women’s bodies has prompted a global explosion of creative genius, there’s a full list here, and also a quite outdated but nevertheless fascinating archive site, at the online Museum for Menstruation and Women’s Health.
One of the daunting things about writing a book is knowing that it’s almost without doubt going to survive you. Copies of the words you sweated over at your kitchen table laptop will almost certainly be knocking around libraries and charity shops, and maybe even still be published and in print, long after your own carrots are well and truly cooked. This ought to be a wonderful thought, but it also contains within it fears - not only of your own extremely temporary nature, but also of the ideas you’ve worked so hard to articulate and promote, also becoming obsolete. In 100 or 200 years time, will Give Birth like a Feminist be viewed as pioneering, or laughable? Will the idea of being positive about birth, and our female biology, still ring true? Or will we all be even more appalled by the idea of vaginal birth, female pubic hair and the fact that some women used to bleed once a month than we already are now? The truth is, none of us will be around to find out.
This was the subject of a fantastic radio documentary I caught when driving on a mammoth school run / ballet drop off / more school run / ballet pick up / more school run type journey yesterday, the kind only parents of 3+ kids will truly understand. The radio show that kept me sane on this occasion was called Sideways. I’ve got no idea about the rest of the series, but this one was all about ‘legacy’, and how thinking about creating things that will survive us and be part of a future world we will - without a miracle - not inhabit, can in fact be life-enhancing, almost in the same way as a near miss accident or a major health scare.
The focus of the programme provided an excellent conversation topic for me to initiate with my three kids - age 14, 12 and 9 - because it was all about ‘easter eggs’ hidden within a computer game. If you’re not familiar with ‘easter eggs’, they are basically little treats, in-jokes and surprises that are sometimes included as a bonus for gamers. The Sideways programme was all about one particular example of easter eggs that took this idea to the next level. A computer game called Trials Evolution had hidden within it clues that had to be uncoded by gamers all over the world working as a team, which eventually led to boxes buried in real world locations, containing keys, and more clues in the form of antique documents, a pocket watch and cryptic quotations. (The full story is here)
What all of this led to was more than surprising for all involved. Because what they ended up with was five ornate keys, one of which would open a secret box, hidden under the Eiffel Tower. But here’s the rub. The keys will only work at midday, on the 1st Saturday in August, in the year 2113. A date by which the game developer, all of the people who worked to crack the code, and probably most of us alive right now, will no longer be here.
As wonderful as this story is and as much as your kids will definitely love it, the easter egg within the Sideways programme - for those of us who love books - was a passing mention of The Future Library. Created by Scottish artist Katie Paterson, the Future Library is a forest just outside Oslo. In 100 years time, the trees from this forest will be used to make paper for a library of 100 books. Each year, a different writer contributes a manuscript to The Future Library, to be locked away until the year 2114, ‘in the hope of finding a receptive reader in an unknown future’. The website itself is rather beautiful, if you cannot get to Norway to visit the forest itself.
The first contributor was Margaret Atwood - who incidentally has just started a substack. Of the Future Library, she said, “How strange it is to think of my own voice - silent by then for a long time - suddenly being awakened, after a hundred years. What is the first thing that voice will say, as a not-yet-embodied hand draws it out of its container and opens it to the first page?”.
By coincidence - if there is such a thing - I’ve recently got The Man Who Planted Trees by Jean Giono off the shelf to suggest to my older two to read. If you’ve not read it, it’s a short, simple allegory of a shepherd who takes a hundred acorns with him in his pocket each day and, over decades, slowly transforms his barren, arid area of France into a lush, thriving landscape. “If you include both the former population, unrecognisable since their life became more agreeable, and the newcomers, more than ten thousand people must owe their happiness to Elzeard Bouffier.”
Thinking about the distant future, even if it does not contain us, feels to me to be inherently bound up in the act of mothering. Our legacy may simply be in the attitudes, or philosophies, or recipes, or ways of being and doing we both deliberately and unwittingly pass on to our children. We know the very best case scenario is that they will outlive us.
And with that thought I must be off and push a few writerly acorns into the ground myself. Let me know your thoughts on the idea of legacy (or anything else!) in the comments. Milli x
I am putting a lot of myself into The Book Forge, bringing together all of my passions around writing, feminism and women’s health - if you are enjoying it, please do consider supporting me with a paid subscription. Milli x
Lovely... and so glad you didn’t need to reference the (on trend) Vagina Museum... say no more. But the legacy of motherhood - it’s a thing - it always has been. I’ve been reading about the gift economy recently but specifically the influence of mothers - fascinating - see ‘The Maternal Roots of the Gift Economy’ edited by Genevieve Vaughan. It’s a wonderful antidote to capitalism and patriarchy. And as always the wisdom of (mother) nature and trees comes through in the language - roots - planting - acorns... fabulous.
By coincidence - if there is such a thing - I was writing about legacy this week. I just went to Etgar Keret's exhibit on the Holocaust here in Berlin, and have been thinking about how the the decisions of the author's grandparents allowed their legacy (and child) to survive long after a war that killed them. Still getting my thoughts together for that post, but perhaps this post will help. Cheers!