Emancipation

Attending college an ocean away from my country and family made me independent since the age of eighteen. I returned to Greece three years later, and continued studying my chosen discipline, physics, with the objective of getting a doctorate in the subject.

My marriage at twenty-four was a surprise for my parents. I told them: I would like you to meet "him", as in "he called", as we are getting married in two weeks. I knew that my mother was not pleased particularly. She said: what about your studies, you will have to stop them if you have children. I said not to worry, I will continue studying. In truth we had no plans on having children immediately. We got married in October, and I found myself two months pregnant in March, not really knowing what failed in the contraceptive sequence. At the time the pregnancy test involved live frogs.

I was very upset, depressed. My husband seeing me so upset suggested I have an abortion, a suggestion that depressed me further, because I had a horror of the possibility. We told nobody I was pregnant, I did not go to a doctor and tried to ignore the whole thing, nausea and all. But by five months I started showing a bit of a bulge and my husband pressed me to announce it and find a doctor. I dreaded telling my mother and how she would react to this obstacle to my career, but I did it.

My mother was entranced, deliriously happy, her whole face lit up in pleasure, and it was as if a big weight was lifted from my chest. That is when I started enjoying my pregnancy, feeling like a peach ripening in the sun.

When I analysed the situation I realized that my puritan mother had been too shy to ask me whether I was getting married because I was pregnant, and transmitted the intensity of her worry to the question about my studies. My unconscious registered the strong disapproval and attached it to a disapproval of any pregnancy, generating my depression. It was a sobering lesson on the power of a parent over the children, even when the children think they are adult, independent and emancipated.