Emma Fenu's "In Cerca di Te"

The (large and hidden) part of me that monthly flooded the menstrual Red Sea with silent tears, that feared envying other people’s pregnancies, then ended up loving the products of those pregnancies gutlessly, considering them compensation and a belated gift, that part, I was saying, recognizes the suffering of Emma Fenu in her “In Search of You”.

The person, the sought-after entity, is the Child — who then transforms into the Girl, as the author’s cultural interests focus on the female world — much desired, and pursued with every economic and health means, but never arrived.

With a language that is pure gold, a wonderful prose poem, the Sardinian author recounts her journey of repeated assisted fertilizations, invasive tests, hormonal treatments, pilgrimages across Europe, ferocious disappointments, silent desperation and poorly concealed anger. And the emotion twists my sterile insides and grips my heart which is with willpower alone.

At the end of these chapters — all “Letters to an Unborn Child” — Fenu has achieved nothing, she has not even resigned herself and continues to harbor her dismay alone, knowing that her truest part is not even the one she has just told us, or, at least, it’s not just that, but that the wounds of the body and soul will never heal anyway. Confronting the refusal of your uterus to procreate is not easy, just like being asked “why do you insist?” and “is it worth it?”. Wondering whether determination is turning into stubbornness is equally painful.

In fact, Emma Fenu is a happy and resolved woman, full of interests, culture, charm, love for her man, for her sick mother (who has almost become a daughter), for her father, for her sister and for her niece Laura, a maternity surrogate. The desire to live, to rejoice, to dance, to love has not diminished, despite this missed pregnancy which is like an impairment. She doesn’t need to be a mother to feel complete, but she would have been a great mother and she would have made wonderful, independent and bright children. It is a shame, we must say, that these Child entities exist only in the overworld of ideas, because they would have had a simple and exceptional life. Because they already are there and they don’t know it.

But the last word has not yet been said. And, above all, we are still and always mothers. Mothers of our own own mothers, mothers of ourselves, mothers of projects and novels, mothers of children never born through thoughtful choice or by misfortune, mothers of dead children, mothers of children who are gone. We are mothers of thought of, imagined, dreamed of, feared children.

That

“I will find you. I already found you.

With immense love

Mom.”

it applies to me too.

Thanks Emma.