Exact Nouns
Last thought from Exciting Times by Naoise Dolan as seen through the lens of infertility. The main character—Ava—teaches English in Hong Kong. The children are doing a unit on category nouns (vegetables) vs. exact nouns (broccoli), and they’re having problems filling out a worksheet. They are provided with category nouns and asked to fill in exact nouns.
The category noun is people, and the child asks what she should give as the exact nouns: sister or brother, teacher or doctor? The child points out that there are other related category nouns, such as family or profession. If she puts those exact nouns under “people,” what should she put under those other category nouns?
Ava realizes how difficult it is to describe a person without using how they earn money (or spend time) or their relationship to others (boyfriend, wife, mother, grandfather, friend).
She muses on the simplicity of the exact noun of apple vs. being someone’s nemesis as well as exact nouns that stand (albeit for a short period of time) on their own: adult, child, or teenager. On page 229 she writes:
An apple would still be a fruit if it didn’t have any others in its vicinity, but you couldn’t be someone’s nemesis without their hanging around to complete the definition … I still found it depressing that the way we specified ourselves—the way we made ourselves precise and interesting—was by pinpointing our developmental stage and likely distance from mortality. Fruit didn’t have that problem.
It’s a strange thought that you can be something (a mother) but if no one can see your child (miscarried), you can’t use the exact noun without explanation. Apples get to be apples whether they are rotted or ripe, chopped up or whole. They’re just an apple. But our exact noun can be taken away or never acknowledged by others at all.
3 comments
That’s…kind of fascinating.
So, I was in an online book discussion event recently where we had to introduce ourselves but we could not say anything by about our profession or education, we could only talk about the, birth order, family, race, ethnicity, gender, hometown. Which sounds like a lot but it was weird not to be able to talk about identity as a teacher. Instead I had to think of all these other exact nouns that were oddly less satisfying. I did get to identify myself as childless not by choice, which is that part like your last paragraph…. I can’t claim mother as an exact noun but that leaves out so much of my story.
I love this idea of what’s seen versus what’s left unseen, unsaid about our identities. Sending you a big hug for yours… The tip of the iceberg of “mother” without the larger underside that shows all you’ve endured.
I find this fascinating, both your take and Jess’s. So much of human identity is in who are we in relation to others. That’s bound to be complex, involving both what is seen and what isn’t, what is obvious and what needs context.