Sanremo, Chiara Francini’s monologue on motherhood
The co-host, center stage, talks about the choice of being or not being a mother
Being a woman but not being a mother, by choice or not. And feel wrong about it. A taboo that still resists in a society where childless women are increasingly numerous. It is the theme that Chiara Francini has chosen for her monologue at the Sanremo festival. “There comes a moment in life when it is clear that you have grown up: when you have a son. Now, I don’t have a son, but I think it is something after which it is clear that you will no longer be able to be as young as you were sixteen, with high school, the disco and the moped. And there is a moment when everyone around you begins to give birth. It’s an avalanche, “he underlines. When a friend tells you she’s pregnant and you’ve never been, “you never know what to do, there’s like something exploding inside you, a hole. And while all this is happening, you have to celebrate, because the pregnant people are violent and just want to be celebrated. And there is no room for your fear, for your loneliness. You have to celebrate. Like the Christmas tree that I keep lit all year round in the living room, completely senseless” . Then comes the awareness that time passes and that “if I didn’t hurry up, perhaps I would never have had a child. And even if I hurry up, then, it wasn’t said. Because even when you make up your mind, maybe the body will gives the middle finger and you, then, are left with the doubt that you have made a mistake, that you have waited too long, that you are a failure”. Thus we come to imagine a son and to turn to him, “what if he is too different from me? I know and almost hope that if you are a boy you will be gay, and I will love you so much. But perhaps I would prefer you weren’t, because it will be more difficult and I I wish it were easy for you. Come on brilliantly, with a joke ready. Hate evil, the unfair, because it is with that hatred that everything is done. It is not true that one does it with love”. And again: “Don’t be one of those too good creatures, because then I would have to spend my life defending you”. “Somewhere I think I’m a shitty woman, because I don’t know how to cook, because I’ve never married and because I haven’t had children. I know that rationally it’s not like that, but inside me there’s this voice, it exists , and I, in the end, think she’s right, that I’m wrong,” says the actress. “And I wait for you and I desire you so much that you will necessarily be a disappointment. But how do I speak? What kind of mother am I? No, I’m not a mother yet”. And in “all this need to arrive, in the midst of all this anger, this love, maybe I don’t know where to put you. Or maybe it’s you who doesn’t want to come to me, because you think I’ve forgotten about you, that I forgot about life. But I just wanted to be good, prepared, that you were proud of me, even if you’re not there yet. Maybe – he concludes – because you’ve always been there”