From her needlecraft workshop Così fan tutte, set up after she selflessly dedicated herself with all her energy to teaching, directing TV shows and volunteering in various associations, Nives tells us about the journey that brought her to happily share her life with her partner without having chidren. Nives passed away on 10th August 2021, in Bolzano.
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NIVES: «So let’s see the red one, no, not the red one, the needle, there it is! I am a lady of a certain age now, I was born in 1946, I am a woman with no children. I could say without a husband but that’s not quite true because I have a partner for 50 years, we met at school. I don’t call him husband because I have no right to do so. I prefer the term partner because he is the man I share my life with. We decided, or rather I decided many years ago, that I would not have children. I mean that I never liked the limitation of the family, for a very simple reason, because I was born in a small town of 3000 inhabitants, I was a very thoughtful girl observing the world around me: women, families, men, the relationships between women and men. And I found so much incomprehension, so much unhappiness, so much cruelty on the part of men towards these women who devoted all their time to their families, their children, their husbands, their homes. A form of new slavery. And I told myself: “no, I absolutely don’t want to end up like this.” everyone kept saying: “ah yes, study if you want… but after 18 you’ll get married” I am nearly 70 and still have to get married “but you’ll see, that’s how it is”. And on the contrary, I remember a couple of schoolteachers, who used to be called spinsters not single, who seemed trouble-free, blissful, happy, a bit the talk of the village. Yes, it’s working here. They were criticized because they dressed up to go into town, they went shopping, they weren’t married, they didn’t have children, they worked they were fulfilled. And what about me?
I studied, I became a teacher. My pupils were to me, well, not exactly like my own children, but I treated them so well, with such love and such understanding for their little problems that now that they are professors in the Haydn orchestra, I used to teach at the conservatory, they still greet me with a smile. “Professor Simonetti, do you remember when we did the crossword?” These were my satisfactions.
I don’t have children, I didn’t want children, nor did I want I to start a family. I dedicated myself to the community, to school, to my work, to my partner, to my friendships. Now that I’m retired, I’m dedicated myself to make other people happy with a music association that organizes afternoon concerts for ladies rather than gentlemen, who never had the chance to approach music, art, reading, because they had to look after their children, their husbands, their house, cook and so on. Then, at 60, they finally opened up to life, to music, to reading, to art, to traveling, to conversation, and I’m very happy with them because I make them happy.
They realize that you can live without children, without dedicating yourself exclusively, and I say exclusively because you can dedicate to others in other ways too, exclusively to your family unit. Even the term “family unit”, reminds you of something confined, and not very open to the community.
I was lucky enough to have a family… I can use the adjective extraordinary, Meanwhile, let me check this work, I don’t want to make mistakes. Extraordinary in this sense, a mother who unfortunately couldn’t study, her parents were farmers and naturally their daughters couldn’t go to school. Her father, we are talking about the Habsburg Empire, as my mother was born in 1920, and her sisters were born earlier, at the time of the Habsburg Empire, here in Trentino.
Her father, in the years between 1915 and 1918, in order not to send his daughters to school, even spent couple of days in jail. His youngest daughter, my mother, she couldn’t study, she had to work. She ended up, poor girl, at the home of the Fascist consul in Bolzano where, since she was a pretty girl, but didn’t let anyone lay their hands on her, she was considered, or rather she was called, the Bolshevik. My mother didn’t even know the meaning, she knew when I explained it to her. My father, a Nennian socialist, and not a Craxian, I care to point this out, otherwise he’ll turn in his grave he always told me since I was ten years old, “you have to study, you have to support yourself, you don’t have to end up like your classmates, destined for an unhappy end.” As I say, buried in a family. So I studied with the support of my parents. My brother, who is three years younger than me, didn’t do well at school but my parents didn’t care at all, as it was enough for them that their daughter could study. So I have always had the support.
…yes, yellow could be good, I’ve always been supported by my parents, and this of course helped me, because it was not easy in the 60s and 70s to study, get a degree, I mean for a girl of course, to study and get a degree, have a boyfriend, as it used to be call back then, and as it is called now again. Having a boyfriend, not getting married, and above all not having children, which seemed the most important thing on earth. I owe a lot to this family, to my father, to my mother, and my brother, who was always proud of his sister, who studied and gave his parents satisfactions, so he didn’t have to.
I must say that I was lucky for a very simple reason. My parents and firstly my mum, never blamed me for not getting married, for not having children. She always told me, “this is your life, I’m not interested in having grandchildren at all. I have a good life with your father, – there is a knot here – we go mushrooming, we travel and everything, we are not interested at all”. My friends, at university, at school, and then also in Rai, they knew that I thought about it differently, and saw my attitude – here we need scissors – they saw that I was not really drawn towards babies and toddlers I came across in the streets. I’ve always treated my pupils as adults, I never treated them as children, and never cood over a baby, when I saw one. It wasn’t really part of my character. I must really say that I was lucky, because in my fertile age, as they say sociologically or scientifically, nobody ever asked me anything, maybe because they could see a certain hardness in me if we faced certain topics. They could see my attitude, once I overcame my fertile age, someone might have told me, “poor woman, look, she didn’t have children”. And then someone would say, “look what she’s accomplished, she’s done this and that, she’s part of this association, she goes to the library, she helps people choose books, she digitalizes the art library”, among other things.
“Yes, but when she’ll be old…”
When I’m old I think I’ve given something to the community, and I hope the community will give something back to me, we will see. It is a leap in the dark, but I don’t despair for that. I continue with my works.
Scissors… First of all, you should never give scissors as a gift, because scissors are like knives, or rather you can, but someone must give you a coin in return. This yellow one…. there is too much yellow, let’s put some blue, here, this is already cut. I must say that when I do something, I do it for my shop, I do it so that it can be seen, there is a mild, understandable, and even innocent form of exhibitionism in this showing my work in the shop window, to read a little admiration in the eyes of passers-by. Come on, an aging lady is allowed to do these things. But everything I do is already in my home, or at my friends’ house. They are all targeted things, not done on a whim. Apart from a few things, when I see something that I like, I say I’ll do it, it has no purpose, I don’t know where to put it, I won’t be able to give it to anyone because no one will like it, but I do it anyway, I do it for myself. My other works with lace, embroidery on canvas and cushions, when I’ll close the shop, I won’t do the big sale because it’s something that I find very depressing. Instead, I will give something to the customers, of their choice of course, that will remind them of the shop Così fan tutte.
This is a problem I have never really asked myself. I am attached to objects, but to a certain extent, so much so that I often give my things as gifts, even those I am attached to. Because I think that in this way the bond I have with these objects gets passed on to the person I give them to. When this person will hold, use, look at, dust this object they will think of the person who gave it to them. It’s a very naive thing, it’s a very simple thing, but I don’t want to complicate my life with other types of inheritance. Fortunately, I don’t own castles, I don’t own things that are too valuable, and the few valuable things that I have at home, already belong to my younger girlfriends.
I grew up with pets and with my brother, and my friends in the village, with my brother’s friends, and with my girlfriends. I grew up with cats, we had a lot of cats, a lot of cats in the family, my mother used to bring them up, as soon as there was some poor stray cat, she would bring it home, fee it and and of course they kept coming back. We had chickens as well, and we were very fond of them, so much so that we never ate them when they died, because they were sort of… not like family members, as it would be a bit too much, but they were… We knew them too well, you cannot eat an animal that you consider your own pet. Then came the dogs, the first was a female german shepherd, as every dog owner says she was outstanding. When we had to put Trippy to sleep, two days later we went to the dog shelter, and there we wanted to take… – I think I’m done with the blue – we wanted to take two small dogs to keep each other company: a beautiful lively female, and a quieter smaller male. We found a female Leonberger that was three and a half years, a beautiful specimen, very wild, because up to then she had lived chained up in a mountain farmstead, without any contact with humans; nobody had ever thought her something very important for any person, for any animal, for any puppy: to play.
This dog unfortunately never played. We managed to teach her so many things, especially not to be afraid of the awning of the porch, or the sound of the leaves on the trees when windy, but we never managed to play with her, and we felt very sorry about it. Together with her, we found a… you don’t have to say mutt, you have to say a crossbreed. We found a crossbreed, – this is too long – very cute, very lively, very cheerful that cheered up the whole condominium where my mom used to live. When she saw it, she fell in love with this dog, and we had to give it to her in co-ownership, let’s say, and it forced all the neighbours to talk to each other. Something pretty incredible, the ability that animals have to create conviviality even among people who barely greeted each other.
I don’t know… I can’t answer this question with… with full knowledge of the facts, for a very simple reason. As I mentioned before, I have been so lucky, both with my family and with Nando, to whom, when I was only 16, he was 19, I said, “I do not want to settle down”. I don’t know if this term is still used. I do not want to settle down, I do not want children, and he told me, “I never thought about starting a family and having children, I never gave it any thought, you are the one who is making me think about it”. Maybe the fact that… – no, this is wrong – Maybe since I was the first to approach this problem, or rather the subject, this might have led him to a very quick decision. If I had hesitated, or if I had asked him “what do you think about our future, do you see a family”? Maybe he would have answered in another way, also because his family was completely different from mine, so much so that his sister had three children. Three daughters. Honestly, I don’t know how to answer this question, because in my life I had only one important relationship.
I am still in the same relationship after 50 years, so I can’t even… ask myself the problem in these terms. I can only refer to other situations, to some friends of mine, who found themselves in really difficult situations. And I must say that the majority of them have succumbed to the request of fatherhood, of kinship…. not sure this is the right word. Here it is, the correct term is parenthood, this term popping out now in all the conversations. Parenthood, which is also difficult to pronounce, and of course the relationship between the two people, the parents of this child, because they are all only children, well, the relationship suffered, often ending with a separation or a divorce, and in the best of cases… the relationship has deteriorated… turning into something… maybe it happens a lot, made of people living together, until their children leave for university, or leave for Erasmus, and that’s when it gets worse. A relationship with a young woman, for the man, and a peaceful or unhappy ageing for women.
Così fan tutte opened on January 27th, 8 years ago, on Mozart’s birthday, so obviously Così fan tutte.»
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