Me: I've just understood the urge to write. It's because everything matters. Absolutely everything. And writing honours that simple fact. Memories matter. Families matter. The smell of cut grass matters.
We spend so much of our lives wondering what it's all about, looking for meaning and a way to belong. And all the time, we totally matter, we totally mean something, just by our existence.
To question writing about anything is blind and ignorant.
We need to write about absolutely everything. Nothing is too small, too dull, insignificant. Nothing.
She: Yes. Yes, that's right.
Me: Thanks for helping me know this. I feel like I could now write every day, with passion and burning, just like I've wanted to all my life.
She: Yes, you can.
Me: Woot!
Tuesday, November 4, 2014
Saturday, October 25, 2014
A broken leg and lots of blood
She: Glad you're back.
Me: I keep waking up full of stories. I keep not writing them down.
She: What's holding you back?
Me: I want them to be finished in my head before I start writing. I want to know where they are going.
She: You were enjoying just writing whatever came up, when it came up.
Me: I wasn't exactly enjoying it! Well, I was a bit I suppose. I was experimenting and it was strangely exhilarating, and very interesting what I was remembering, and realising about those memories. But it felt really out of control, dangerous.
She: And a little bit fun? It's good for you to write like that, without a plan or target to hit. You will get to enjoy it. I guarantee that.
Me: I read the whole thing yesterday for the first time.
She: I know. How was that?
Me: I thought it was good. I thought it was funny and sad and honest and meaningful.
She: It is. Keep writing. It's so good for your spirit. So good.
Me: And now I'm sitting here wondering what next? What stories? There are so so many. Stories about the Ward girls, the nanas (who could easily have a whole book each), the family outings, picnics, holidays. The food. The Christmasses, weddings, funerals. Pat and Jim O'Brien, aunty Win and uncle Jack Elder (Gin and Wack), Uncle grandad (our dead granddad's brother, Jim) and aunty Muriel and their son Neville (Devil). And more stories about mum and dad.
_________________
So now it's taking a huge effort to stay here and write. I get this pressure in my chest. It's so solid and heavy. I just want to get up and do something busy, like clean the house or dig the garden, run the dog... if I was still drinking, I'd want a drink to bring me back down to a relaxed level. It's anxiety. It is so obvious now. It's really good to be able to see it, know what it is, and be curious about it.
A broken leg -- Polly
We were in Gore, visiting mum and dad's friends Tony and Jan Fosbender. Tony worked in the Gore branch of the same company as dad. He was small, wiry, with a squeaky voice. I think he had a moustache. He was small, and dapper in a grungy sort of way. Jan was large, loud, with died orange hair. They were not like any other friends mum and dad had. They weren't Catholics for starters. They weren't related to us either. And they didn't have children. They were an odd fit for family friends. I don't know why they were friends at all, but we drove the 40 miles to Gore to visit them occasionally, and dad and Tony would drink flagon beer, mum and Jan would have sherry, and Jan would make an uncomfortable fuss of us because she really wanted children but didn't have any.
Polly wasn't a baby, but wasn't walking yet. She could nearly sit up, so was probably 6 or 7 months old. I was 5. She was in the kitchen and I wanted to carry her into the lounge where the others were, because she was having trouble crawling on the lino floor. Jan's kitchen floor was legendary for its shine. I always asked before I did anything new, so I asked if I could pick her up and carry her out of the kitchen.
First I had to practice they said. It was agreed that a big bag of salt from the pantry would by a good Polly substitute for me to carry, to prove I could do it. I passed the salt test with flying colours, and went back into the kitchen with permission to carry Polly. I got her up into my arms, but as soon as I took a step towards the lounge I slipped and fell, and dropped her -- and broke her leg.
Polly ended up with her lovely little leg in a heavy plaster. The up-side of that was that suddenly she could sit up good and proper, because she was weighed down by the ankle to thigh plaster. The down side was that for a while after the plaster was taken off, she would fall backwards and hit her head on the floor, because she'd come to rely in the weight of the plaster to hold her up.
This was told as a funny-haha family story, and I was grateful for that. I wasn't harassed or shamed over dropping Polly. I was never allowed to forget it, but it was a light-hearted thing, not a guilt thing. I do remember being shocked when my feet shot out from underneath me like they did. And I do remember one kind adult saying something like "that was Jan's fault for having such a shiny floor." It wasn't traumatic for me. It probably was for Polly.
If you were to take the family photos as a true record, I always had a baby under my arm, from age three to thirteen. Uncle Jim often said that he'd not seen me as a child without a baby latched on to me. I was very sure, from a very early age, that my job was to look out for my sisters. It was a job I took very seriously, and usually I did it well. But not always.
Lots of blood -- Julie
Obviously, it wasn't my fault that Julie got a cut on her head when she fell off the back of Mr Hunt's trailer. How could it be? But I was supposed to be "keeping an eye out" for the girls, and I had to bring her home with blood gushing out the side of her head, and deal with mum's hysterics, which were pretty dramatic.
Mr Hunt was the father next door, Mrs Hunt's husband, and the Hunt kids' dad. He was a builder. They weren't Catholics (so they didn't go to the same school as us), and they weren't related to us. We played with the kids anyway, but I don't remember the adults having that much more to do with each other than a hello over the back fence.
Mr Hunt drove a car with a trailor attached, for carrying his tools and wood to work. He would stop at the corner of Patterson and Harvey St, and the kids from the street would pile on the back of the trailor and get a ride the half block to the Hunt house. Then they'd all pile off before he went in the drive. That's when Julie's head got dinged. She jumped off the trailor, and someone else (probably Trevor Hunt, same age as Julie) jumped off just after her, knocked her over and scraped her head.
Julie got hauled off to hospital and came home with a cool big bandage around her head. It was only a small cut but such a lot of blood. Now I know head wounds bleed dramatically, even if there's just a little cut. This was dramatic. I felt terrible. That day I did a really bad job of keeping an eye out for the girls.
NEXT: Everything matters
Me: I keep waking up full of stories. I keep not writing them down.
She: What's holding you back?
Me: I want them to be finished in my head before I start writing. I want to know where they are going.
She: You were enjoying just writing whatever came up, when it came up.
Me: I wasn't exactly enjoying it! Well, I was a bit I suppose. I was experimenting and it was strangely exhilarating, and very interesting what I was remembering, and realising about those memories. But it felt really out of control, dangerous.
She: And a little bit fun? It's good for you to write like that, without a plan or target to hit. You will get to enjoy it. I guarantee that.
Me: I read the whole thing yesterday for the first time.
She: I know. How was that?
Me: I thought it was good. I thought it was funny and sad and honest and meaningful.
She: It is. Keep writing. It's so good for your spirit. So good.
Me: And now I'm sitting here wondering what next? What stories? There are so so many. Stories about the Ward girls, the nanas (who could easily have a whole book each), the family outings, picnics, holidays. The food. The Christmasses, weddings, funerals. Pat and Jim O'Brien, aunty Win and uncle Jack Elder (Gin and Wack), Uncle grandad (our dead granddad's brother, Jim) and aunty Muriel and their son Neville (Devil). And more stories about mum and dad.
_________________
So now it's taking a huge effort to stay here and write. I get this pressure in my chest. It's so solid and heavy. I just want to get up and do something busy, like clean the house or dig the garden, run the dog... if I was still drinking, I'd want a drink to bring me back down to a relaxed level. It's anxiety. It is so obvious now. It's really good to be able to see it, know what it is, and be curious about it.
A broken leg -- Polly
We were in Gore, visiting mum and dad's friends Tony and Jan Fosbender. Tony worked in the Gore branch of the same company as dad. He was small, wiry, with a squeaky voice. I think he had a moustache. He was small, and dapper in a grungy sort of way. Jan was large, loud, with died orange hair. They were not like any other friends mum and dad had. They weren't Catholics for starters. They weren't related to us either. And they didn't have children. They were an odd fit for family friends. I don't know why they were friends at all, but we drove the 40 miles to Gore to visit them occasionally, and dad and Tony would drink flagon beer, mum and Jan would have sherry, and Jan would make an uncomfortable fuss of us because she really wanted children but didn't have any.
Polly wasn't a baby, but wasn't walking yet. She could nearly sit up, so was probably 6 or 7 months old. I was 5. She was in the kitchen and I wanted to carry her into the lounge where the others were, because she was having trouble crawling on the lino floor. Jan's kitchen floor was legendary for its shine. I always asked before I did anything new, so I asked if I could pick her up and carry her out of the kitchen.
First I had to practice they said. It was agreed that a big bag of salt from the pantry would by a good Polly substitute for me to carry, to prove I could do it. I passed the salt test with flying colours, and went back into the kitchen with permission to carry Polly. I got her up into my arms, but as soon as I took a step towards the lounge I slipped and fell, and dropped her -- and broke her leg.
Polly ended up with her lovely little leg in a heavy plaster. The up-side of that was that suddenly she could sit up good and proper, because she was weighed down by the ankle to thigh plaster. The down side was that for a while after the plaster was taken off, she would fall backwards and hit her head on the floor, because she'd come to rely in the weight of the plaster to hold her up.
This was told as a funny-haha family story, and I was grateful for that. I wasn't harassed or shamed over dropping Polly. I was never allowed to forget it, but it was a light-hearted thing, not a guilt thing. I do remember being shocked when my feet shot out from underneath me like they did. And I do remember one kind adult saying something like "that was Jan's fault for having such a shiny floor." It wasn't traumatic for me. It probably was for Polly.
If you were to take the family photos as a true record, I always had a baby under my arm, from age three to thirteen. Uncle Jim often said that he'd not seen me as a child without a baby latched on to me. I was very sure, from a very early age, that my job was to look out for my sisters. It was a job I took very seriously, and usually I did it well. But not always.
Lots of blood -- Julie
Obviously, it wasn't my fault that Julie got a cut on her head when she fell off the back of Mr Hunt's trailer. How could it be? But I was supposed to be "keeping an eye out" for the girls, and I had to bring her home with blood gushing out the side of her head, and deal with mum's hysterics, which were pretty dramatic.
Mr Hunt was the father next door, Mrs Hunt's husband, and the Hunt kids' dad. He was a builder. They weren't Catholics (so they didn't go to the same school as us), and they weren't related to us. We played with the kids anyway, but I don't remember the adults having that much more to do with each other than a hello over the back fence.
Mr Hunt drove a car with a trailor attached, for carrying his tools and wood to work. He would stop at the corner of Patterson and Harvey St, and the kids from the street would pile on the back of the trailor and get a ride the half block to the Hunt house. Then they'd all pile off before he went in the drive. That's when Julie's head got dinged. She jumped off the trailor, and someone else (probably Trevor Hunt, same age as Julie) jumped off just after her, knocked her over and scraped her head.
Julie got hauled off to hospital and came home with a cool big bandage around her head. It was only a small cut but such a lot of blood. Now I know head wounds bleed dramatically, even if there's just a little cut. This was dramatic. I felt terrible. That day I did a really bad job of keeping an eye out for the girls.
NEXT: Everything matters
Am I one of the girls?
I had my first epiphany when I was 11. That was when I found out I was a child, not a parent, and it was a Very Big Shock indeed. Here's how it happened.
The whole family was in the kitchen. Dad, mum, me, Julie, Polly, Maria, Angie. In that order. We were getting ready for our usual Sunday family picnic. It must have been winter because mum was filling the big green thermos with steaming Wattie’s tomato soup. Dad was leaning against the bench, finished buttering the white Sunday bread, probably thinking about the racehorse he’d put a bet on. I think he liked to spend his winnings in his head a few times before he actually won them.
Mum and dad were having a conversation, probably something ordinary like what time to leave, or which beach or bush to go to given the weather. I was standing by, as I did, watching and waiting for instructions. My four sisters were playing about in a girly tangle, as they did, giggling probably, and being told to behave themselves by mum. Or dad. Whoever got irritated with them first. Then mum said it to dad, or he said said it to her... I don't remember the details, but it was something about ‘the girls’ that clearly included me. First it puzzled me, then concerned me deeply, and then caused me to look at them both and ask “Am I one of the girls?”
Mum and dad were having a conversation, probably something ordinary like what time to leave, or which beach or bush to go to given the weather. I was standing by, as I did, watching and waiting for instructions. My four sisters were playing about in a girly tangle, as they did, giggling probably, and being told to behave themselves by mum. Or dad. Whoever got irritated with them first. Then mum said it to dad, or he said said it to her... I don't remember the details, but it was something about ‘the girls’ that clearly included me. First it puzzled me, then concerned me deeply, and then caused me to look at them both and ask “Am I one of the girls?”
If you knew my father, you’d know how deep and meaningful his laugh was when he heard something ridiculous. He laughed a particularly good one that time. Mum said something, but I wasn’t listening, because dad’s laugh said it all. And all I could think as my world view crashed around me was “What an idiot! I don’t even know who I am.”
I honestly didn’t know, until that day, that I was one of the girls. I am the oldest, and they started coming thick and fast from when I was three until I was ten. In practically every childhood photo after age three, I have a baby under my arm. The communication between my parents and me was mostly like this: “Are the girls ready?” “Where are the girls?” “Can you call the girls for dinner?” “Can you put the girls in the bath?” “Time to read the girls a story... get the girls in the car... put the girls’ coats on...” It never occurred to me that I was one of them. I was part of the mum+dad+me girl herding unit. Those four giggling tangled up creatures were the girls.
I honestly didn’t know, until that day, that I was one of the girls. I am the oldest, and they started coming thick and fast from when I was three until I was ten. In practically every childhood photo after age three, I have a baby under my arm. The communication between my parents and me was mostly like this: “Are the girls ready?” “Where are the girls?” “Can you call the girls for dinner?” “Can you put the girls in the bath?” “Time to read the girls a story... get the girls in the car... put the girls’ coats on...” It never occurred to me that I was one of them. I was part of the mum+dad+me girl herding unit. Those four giggling tangled up creatures were the girls.
Anyway, dad eventually stopped laughing, mum finished filling the thermos, the girls got themselves untangled long enough to get into the car and tangled back up again, and we took off on the Sunday picnic. Life quickly got back to normal -- or so I thought.
I don’t tell this story for sympathy. Not at all. I loved that job. I loved those girls. I watched them grow from babies, to toddlers, take their first steps, speak their first words, suffer their childhood illnesses. I doubled them to school on my bike. I dressed them, and wiped their cute little noses, and sang to them in the car when they were wailing with boredom or car sickness. That was my job, I was really good at it, and I loved it.
I don’t tell this story for sympathy. Not at all. I loved that job. I loved those girls. I watched them grow from babies, to toddlers, take their first steps, speak their first words, suffer their childhood illnesses. I doubled them to school on my bike. I dressed them, and wiped their cute little noses, and sang to them in the car when they were wailing with boredom or car sickness. That was my job, I was really good at it, and I loved it.
I tell this story, because I've recently had another epiphany, equal and opposite to that one.
I've been listening to Tara Brach's teachings about self compassion; she's the reason I even thought about that situation when I was 11. During one of her meditations, I realised I've been still stuck in that "What an idiot, I don't even know who I am" story, all these years later. It's an intensely anxious feeling, and I've spent a lifetime numbing and zoning out and desperately trying to disprove it.
It's played out as hanging about on the fringes, shrinking, second-guessing, isolating and not trusting myself. I've quietly thought the good things in life apply to other people, not me -- things like the law of attraction and book deals, for example! I expect to be whacked from behind, when I least expect it, and I've spent a good deal of energy making sure I'm ready to counter-attack when this happens (which it never does, by the way.) I am very shy of strangers, terrified of mingling and networking events. I think other people will find me crashingly boring. I could go on, but you get the picture.
I've been living scared. I don't even know of what. Scared and anxious. Believing I'm not OK and not acceptable, not safe, and accepting the resulting low-level background anxiety as a normal part of life. This is crippling and limiting. And totally exhausting.
So. How cool is it to stare that one in the face and watch it back down? Very cool indeed.
Tara Brach explains the limbic brain, or reptilian brain, which humans share with other animals. It's in the back of the head, and it has very useful powers and lightning speed responses to keep us safe, alerting us to dangers and kicking in automatic reactions like fight, flight or freeze mode. It's responsible for basic survival. Useful stuff for sure.
We've also evolved another brain in the front of our heads which gives us other powers like compassion, empathy, discernment, kindness, creativity, love. Don't you just feel relaxed and gorgeous thinking about it?
The epiphany for me was: I get to choose which brain is running my show. And I choose the evolved one at the front.
(ps. I wrote this story quite a while ago, but it seems to fit in the sequence here.)
NEXT: A broken leg and lots of blood
I've been listening to Tara Brach's teachings about self compassion; she's the reason I even thought about that situation when I was 11. During one of her meditations, I realised I've been still stuck in that "What an idiot, I don't even know who I am" story, all these years later. It's an intensely anxious feeling, and I've spent a lifetime numbing and zoning out and desperately trying to disprove it.
It's played out as hanging about on the fringes, shrinking, second-guessing, isolating and not trusting myself. I've quietly thought the good things in life apply to other people, not me -- things like the law of attraction and book deals, for example! I expect to be whacked from behind, when I least expect it, and I've spent a good deal of energy making sure I'm ready to counter-attack when this happens (which it never does, by the way.) I am very shy of strangers, terrified of mingling and networking events. I think other people will find me crashingly boring. I could go on, but you get the picture.
I've been living scared. I don't even know of what. Scared and anxious. Believing I'm not OK and not acceptable, not safe, and accepting the resulting low-level background anxiety as a normal part of life. This is crippling and limiting. And totally exhausting.
So. How cool is it to stare that one in the face and watch it back down? Very cool indeed.
Tara Brach explains the limbic brain, or reptilian brain, which humans share with other animals. It's in the back of the head, and it has very useful powers and lightning speed responses to keep us safe, alerting us to dangers and kicking in automatic reactions like fight, flight or freeze mode. It's responsible for basic survival. Useful stuff for sure.
We've also evolved another brain in the front of our heads which gives us other powers like compassion, empathy, discernment, kindness, creativity, love. Don't you just feel relaxed and gorgeous thinking about it?
The epiphany for me was: I get to choose which brain is running my show. And I choose the evolved one at the front.
(ps. I wrote this story quite a while ago, but it seems to fit in the sequence here.)
NEXT: A broken leg and lots of blood
Tuesday, September 30, 2014
Emo
I've been looking at emo me. Closely, and often. Just over a couple of days I've learned A Lot.
Sometimes she looks like mum. Mum in the middle of a massive surge of anger and frustration, face crumpled, jaw jutting out, red wet eyes, hands clenched, shoulders hunched over, cowering. After all the effort, the trying, the making things right. All the bargains, and sewing and repairing, the brass polishing and weeding and fixing and wallpapering... after all this exhausting effort, nothing is right. Still not perfect. She can't make it perfect. It's destroying her.
Sometimes she looks like a little sister, desperate for a pee, made to wait because someone's taking a photo. Face crumpled into tears, trying not to wet her pants.
Sometimes she's another sister, curled up in a ball with the cat, just humming to it, not making eye contact with anyone. Just curled up.
Sometimes it's dad carrying a white baby coffin, the day my cousin Andrew was buried.
Sometimes it's Nana Ward saying she wishes God would just take her now.
Sometimes it's me wailing through the trauma of break up. Or watching my father die. Watching my mother die. Feeling, watching, the life force leave us behind. Leaving the cat behind in Canada. Coming home and being a misterable stranger in my own country. Lost at home with nowhere else to go.
Sometimes it's just nobody in particular, miserable, snivelling, snotty blurry salty hot tears for no particular reason.
But the point is emo me isn't actually me. This thing I feel like I've been dragging around is emotion. Sad emotion. It's just frustration and anger, indignity, feeling lost, failing, flailing. It's emotion. It's everyone's emotion. It's not mine. And that's not me.
Which is actually rather a relief. It's not mine or me.
It's life. It's everyone's. We all get our turn at the trough of misery. We all have to suck it some time or other. But we don't own it and it doesn't own us.
That's what I saw when I looked long enough.
NEXT: how not to find out who you really are
Sometimes she looks like mum. Mum in the middle of a massive surge of anger and frustration, face crumpled, jaw jutting out, red wet eyes, hands clenched, shoulders hunched over, cowering. After all the effort, the trying, the making things right. All the bargains, and sewing and repairing, the brass polishing and weeding and fixing and wallpapering... after all this exhausting effort, nothing is right. Still not perfect. She can't make it perfect. It's destroying her.
Sometimes she looks like a little sister, desperate for a pee, made to wait because someone's taking a photo. Face crumpled into tears, trying not to wet her pants.
Sometimes she's another sister, curled up in a ball with the cat, just humming to it, not making eye contact with anyone. Just curled up.
Sometimes it's dad carrying a white baby coffin, the day my cousin Andrew was buried.
Sometimes it's Nana Ward saying she wishes God would just take her now.
Sometimes it's me wailing through the trauma of break up. Or watching my father die. Watching my mother die. Feeling, watching, the life force leave us behind. Leaving the cat behind in Canada. Coming home and being a misterable stranger in my own country. Lost at home with nowhere else to go.
Sometimes it's just nobody in particular, miserable, snivelling, snotty blurry salty hot tears for no particular reason.
But the point is emo me isn't actually me. This thing I feel like I've been dragging around is emotion. Sad emotion. It's just frustration and anger, indignity, feeling lost, failing, flailing. It's emotion. It's everyone's emotion. It's not mine. And that's not me.
Which is actually rather a relief. It's not mine or me.
It's life. It's everyone's. We all get our turn at the trough of misery. We all have to suck it some time or other. But we don't own it and it doesn't own us.
That's what I saw when I looked long enough.
NEXT: how not to find out who you really are
Wednesday, September 24, 2014
That Only Happens When I Write
Me: I only have those melt-downs when I write. The rest of the time I'm perfectly fine and normal. It's like writing picks the scab and makes things hurt. After writing yesterday I flaked out on the couch and fell into a deep sleep. That only happens when I write too. I'm definitely stirring and moving stuff here. Something's happening.
I was going through the same process this time last year. Keep coming back. Keep creeping closer to healing.
___________________________
Overnight I knew some things. Some important things that have faded into rubbish all of a sudden. But perhaps, by writing them down, they can become not rubbish. Gems maybe.
I read a few sober blogs last night. There are always themes going around. Last night is was the hole inside. The hole that happened at age 4, the God-shaped hole, the black pit, the self abuse, the meaningless, lost, dark struggle that life seems to be. Everyone's got it. Well not everyone, but many many people. Many suffer.
That's what I'm feeling. That hole. That empty place that I tried to fill with booze, business, work, longing, dreaming. As a teenager it could be made happy with the right pair of jeans. Now it's not that easy to appease! (Write about this more.)
So then I read an old post on the 6 Year Hangover blog, about what he was doing last time he got sober. How he just stopped drinking and tried super super harder to be an artist instead of a drunk. He didn't do any recovering. He just switched his passion for drinking to his job making art. He tried to fill that hole up with something else. Not booze, but work. And for him, work success was all about recognition. Acceptance of his work by peers, professionals, reviewers -- all outside. I feel like that all the time. Like I don't exists unless someone else is responding to me. Constantly checking to see if I'm OK, if I'm valid, real. And trying harder and harder and harder till exhausted and feeling like 110% disappointed and ripped off. So.
That's me, I said. Looking out there for meaning, where it isn't.
________________________
Downstairs, thinking it might be healthy to go to bed without a book and have a nice long read inside my own head instead. But I scanned the bookshelf, as I do every night, and this time picked out Care of the Soul by Thomas Moore. I bought that book 20+ years ago and have read it several times. Like many books I own, it feels like a completely new read every time I pick it up.
Last night i started at the beginning and read slowly. And I understood--knew for sure--something I have missed in previous readings. The hole we feel -- the empty dark scary uncomfortable thing we're all so desperately trying to soothe and fill isn't a hole. It's our soul. Our soul is suffering. From childhood when it's slammed and bashed by insensitive people. From rejection, from hunger, from just being a human being, with all the complexity and intensity. From birth, or before. It's not a hole to be filled. It's a part of us that is vital to happiness, and grossly neglected.
We feel this pain because our souls are neglected. Hungry, exhausted, abused, ignored, rejected. We don't need to fix it. We need to accept it and listen to it, and start to honour it like we honour the rest of our needs -- our hunger, tiredness, sociability, health. We need to pay it attention.
I am not talking about religion here. I'm talking about spirit. About the imagination, the hope, the wonder, emotion, creativity, sparks of joy, moments of utter peace.
_______________________
So if we become additcts, depressed, mad, lost, despairing when our soul is neglected, we can see those things not as afflictions to be fixed, but as messages, gifts.
Perhaps an urge to write, to pick scabs and stir up grief, is my way of reaching my soul. Perhaps this suffering is actually healing.
NEXT: Emo
I was going through the same process this time last year. Keep coming back. Keep creeping closer to healing.
___________________________
Overnight I knew some things. Some important things that have faded into rubbish all of a sudden. But perhaps, by writing them down, they can become not rubbish. Gems maybe.
I read a few sober blogs last night. There are always themes going around. Last night is was the hole inside. The hole that happened at age 4, the God-shaped hole, the black pit, the self abuse, the meaningless, lost, dark struggle that life seems to be. Everyone's got it. Well not everyone, but many many people. Many suffer.
That's what I'm feeling. That hole. That empty place that I tried to fill with booze, business, work, longing, dreaming. As a teenager it could be made happy with the right pair of jeans. Now it's not that easy to appease! (Write about this more.)
So then I read an old post on the 6 Year Hangover blog, about what he was doing last time he got sober. How he just stopped drinking and tried super super harder to be an artist instead of a drunk. He didn't do any recovering. He just switched his passion for drinking to his job making art. He tried to fill that hole up with something else. Not booze, but work. And for him, work success was all about recognition. Acceptance of his work by peers, professionals, reviewers -- all outside. I feel like that all the time. Like I don't exists unless someone else is responding to me. Constantly checking to see if I'm OK, if I'm valid, real. And trying harder and harder and harder till exhausted and feeling like 110% disappointed and ripped off. So.
That's me, I said. Looking out there for meaning, where it isn't.
________________________
Downstairs, thinking it might be healthy to go to bed without a book and have a nice long read inside my own head instead. But I scanned the bookshelf, as I do every night, and this time picked out Care of the Soul by Thomas Moore. I bought that book 20+ years ago and have read it several times. Like many books I own, it feels like a completely new read every time I pick it up.
Last night i started at the beginning and read slowly. And I understood--knew for sure--something I have missed in previous readings. The hole we feel -- the empty dark scary uncomfortable thing we're all so desperately trying to soothe and fill isn't a hole. It's our soul. Our soul is suffering. From childhood when it's slammed and bashed by insensitive people. From rejection, from hunger, from just being a human being, with all the complexity and intensity. From birth, or before. It's not a hole to be filled. It's a part of us that is vital to happiness, and grossly neglected.
We feel this pain because our souls are neglected. Hungry, exhausted, abused, ignored, rejected. We don't need to fix it. We need to accept it and listen to it, and start to honour it like we honour the rest of our needs -- our hunger, tiredness, sociability, health. We need to pay it attention.
I am not talking about religion here. I'm talking about spirit. About the imagination, the hope, the wonder, emotion, creativity, sparks of joy, moments of utter peace.
_______________________
So if we become additcts, depressed, mad, lost, despairing when our soul is neglected, we can see those things not as afflictions to be fixed, but as messages, gifts.
Perhaps an urge to write, to pick scabs and stir up grief, is my way of reaching my soul. Perhaps this suffering is actually healing.
NEXT: Emo
Tuesday, September 23, 2014
The Screaming Baby
Emo me is like a screaming baby. And wise me is her mother.
I never had kids. I can see now, I've actually always had a kid -- deep inside myself. I'm my own kid. And I've been screaming for years. Exhausing myself. What to I really need here?
I don't need numbing out. That's for sure.
I don't need entertaining.
I don't need food. I'm not hungry.
I'm not sick either. I don't need medicine or a doctor.
What do I really, really need?
I need someone to look at me and see me. That's all. I just need to be looked at, and seen.
Can wise me do that? Look at emo me, like a parent could look at a child, and see her... give her a sense of existing, mattering, being alright, being safe?
There's been a line of the Desiderata going through my head: You are a child of the universe, no less than the trees and the stars, you have a right to be here.
I always loved those words -- I think they might have even been up on our kitchen wall, at Princes St, on a poster. I wanted to be like that. No less than the trees and the stars. But I wasn't. I felt like a nuisance, in the way, expensive, invalid. And underneath all the wonderful things that life has given me, there's still that little cesspool, poisoning things. Not good enough. Not trying hard enough. Who wants to know what you've got to say?
In short, the baby's still screaming.
So. I'm going to look at her, and see her for who she is. I can do that. It's not that hard.
I did the same thing for my secret little addict when I gave up drinking. I gave her attention. I really listened to her demands and needs and fears and concerns. I heard her screaming and whining and bargaining and manipulating. I saw her hurting herself, getting in trouble. Wise me decided to take over that situation and get the booze problem sorted. Not by bashing and blaming and slamming. But by being there, all the time, taking notice and staying calm. It worked.
So wise me can now do a little basic parenting. I have a feeling it's not going to take much. A bit of time and attention. Some kindness, a soft quiet approach to start. I remember babysitting the kids next door. They were both screaming and I started doing ujyyia breath -- ocean sounding breathing -- that I learned in yoga. It only took minutes for the kids to be quiet and calm down -- the breath was infectious. Maybe it's as simple as breathing consciously. No more running away, wishing it would just stop. Wise me just needs to look emo me in the eye and hold her gaze for a while. Look at her with love.
NEXT: That only happens when I write
I never had kids. I can see now, I've actually always had a kid -- deep inside myself. I'm my own kid. And I've been screaming for years. Exhausing myself. What to I really need here?
I don't need numbing out. That's for sure.
I don't need entertaining.
I don't need food. I'm not hungry.
I'm not sick either. I don't need medicine or a doctor.
What do I really, really need?
I need someone to look at me and see me. That's all. I just need to be looked at, and seen.
Can wise me do that? Look at emo me, like a parent could look at a child, and see her... give her a sense of existing, mattering, being alright, being safe?
There's been a line of the Desiderata going through my head: You are a child of the universe, no less than the trees and the stars, you have a right to be here.
I always loved those words -- I think they might have even been up on our kitchen wall, at Princes St, on a poster. I wanted to be like that. No less than the trees and the stars. But I wasn't. I felt like a nuisance, in the way, expensive, invalid. And underneath all the wonderful things that life has given me, there's still that little cesspool, poisoning things. Not good enough. Not trying hard enough. Who wants to know what you've got to say?
In short, the baby's still screaming.
So. I'm going to look at her, and see her for who she is. I can do that. It's not that hard.
I did the same thing for my secret little addict when I gave up drinking. I gave her attention. I really listened to her demands and needs and fears and concerns. I heard her screaming and whining and bargaining and manipulating. I saw her hurting herself, getting in trouble. Wise me decided to take over that situation and get the booze problem sorted. Not by bashing and blaming and slamming. But by being there, all the time, taking notice and staying calm. It worked.
So wise me can now do a little basic parenting. I have a feeling it's not going to take much. A bit of time and attention. Some kindness, a soft quiet approach to start. I remember babysitting the kids next door. They were both screaming and I started doing ujyyia breath -- ocean sounding breathing -- that I learned in yoga. It only took minutes for the kids to be quiet and calm down -- the breath was infectious. Maybe it's as simple as breathing consciously. No more running away, wishing it would just stop. Wise me just needs to look emo me in the eye and hold her gaze for a while. Look at her with love.
NEXT: That only happens when I write
Keep telling your story
She: Keep telling your story.
Me: I'm so tired. But I'm full of stories, ideas. Every day they're bubbling up from somewhere/nowhere deep inside. Every night as I'm falling asleep, every morning when I wake up, sometimes in my sleep, have ideas that seem brilliant, and then I lose them. They're gone, or seem lame, and I get defeated. Worst, I second-guess myself, and start drowning in that horrible overwhelming sneering "Who cares what you've got to say?"
It really is like a dark blanket that drops over my head, blotting me out, shutting me up, forcing me to be nobody. It comes and goes. I know it's not the truth. I know it's just doubt or fear or a primal survival tactic. I'm a chameleon, or a moth or insect, disappearing into nothing, making myself invisible.
She: And yet you've got a drive to write.
Me: I know. It's ironic. It's cruel. It's funny. It's kind of embarrassing. I've wanted to be a writer since I was a child. I have been a writer since I was a child. But it feels like I've never really let myself believe that.
It's a theme -- not owning my own life, feeling like I'm not actually here, in this life. Like I'm someone else, living in a costume or something. I'm not connected to my own reality.
She: That's one of the purposes for writing. To connect yourself to your own reality.
Me: Really?
She: Yes. Definitely.
Me: Wow. When you put it like that, it gets a whole different look.
She: Yes. So keep telling your story.
Me: OK, I'm going to write how it feels to be disconnected from my own reality.
She: OK, go.
So sometimes I'm living my life, which is pretty peaceful and calm, and pretty awesome in so many ways, and I feel worried and concerned, anxious about who knows what, but that's the default feeling. Something's wrong. But then I think that if I were a journalist, writing a story about me, I would write something totally different to how I really feel. All the surface stuff is great. I am almost too embarrassed to write about how perfect this life is. I am healthy, I am fit, I do and teach yoga, I have a great working situation, I live in a lovely house with a lovely man and a lovely dog, in a beautiful city. We eat well, have the cutest garden. We travel regularly. I have lots of time to do creative things, to cook, and garden. I have lovely friends, family, neighbours. I even quit drinking two years ago --which was the one thing I thought would make my life finally perfect and happy.
(If that's not laying it on thick enough, we are building a lovely new house in Nova Scotia and we're going to move there in six months, and semi-retire, and have a whole acre of amazing fertile soil to grow food on. How fucking perfect can my life be?)
And frankly, I haven't exactly struggled or strived, or made huge sacrifices to get this life. It's kind of just worked out this way.
I feel like I'm writing about someone else. Because that person, in those paragraphs up there, should be so happy and amazed and thrilled and content. That person has absolutely no reason whatsover to be anxious, or blocked, or worried or afraid of anything.
I have time to write. I have material to write about. And yet I kick and scream and get mired down about writing. Over and over again. What is that about?
These are the things I've struggled with all my life. My emotions and feeling and reactions seem to have absolutely no connection at all to my reality.
She: Those feelings and suffering are your reality too.
Me: They just seem so invalid.
She: What do you mean?
I mean that I feel like my emotional self is so disconnected, so far behind the game, so completely not in sync with the rest of me. Part of me is growing up and thriving. The other part of me is cowering in a corner with my head covered, freaking out.
I had this idea the other day to write a story or blog post called "Wise Me". I feel like wise me is the one who's quit drinking and teaches yoga and goes to work and keeps the household humming along, and has relationships with people. Wise me does all the normal stuff and the hard stuff. Then there's emo me who's dragging along in the dust, whimpering and cry-babying, and feeling all freaked and terrified. About nothing really. About nothing. I used to do all sorts of things to pacify her. Drink to numb out the pain, get lost in endless mindless TV, socialise aimlessly, nap obsessively. But mostly drink. And recently I've stopped doing all those things. So the struggle is just more obvious, more constant. But I still just want it to stop. It's so exhausting.
She: Who wants it to stop? Wise you?
Me: No. I think she's cool with it. She gets it. She knows it's just how humans are. This is how we suffer.
You know, the times I most wanted to drink alcohol -- drink with some urgency -- was after doing long yoga sessions. I remember walking up the hill after the weekend workshops or training sessions, desperate for a cold white wine. Pouring myself one as soon as I got in the door, and pretty much sculling it. I could feel it tingle through my blood stream and start to dull me down, numb me out. I'd drink more till I couldn't feel so much. Yoga got me in touch with myself, my feelings, and it was very very weird and odd and frightening. Uncomfortable. Drinking took care of that.
Now I have nothing to take care of that. But it's still happening. I don't know what to do instead. Crochet? Drink tea? Do I just need to experience whatever this anxiety is, and let it work itself out? Is that the answer? Is there an answer? Are these even questions?
NEXT: The screaming baby
Me: I'm so tired. But I'm full of stories, ideas. Every day they're bubbling up from somewhere/nowhere deep inside. Every night as I'm falling asleep, every morning when I wake up, sometimes in my sleep, have ideas that seem brilliant, and then I lose them. They're gone, or seem lame, and I get defeated. Worst, I second-guess myself, and start drowning in that horrible overwhelming sneering "Who cares what you've got to say?"
It really is like a dark blanket that drops over my head, blotting me out, shutting me up, forcing me to be nobody. It comes and goes. I know it's not the truth. I know it's just doubt or fear or a primal survival tactic. I'm a chameleon, or a moth or insect, disappearing into nothing, making myself invisible.
She: And yet you've got a drive to write.
Me: I know. It's ironic. It's cruel. It's funny. It's kind of embarrassing. I've wanted to be a writer since I was a child. I have been a writer since I was a child. But it feels like I've never really let myself believe that.
It's a theme -- not owning my own life, feeling like I'm not actually here, in this life. Like I'm someone else, living in a costume or something. I'm not connected to my own reality.
She: That's one of the purposes for writing. To connect yourself to your own reality.
Me: Really?
She: Yes. Definitely.
Me: Wow. When you put it like that, it gets a whole different look.
She: Yes. So keep telling your story.
Me: OK, I'm going to write how it feels to be disconnected from my own reality.
She: OK, go.
So sometimes I'm living my life, which is pretty peaceful and calm, and pretty awesome in so many ways, and I feel worried and concerned, anxious about who knows what, but that's the default feeling. Something's wrong. But then I think that if I were a journalist, writing a story about me, I would write something totally different to how I really feel. All the surface stuff is great. I am almost too embarrassed to write about how perfect this life is. I am healthy, I am fit, I do and teach yoga, I have a great working situation, I live in a lovely house with a lovely man and a lovely dog, in a beautiful city. We eat well, have the cutest garden. We travel regularly. I have lots of time to do creative things, to cook, and garden. I have lovely friends, family, neighbours. I even quit drinking two years ago --which was the one thing I thought would make my life finally perfect and happy.
(If that's not laying it on thick enough, we are building a lovely new house in Nova Scotia and we're going to move there in six months, and semi-retire, and have a whole acre of amazing fertile soil to grow food on. How fucking perfect can my life be?)
And frankly, I haven't exactly struggled or strived, or made huge sacrifices to get this life. It's kind of just worked out this way.
I feel like I'm writing about someone else. Because that person, in those paragraphs up there, should be so happy and amazed and thrilled and content. That person has absolutely no reason whatsover to be anxious, or blocked, or worried or afraid of anything.
I have time to write. I have material to write about. And yet I kick and scream and get mired down about writing. Over and over again. What is that about?
These are the things I've struggled with all my life. My emotions and feeling and reactions seem to have absolutely no connection at all to my reality.
She: Those feelings and suffering are your reality too.
Me: They just seem so invalid.
She: What do you mean?
I mean that I feel like my emotional self is so disconnected, so far behind the game, so completely not in sync with the rest of me. Part of me is growing up and thriving. The other part of me is cowering in a corner with my head covered, freaking out.
I had this idea the other day to write a story or blog post called "Wise Me". I feel like wise me is the one who's quit drinking and teaches yoga and goes to work and keeps the household humming along, and has relationships with people. Wise me does all the normal stuff and the hard stuff. Then there's emo me who's dragging along in the dust, whimpering and cry-babying, and feeling all freaked and terrified. About nothing really. About nothing. I used to do all sorts of things to pacify her. Drink to numb out the pain, get lost in endless mindless TV, socialise aimlessly, nap obsessively. But mostly drink. And recently I've stopped doing all those things. So the struggle is just more obvious, more constant. But I still just want it to stop. It's so exhausting.
She: Who wants it to stop? Wise you?
Me: No. I think she's cool with it. She gets it. She knows it's just how humans are. This is how we suffer.
You know, the times I most wanted to drink alcohol -- drink with some urgency -- was after doing long yoga sessions. I remember walking up the hill after the weekend workshops or training sessions, desperate for a cold white wine. Pouring myself one as soon as I got in the door, and pretty much sculling it. I could feel it tingle through my blood stream and start to dull me down, numb me out. I'd drink more till I couldn't feel so much. Yoga got me in touch with myself, my feelings, and it was very very weird and odd and frightening. Uncomfortable. Drinking took care of that.
Now I have nothing to take care of that. But it's still happening. I don't know what to do instead. Crochet? Drink tea? Do I just need to experience whatever this anxiety is, and let it work itself out? Is that the answer? Is there an answer? Are these even questions?
NEXT: The screaming baby
Thursday, September 4, 2014
Filing the Underwear
Having five girls was a challenge when it came to clothes, and in particular doing laundry and keeping track of the underwear and socks. Don't forget we all had identical clothing, including our school uniforms, and we were all much the same size. I'm sure it was dad who invented the underwear filing system. Mum made it, but it had dad's practicality and rationale written all over it. It was a sheet of fabric with 9 pouches sewn onto it, hung on the inside of the hot-water cupboard door. The idea was that there was a row of pouches for each of us who were at school -- me, Julie and Polly. It was an underwear filing system. I had the top row, with one pouch for undies, one for socks, and one for singlets (today they'd be camisoles). Julie had the middle row. Polly, the smallest, had the bottom row. It was one of those moments: "From now on, all the underwear will be folded and put in the right place. Every Day!"
But it didn't work. Because it required things to be sorted according to child, and who knew, with all the matching gear, whose was whose stuff? If that had been easy or obvious, we wouldn't have needed an underwear filing system.
So things went from good to bad fairly quickly "From now on, all the underwear and socks will be folded up properly in these pouches!!" Soon all the undies were stuffed into the middle row pouches. All the socks were in the bottom, and all the singlets in the top. We had no idea whose was whose. The system became first up best dressed. You got up, came downstairs in pjs, raided the pouches for the best stuff you could find, then went back upstairs to get dressed for school.
Mum did have one very clever solution to this though. When I turned 11, I was "allowed" to do my own laundry. This meant I could control my own underwear. I was rapt. Seems like a very small victory in the telling, but it was huge at the time. Huge.
I was also "allowed" to learn how to iron dad's shirts. Which I did for years. And all the school uniform shirts in the house too. It was a good job. I love the smell of ironed cotton.
NEXT: Keep telling your story
NEXT: Keep telling your story
Monday, August 25, 2014
Mum is Dumb and Dad is Mad
I often wonder how mum coped with having five children by the time she was 31. Married to a man who was so utterly different to her. Did they love each other? I have no idea. They survived together. They had a few laughs, but often at each other's expense. They tolerated each other. They didn't have a choice really. They made it work.
Dad used to say "Rosie, it's a good thing the girls got your looks and my brains, because if it was the other way around, it would be a disaster." And that totally sums it up!
Once, I have heard from an aunty who was there, mum was going on and on, entertaining a crowd gathered in our living room, that while dad was known as "Peter bloody Ward" because he swore so much, he had never said, and never ever would say "the F word". Everyone challenged her noisily, but she stuck to her guns and refused to accept anyone else's arguments. The phone rang in another room, and mum went to answer it. As she passed through the doorway and shut the door, dad said to anyone who would listen "She's a silly fucking bitch sometimes." That sums it up!
Mum looked after the kids, the food, the housekeeping, and was the social coordinator (aka party animal). Dad worked to earn the money to pay for things. He was an un-qualified but competent carpenter. He'd worked with builders, bricklayers, and watched and learned. When I was born, and he was only 26, he'd had 27 different jobs. Not long before I was born he left a good office job and took one at the Tisbury Cheese Factory as a delivery person. His good friend, Les Macaskill (career teacher and school principal) questioned his judgement. Dad was quick with his reasoning. "I need a vehicle to get Rosie to the hospital when the baby comes. This job comes with a van." Pragmatic.
Mum made a career out of being ditsy, and it was something I really didn't like about her. She thought it was funny to be irrational and twist reality. If she bought a pair of shoes for $10, on sale from $20, she would proclaim proudly, "I earned $10 today!" And she would argue the point, for the fun of it. She did this constantly. Shopping for a bargain wasn't just a hobby, but it was a way to show off, flaunt this silly side.
She would often say outrageous things, drop her false teeth out of her mouth to scare the kids, make her eyes so crossed she looked horrific. Just do stupid things.
This reminds me of the day she got all her teeth taken out. They were doing that in the 60s. Cosmetic purposes I think. I was very small. Three or four at the most. Mum left me with Nana Baird, and went to the dentist and got her teeth pulled out. All in one go. She came back to nana's place looking horrific. Totally. She went to lie down in nana's bed. It must have been quite physically traumatic, but lots of people did it. I was in the little bed -- Joanne's bed -- beside her. I didn't want to look at her. She was scary. I said "Is your mouth looking?" And she said "No." And I peeped out from under the covers, and there was her caved in, collapsed, ugly mouth grinning at me. I screamed and dived back under the covers. It was a game. Like a lot of the games in our household, I didn't like it. Fortunately I was too young to know about being a good sport, so I just stayed under the blankets and cried.
Mum used to drop her teeth as a party trick. I always found that excruciating.
____________
When I turned 18, my friend Greg McIlhinney threw a party for me. I think he knew that any birthday party held at my home would be my parent's affair, not mine, and he was determined to do something for me. So we had the party at his home -- he lived alone with his mother, who we called Maude -- and invited a load of people. We had loud music, dancing, and alcohol. I remember at one point toward the end of the evening saying to Greg that I thought someone had spiked my drinks because I felt really woosy. I'm sure now it was just that I didn't expect the alcohol to affect me the way it did... get me drunk!
Anyway, around 10pm, there was a rucus in the front room, with a lot of hooting and hollering, so I went to investigate. My parents had shown up. Dressed in long dressing gowns, wearing ape masks, dancing around like lunatics. At first, I was the only one who knew they were my parents. I recognised the ape masks and the dressing gowns. I was supposed to think this was funny. Everyone else thought it was hilarious. I withered. I'm totally sure mum harranged dad into doing this, or waited until he'd had several beers and was up for it. Whatever. It was mortifying.
People thought my parents were great, especially mum. When friends came around, there was always hilarity and pranks. Someone always got thrown, fully clothed, into the swimming pool. Someone always ended up wearing a stupid wig or mask or a wedding dress or knickers on their head. There would be chickens in the house, or someone trying to walk up the stairs on their hands, or on stilts, hiding, chasing and shrieking, mum playing moonlight sonata in the wrong key three times too fast, dropping her teeth... boozing and laughing, and mortification.
We lived in a party house. Well it was a party when there were visitors. Which was too often, in my not so humble opinion.
______________
Dad always made mum a cup of tea in the morning and delivered it to her in bed. I insist on this treatment myself, even now! As we all got a bit older, he would bring us all drinks in bed in the morning. Coffee or tea, however we liked it. He'd come upstairs with the tray, make all the drink deliveries, and so started the day in the household. That was very civilised. Things usually degenerated into chaos fairly quickly, with scraps over clothing, school lunches never made until the last minute, flat tires on bikes, running late and the car not starting if mum was driving us to school.
__________
The title for this post is a quote from my sister Julie, who recited that wonderfully funny poem at the dinner table one night, and got in trouble for it. That was grossly unfair -- her poem was true.
NEXT: Filing the Underwear
Dad used to say "Rosie, it's a good thing the girls got your looks and my brains, because if it was the other way around, it would be a disaster." And that totally sums it up!
Once, I have heard from an aunty who was there, mum was going on and on, entertaining a crowd gathered in our living room, that while dad was known as "Peter bloody Ward" because he swore so much, he had never said, and never ever would say "the F word". Everyone challenged her noisily, but she stuck to her guns and refused to accept anyone else's arguments. The phone rang in another room, and mum went to answer it. As she passed through the doorway and shut the door, dad said to anyone who would listen "She's a silly fucking bitch sometimes." That sums it up!
Mum looked after the kids, the food, the housekeeping, and was the social coordinator (aka party animal). Dad worked to earn the money to pay for things. He was an un-qualified but competent carpenter. He'd worked with builders, bricklayers, and watched and learned. When I was born, and he was only 26, he'd had 27 different jobs. Not long before I was born he left a good office job and took one at the Tisbury Cheese Factory as a delivery person. His good friend, Les Macaskill (career teacher and school principal) questioned his judgement. Dad was quick with his reasoning. "I need a vehicle to get Rosie to the hospital when the baby comes. This job comes with a van." Pragmatic.
Mum made a career out of being ditsy, and it was something I really didn't like about her. She thought it was funny to be irrational and twist reality. If she bought a pair of shoes for $10, on sale from $20, she would proclaim proudly, "I earned $10 today!" And she would argue the point, for the fun of it. She did this constantly. Shopping for a bargain wasn't just a hobby, but it was a way to show off, flaunt this silly side.
She would often say outrageous things, drop her false teeth out of her mouth to scare the kids, make her eyes so crossed she looked horrific. Just do stupid things.
This reminds me of the day she got all her teeth taken out. They were doing that in the 60s. Cosmetic purposes I think. I was very small. Three or four at the most. Mum left me with Nana Baird, and went to the dentist and got her teeth pulled out. All in one go. She came back to nana's place looking horrific. Totally. She went to lie down in nana's bed. It must have been quite physically traumatic, but lots of people did it. I was in the little bed -- Joanne's bed -- beside her. I didn't want to look at her. She was scary. I said "Is your mouth looking?" And she said "No." And I peeped out from under the covers, and there was her caved in, collapsed, ugly mouth grinning at me. I screamed and dived back under the covers. It was a game. Like a lot of the games in our household, I didn't like it. Fortunately I was too young to know about being a good sport, so I just stayed under the blankets and cried.
Mum used to drop her teeth as a party trick. I always found that excruciating.
____________
When I turned 18, my friend Greg McIlhinney threw a party for me. I think he knew that any birthday party held at my home would be my parent's affair, not mine, and he was determined to do something for me. So we had the party at his home -- he lived alone with his mother, who we called Maude -- and invited a load of people. We had loud music, dancing, and alcohol. I remember at one point toward the end of the evening saying to Greg that I thought someone had spiked my drinks because I felt really woosy. I'm sure now it was just that I didn't expect the alcohol to affect me the way it did... get me drunk!
Anyway, around 10pm, there was a rucus in the front room, with a lot of hooting and hollering, so I went to investigate. My parents had shown up. Dressed in long dressing gowns, wearing ape masks, dancing around like lunatics. At first, I was the only one who knew they were my parents. I recognised the ape masks and the dressing gowns. I was supposed to think this was funny. Everyone else thought it was hilarious. I withered. I'm totally sure mum harranged dad into doing this, or waited until he'd had several beers and was up for it. Whatever. It was mortifying.
People thought my parents were great, especially mum. When friends came around, there was always hilarity and pranks. Someone always got thrown, fully clothed, into the swimming pool. Someone always ended up wearing a stupid wig or mask or a wedding dress or knickers on their head. There would be chickens in the house, or someone trying to walk up the stairs on their hands, or on stilts, hiding, chasing and shrieking, mum playing moonlight sonata in the wrong key three times too fast, dropping her teeth... boozing and laughing, and mortification.
We lived in a party house. Well it was a party when there were visitors. Which was too often, in my not so humble opinion.
______________
Dad always made mum a cup of tea in the morning and delivered it to her in bed. I insist on this treatment myself, even now! As we all got a bit older, he would bring us all drinks in bed in the morning. Coffee or tea, however we liked it. He'd come upstairs with the tray, make all the drink deliveries, and so started the day in the household. That was very civilised. Things usually degenerated into chaos fairly quickly, with scraps over clothing, school lunches never made until the last minute, flat tires on bikes, running late and the car not starting if mum was driving us to school.
The title for this post is a quote from my sister Julie, who recited that wonderfully funny poem at the dinner table one night, and got in trouble for it. That was grossly unfair -- her poem was true.
NEXT: Filing the Underwear
A Cold Hard Fact
She: Are you still there?
Me: Yes. It's been such a busy holiday. I've had no time or space to write. Until now.
She: Keep telling your story.
Me: I will. I want to. The more I write, the more I remember. I thought I'd only have one page of memories about mum. Thought I didn't really have much to say about her. But there's a lot. I keep remembering more and more.
She: How is it feeling?
Me: I am feeling more compassionate, less hateful. Less resentful. I feel like I'm seeing things for what they were. What they are.
She: And what is that?
Me: Just people, trying to make sense of themselves, trying to make the best of their lives. Dealing with their pain and insecurities. Trying to be happy. Not having a bloody clue about anything. Screwing up. Kind of like my life!
She: Good observation.
Me: Through all of this, I am confronted with a tough fact. I didn't love my mother, or even like her. Still don't. I was afraid of her and alienated from her. I couldn't speak honestly to her, couldn't let her see who I really was. The relationship was based on survival tactics and pretense. That makes me really sad. It's like a huge hole. I've known it forever. I've just always tried to ignore it, think it doesn't matter. Maybe it doesn't matter. Who knows? What good can come of not liking or loving your mother? What possible reason could there be for that? What fix, cure? Does there need to be one? I don't know what to do with this cold hard fact. I can't make myself feel something I don't feel. This might explain why I've been so hard on myself, so tough.
She: It's harder to love yourself when you don't know parent love. Much harder. But not impossible. You just need to work at it a bit harder at it.
Me: 110%?
She: You're good at that.
_________________
I feel quite shitty writing this. Not angry, just mean and low. Like I failed at something utterly fundamental. And now, suddenly, I remember:
One day a year or two ago, I was walking on Oreti Beach (the beach near Invercargill where I was born and grew up), and knew that I had chosen this birth. I had chosen to be born into this environment, this time, and to these parents. It wasn't some flash of light epiphany. It was just a knowing. I chose this. All of it. For a reason. And that reason was to crack my fucking egg open!
NEXT Mum is Dumb and Dad is Mad
Me: Yes. It's been such a busy holiday. I've had no time or space to write. Until now.
She: Keep telling your story.
Me: I will. I want to. The more I write, the more I remember. I thought I'd only have one page of memories about mum. Thought I didn't really have much to say about her. But there's a lot. I keep remembering more and more.
She: How is it feeling?
Me: I am feeling more compassionate, less hateful. Less resentful. I feel like I'm seeing things for what they were. What they are.
She: And what is that?
Me: Just people, trying to make sense of themselves, trying to make the best of their lives. Dealing with their pain and insecurities. Trying to be happy. Not having a bloody clue about anything. Screwing up. Kind of like my life!
She: Good observation.
Me: Through all of this, I am confronted with a tough fact. I didn't love my mother, or even like her. Still don't. I was afraid of her and alienated from her. I couldn't speak honestly to her, couldn't let her see who I really was. The relationship was based on survival tactics and pretense. That makes me really sad. It's like a huge hole. I've known it forever. I've just always tried to ignore it, think it doesn't matter. Maybe it doesn't matter. Who knows? What good can come of not liking or loving your mother? What possible reason could there be for that? What fix, cure? Does there need to be one? I don't know what to do with this cold hard fact. I can't make myself feel something I don't feel. This might explain why I've been so hard on myself, so tough.
She: It's harder to love yourself when you don't know parent love. Much harder. But not impossible. You just need to work at it a bit harder at it.
Me: 110%?
She: You're good at that.
_________________
I feel quite shitty writing this. Not angry, just mean and low. Like I failed at something utterly fundamental. And now, suddenly, I remember:
One day a year or two ago, I was walking on Oreti Beach (the beach near Invercargill where I was born and grew up), and knew that I had chosen this birth. I had chosen to be born into this environment, this time, and to these parents. It wasn't some flash of light epiphany. It was just a knowing. I chose this. All of it. For a reason. And that reason was to crack my fucking egg open!
NEXT Mum is Dumb and Dad is Mad
Sunday, August 17, 2014
Good and Bad Surprises
Some happy memories associated with mum's obsessions.
When I went to school, I had a home made school uniform, in red and white gingham. When I cam home from school after my first day, my doll, Squinty (because of her squinty eyes), was waiting for me on the kitchen table, wearing a full school uniform identical to mine, with a red school case to finish off the look. Mum must have spend all day making that doll's outfit.
When mum and dad bought the big old house in Princes Street, before we moved in mum decorated our bedrooms with bright, cheerful wall paper, matching curtains, and bedding. We didn't know what our rooms would be like until the day we moved in. My room (I got my own room!) was orange and yellow, and it really was a happy place for an 11 year girl. Julie's room (she got her own room too) was pink and sweet, perfect for an 8 year old girl.
That same year, 1971, on my 11th birthday, mum organised a surprise birthday party, and invited all the girls from my old class at Sacred Heart, and all the girls from my new school, St Patricks. She also made me a beautiful dress -- one of a kind, no matching copies for my sisters. It was a large blue and white check, full long skirt cut on the bias, with a bib in the front, straps over the shoulders that crossed over the back, and a ruffle over the shoulders, and down the front of the bib. It was hanging in the window of the downstairs living room when I came downstairs that morning. I loved it, more because it was one of a kind than anything else.
These were the nice side of mum's surprises.
___________
Mum was pretty emotional, and there was a lot of up and down in the atmosphere of the house. She was always "on" for guests. She was often "off" on Saturday mornings, which always had an air of anger and frenetic energy about it.
The time she was most upset with me -- to the point that she cried for an entire day, and wouldn't look at me or speak to me, was when I was 19 and she found contraceptive pills in my toilet bag. What was she doing in my toilet bag? Snooping. Looking for evidence that I was having sex. Which I was, finally. And no thanks to anyone else, I was having safe sex, and taking care of the potential not to get pregnant. But I had committed a mortal (unforgiveable) sin by going on the pill. This was horrendous. This Must Stop NOW. How could I betray my parents like this? (I just got more pills after mum had thrown the pack she found out. I hid them better. There was no way I was going to get pregnant before I figured out what to do with my life.)
Here's how I got ready for my first sexual experience. I read a couple of books. From the library and from mum's bedside table (this one was about Catholic marriage, which did involve sex, and details about a woman's fertility and the menstual cycle, so she could avoid getting pregnant by timing things right, rather than the sinful pill. I became an expert in this, and later kept myself un-pregnant for years using that science.)
After I read the books, I made an appointment at the Family Planning Clinic. Not the family doctor. He would have said something to mum, or that's what I believed. I told the Family Planning doctor that I had a boyfriend and was ready to have sex, but didn't want to get pregnant. She listened and took me 100% seriously, and told me what my options were. I was dumbfounded. I'd expected to have to plead my case, beg, and be denied contraception. But no. I think she might have even praised me for being sensible and getting prepared ahead of time. Wow.
Somehow mum thought that by banning the pill, she was stopping us from having sex. She never asked me if I was sleeping with anyone. She demanded, hurt and crying, "Why do you need to be on the Pill?"
"To control my PMS."
"You haven't got PMS!!" (Once I told her I was feeling depressed and she shouted, "What on earth have you got to be depressed about?" and stormed out of the room before I had a chance to answer.)
But anyway. I lied about why I was on the pill. I felt I had to. I suppose I could have said, "Mum, I'm 19 and I'm sleeping with my boyfriend, and I'm on the pill because I don't want to get pregnant." I'm pretty sure she would have had a breakdown and kicked me out of the house. Which wouldn't have been a bad thing, in retrospect.
Fads and Fashion: It's better to look good than feel good.
Mum had fads. Lots of them. Wall papering -- she even put wallpaper on our old Simca (car) to cover up the rust at the bottom of the doors. Rug-hooking. Amethests. Antiques. Bantams. Sun bathing. Cafe curtains. Fondues. She wasn't a fussy seamstress, but during the 1960s and 70s, when you couldn't get anything but the most basic clothing in shops in New Zealand, she made all her and our clothes, and we were known for being "well turned out".
She was up with the fashion, and every season we'd have the latest styles and colours. We had the long tartan skirts cut on the bias. We had smock tops. We had halter dresses (modest ones), and we had the shoes to match, the head bands. When pastels were in we had pastels. When florals, or primary colours, or whatever was in, we had it. We didn't have a lot of clothes. Each season, summer and winter, we'd get a new good dress and an outfit for wearing around home, new pyjamas (also home made), and maybe a new cardie.
Mum took our appearance very seriously. She spent hours, days sewing our outfits. She was constantly bringing home yards of material, cutting, pinning. I can still see mum's mouth full of pins -- she used to hold them between her lips while she was sewing, which gave her a weird smiling grimace. Whenever we went out anywhere, we'd have to get dressed up, in identical outfits (well until I was 11 -- more coming on that), be washed, get our hair done in identical styles, and stay clean until we arrived at our destination. This last point was critical. We had to arrive in good shape. No slops or smudges on anything. It was probably dad's idea to make sure that our top layer of clothing, usually a cardigan or jersey, was put on us in-side-out, and only taken off and turned the right way in the car, once we'd arrived at our destination. All the signs that we were ordinary kids with ordinary sloppy habits were well hidden on the insides of our cardies or coats.
One year we had mustard coloured skirts with suspender-type straps that sat over the top of cream blouses. The blouses had a flash mustard stitch trim that mum's new sewing machine could magically spit out with the turn of a dial. I think they might have had hand-covered buttons too. And we had brown lace-up knee-length boots, fake crocodile-skin if I remember correctly. What I remember most about those outfits was that we could only get boots to fit Julie and me in Invercargill. They didn't have Polly's size. And we were going on a trip, to the North Island, to visit nana Ward and the Ward relatives.
I remember nothing about that trip except that mum got dad to stop at every shoe shop along the way to try and get those boots. It was so important to her that we arrived all perfectly matching. None of the shops had the size we needed, until Levin, which was so close to our destination it was almost a Total Disaster. But the boots were there, just as mum had always believed they would be. Actually, now that I think about it, she would have bought them too big if that was the final option. But we arrived matching. That was all that needed to happen.
None of us liked this, by the way. Well I don't think we did. I certainly hated being dressed the same as my little sisters. Especially when mum got her final triumph and made matching outfits for all five of us. The fabric was nice and colourful, but honestly, at 11, the last thing I wanted was to be part of a matching freak show with my sisters aged 8, 5, 3 and 1. But too bad for me. I had no say in what I wore. That was entirely true. We never got to choose what we wore. Mum told us what to wear. She did it well into my teenage years. And after it became obviously ridiculous for her to do this, she swapped it for saying "You're not going to wear that are you?" I was already wearing that, but it wasn't unheard of for her to make such a fuss that I got changed just to make it stop.
I had a terrible sense of personal style for years, and found it really hard to make choices about clothing. I remember going shopping for a skirt and jacket for a wedding, not long after I was first married. I was with my Aunty Angela, and showed her what I was thinking of getting. She said something I've never forgotten. "If I had a lovely figure like yours, I'd get something much more slim fitting to show it off." "But that might tempt boys!" squeaked a tiny little voice deep within my mind. But I was always thankful to Angela for saying that. I had no idea I had a lovely figure, but I did. All I knew how to do was hide it.
I feel now I have a good sense of what suits me and what I like, but I still tend to dress down, pick the lowest common denominator so I don't draw attention to myself. I do still second guess myself about clothes. But there is that moment when I try something on, and see immediately "Yes, that's the right colour and style for you!"
Mum taught me to sew when I was 10. So at that young age I was able to put together a simple outfit. Mum told me what to make, and picked the material, but I was allowed to make it. My first outfit was in the gypsy theme that was the rage in one year of the 1970s. It was a long gathered skirt in bright reds, oranges and yellows, with a white searsucker gypsy blouse, with red rick-rack trim. It was simple, but effective, and I did enjoy being able to say "I made it myself." I still love saying that about things I sew or crochet.
A recent clothes story: Aunty Pat, mum's older sister, recently gave me a bag of old but lovely woolen clothing, to use for my upcycling sewing projects. One of the wool coats was mum's. We gave it to Pat when mum died 15 years ago. It was good quality, but so long it dragged on the floor, and was far too big for me. But I felt I couldn't felt it and cut it up like the other garments. This was mum's coat, and I really should keep it. It hung around in my sewing stash for a few months, annoying me. One day I was having a bit of a mum-memory meltdown, part of my personal therapy that's been ongoing these past few years, and I slammed my journal shut, dried my eyes, and thought "Fuck it. Fucking mum is not getting way with this one minute longer. I'm felting her fucking coat!" And I did. I put it in the hottest wash, and the hottest dry. Later I pulled it out of the dryer, expecting to hack it up with my super sharp dressmaking scissors, and make it into a cushion or a doormat, but it hadn't felted that successfully. It had shrunk though, to a perfect size for me. I put it on, and it was super warm and cosy. It was as if mum was giving me a warm hug, for the first time. So I kept that coat -- it's more like a house coat, but I sometimes wear it out of the house. It's warm and comforting. The hug I always wanted from her. I had a funny feeling she arranged it all.
Some of mum's fads were traumatic. Like the ringlet fad. I don't know where that came from, but mum decided we'd all have ringlets in our hair (not her, just Julie, Paula and me). This involved wrapping our hair up at night in strips of damp cotton rags, the theory being that the damp hair would dry overnight and retain its curl from being wrapped around the rags. It was like having thick wads of bandaged sausages sticking out of your head. Horrible, painful for sleeping. But there was no arguing about it. We were not in charge of our hair or our clothing. We were a bit like dolls, to be dressed up and paraded around. In the morning, she'd unwrap all the sausage bandages, and tie the hair in pig-tail wringlets. I seem to remember Julie and I had stubbornly straight hair, but Paula's had good curl potential. That fad might have only lasted a week or two, but it's stuck in my memory all these years.
Another one was the '100 strokes a day' hair fad. This involved having our hair brushed 100 strokes, every night before bed. That didn't last too long either.
I remember mum declaring often, and often in frustration, "Right, from now on ___________ fill in the blanks." It could be from now on you'll polish the brass every Saturday. From now on you're all having Lanes Emulsion every day. From now on, you're biking to school and doubling your little sister. From now on, you're getting your hair brushed 100 strokes a day. From now on, you're doing your own laundry. From now on there will be no more colouring-in on the lounge table. From now on, we're going to 9 0'clock mass every Sunday. Whatever it was we were going to do from now on only ever lasted a while.
I understand now, that when mum got married and had kids, she was determined to get her life right, perhaps to exercise control over her life that she felt she didn't have growing up. We probably all do that. If we take the measure of her need to control as an indication of her own insecurity, she was off the charts. She was utterly obsessed with appearances. The white picket fence, the white lace curtains, the five little girls all in a row. So well dressed. So well behaved. Looking stylish. It was definitely better to look good than to feel good!
She was up with the fashion, and every season we'd have the latest styles and colours. We had the long tartan skirts cut on the bias. We had smock tops. We had halter dresses (modest ones), and we had the shoes to match, the head bands. When pastels were in we had pastels. When florals, or primary colours, or whatever was in, we had it. We didn't have a lot of clothes. Each season, summer and winter, we'd get a new good dress and an outfit for wearing around home, new pyjamas (also home made), and maybe a new cardie.
Mum took our appearance very seriously. She spent hours, days sewing our outfits. She was constantly bringing home yards of material, cutting, pinning. I can still see mum's mouth full of pins -- she used to hold them between her lips while she was sewing, which gave her a weird smiling grimace. Whenever we went out anywhere, we'd have to get dressed up, in identical outfits (well until I was 11 -- more coming on that), be washed, get our hair done in identical styles, and stay clean until we arrived at our destination. This last point was critical. We had to arrive in good shape. No slops or smudges on anything. It was probably dad's idea to make sure that our top layer of clothing, usually a cardigan or jersey, was put on us in-side-out, and only taken off and turned the right way in the car, once we'd arrived at our destination. All the signs that we were ordinary kids with ordinary sloppy habits were well hidden on the insides of our cardies or coats.
One year we had mustard coloured skirts with suspender-type straps that sat over the top of cream blouses. The blouses had a flash mustard stitch trim that mum's new sewing machine could magically spit out with the turn of a dial. I think they might have had hand-covered buttons too. And we had brown lace-up knee-length boots, fake crocodile-skin if I remember correctly. What I remember most about those outfits was that we could only get boots to fit Julie and me in Invercargill. They didn't have Polly's size. And we were going on a trip, to the North Island, to visit nana Ward and the Ward relatives.
I remember nothing about that trip except that mum got dad to stop at every shoe shop along the way to try and get those boots. It was so important to her that we arrived all perfectly matching. None of the shops had the size we needed, until Levin, which was so close to our destination it was almost a Total Disaster. But the boots were there, just as mum had always believed they would be. Actually, now that I think about it, she would have bought them too big if that was the final option. But we arrived matching. That was all that needed to happen.
None of us liked this, by the way. Well I don't think we did. I certainly hated being dressed the same as my little sisters. Especially when mum got her final triumph and made matching outfits for all five of us. The fabric was nice and colourful, but honestly, at 11, the last thing I wanted was to be part of a matching freak show with my sisters aged 8, 5, 3 and 1. But too bad for me. I had no say in what I wore. That was entirely true. We never got to choose what we wore. Mum told us what to wear. She did it well into my teenage years. And after it became obviously ridiculous for her to do this, she swapped it for saying "You're not going to wear that are you?" I was already wearing that, but it wasn't unheard of for her to make such a fuss that I got changed just to make it stop.
I had a terrible sense of personal style for years, and found it really hard to make choices about clothing. I remember going shopping for a skirt and jacket for a wedding, not long after I was first married. I was with my Aunty Angela, and showed her what I was thinking of getting. She said something I've never forgotten. "If I had a lovely figure like yours, I'd get something much more slim fitting to show it off." "But that might tempt boys!" squeaked a tiny little voice deep within my mind. But I was always thankful to Angela for saying that. I had no idea I had a lovely figure, but I did. All I knew how to do was hide it.
I feel now I have a good sense of what suits me and what I like, but I still tend to dress down, pick the lowest common denominator so I don't draw attention to myself. I do still second guess myself about clothes. But there is that moment when I try something on, and see immediately "Yes, that's the right colour and style for you!"
Mum taught me to sew when I was 10. So at that young age I was able to put together a simple outfit. Mum told me what to make, and picked the material, but I was allowed to make it. My first outfit was in the gypsy theme that was the rage in one year of the 1970s. It was a long gathered skirt in bright reds, oranges and yellows, with a white searsucker gypsy blouse, with red rick-rack trim. It was simple, but effective, and I did enjoy being able to say "I made it myself." I still love saying that about things I sew or crochet.
A recent clothes story: Aunty Pat, mum's older sister, recently gave me a bag of old but lovely woolen clothing, to use for my upcycling sewing projects. One of the wool coats was mum's. We gave it to Pat when mum died 15 years ago. It was good quality, but so long it dragged on the floor, and was far too big for me. But I felt I couldn't felt it and cut it up like the other garments. This was mum's coat, and I really should keep it. It hung around in my sewing stash for a few months, annoying me. One day I was having a bit of a mum-memory meltdown, part of my personal therapy that's been ongoing these past few years, and I slammed my journal shut, dried my eyes, and thought "Fuck it. Fucking mum is not getting way with this one minute longer. I'm felting her fucking coat!" And I did. I put it in the hottest wash, and the hottest dry. Later I pulled it out of the dryer, expecting to hack it up with my super sharp dressmaking scissors, and make it into a cushion or a doormat, but it hadn't felted that successfully. It had shrunk though, to a perfect size for me. I put it on, and it was super warm and cosy. It was as if mum was giving me a warm hug, for the first time. So I kept that coat -- it's more like a house coat, but I sometimes wear it out of the house. It's warm and comforting. The hug I always wanted from her. I had a funny feeling she arranged it all.
Some of mum's fads were traumatic. Like the ringlet fad. I don't know where that came from, but mum decided we'd all have ringlets in our hair (not her, just Julie, Paula and me). This involved wrapping our hair up at night in strips of damp cotton rags, the theory being that the damp hair would dry overnight and retain its curl from being wrapped around the rags. It was like having thick wads of bandaged sausages sticking out of your head. Horrible, painful for sleeping. But there was no arguing about it. We were not in charge of our hair or our clothing. We were a bit like dolls, to be dressed up and paraded around. In the morning, she'd unwrap all the sausage bandages, and tie the hair in pig-tail wringlets. I seem to remember Julie and I had stubbornly straight hair, but Paula's had good curl potential. That fad might have only lasted a week or two, but it's stuck in my memory all these years.
Another one was the '100 strokes a day' hair fad. This involved having our hair brushed 100 strokes, every night before bed. That didn't last too long either.
I remember mum declaring often, and often in frustration, "Right, from now on ___________ fill in the blanks." It could be from now on you'll polish the brass every Saturday. From now on you're all having Lanes Emulsion every day. From now on, you're biking to school and doubling your little sister. From now on, you're getting your hair brushed 100 strokes a day. From now on, you're doing your own laundry. From now on there will be no more colouring-in on the lounge table. From now on, we're going to 9 0'clock mass every Sunday. Whatever it was we were going to do from now on only ever lasted a while.
I understand now, that when mum got married and had kids, she was determined to get her life right, perhaps to exercise control over her life that she felt she didn't have growing up. We probably all do that. If we take the measure of her need to control as an indication of her own insecurity, she was off the charts. She was utterly obsessed with appearances. The white picket fence, the white lace curtains, the five little girls all in a row. So well dressed. So well behaved. Looking stylish. It was definitely better to look good than to feel good!
Girls are Better than Boys
Like most women of her day, the minute mum got married she stopped working to become a housewife. She said all she ever wanted to do was get married and have babies. Only girls. It was a Known Fact in our house that girls were better than boys. Both mum and dad swore by that, and mum even suggested that she wasn't able to have any boy babies-- as in not physically able to carry one, and it was clear she didn't see this as a failing. It was a triumph and a talent to produce only girls.
When I was a bit older and understood about miscarriages, I heard mum saying that she thought the miscarriages she had were all boys -- her body rejected them. I am not kidding. What did I think about that? It was a bit creepy to be honest. It sounded a bit extreme. A bit "not quite right". But I couldn't ask or say anything. I just tucked it away as a strange thing, and never forgot it.
Mum obviously felt afraid and powerless about males. For all her bravado and outrageous flirting, she was terrified. "Don't tempt boys!" That was the central theme of my sex education. Don't dress in a way that could tempt boys. Don't talk or look or do anything that might tempt boys. If you do tempt boys, you'll get in trouble and it will be your fault. Needless to say, I thought boys were incredibly dangerous -- anything you did might tempt them, they might do anything if they were tempted (although I had no concept of what that could be, not having a grasp on the deeper realities of gender differences), and they weren't responsible for their actions! Girls were definitely better.
Being the oldest of five girls, I had the additional message that if I 'got in trouble' with boys, then my sisters would too. If I didn't, they'd be OK. Basically, I would set the moral tone for the whole gang of girls. I didn't question that, and took it seriously and literally. While I was having a chaste and worried adolescence, my sisters were living it up with boys! Oh well.
When I was a bit older and understood about miscarriages, I heard mum saying that she thought the miscarriages she had were all boys -- her body rejected them. I am not kidding. What did I think about that? It was a bit creepy to be honest. It sounded a bit extreme. A bit "not quite right". But I couldn't ask or say anything. I just tucked it away as a strange thing, and never forgot it.
Mum obviously felt afraid and powerless about males. For all her bravado and outrageous flirting, she was terrified. "Don't tempt boys!" That was the central theme of my sex education. Don't dress in a way that could tempt boys. Don't talk or look or do anything that might tempt boys. If you do tempt boys, you'll get in trouble and it will be your fault. Needless to say, I thought boys were incredibly dangerous -- anything you did might tempt them, they might do anything if they were tempted (although I had no concept of what that could be, not having a grasp on the deeper realities of gender differences), and they weren't responsible for their actions! Girls were definitely better.
Being the oldest of five girls, I had the additional message that if I 'got in trouble' with boys, then my sisters would too. If I didn't, they'd be OK. Basically, I would set the moral tone for the whole gang of girls. I didn't question that, and took it seriously and literally. While I was having a chaste and worried adolescence, my sisters were living it up with boys! Oh well.
Mum Stories. Growing up and getting married
Me: I think it's time to write about mum.
She: OK.
Me: I'm writing in San Francisco today. Woot!
She: How does that feel?
Me: Amazing. Last time I was here I wasn't feeling anywhere near as good as I feel now. I feel like myself, you know? Something essential has come with me this time and it's good. I chose to spend a chunk of time alone today. Came to a lovely tea shop instead of a coffee place, ordered a pot of chai, and now I'm tapping away on my new laptop, which is fabulous.
She: What do you want to write about your mother?
Me: Just what I knew about her life, kind of what I wrote about dad a while ago.
She: OK, go!
Mum was the third of eight children. She was born on February 10, 1939, the same year as World War 2 broke out, but several months sooner. She had two older sisters, and would be followed up by four brothers in a row, then a baby sister.
She told me that sometimes nana would put the three girls to bed, and in the morning when they got up there would be three dresses hanging up in the kitchen -- nana had made them overnight.
Mum's father, Reginald, died when mum was only 15. Joanne, the baby, was just 2. So nana brought up eight children on her own. Mum did talk a lot about growing up feeling poor. She said she and her sisters didn't have the proper school uniform, so the nuns made them stand at the back of the line on the way to mass. Mum also said something about taking a pack of sanitary pads to school on the carrier of her bike, thinking that was pretty special, but being laughed at by other girls. She probably had her own nightmare first period to deal with.
They went to dances, made their own clothes, and by the looks of the old black and white photos in the photo box they had a good time. They wore lipstick and earrings and pearls, and looked quite stylish. Apparently nobody was allowed to leave the house to go out to a dance before the family rosary was said. And any boys who arrived to take the girls out had to kneel down and say the rosary with the family. For those of you who don't know, the rosary consists of saying, in a row, 50 Hail Marys, in groups of ten with an Our Father in between, and some miscellaneous other Hail Holy Queen type prayers at the end. You kneel for the whole thing, and it seems to take forever. Everyone had rosary beads in those days, for keeping count of the Hail Marys and the whole procedure. I got a set of rosary beads that belonged to Sid, dad's father. I have been trying to get rid of them to an appropriate family member (thinking that since I don't have kids of my own to leave them to, I might as well see them off into another branch of the family), but nobody wanted them. Meanwhile I've been wanting a set of Mala beads -- 108 beads on a string for counting meditation mantras. I got the inspiration to check out the rosary beads one day recently, and discovered that one round has 54 beads on it, so if I go around twice, I get 108 mantra counts. Not sure what the grandparents would think of using rosary beads for mediation, but really, what's the rosary if not a meditation -- repeats of the same thing, to help focus the mind. Perfect.
_________________
Mum married dad when she was 20. The match was a bit of a worry for her older sisters, one in the convent and one not. There is a letter between them, discussing the engagement and questioning dad's character and suitability. He was a bit of a party animal, and five years older than her too. But they married. Mum had a very stylish dress, the bridesmaids (mum's sisters who were not in the convent) wore red velvet. It looked like a really lovely wedding -- it was on July 25 1959.
(An aside here. Dad looked really good too in his suit, but apparently the pants were many sizes too big for him, and they ended up pinning the pants to the armpits of his shirt to get them to look half decent. He had to keep his jacket on all day. He used to say "The guy who measured me for those pants must have stuck his ruler right up my ass to get the legs that long!!" Roar with laughter.)
Another story, and I don't know if it was true, or made up to prove how chaste mum was. On their honey moon, they had to go to a doctor so he could confirm to mum that sex was normal and what was happening was the right thing to be doing. It sounds ridiculous. It was always followed up with another story about mum's sex education. She and her little sister were in bed one morning, laughing at the sparrows "piggy-backing" on the power lines outside their window. Nana asked "Do you know what they are doing?" Mum answered "Yes!" And that was that. Mum thought they were piggy-backing.
Mum also said that she didn't want to go to Mass on Sunday morning if she and dad had had sex on Saturday night, because she thought everyone in the congregation and the priest would know what they'd been up to.
All this seemed and still seems a tad unconvincing, but it could be true I suppose. Mum was the first of her siblings to marry, so she wouldn't have had any advice from her sisters. But I doubt nana would have sent her out into the world with that little preparation. These stories were told in the context of us being warned about how important it was to be "moral" (not have sex before marriage). Our mother had been so utterly chaste when she got married, and we should be the same. But it's just as likely to be the result of trauma. (How would this kind of thing even come up in conversation? After a few drinks, when we were a bit older. It's strange... the family stories were definitely themed around dad having a cruel upbringing (poor dad) and mum being 125% pure and innocent (good mum). Interesting.)
______________
One night when mum and dad were engaged, they had a fight. Dad was dropping mum off in a car, and things blew up to the point that mum gave dad back her engagement ring, got out of the car and slammed the door. Dad wound down the car window and threw the ring into Queen's Park (just across the road from the Baird house) and drove off. I always imagine the wheels smoking as he took off. Mum was horrified that he'd thrown away the ring, and spent a couple of hours trying to find it in the dark, in amoung the long grass and weeds under the huge macracarpa hedge. She couldn't find it, and got in a panic, and ran through town, crying, all the way to the Ward house (it probably wasn't raining and thundering, but let's just say it was).
That was a long run in a party dress and shoes, right across town from 174 Kelvin Street to XXX Tweed Street. She ran into dad's room, and found him sound asleep, with the engagement ring safely hanging on a nail in the wall beside the bed. They made up. It kind of sums up their relationship. Mum was always the dramatic, emotional one. Dad had things under control, but was a bit of a trickster.
I don't know how they got engaged, and I wish I did. Maybe aunty Pat would know.
Before she got married, mum worked in an office. I don't know what she did there. It was just a stop-gap before marriage. It must have included typing, because she could touch type, and liked to impress us by showing us how she could type without looking what she was doing. She also used to do that while playing the piano, but starting the tune (she only knew one, Moonlight Sonata) on the wrong key, but playing it anyway... we really thought that was hilarious.
NEXT
She: OK.
Me: I'm writing in San Francisco today. Woot!
She: How does that feel?
Me: Amazing. Last time I was here I wasn't feeling anywhere near as good as I feel now. I feel like myself, you know? Something essential has come with me this time and it's good. I chose to spend a chunk of time alone today. Came to a lovely tea shop instead of a coffee place, ordered a pot of chai, and now I'm tapping away on my new laptop, which is fabulous.
She: What do you want to write about your mother?
Me: Just what I knew about her life, kind of what I wrote about dad a while ago.
She: OK, go!
Mum was the third of eight children. She was born on February 10, 1939, the same year as World War 2 broke out, but several months sooner. She had two older sisters, and would be followed up by four brothers in a row, then a baby sister.
She told me that sometimes nana would put the three girls to bed, and in the morning when they got up there would be three dresses hanging up in the kitchen -- nana had made them overnight.
Mum's father, Reginald, died when mum was only 15. Joanne, the baby, was just 2. So nana brought up eight children on her own. Mum did talk a lot about growing up feeling poor. She said she and her sisters didn't have the proper school uniform, so the nuns made them stand at the back of the line on the way to mass. Mum also said something about taking a pack of sanitary pads to school on the carrier of her bike, thinking that was pretty special, but being laughed at by other girls. She probably had her own nightmare first period to deal with.
They went to dances, made their own clothes, and by the looks of the old black and white photos in the photo box they had a good time. They wore lipstick and earrings and pearls, and looked quite stylish. Apparently nobody was allowed to leave the house to go out to a dance before the family rosary was said. And any boys who arrived to take the girls out had to kneel down and say the rosary with the family. For those of you who don't know, the rosary consists of saying, in a row, 50 Hail Marys, in groups of ten with an Our Father in between, and some miscellaneous other Hail Holy Queen type prayers at the end. You kneel for the whole thing, and it seems to take forever. Everyone had rosary beads in those days, for keeping count of the Hail Marys and the whole procedure. I got a set of rosary beads that belonged to Sid, dad's father. I have been trying to get rid of them to an appropriate family member (thinking that since I don't have kids of my own to leave them to, I might as well see them off into another branch of the family), but nobody wanted them. Meanwhile I've been wanting a set of Mala beads -- 108 beads on a string for counting meditation mantras. I got the inspiration to check out the rosary beads one day recently, and discovered that one round has 54 beads on it, so if I go around twice, I get 108 mantra counts. Not sure what the grandparents would think of using rosary beads for mediation, but really, what's the rosary if not a meditation -- repeats of the same thing, to help focus the mind. Perfect.
_________________
Mum married dad when she was 20. The match was a bit of a worry for her older sisters, one in the convent and one not. There is a letter between them, discussing the engagement and questioning dad's character and suitability. He was a bit of a party animal, and five years older than her too. But they married. Mum had a very stylish dress, the bridesmaids (mum's sisters who were not in the convent) wore red velvet. It looked like a really lovely wedding -- it was on July 25 1959.
(An aside here. Dad looked really good too in his suit, but apparently the pants were many sizes too big for him, and they ended up pinning the pants to the armpits of his shirt to get them to look half decent. He had to keep his jacket on all day. He used to say "The guy who measured me for those pants must have stuck his ruler right up my ass to get the legs that long!!" Roar with laughter.)
Another story, and I don't know if it was true, or made up to prove how chaste mum was. On their honey moon, they had to go to a doctor so he could confirm to mum that sex was normal and what was happening was the right thing to be doing. It sounds ridiculous. It was always followed up with another story about mum's sex education. She and her little sister were in bed one morning, laughing at the sparrows "piggy-backing" on the power lines outside their window. Nana asked "Do you know what they are doing?" Mum answered "Yes!" And that was that. Mum thought they were piggy-backing.
Mum also said that she didn't want to go to Mass on Sunday morning if she and dad had had sex on Saturday night, because she thought everyone in the congregation and the priest would know what they'd been up to.
All this seemed and still seems a tad unconvincing, but it could be true I suppose. Mum was the first of her siblings to marry, so she wouldn't have had any advice from her sisters. But I doubt nana would have sent her out into the world with that little preparation. These stories were told in the context of us being warned about how important it was to be "moral" (not have sex before marriage). Our mother had been so utterly chaste when she got married, and we should be the same. But it's just as likely to be the result of trauma. (How would this kind of thing even come up in conversation? After a few drinks, when we were a bit older. It's strange... the family stories were definitely themed around dad having a cruel upbringing (poor dad) and mum being 125% pure and innocent (good mum). Interesting.)
______________
One night when mum and dad were engaged, they had a fight. Dad was dropping mum off in a car, and things blew up to the point that mum gave dad back her engagement ring, got out of the car and slammed the door. Dad wound down the car window and threw the ring into Queen's Park (just across the road from the Baird house) and drove off. I always imagine the wheels smoking as he took off. Mum was horrified that he'd thrown away the ring, and spent a couple of hours trying to find it in the dark, in amoung the long grass and weeds under the huge macracarpa hedge. She couldn't find it, and got in a panic, and ran through town, crying, all the way to the Ward house (it probably wasn't raining and thundering, but let's just say it was).
That was a long run in a party dress and shoes, right across town from 174 Kelvin Street to XXX Tweed Street. She ran into dad's room, and found him sound asleep, with the engagement ring safely hanging on a nail in the wall beside the bed. They made up. It kind of sums up their relationship. Mum was always the dramatic, emotional one. Dad had things under control, but was a bit of a trickster.
I don't know how they got engaged, and I wish I did. Maybe aunty Pat would know.
Before she got married, mum worked in an office. I don't know what she did there. It was just a stop-gap before marriage. It must have included typing, because she could touch type, and liked to impress us by showing us how she could type without looking what she was doing. She also used to do that while playing the piano, but starting the tune (she only knew one, Moonlight Sonata) on the wrong key, but playing it anyway... we really thought that was hilarious.
NEXT
Sunday, August 3, 2014
I Knew Nothing
The fact is I knew nothing about alcohol -- except that it was a good time fun thing that people who were good sorts drank.
It stuns me now that with the family history--the champion boozers and alcholics in my gene pool--nobody ever warned me about the down side of alcohol. Considering all the other life dangers I was barraged about -- boys, cars, dances, drugs, sex, non-catholics, to name just a few, this is still shocking.
It might have been because I didn't drink very young, or roll home drunk and vomiting, crash cars, or get arrested. Maybe if that had happened, someone might have warned me. But as it turned out, I had no concept of alcohol being equally addictive as any of those other "dangerous" addictive drugs. I had no concept of what alcohol does to the human body, besides relax it and make it laugh, move a bit more fluidly, make it stumble occasionally. I didn't think of it as toxic, or consider that our bodies had to labour to process and clean it out every time we consumed it. I didn't realise a hangover was quite literally a poisoning.
Obviously, this was my own responsiblity, and it was only my own selective blindness that kept me conveniently ignorant. I was very aware of the dangers of consuming processed foods, smoking, pesticides and plastics. I simply ignored the dangers of consuming alcohol.
Not long before I quit drinking, I saw the doctor for a routine check up and I decided to be a bit more honest about my alcohol consumption than I usually was. I admitted to drinking wine every day... but lied the edge off it by saying, just a glass or two with dinner. At the end of the session he said, the only health danger I see for you is drinking and breast cancer. Daily drinking raises the risk of breast cancer considerably. I was probably 51. This was news to me.
But let's look at this a bit more closely. I was actually a health freak of sorts. For years I loaded up with vitamins, raw juices, organic food. I walked a lot and kept the weight off. So why did I not do the same due diligence on booze? I would have seen immediately it was badass, and didnt' belong in a healthy body. Why did I think that it was fine to drink several glasses of wine as long as my chicken had been corn-fed, and the veges came from the organic farmers' market? Why did i think it was OK to knock back bloody marys at noon on Sunday as long as the tomato juice and cucumber were organic, and fresh-squeezed in my own juicer -- my cocktails were practically health food!
My attitude to drinking alcohol was that it was inevitable. It did not occur to me that it was feasible, or even possible to live an alcohol-free life.
How the heck was I going to relax?
How was I going to socialise? Get over my shyness?
How on earth would I celebrate? Or commiserate?
What about weddings, funerals, Christmas, New Year?
What about weekends?
What about every day, after work?
Everyone who quits drinking, gets sober, seems to go though this. We simply can't imagine life without alcohol. What the fuck are we going to DO if we don't drink? How are we going to function normally? It just seems utterly impossible.
These were not always conscious thoughts. They were deep, still, silent attitudes. They were unspoken fears. Beliefs even. They were incredibly powerful. They kept me trapped.
So how come I now happily live booze-free? I now look at that list and think WTF? That's haha hilarious. How could I have been so blind?
One day I found out that those deep, still, silent attitudes, unspoken fears, beliefs... were not true. They were a baldface lie, and I didn't need to believe them. Of course, it wasn't really as simple as that.
My eggshell was cracking. And I was getting another chance to examine what was inside -- the precious sweetness of a happy, kind, loving girl... and all the weird shit she'd stashed away over the years.
___________
Me: God, I feel like I'm so close to pin-pointing something really important here, but I can't quite get it. It's frustrating. I'm concentrating hard. Then daydreaming. Then concentrating. Then it starts to get clear, then dissappears. It's like the truth is hovering, but not landing.
She: Good description.
Me: It's making me crazy.
She: Are you crying?
Me: No! Yes. I'm crying. But not sad hot angry crying. Soft crying. Release, relief crying. I guess this is why I'm writing this. To get some relief from something. Not even sure what. But that's what's happening.
She: That's a good reason to write.
Me: It's a really different experience. I feel like I'm writing with a stick, poking, prodding, seeing what's going to happen if I apply some pressure here, break the skin there, take a whack over there. That's what's going on -- I'm experimenting with it. With myself even.
She: You're doing a good job.
__________________
Looking back, I can see so many times when I knew drinking alcohol was the stumbling block to something I really wanted -- a healthy body, an open, free mind, deep inner peace, the enthusiasm to write freely, to create. And I let it stay there, trap me, hold me back. I didn't stand up to it, see it for what it was. I continued to drink, to blot myself out, numb and dumb myself, because that felt normal -- that was what I was used to. Withdrawing, suppressing, feeling trapped.
I spent so many years trying to work the system, trading off drinking with working really hard, saving really hard, exercising really hard, eating well, doing yoga... Doing everything right, 110%. Because being a non-drinker just didn't seem like it was an option -- but I did have some reconciling to do. I was going to keep drinking, but I had to pay for it somehow.
Now I know my alcohol habit was keeping me afraid, small, withdrawn -- just like I'd been as a child. I was doing exactly the same shitty stuff to myself as I'd blamed my parents for doing to me.
NEXT
It stuns me now that with the family history--the champion boozers and alcholics in my gene pool--nobody ever warned me about the down side of alcohol. Considering all the other life dangers I was barraged about -- boys, cars, dances, drugs, sex, non-catholics, to name just a few, this is still shocking.
It might have been because I didn't drink very young, or roll home drunk and vomiting, crash cars, or get arrested. Maybe if that had happened, someone might have warned me. But as it turned out, I had no concept of alcohol being equally addictive as any of those other "dangerous" addictive drugs. I had no concept of what alcohol does to the human body, besides relax it and make it laugh, move a bit more fluidly, make it stumble occasionally. I didn't think of it as toxic, or consider that our bodies had to labour to process and clean it out every time we consumed it. I didn't realise a hangover was quite literally a poisoning.
Obviously, this was my own responsiblity, and it was only my own selective blindness that kept me conveniently ignorant. I was very aware of the dangers of consuming processed foods, smoking, pesticides and plastics. I simply ignored the dangers of consuming alcohol.
Not long before I quit drinking, I saw the doctor for a routine check up and I decided to be a bit more honest about my alcohol consumption than I usually was. I admitted to drinking wine every day... but lied the edge off it by saying, just a glass or two with dinner. At the end of the session he said, the only health danger I see for you is drinking and breast cancer. Daily drinking raises the risk of breast cancer considerably. I was probably 51. This was news to me.
But let's look at this a bit more closely. I was actually a health freak of sorts. For years I loaded up with vitamins, raw juices, organic food. I walked a lot and kept the weight off. So why did I not do the same due diligence on booze? I would have seen immediately it was badass, and didnt' belong in a healthy body. Why did I think that it was fine to drink several glasses of wine as long as my chicken had been corn-fed, and the veges came from the organic farmers' market? Why did i think it was OK to knock back bloody marys at noon on Sunday as long as the tomato juice and cucumber were organic, and fresh-squeezed in my own juicer -- my cocktails were practically health food!
My attitude to drinking alcohol was that it was inevitable. It did not occur to me that it was feasible, or even possible to live an alcohol-free life.
How the heck was I going to relax?
How was I going to socialise? Get over my shyness?
How on earth would I celebrate? Or commiserate?
What about weddings, funerals, Christmas, New Year?
What about weekends?
What about every day, after work?
Everyone who quits drinking, gets sober, seems to go though this. We simply can't imagine life without alcohol. What the fuck are we going to DO if we don't drink? How are we going to function normally? It just seems utterly impossible.
These were not always conscious thoughts. They were deep, still, silent attitudes. They were unspoken fears. Beliefs even. They were incredibly powerful. They kept me trapped.
So how come I now happily live booze-free? I now look at that list and think WTF? That's haha hilarious. How could I have been so blind?
One day I found out that those deep, still, silent attitudes, unspoken fears, beliefs... were not true. They were a baldface lie, and I didn't need to believe them. Of course, it wasn't really as simple as that.
My eggshell was cracking. And I was getting another chance to examine what was inside -- the precious sweetness of a happy, kind, loving girl... and all the weird shit she'd stashed away over the years.
___________
Me: God, I feel like I'm so close to pin-pointing something really important here, but I can't quite get it. It's frustrating. I'm concentrating hard. Then daydreaming. Then concentrating. Then it starts to get clear, then dissappears. It's like the truth is hovering, but not landing.
She: Good description.
Me: It's making me crazy.
She: Are you crying?
Me: No! Yes. I'm crying. But not sad hot angry crying. Soft crying. Release, relief crying. I guess this is why I'm writing this. To get some relief from something. Not even sure what. But that's what's happening.
She: That's a good reason to write.
Me: It's a really different experience. I feel like I'm writing with a stick, poking, prodding, seeing what's going to happen if I apply some pressure here, break the skin there, take a whack over there. That's what's going on -- I'm experimenting with it. With myself even.
She: You're doing a good job.
__________________
Looking back, I can see so many times when I knew drinking alcohol was the stumbling block to something I really wanted -- a healthy body, an open, free mind, deep inner peace, the enthusiasm to write freely, to create. And I let it stay there, trap me, hold me back. I didn't stand up to it, see it for what it was. I continued to drink, to blot myself out, numb and dumb myself, because that felt normal -- that was what I was used to. Withdrawing, suppressing, feeling trapped.
I spent so many years trying to work the system, trading off drinking with working really hard, saving really hard, exercising really hard, eating well, doing yoga... Doing everything right, 110%. Because being a non-drinker just didn't seem like it was an option -- but I did have some reconciling to do. I was going to keep drinking, but I had to pay for it somehow.
Now I know my alcohol habit was keeping me afraid, small, withdrawn -- just like I'd been as a child. I was doing exactly the same shitty stuff to myself as I'd blamed my parents for doing to me.
NEXT
Saturday, August 2, 2014
Escalating Backwards
The main point for writing this story was to write about drinking -- my own in particular. But I can't seem to find a natural segue into it, so I'm just going to have to launch in.
I've been reading recovery memoirs, and sober blogs, and it seems like my drinking story goes in the opposite direction to a lot of them.
I didn't binge drink when I was a teenager. I didn't drink at all until I was 18, and didn't enjoy it much when I did. I drank a bit in university, but didn't get drunk. I drank during my 20s but moderately. The point is that I remember it all -- so I wasn't overdoing it. Some highlights:
The laboratory I worked at had a home-brew department out the back, where Bill got his elderberry and blackberry wine on. The first time I got drunk was on that wine. My co-worker kindly drove me home to her place and put me to bed. She phoned my mother and said I wouldn't be home for dinner, and she took me home later when I'd recovered. I don't know if mum knew what really happened, but nothing was said.
That same job. Christmas party time. One of the managers arranged for me to go with one of his friends -- a sort of blind date. This guy got totally rotten drunk, and had to be carried out of the event.
In my early 20s, during the university holidays, the Ward side of the family had a big family reunion. We were all together for about 10 days, and I drank with the adults every day at "five o'clock drinks" or happy hour or whatever it was. Then I stayed on and worked in the rest home. We continued to have after work drinks, and I remember this was the first time I felt the "urge" to drink at a particular time of the day -- a habit was forming. But it wasn't lasting. It went away when I went back to university and a different routine.
A beach hut somewhere in the Carribean, eating white tuna just out of a boat, with breadfruit chips, and cold Heinekin. I remember this because it was Gerard's first beer since he was 17, and had an epiphany that he should stop drinking. We were 26 at the time. Same trip, getting to Chile, mid 1980s before Chilean wine was world-famous and widely available. We'd picnic in parks with wine, bread, chocolate. We'd order massive steaks and chips, and drink red wine. I remember a christmas celebration in Puerto Montt, with some other travellers. There was drunkenness and hangovers, but I don't think I was afflicted.
London. Drinking was huge in London. The Brits in the publishing house I worked at went to the pub for lunch and drank. The Australians and Kiwis were pub mad. There was a wine bar on every corner. We drank regularly, but not a huge quantity. I do remember that we picked a laundromat with a pub across the road, so we could sit and have a pint while the clothes were washing, whip over and stick them in the drier, and have another pint as they dried. We went out for pub lunches on Sunday, and had cider with a pie and spuds and peas.
I was in London the day they abolished pubs closing between 3pm and 6pm. That day we all went to the pub for lunch and didn't go back to work. I was pretty drunk and a little hung over.
Spain, out drinking one night in a pub in Gibralta, meeting Irish Louie, agreeing to go to Morocco with him the next day, waking up in the morning hung over and regretting that promise... but we did remember it at least. No booze in Morocco, and it didn't matter one bit.
Vancouver. Wine Festival. We had Kiwis staying with us. Everyone got totally rotten, passed out, vomitting out the flat windows. It was brutal.
But all those years, drinking was something of an occasion, not a daily activity.
Then I was in my 30s, separated, living alone, and working in a big office where after-work drinks happened during the week. I drank more often. I would have beer in the house, and that was the first time I'd have a drink on my own -- not as part of a social gathering. I didn't do it a lot, but it was a change worth noting. I say I had my adolescence in my early 30s. It involved quite a lot of drinking, partying, socialising.
It's really weird to be writing this, but it seemed that as I got older, and got my shit together more, got into a stable relationship and married again, grew a successful business and got some financial stability... they more sorted out my life got, the more I drank.
Some time during my 40s, daily drinking became the norm. We ate out a lot, and our local bar tender had a very generous pour. Wine was cheap, and we had a stash in the basement storage cupboard... which we didn't need, because there was a big liquor store at the corner.
I did not feel like there was anything amiss. Life was good. I was really happy and enjoying myself.
The last year we were in Vancouver 2003 - 4 was particularly intense. I was trying to keep the business running, and sell it before we left, I was training for a triathalon, and getting ready to return to NZ after being away for 18 years. I was constantly hungry because of the training schedule. I started going to the Greek restaurant down the block for a cooked meal at lunch time, two or three days a week. And once I ordered a wine. They had a generous pour too. It really took the edge off my work stress, so I kept doing it. All that year I was training hard, stressed at work, eating like a horse, and drinking cheap white wine with my lunch. I had had wine with lunch before, but not by myself, and not regularly. This was a change I noticed, and wasn't that proud of. Put it this way, I didn't tell anyone.
When we got to NZ, nothing turned out the way I expected. I had been gone for 18 years, and built NZ up to be a paradise that it wasn't. We landed in our dream spot, didn't really settle, moved to a new town, moved houses a few times, got jobs, changed jobs... and generally the whole thing was a huge stress to me. Being in New Zealand was stressful -- I felt that my dreams were dashed. I didn't know myself. I felt like I'd been slung back into that horrible place I'd been as a child... it was cruel and depressing. But I was being brave, and probably nobody had a clue about how shitty I was feeling. And I was drinking more. And more. And more. Every day now, as soon as I got in the door from work, I'd have a wine to bring me down from the day -- take the edge off. Except the edge was still there, and it kept taking more wine to smooth it. I don't know how it ended up being a whole bottle of wine most days, but that's what it was.
Not long before we left Arrowtown, I decided I was turning into a lush, and needed to quit drinking for a while -- to prove to myself I didn't have a problem. So I stopped drinking wine, and started drinking a bottle of sparkling grape juice every day. Very soon my whole body started to stiffen up -- rheumatoid arthritis symptoms. My arms wouldn't lift up, my hands were stiff, my feet wouldn't move properly... I woke up in the morning in agony, and could hardly move. One night, about three months into this very frightening time, David was about to go to Wellington for a new job, and I drank a glass of red wine with him while we had dinner. I woke up the next morning with no pain. I started drinking again, and I was soon good as gold... well not that soon, but I did fully recover. There are various theories about that episode, including sugar poisoning, massive stress about leaving Arrowtown, dreams dashed. Who knows? It doesn't matter.
Working in Wellington, I was thrown in to a crowd of wonderful people who liked to party after work, and I joined them quite often. We drank at home, drank with neighbours, drank alone. It was just woven into the daily routine. I didn't really think it wasn't normal. It was what my parents had done, and what people seemed to do -- take the edge of whatever stresses you with a few drinks.
I wasn't falling down drunk. I did have a few bender-type nights, when I went out with my work mates and got a bit stumbly, but it was pretty benign compared to what other people managed to achieve! I didn't break the law, get wild and crazy, hurt myself or others overtly, miss work... I was just drinking myself into a nice stupor every night, blotting myself out, sleeping badly, waking up annoyed and angry at myself for being such a looser, promising myself I'd cut back, and doing it all over again, day after day after day.
Writing this out brings up a heck of a lot of questions I could ask and answer... but the real point is that I felt out of control. I was constantly drinking more than I intended to drink. That was a problem. It might not have looked like one, and my life looked together. But I was worried. Scared, defeated. I had achieved so so much in life -- overcome so many obstacles, escaped my crazy family and made a life for myself, but this was the one thing that I couldn't get a handle on, couldn't keep under control.
It went on like this for several years.
Then in 2010, in August, I got a virus that knocked me totally flat for three weeks. I hadn't been sick for years, and this was the Big One. I couldn't eat, was in a fever-chill cycle around the clock, had a severe headache, and I think I was delirious a lot of the time. It occurred to me that as well as having the viral infection I was probably going though an alcohol detox. I didn't get a repeat of the arthritis symptoms. When the virus cleared up, and I got my appetite back, I pragmatically thought "Well, I've just had three weeks off drinking, the hard work is done, I might as well stick with this for a while." And I did. I didn't drink again for 9 months. I didn't drink on my 50th birthday -- that was strange but true. I hadn't even thought about giving up drining forver, I just was having a break.
I remember very little about this time. I didn't talk to anyone much about not drinking, I just grit my teeth and didn't drink. I didn't keep a journal,and I'm gutted about that, because I'm really curious about what was going on in my head for those 9 months -- and I can't remember much at all.
What I do remember very clearly is ordering a beer in a bar in Melbourne in April 2011. It tasted great. I felt good about it. David did ask me "are you sure you want to do that?" and I was. I thought I'd broken the back of my alcohol issues, and would really enjoy a beer every now and then. And so it was for a few weeks. I mixed a splash of red wine with soda water for a drink with dinner. In the back of my mind was the idea that I'd be fine as long as I didn't start drinking full-strength white wine again. I didn't know it at the time, but I was right on track to be drinking full-on again in no time flat, and I kept it up for another 18 months, stunned at how that happened, but re-trapped in the daily drinking cycle, like nothing had happened. I wasn't cured afterall.
I'm aware that is just a big dump of information and I will re-visit is, and edit. But it feels good to get this out on paper. To Admit It, commit it to print.
NEXT
I've been reading recovery memoirs, and sober blogs, and it seems like my drinking story goes in the opposite direction to a lot of them.
I didn't binge drink when I was a teenager. I didn't drink at all until I was 18, and didn't enjoy it much when I did. I drank a bit in university, but didn't get drunk. I drank during my 20s but moderately. The point is that I remember it all -- so I wasn't overdoing it. Some highlights:
The laboratory I worked at had a home-brew department out the back, where Bill got his elderberry and blackberry wine on. The first time I got drunk was on that wine. My co-worker kindly drove me home to her place and put me to bed. She phoned my mother and said I wouldn't be home for dinner, and she took me home later when I'd recovered. I don't know if mum knew what really happened, but nothing was said.
That same job. Christmas party time. One of the managers arranged for me to go with one of his friends -- a sort of blind date. This guy got totally rotten drunk, and had to be carried out of the event.
In my early 20s, during the university holidays, the Ward side of the family had a big family reunion. We were all together for about 10 days, and I drank with the adults every day at "five o'clock drinks" or happy hour or whatever it was. Then I stayed on and worked in the rest home. We continued to have after work drinks, and I remember this was the first time I felt the "urge" to drink at a particular time of the day -- a habit was forming. But it wasn't lasting. It went away when I went back to university and a different routine.
A beach hut somewhere in the Carribean, eating white tuna just out of a boat, with breadfruit chips, and cold Heinekin. I remember this because it was Gerard's first beer since he was 17, and had an epiphany that he should stop drinking. We were 26 at the time. Same trip, getting to Chile, mid 1980s before Chilean wine was world-famous and widely available. We'd picnic in parks with wine, bread, chocolate. We'd order massive steaks and chips, and drink red wine. I remember a christmas celebration in Puerto Montt, with some other travellers. There was drunkenness and hangovers, but I don't think I was afflicted.
London. Drinking was huge in London. The Brits in the publishing house I worked at went to the pub for lunch and drank. The Australians and Kiwis were pub mad. There was a wine bar on every corner. We drank regularly, but not a huge quantity. I do remember that we picked a laundromat with a pub across the road, so we could sit and have a pint while the clothes were washing, whip over and stick them in the drier, and have another pint as they dried. We went out for pub lunches on Sunday, and had cider with a pie and spuds and peas.
I was in London the day they abolished pubs closing between 3pm and 6pm. That day we all went to the pub for lunch and didn't go back to work. I was pretty drunk and a little hung over.
Spain, out drinking one night in a pub in Gibralta, meeting Irish Louie, agreeing to go to Morocco with him the next day, waking up in the morning hung over and regretting that promise... but we did remember it at least. No booze in Morocco, and it didn't matter one bit.
Vancouver. Wine Festival. We had Kiwis staying with us. Everyone got totally rotten, passed out, vomitting out the flat windows. It was brutal.
But all those years, drinking was something of an occasion, not a daily activity.
Then I was in my 30s, separated, living alone, and working in a big office where after-work drinks happened during the week. I drank more often. I would have beer in the house, and that was the first time I'd have a drink on my own -- not as part of a social gathering. I didn't do it a lot, but it was a change worth noting. I say I had my adolescence in my early 30s. It involved quite a lot of drinking, partying, socialising.
It's really weird to be writing this, but it seemed that as I got older, and got my shit together more, got into a stable relationship and married again, grew a successful business and got some financial stability... they more sorted out my life got, the more I drank.
Some time during my 40s, daily drinking became the norm. We ate out a lot, and our local bar tender had a very generous pour. Wine was cheap, and we had a stash in the basement storage cupboard... which we didn't need, because there was a big liquor store at the corner.
I did not feel like there was anything amiss. Life was good. I was really happy and enjoying myself.
The last year we were in Vancouver 2003 - 4 was particularly intense. I was trying to keep the business running, and sell it before we left, I was training for a triathalon, and getting ready to return to NZ after being away for 18 years. I was constantly hungry because of the training schedule. I started going to the Greek restaurant down the block for a cooked meal at lunch time, two or three days a week. And once I ordered a wine. They had a generous pour too. It really took the edge off my work stress, so I kept doing it. All that year I was training hard, stressed at work, eating like a horse, and drinking cheap white wine with my lunch. I had had wine with lunch before, but not by myself, and not regularly. This was a change I noticed, and wasn't that proud of. Put it this way, I didn't tell anyone.
When we got to NZ, nothing turned out the way I expected. I had been gone for 18 years, and built NZ up to be a paradise that it wasn't. We landed in our dream spot, didn't really settle, moved to a new town, moved houses a few times, got jobs, changed jobs... and generally the whole thing was a huge stress to me. Being in New Zealand was stressful -- I felt that my dreams were dashed. I didn't know myself. I felt like I'd been slung back into that horrible place I'd been as a child... it was cruel and depressing. But I was being brave, and probably nobody had a clue about how shitty I was feeling. And I was drinking more. And more. And more. Every day now, as soon as I got in the door from work, I'd have a wine to bring me down from the day -- take the edge off. Except the edge was still there, and it kept taking more wine to smooth it. I don't know how it ended up being a whole bottle of wine most days, but that's what it was.
Not long before we left Arrowtown, I decided I was turning into a lush, and needed to quit drinking for a while -- to prove to myself I didn't have a problem. So I stopped drinking wine, and started drinking a bottle of sparkling grape juice every day. Very soon my whole body started to stiffen up -- rheumatoid arthritis symptoms. My arms wouldn't lift up, my hands were stiff, my feet wouldn't move properly... I woke up in the morning in agony, and could hardly move. One night, about three months into this very frightening time, David was about to go to Wellington for a new job, and I drank a glass of red wine with him while we had dinner. I woke up the next morning with no pain. I started drinking again, and I was soon good as gold... well not that soon, but I did fully recover. There are various theories about that episode, including sugar poisoning, massive stress about leaving Arrowtown, dreams dashed. Who knows? It doesn't matter.
Working in Wellington, I was thrown in to a crowd of wonderful people who liked to party after work, and I joined them quite often. We drank at home, drank with neighbours, drank alone. It was just woven into the daily routine. I didn't really think it wasn't normal. It was what my parents had done, and what people seemed to do -- take the edge of whatever stresses you with a few drinks.
I wasn't falling down drunk. I did have a few bender-type nights, when I went out with my work mates and got a bit stumbly, but it was pretty benign compared to what other people managed to achieve! I didn't break the law, get wild and crazy, hurt myself or others overtly, miss work... I was just drinking myself into a nice stupor every night, blotting myself out, sleeping badly, waking up annoyed and angry at myself for being such a looser, promising myself I'd cut back, and doing it all over again, day after day after day.
Writing this out brings up a heck of a lot of questions I could ask and answer... but the real point is that I felt out of control. I was constantly drinking more than I intended to drink. That was a problem. It might not have looked like one, and my life looked together. But I was worried. Scared, defeated. I had achieved so so much in life -- overcome so many obstacles, escaped my crazy family and made a life for myself, but this was the one thing that I couldn't get a handle on, couldn't keep under control.
It went on like this for several years.
Then in 2010, in August, I got a virus that knocked me totally flat for three weeks. I hadn't been sick for years, and this was the Big One. I couldn't eat, was in a fever-chill cycle around the clock, had a severe headache, and I think I was delirious a lot of the time. It occurred to me that as well as having the viral infection I was probably going though an alcohol detox. I didn't get a repeat of the arthritis symptoms. When the virus cleared up, and I got my appetite back, I pragmatically thought "Well, I've just had three weeks off drinking, the hard work is done, I might as well stick with this for a while." And I did. I didn't drink again for 9 months. I didn't drink on my 50th birthday -- that was strange but true. I hadn't even thought about giving up drining forver, I just was having a break.
I remember very little about this time. I didn't talk to anyone much about not drinking, I just grit my teeth and didn't drink. I didn't keep a journal,and I'm gutted about that, because I'm really curious about what was going on in my head for those 9 months -- and I can't remember much at all.
What I do remember very clearly is ordering a beer in a bar in Melbourne in April 2011. It tasted great. I felt good about it. David did ask me "are you sure you want to do that?" and I was. I thought I'd broken the back of my alcohol issues, and would really enjoy a beer every now and then. And so it was for a few weeks. I mixed a splash of red wine with soda water for a drink with dinner. In the back of my mind was the idea that I'd be fine as long as I didn't start drinking full-strength white wine again. I didn't know it at the time, but I was right on track to be drinking full-on again in no time flat, and I kept it up for another 18 months, stunned at how that happened, but re-trapped in the daily drinking cycle, like nothing had happened. I wasn't cured afterall.
I'm aware that is just a big dump of information and I will re-visit is, and edit. But it feels good to get this out on paper. To Admit It, commit it to print.
NEXT
Are We There Yet?
Me: I'd like to know where this is going.
She: Where what's going?
Me: This story. This writing. It's all over the place. There's no structure. There's no end in sight either. Where is it all going to end up? I really didn't want to write a re-hash of everything about my life that's pissed me off. I wanted to progress it, make something of it. You know, make it better.
She: What do you want to write about now?
Me: I don't know. I can't decide what's going to make sense. And what I can cope with.
She: What's been on your mind when you wake up in the night, or in the morning. What's smoldering?
Me: Stuff I actually don't want to write about.
She: What?
Me: What I did to my parents. My part in the alienation.
She: Can you start on that now?
Me: I suppose so. It does feel sticky and sad, choking and hot. Tight in the gut too -- that's a new feeling. But I'm ready to give it a go.
She: OK, go.
I did two things that ensured a gulf remained between me and my mother. I left the Catholic church, and I moved to the other side of the world. Let's deal with the Catholic thing first.
The day before mum died, she told me that the worst thing that had happened in her life was that I'd left the Catholic church -- but that she now realised it didn't matter. I was shocked. I'd had no idea. I knew when I refused to get married in the Catholic church, it was a Big Deal. They got the parish priest over to talk me into it. He failed. I remember the day clearly. I had just been bullied into having a polyester wedding dress, but I sat on the other side of the fireplace from Father Ives, and answered all his questions calmly, rationally -- I wasn't going to stand in front of a priest in a church and declare things I didn't believe just because my parents wanted me to. It was a matter of conscience. I wasn't going to be unreasonable though. I invited Father Ives to take part in the wedding service, which would be held on neutral ground, not in a church at all. I was open to him joining in. He refused. He got up from the arm chair, walked into the kitchen, declared me a lost soul to my mother, who was crying when I next saw her, and wouldn't look at me or speak. Shame, frustration? Their oldest child getting married outside the church. Well at least I wasn't wearing a silk dress!
Giving up on Catholicism wasn't something I did lightly or friviously, or quickly, or with the intention of gaining some precious sense of control over my own life. But from here I can see that it created a huge rift that would never be healed. And I kind of liked things that way. It was a way of saying -- you don't own me. You might dictate what I wear, and eat, and say, where I live, what I do in my spare time... but you don't dictate what I think or believe.
Me: that was a lot harder to write than I thought.
She: are you feeling OK?
Me: Yes, but a bit confused. It makes me question my motives. I've never thought I tossed away my religion to spite my parents, but maybe that was part of the motivation. I also feel a bit weird that all those years mum thought this was the worst thing that had happened in her life. I had no idea.
And I also want to say that whatever shame and frustration mum had over the wedding seemed to quickly evaporate, and the plans and preparations proceeded with a hiss and a roar, and it all came together nicely. We had the wedding in the Victoria Chambers -- newly renovated, and very lovely. We got married by a lovely Baptist minister (Nana Ward thought that was cool, her Sid having been a Baptist), all the relatives came (after receiving permission or dispensation from their parish priest to attend a non-Catholic wedding in a non-church), it was a happy day, and everyone agreed the whole thing was lovely. The dress didn't even look too hideous!
I remember Dad was dumbfounded that there was so much booze left over after that wedding. He did the wine and beer catering, and based his calculations on the usual family party consumption. Most of our friends and the other side of the family were not big drinkers. Some of them, including my new husband, didn't drink at all. So Dad got to take more than half the booze home afterwards, which I thought more than made up for for any trouble we'd caused.
____________________
I went travelling, with my first husband, as a lot of people did in their twenties. We were going for 6 months, to Canada, the US and South America. We stayed away the first time for three years. Then we moved to Canada, and I didn't come home for a six year stretch. Dad had died, and I was pretty much disconnected from my sisters, not connected with mum either.
I remember during all those years, starting from when I went to university, really loving being away from the family, having the freedom to just be myself, get a sense of who I was, without all that expectation, controllling and interference. I wasn't going mad and doing stupid things, I was just reading, and writing, and learning not to be freaked out and anxious about everything. I was studying and thinking, and learning to cook, and even starting to get a sense of personal style -- just a tiny bit... that's still a work in progress!
And every time I was going home or seeing the family, I'd be thinking "This time, it's going to be different. This time they'll see who I am, and we'll get on, and like each other and have a real relationship." And every time, it was like walking into a time warp, where I felt like a defected freak, a different species, a disappointment. It was so frustrating. There was no way to connect.
Mum started coming to Canada with her second husband, and I hoped things would improve. During these trips, and some trips I made back to NZ, mum and I would be polite, but alien strangers, as usual. But I learned that by applying alcohol, at least we could have a bit of a conversation that didn't end in tears or frustrated anger. Drinking took the edge off my anxiety, which was sky-high when mum was around. Drinking made me lose my fear of offending her -- seemed to cement my sense of self. Drinking made her not be so easily offended -- she was a bit looser, more open. So we drank wine, or cocktails to take the edge off things between us, and we coped.
We didn't connect. But we didn't have a completely miserable time.
________________
And I would say that was the first time in my life I was really aware of alcohol being a very useful social lubricant. I drank when I wasn't around the family, but I drank far more when I was.
NEXT
She: Where what's going?
Me: This story. This writing. It's all over the place. There's no structure. There's no end in sight either. Where is it all going to end up? I really didn't want to write a re-hash of everything about my life that's pissed me off. I wanted to progress it, make something of it. You know, make it better.
She: What do you want to write about now?
Me: I don't know. I can't decide what's going to make sense. And what I can cope with.
She: What's been on your mind when you wake up in the night, or in the morning. What's smoldering?
Me: Stuff I actually don't want to write about.
She: What?
Me: What I did to my parents. My part in the alienation.
She: Can you start on that now?
Me: I suppose so. It does feel sticky and sad, choking and hot. Tight in the gut too -- that's a new feeling. But I'm ready to give it a go.
She: OK, go.
I did two things that ensured a gulf remained between me and my mother. I left the Catholic church, and I moved to the other side of the world. Let's deal with the Catholic thing first.
The day before mum died, she told me that the worst thing that had happened in her life was that I'd left the Catholic church -- but that she now realised it didn't matter. I was shocked. I'd had no idea. I knew when I refused to get married in the Catholic church, it was a Big Deal. They got the parish priest over to talk me into it. He failed. I remember the day clearly. I had just been bullied into having a polyester wedding dress, but I sat on the other side of the fireplace from Father Ives, and answered all his questions calmly, rationally -- I wasn't going to stand in front of a priest in a church and declare things I didn't believe just because my parents wanted me to. It was a matter of conscience. I wasn't going to be unreasonable though. I invited Father Ives to take part in the wedding service, which would be held on neutral ground, not in a church at all. I was open to him joining in. He refused. He got up from the arm chair, walked into the kitchen, declared me a lost soul to my mother, who was crying when I next saw her, and wouldn't look at me or speak. Shame, frustration? Their oldest child getting married outside the church. Well at least I wasn't wearing a silk dress!
Giving up on Catholicism wasn't something I did lightly or friviously, or quickly, or with the intention of gaining some precious sense of control over my own life. But from here I can see that it created a huge rift that would never be healed. And I kind of liked things that way. It was a way of saying -- you don't own me. You might dictate what I wear, and eat, and say, where I live, what I do in my spare time... but you don't dictate what I think or believe.
Me: that was a lot harder to write than I thought.
She: are you feeling OK?
Me: Yes, but a bit confused. It makes me question my motives. I've never thought I tossed away my religion to spite my parents, but maybe that was part of the motivation. I also feel a bit weird that all those years mum thought this was the worst thing that had happened in her life. I had no idea.
And I also want to say that whatever shame and frustration mum had over the wedding seemed to quickly evaporate, and the plans and preparations proceeded with a hiss and a roar, and it all came together nicely. We had the wedding in the Victoria Chambers -- newly renovated, and very lovely. We got married by a lovely Baptist minister (Nana Ward thought that was cool, her Sid having been a Baptist), all the relatives came (after receiving permission or dispensation from their parish priest to attend a non-Catholic wedding in a non-church), it was a happy day, and everyone agreed the whole thing was lovely. The dress didn't even look too hideous!
I remember Dad was dumbfounded that there was so much booze left over after that wedding. He did the wine and beer catering, and based his calculations on the usual family party consumption. Most of our friends and the other side of the family were not big drinkers. Some of them, including my new husband, didn't drink at all. So Dad got to take more than half the booze home afterwards, which I thought more than made up for for any trouble we'd caused.
____________________
I went travelling, with my first husband, as a lot of people did in their twenties. We were going for 6 months, to Canada, the US and South America. We stayed away the first time for three years. Then we moved to Canada, and I didn't come home for a six year stretch. Dad had died, and I was pretty much disconnected from my sisters, not connected with mum either.
I remember during all those years, starting from when I went to university, really loving being away from the family, having the freedom to just be myself, get a sense of who I was, without all that expectation, controllling and interference. I wasn't going mad and doing stupid things, I was just reading, and writing, and learning not to be freaked out and anxious about everything. I was studying and thinking, and learning to cook, and even starting to get a sense of personal style -- just a tiny bit... that's still a work in progress!
And every time I was going home or seeing the family, I'd be thinking "This time, it's going to be different. This time they'll see who I am, and we'll get on, and like each other and have a real relationship." And every time, it was like walking into a time warp, where I felt like a defected freak, a different species, a disappointment. It was so frustrating. There was no way to connect.
Mum started coming to Canada with her second husband, and I hoped things would improve. During these trips, and some trips I made back to NZ, mum and I would be polite, but alien strangers, as usual. But I learned that by applying alcohol, at least we could have a bit of a conversation that didn't end in tears or frustrated anger. Drinking took the edge off my anxiety, which was sky-high when mum was around. Drinking made me lose my fear of offending her -- seemed to cement my sense of self. Drinking made her not be so easily offended -- she was a bit looser, more open. So we drank wine, or cocktails to take the edge off things between us, and we coped.
We didn't connect. But we didn't have a completely miserable time.
________________
And I would say that was the first time in my life I was really aware of alcohol being a very useful social lubricant. I drank when I wasn't around the family, but I drank far more when I was.
NEXT
Thursday, July 31, 2014
Reginald Baird
Here's what I know about mum's father. This is what I've been told about him. He died well before I was born, so I didn't know him. It's funny that just now, in the last few seconds, I realised that he's part of my genetic history. I've got some of this person in me. That kind of shocks me.
Anyway, in order of perceived importance, here's what I know about Reginald Baird
He was handsome.
He was a stock broker.
He was a boozer. He belonged to the "Sunday Morning Drinkers" club. Instead of going to mass with their families, they drank on Sunday mornings. This was told to me as a haha hilarious family story, and that's all I ever thought about it when I was a kid. But when I was a teenager, I was at a school friend's house, and her mother said in passing "but of course your grandfather was a raving alcoholic!" Really? I was kind of offended. I went home and asked mum if that was true. And I don't remember the answer. It wasn't yes, and it wasn't no.
He died in his 40s of sclerosis of the liver. Mum was away with friends for the weekend, and when she got home he had died. She said she laughed when she heard he'd died. I can't remember asking her why, and over the years I've variously thought it must have been a nervous reaction to unexpected bad news, or that she really didn't like him.
Mum was his favourite daughter. When mum was 10, he gave her a giant sausage for a birthday present. I don't know how giant. But it was spectacular and she was embarrassed that her friends saw it. She loved sausages, though, so it was one of those moments.
If he didn't like what was served up for dinner, he pulled the tablecloth off the table, and with it the plates, cutlery and food. Now, I don't know if he did this once or routinely. Mum said that's what he did.
He was a practical joker. He stole the front seat out of one of the first cars to arrive in Invercargill, and hid it for months, so the driver had to drive around town sitting on a beer crate. He shot a horse inside someone's garage and they couldn't get it out without chopping it up. He nailed a fish under someone's kitchen table and it went rotten and stunk up their house. Haha hilarious.
He gave his kids a sixpence or a penny or some coin if they found a four leafed clover. They devised ways to glue extra leaves onto regular clovers to get the money.
When he died, he didn't qualify for a requiem mass in the Catholic church because he didn't go to mass (because he went Sunday morning drinking instead), but the church gave the family a dispensation and let him have one because nana was such a good Catholic, and took all her kids (8 of them) to mass. Reginald wouldn't let his oldest daughter go into the convent to become a nun. But after he died, that's what she did.
There was a really interesting story about what happened when nana and Reg first got married.
Before they got married, Reg lived with his father. His mother had died, and his father had hired a housekeeper called Molly, who lived in the house with them. When Reg and nana married, they had their own house, but because it was a 'bad look' for Reg's father to be alone with Molly in the house, nana and Reg had to go and sleep the night in the old family home, nana in a room with Molly and Reg in a room with his father. I honestly don't know if this last bit was true, but that's what we were told. Eventually the old guy married Molly, and she became nana's mother-in-law, even though they were roughly the same age. Molly and the old man had some children -- a whole new family who got the 'family jewels' and nana got nothing.
When Reg died, nana was 42, and had 8 children aged 2 - 18. (I need to check those ages, but I believe they are correct.) Mum was the third oldest, 15. They had their own house, but they were poor. Mum says she and her sisters were made to stand at the back of the rows at school because they didn't have the proper school uniform. When they got jobs, they helped nana out, but she lived on the widow's benefit and I'm sure on the kindness of the extended family.
Nana was a beautiful, gracious, funny, energetic woman. If you didn't know she'd been widowed at 42 with 8 kids, you'd never suspect it. There wasn't a whiff of the victim about nana Baird. Not a whiff.
I grew up thinking that it was just as well this grandfather wasn't still alive. He was scary, in a cartoon character kind of way. I knew I wouldn't like him. When I got older and read pop psychology and self help books, I started to think that mum's need to control her children, her environment, her everything probably stemmed from fear and instability in her own childhood, and I wondered if a lot of that had to do with her father -- first when he was alive and larger than life, and then when he died and left them all to it.
I could never reconcile mum and nana. They were so different. I honestly don't know what kind of relationship they had. They spend time together. They didn't fight or have any drama. But were they close? Did they communicate properly, or just chat over a sherry or a cup of tea? I don't know. I do remember nana leaving mum's bedside in tears, only days before mum died. Mum had sent her away to get her hearing aid sorted out, so they could talk. "How can I talk to her if her hearing aid has no batteries??" Mum was visibly upset. I always wondered if mum wanted to tell nana something about Reg. I'll never know.
Not long before nana died, I was visiting her at Calvary, and she said "I'm sorry we didn't talk about the important things. But you girls didn't have too bad a time of it did you?"
I just said "No nana, we are all OK." It was an opportunity for me to get inside my egg shell, but I didn't. I just let it pass, and I'll never know what she meant.
NEXT
Anyway, in order of perceived importance, here's what I know about Reginald Baird
He was handsome.
He was a stock broker.
He was a boozer. He belonged to the "Sunday Morning Drinkers" club. Instead of going to mass with their families, they drank on Sunday mornings. This was told to me as a haha hilarious family story, and that's all I ever thought about it when I was a kid. But when I was a teenager, I was at a school friend's house, and her mother said in passing "but of course your grandfather was a raving alcoholic!" Really? I was kind of offended. I went home and asked mum if that was true. And I don't remember the answer. It wasn't yes, and it wasn't no.
He died in his 40s of sclerosis of the liver. Mum was away with friends for the weekend, and when she got home he had died. She said she laughed when she heard he'd died. I can't remember asking her why, and over the years I've variously thought it must have been a nervous reaction to unexpected bad news, or that she really didn't like him.
Mum was his favourite daughter. When mum was 10, he gave her a giant sausage for a birthday present. I don't know how giant. But it was spectacular and she was embarrassed that her friends saw it. She loved sausages, though, so it was one of those moments.
If he didn't like what was served up for dinner, he pulled the tablecloth off the table, and with it the plates, cutlery and food. Now, I don't know if he did this once or routinely. Mum said that's what he did.
He was a practical joker. He stole the front seat out of one of the first cars to arrive in Invercargill, and hid it for months, so the driver had to drive around town sitting on a beer crate. He shot a horse inside someone's garage and they couldn't get it out without chopping it up. He nailed a fish under someone's kitchen table and it went rotten and stunk up their house. Haha hilarious.
He gave his kids a sixpence or a penny or some coin if they found a four leafed clover. They devised ways to glue extra leaves onto regular clovers to get the money.
When he died, he didn't qualify for a requiem mass in the Catholic church because he didn't go to mass (because he went Sunday morning drinking instead), but the church gave the family a dispensation and let him have one because nana was such a good Catholic, and took all her kids (8 of them) to mass. Reginald wouldn't let his oldest daughter go into the convent to become a nun. But after he died, that's what she did.
There was a really interesting story about what happened when nana and Reg first got married.
Before they got married, Reg lived with his father. His mother had died, and his father had hired a housekeeper called Molly, who lived in the house with them. When Reg and nana married, they had their own house, but because it was a 'bad look' for Reg's father to be alone with Molly in the house, nana and Reg had to go and sleep the night in the old family home, nana in a room with Molly and Reg in a room with his father. I honestly don't know if this last bit was true, but that's what we were told. Eventually the old guy married Molly, and she became nana's mother-in-law, even though they were roughly the same age. Molly and the old man had some children -- a whole new family who got the 'family jewels' and nana got nothing.
When Reg died, nana was 42, and had 8 children aged 2 - 18. (I need to check those ages, but I believe they are correct.) Mum was the third oldest, 15. They had their own house, but they were poor. Mum says she and her sisters were made to stand at the back of the rows at school because they didn't have the proper school uniform. When they got jobs, they helped nana out, but she lived on the widow's benefit and I'm sure on the kindness of the extended family.
Nana was a beautiful, gracious, funny, energetic woman. If you didn't know she'd been widowed at 42 with 8 kids, you'd never suspect it. There wasn't a whiff of the victim about nana Baird. Not a whiff.
I grew up thinking that it was just as well this grandfather wasn't still alive. He was scary, in a cartoon character kind of way. I knew I wouldn't like him. When I got older and read pop psychology and self help books, I started to think that mum's need to control her children, her environment, her everything probably stemmed from fear and instability in her own childhood, and I wondered if a lot of that had to do with her father -- first when he was alive and larger than life, and then when he died and left them all to it.
I could never reconcile mum and nana. They were so different. I honestly don't know what kind of relationship they had. They spend time together. They didn't fight or have any drama. But were they close? Did they communicate properly, or just chat over a sherry or a cup of tea? I don't know. I do remember nana leaving mum's bedside in tears, only days before mum died. Mum had sent her away to get her hearing aid sorted out, so they could talk. "How can I talk to her if her hearing aid has no batteries??" Mum was visibly upset. I always wondered if mum wanted to tell nana something about Reg. I'll never know.
Not long before nana died, I was visiting her at Calvary, and she said "I'm sorry we didn't talk about the important things. But you girls didn't have too bad a time of it did you?"
I just said "No nana, we are all OK." It was an opportunity for me to get inside my egg shell, but I didn't. I just let it pass, and I'll never know what she meant.
NEXT
Don't be Such an Egg
So I emerged into adulthood, feeling a bit like an egg.
I had some amazing life skills that I've been very grateful for: I was diplomatic, I could navigate through tricky relationships and situations with ease. I was confident and together. I was very very tuned in to other people's personalities and emotions. I was fiercely independent. I liked my own company, and felt like I didn't need other people much. I didn't have that many friends, but I didn't really want or need them. I was quite serious -- having fun wasn't really a priority. I was fairly well read, and I could write and speak articulately. And I was very very interested in finding out the actual, real meaning of life. The truth. I really wanted to know the truth.
That was the egg shell part of me. That was the part of me that left home, went to university, travelled all over the world, lived in different countries, had cool jobs, had my own business. I got away from that family stuff, built my own life, and had it all together.
Inside that egg was a squishy vulnerable centre that I did my best to keep out of the way, because it was kind of pathetic, terrified, mystified, and mortified. It was a real liability, a huge contrast to the egg shell, and it was very very uncomfortable. Mostly I just tried to ignore it, pretend it wasn't there, so I didn't have to deal with it.
I got a lot of approval for being a tough egg, that person who had her life together. I was convinced nobody would want to have a bar of the egg yolk, the emotional wreck me. That "who do you think you are?" girl.
So she more or less disappeared. For a while anyway. Oh yes, and I keep forgetting this, but it's important. She was slowly but surely becoming boozer. Not a haha hilarious boozer. Just a quiet one. But a boozer nonetheless.
I'll get back to her, but I just want to write some more about mum, and tell you what I know about her father.
NEXT
I had some amazing life skills that I've been very grateful for: I was diplomatic, I could navigate through tricky relationships and situations with ease. I was confident and together. I was very very tuned in to other people's personalities and emotions. I was fiercely independent. I liked my own company, and felt like I didn't need other people much. I didn't have that many friends, but I didn't really want or need them. I was quite serious -- having fun wasn't really a priority. I was fairly well read, and I could write and speak articulately. And I was very very interested in finding out the actual, real meaning of life. The truth. I really wanted to know the truth.
That was the egg shell part of me. That was the part of me that left home, went to university, travelled all over the world, lived in different countries, had cool jobs, had my own business. I got away from that family stuff, built my own life, and had it all together.
Inside that egg was a squishy vulnerable centre that I did my best to keep out of the way, because it was kind of pathetic, terrified, mystified, and mortified. It was a real liability, a huge contrast to the egg shell, and it was very very uncomfortable. Mostly I just tried to ignore it, pretend it wasn't there, so I didn't have to deal with it.
I got a lot of approval for being a tough egg, that person who had her life together. I was convinced nobody would want to have a bar of the egg yolk, the emotional wreck me. That "who do you think you are?" girl.
So she more or less disappeared. For a while anyway. Oh yes, and I keep forgetting this, but it's important. She was slowly but surely becoming boozer. Not a haha hilarious boozer. Just a quiet one. But a boozer nonetheless.
I'll get back to her, but I just want to write some more about mum, and tell you what I know about her father.
NEXT
Saturday, July 26, 2014
My first bra, my first period, and my first wedding dress
Me: I've started seizing up again.
She: Yes. What's happening?
Me: It was fun writing all those stories about dad and the boozy relatives, but I've got some bigger stickier stories that just won't leave me alone, and I feel like I should write them now.
She: OK. Are you ready?
Me: I think so. I've written them before, but I was angry then. I'm not so angry now. I'm just really trying to make sense of things. I feel like I just need to get them out one more time, and walk away from them. They happened. They have haunted me. And I'm totally sick of carrying them around. I kind of feel the same as quitting drinking. "I've had enough of this shit already!"
She: So write them down and leave them behind. What are they about?
Me: My first bra, my first period, and my first wedding dress.
She: OK, go!
I didn't know much about puberty when it started happening. I knew it was important, special. But I also knew it was dangerous. One day when I was about 13 I was drying myself after a shower, it must have been early evening because the sun was streaming through the upstairs bathroom window, and it highlighted a very faint a goldy fuzz of pubic hair starting to grow "down there". I was breathless for a moment. Reverent. It really was true. I was Growing Up. I remember being very excited. And very careful. Nobody else can know.
I wanted a bra for the longest time, but a bra was something I couldn't ask for, and couldn't have until mum got me one. At least that's what I thought. I didn't have any money to buy one. I didn't have any older sisters to give me their hand-downs. I had to wait until she was ready to acknowledge that I was growing up. That would be very difficult for her. She loved babies who were totally dependent on her. Kids with their own personalities, ideas, thoughts, not so much. There was no intimacy between us, no trust. I did not talk to her about anything private. She could not help herself mocking and ridiculing, exploiting any crack of vulnerability, any want or need, any individuality, anything intimate or private. Nothing was sacred. Anything she knew about us was very likely to be the butt of jokes, told to great dramatic effect at social gatherings, and laughed about. We were expected to be good sports, to take a joke.
So while I desperatety wanted a bra, I had no control over that, or anything else in my life, so I had to wait till she was ready.
Me: I'm getting all choked up.
She: Why?
Me: Because she bought me a bra, and gave it to me in front of the whole family. I unwrapped my "present" not knowing what it was, in front of her, my four little sisters and my father. It was one of those utterly overwhelming moments when I was delighted to get a bra, but mortified to be exposed like that about something so private, something that could have been special, but wasn't. I felt so confused about that.
I was grateful -- it was a beautiful bra and it was something I desperately wanted. She told me to go and try it on, and come back downstairs. I did. Then she made me lift up my school shirt to show her the fit. In front of everyone.
I hated her for this. But I couldn't do anything. If I didn't do what she said, be a good sport and get in the spirit of things, she'd just as likely take the bra back. I just needed to be a good sport, even about this.
I have read recently that some mothers cannot comprehend that their daughters are actually separate people from them. They treat them as if they were not individuals, but merely extensions of themselves. They get very angry if the daughter asserts any individuality at all, expresses opinions or desires that aren't exactly the mother's. They (the mother) drums into the daughter that she is not special, does not have any value of her own, has no control over what she eats, wears, says... and thinks, but of course that last one is ridiculous. A girl treated like this develops a very rich mental life -- it's the only place she has that's hers.
I think this was going on in our family. I felt powerless and silenced, confused. An totally alone. There was nobody to talk to about any of this.
I must say it was a beautiful bra. Pink with peachy-cream coloured flowers. The nicest bra I'd ever seen. And it fitted perfectly.
__________________
I got my period in my own good time. I was 16 when that finally happened. I don't remember telling mum, but I must have because I was given a pack of sanitary pads to use. I was pretty excited to get my period -- finally. I was a bit of a late developer. I'd heard that said about me, and understood it to be an embarassing thing. But oh well. I got my period, and the first order of business was to work out what to do with the sanitary pads.
They came with a very detailed instruction sheet. This was in the bad old days when they were attached to a sanitary belt -- they hadn't invented anything more convenient. They were like thick wads of newspaper between your legs. It was impossible to walk properly while wearing one. But I digress.Once you've worn a sanitary pad for a while, you need to dispose of it. The instructions said under no circumstances should you ever flush them down the toilet. Sanitary pads should be incinerated. I looked that up in the dictionary, to make sure it meant what I thought it meant. I need to burn the pads. OK. Good to know.
I got up, got dressed for school, put on a new pad, folded up the used one, found some matches, and headed out the the garden burner -- a rusty old 44 gallon drum that dad used for burning rubbish.
Have you ever tried to light a sanitary pad on fire?
How about a used one? Half a box of matches later, I was in tears, the pad would catch fire on the edge, the the flame would just die out and leave pathetic smoking singe marks. They would not incinerate. I was late for school. I was too embarassed to throw the pad in the burner -- what if someone saw it, what if it got flies on it? I'll just have to try again later.
What's even harder to burn than a sanitary pad? Two sanitary pads.
It was a disaster. Every day I had more pads to deal with. I tried again and again to burn them with matches. I ended up with a bag of singed, used pads in my room, and no idea what to do with them. I actually don't know what I did with them in the end. Eventually I realised that there were incinerators for them at school (I think), so I disposed of them there. Eventually I just used face-cloths, which I washed, dried secretly in my room, and reused. Eventually I figured out how to use tampons (but that's another story!)
I was so alone in all of this. Standing out at that burner, failing to do anything but singe the edges of those pads, hot and angry, desperate, late for school. Mum must have known this was going on. Did she? Didn't she see me out there, struggling, ashamed, hopeless? Didn't she know that a girl needs some information and advice and support?
I guess not. I have been angry about this for years. I don't think mum was deliberate about this neglect. This whole situation was the result of her denial about her children being separate humans with separate lives, growing up, and my deep distrust of her with any intimate details of my life. The absolute last thing I would have done was ask my mother "what should I do with my used pads?"
Once a friend told me a story of a girl getting her period. Her parents gave her a ruby ring to mark the occasion and took her out for a special meal to celebrate. I cried when I heard that story. What a wonderful idea.
She: Well done.
Me: I feel awful writing that.
She: In what way?
Me: I feel like I'm whining and betraying mum. There's a voice saying "Your mother was busy with five kids and a husband, and a household to run. She didn't have time to look after herself, let alone anyone else."
She: Tell it to shut up. Tell us the one about the wedding dress.
Me: Can I wait till tomorrow? If feel shattered.
She: OK.
After-thought: Why didn't I just put them in the rubbish? We didn't have rubbish then. Household waste was dealt with like this: vege and garden scraps went in the compost. Bones, and other things were burnt in the burner at the bottom of the garden. Every home had one. The only rubbish that was picked up was the ash-can. Can that is exactly what it was; a can of ashes from the fireplaces that heated the houses. The ash can sometimes contained hot embers, and if you put other rubbish in there it was likely to burst into flames and burn down your shed, so not advisable. Any waste that couldn't be dealt with those ways was taken to the tip. A trip to the tip was quite an event, and didn't happen that often. Just to give you some perspective, hardly any food came in plastic then (this is the late 1970s). Milk was still delivered in re-usable bottles. There was no such thing as tetra-packs (the juice, milk and liquid containers so common now. Meat, fish, bread, cheese were wrapped in grease-proof paper which could burn. There was not such thing as individual servings of anything. So we didn't have a rubbish bin that I could shove sanitary pads in. They were a category all of their own!
____________
I was having a silk wedding dress, that was for sure. I bought the material myself, from Ballantynes in Christchurch. It was a beautiful colour -- milky tinged with coffee. I was not having a white wedding dress.
Originally, it was going to be a cotton and muslin dress, elegant hippy style, flat sandals, with a huge armful of lupins from the side of the road out to the beach. That of course, wouldn't do, and while I was trying desperately to avoid being bullied into anything about this wedding, I had to agree that a hippy outfit would look ridiculous at the town hall Victoria Chambers, where my parents decided the wedding would take place.
So I dropped the muslin for lush silk. It was gorgeous. Mum was against a silk dress. Silk crushes, wilts, has flaws in it. Totally unsuitable. I, on the other hand, was committed to a natural fabric, cotton and muslin were out, then it would be silk. End of that story. I'm 23 at this point. I paid for the material myself. Oh, and I'm the one getting married.
Balantines shipped the bolt of silk to the dressmaker, and she got busy with the dress. Mum and my future mother-in-law wanted to come to the first dress fitting. I thought this was a bit odd, but then thought it was sweet that they were interested and wanted to be involved. So off we went to Pat Pope's place in Mataura.
When we walked in her sewing room, there was a dress hanging on the wall, disturbingly similar to my pattern. It wasn't my dress though. It was the wrong colour, the wrong fabric--I could see that from across the room. "Who's dress is that?" I asked. "It's yours!" said Pat. "But it's the wrong material. It looks kind of yellow. It's not my silk..." And I started wondering what had gone wrong. Did Ballantynes send the wrong fabric? What had happened? I was so confused.
And then they all started talking at once. The silk material had a flaw in it, we had to return it to the shop, we got something very close, nobody would know the difference. It's polyester (polyester!!) so it won't crush or wilt. It's going to look great. You'll be thankful on the day.
"But why didn't you tell me this happened?" "We didn't want to upset you."
This was a total lie. The whole thing was a farce. Mum didn't want me to have a silk dress, so they changed the material, made the dress in nasty cream polyester, and expected me to wear it. Which of course I did, because... well that's just what I did. I was a good sport.
Was there a flaw in that silk? Who knows. Who cares? That's the beauty of silk. The pattern was full and gathered, a flaw in any material would not have shown. I knew that. I knew this was a lie. I was not the kind of person who would be "upset" by revisiting a flawed fabric. I was very upset about being tricked and bullied out of the wedding dress I really wanted.
But I took it on the chin and moved on. I also allowed myself to be bullied into wearing high heels to that wedding. Did she tell Pat to make the dress a couple of inches too long, so I had to get up on heels? Who knows. I only wore the dress once for the wedding, and on numerous occasions at drunken parties when it was pulled out the dress-up box at mum's place. I always hated the scratchy feel of that fabric.
She: Are you feeling OK?
Me: I'm getting that tight throat feeling, but it's not too bad. Back then my throat constricted so much I couldn't speak. Maybe my silence was seen as consent. But not, I felt powerless. On some level I knew I needed to stand up to mum on some of these things. Say "this is not your call -- you have no right to do this." But she would cry, and say she was only doing her best to be helpful, and I had no idea, and how could I think she was being anything but... " Blah blah blah.
I just remembered the nights when I was in 7th form, 17 years old, planning my career after high school, deciding that I was going to be a journalist. We always sat at the table for dinner, and talked. When I talked about doing anything beyond high school that didn't involve staying home and getting a job in and office in town (which is what mum did), mum would cry. This was not an isolated incident. It happened often. Her family would be broken up. Why on earth would I want to leave home, leave the family? What was wrong with getting a job and staying at home?
I suppose I could have seen this as loving and charming, but it was horrible. I had talents and hope and dreams of being a writer. I needed to get away from home and invercargill. As it happened, I stayed until I was 21. I still dream regularly about being trapped in a house with my parents and sisters. They are still back in the late 1970s. I am myself now. At some point in the dream, I wise up and say to myself, "Hang on, I don't have to live here with these people. I have my own money. I can get a car, get my own place, and get out of here!"
At 21 I was desperate. I decided to enrol at the university in Christchurch, and spend three years doing a degree and getting myself sorted out. I had saved enough money, so I didn't need any help from mum and dad. I didn't tell them I was doing this until I had received my acceptance letter. Then I told them. Then they protested mightily. But I just went. I was so tired of being under their thumbs.
I got to Christchurch and found a great flat with a lovely flatmate, and settled immediately into my classes, loving the reading, learning, freedom, wide openness. One night, mid way into the first term -- perhaps a month or six weeks after I'd left home -- there was a knock at the flat door. It was John Riack, a family friend who was a travelling salesman of some sort at the time. "Your parents asked me to bring something up for you. Will you come out to the car and get it?" Sure, great. And when I got out to the car, there was my mother in the passenger seat, come for a visit, come to stay with me in my new flat. She slept in my bed. There was nowhere else. She came to lectures with me. I was dumb, dumbfounded. She only stayed with me for a couple of days. Her older sister, Judy, lived in Christchurch, and when she heard what had happened she came over and picked mum up and took her back to her own place to stay. I was very grateful. Judy understood.
___________
I do want these stories to go somewhere else now. I don't want them to be "the complaints department". I feel like I can't preface these stories with "I don't want be be judgmental about mum..." because I know I am. I feel like I could never understand the depths of her fear and insecurity. I would never know what made her tick. The weird thing is that people who know our family remember mum completely differently, and I suspect these stories might not be believed -- or seen as gross misinterpretations of an immature adolescent.
People say these things about mum:
She was such fun! Always the life of the party.
Such a good sort. Always having a joke.
Such a good dressmaker.
She always dressed you girls so well.
She was so good with interior decorating.
She was such fun.
And I know those things were all true.
________________-
I keep getting fleeting ideas about how I didn't deal with these experiences in any kind of healthy way, and how they just stayed buried -- even though I'd talk about them, I'd never done anything with the emotions around them except stuff them down and try to be a good sport. These stories show me what a deep, dark, lonely place I was in -- I knew it was bullshit and bollocks. I totally knew. But I was always silent. Always took it on the chin. It was the only safe way. I had learned to protect myself by being silent, compliant. Accepting that what I wanted and thought didn't matter. That I was nobody.
Humans respond to that kind of situation in different ways. Some rebel and react and assert themselves. Some just don't even register it's happening and get on with their own lives. Some withdraw and go numb to deal with it. That's what I did.
We went on our honeymoon on a motorbike.
Mum didn't protest or interfere. I was mystifies. I asked her "How come you haven't said anything about our honeymoon plans." "You're married to Gerard now. You're his responsibility now, not mine." And that was the end of that.
It was interesting that later, after Gerard and I divorced, and I was not re-married, she resumed her oversight of my life, albiet from a distance. There are so many stories. They are interesting to me, but probably just sound like whining first world problems that I should have recovered from years ago. I really should just get over myself. Indeed.
But these stories, and this particular habit of withdrawing, numbing and running away from pain, has been with me for decades, and I'm only just learning about living in a different way. It's revolutionary.
NEXT
She: Yes. What's happening?
Me: It was fun writing all those stories about dad and the boozy relatives, but I've got some bigger stickier stories that just won't leave me alone, and I feel like I should write them now.
She: OK. Are you ready?
Me: I think so. I've written them before, but I was angry then. I'm not so angry now. I'm just really trying to make sense of things. I feel like I just need to get them out one more time, and walk away from them. They happened. They have haunted me. And I'm totally sick of carrying them around. I kind of feel the same as quitting drinking. "I've had enough of this shit already!"
She: So write them down and leave them behind. What are they about?
Me: My first bra, my first period, and my first wedding dress.
She: OK, go!
I didn't know much about puberty when it started happening. I knew it was important, special. But I also knew it was dangerous. One day when I was about 13 I was drying myself after a shower, it must have been early evening because the sun was streaming through the upstairs bathroom window, and it highlighted a very faint a goldy fuzz of pubic hair starting to grow "down there". I was breathless for a moment. Reverent. It really was true. I was Growing Up. I remember being very excited. And very careful. Nobody else can know.
I wanted a bra for the longest time, but a bra was something I couldn't ask for, and couldn't have until mum got me one. At least that's what I thought. I didn't have any money to buy one. I didn't have any older sisters to give me their hand-downs. I had to wait until she was ready to acknowledge that I was growing up. That would be very difficult for her. She loved babies who were totally dependent on her. Kids with their own personalities, ideas, thoughts, not so much. There was no intimacy between us, no trust. I did not talk to her about anything private. She could not help herself mocking and ridiculing, exploiting any crack of vulnerability, any want or need, any individuality, anything intimate or private. Nothing was sacred. Anything she knew about us was very likely to be the butt of jokes, told to great dramatic effect at social gatherings, and laughed about. We were expected to be good sports, to take a joke.
So while I desperatety wanted a bra, I had no control over that, or anything else in my life, so I had to wait till she was ready.
Me: I'm getting all choked up.
She: Why?
Me: Because she bought me a bra, and gave it to me in front of the whole family. I unwrapped my "present" not knowing what it was, in front of her, my four little sisters and my father. It was one of those utterly overwhelming moments when I was delighted to get a bra, but mortified to be exposed like that about something so private, something that could have been special, but wasn't. I felt so confused about that.
I was grateful -- it was a beautiful bra and it was something I desperately wanted. She told me to go and try it on, and come back downstairs. I did. Then she made me lift up my school shirt to show her the fit. In front of everyone.
I hated her for this. But I couldn't do anything. If I didn't do what she said, be a good sport and get in the spirit of things, she'd just as likely take the bra back. I just needed to be a good sport, even about this.
I have read recently that some mothers cannot comprehend that their daughters are actually separate people from them. They treat them as if they were not individuals, but merely extensions of themselves. They get very angry if the daughter asserts any individuality at all, expresses opinions or desires that aren't exactly the mother's. They (the mother) drums into the daughter that she is not special, does not have any value of her own, has no control over what she eats, wears, says... and thinks, but of course that last one is ridiculous. A girl treated like this develops a very rich mental life -- it's the only place she has that's hers.
I think this was going on in our family. I felt powerless and silenced, confused. An totally alone. There was nobody to talk to about any of this.
I must say it was a beautiful bra. Pink with peachy-cream coloured flowers. The nicest bra I'd ever seen. And it fitted perfectly.
__________________
I got my period in my own good time. I was 16 when that finally happened. I don't remember telling mum, but I must have because I was given a pack of sanitary pads to use. I was pretty excited to get my period -- finally. I was a bit of a late developer. I'd heard that said about me, and understood it to be an embarassing thing. But oh well. I got my period, and the first order of business was to work out what to do with the sanitary pads.
They came with a very detailed instruction sheet. This was in the bad old days when they were attached to a sanitary belt -- they hadn't invented anything more convenient. They were like thick wads of newspaper between your legs. It was impossible to walk properly while wearing one. But I digress.Once you've worn a sanitary pad for a while, you need to dispose of it. The instructions said under no circumstances should you ever flush them down the toilet. Sanitary pads should be incinerated. I looked that up in the dictionary, to make sure it meant what I thought it meant. I need to burn the pads. OK. Good to know.
I got up, got dressed for school, put on a new pad, folded up the used one, found some matches, and headed out the the garden burner -- a rusty old 44 gallon drum that dad used for burning rubbish.
Have you ever tried to light a sanitary pad on fire?
How about a used one? Half a box of matches later, I was in tears, the pad would catch fire on the edge, the the flame would just die out and leave pathetic smoking singe marks. They would not incinerate. I was late for school. I was too embarassed to throw the pad in the burner -- what if someone saw it, what if it got flies on it? I'll just have to try again later.
What's even harder to burn than a sanitary pad? Two sanitary pads.
It was a disaster. Every day I had more pads to deal with. I tried again and again to burn them with matches. I ended up with a bag of singed, used pads in my room, and no idea what to do with them. I actually don't know what I did with them in the end. Eventually I realised that there were incinerators for them at school (I think), so I disposed of them there. Eventually I just used face-cloths, which I washed, dried secretly in my room, and reused. Eventually I figured out how to use tampons (but that's another story!)
I was so alone in all of this. Standing out at that burner, failing to do anything but singe the edges of those pads, hot and angry, desperate, late for school. Mum must have known this was going on. Did she? Didn't she see me out there, struggling, ashamed, hopeless? Didn't she know that a girl needs some information and advice and support?
I guess not. I have been angry about this for years. I don't think mum was deliberate about this neglect. This whole situation was the result of her denial about her children being separate humans with separate lives, growing up, and my deep distrust of her with any intimate details of my life. The absolute last thing I would have done was ask my mother "what should I do with my used pads?"
Once a friend told me a story of a girl getting her period. Her parents gave her a ruby ring to mark the occasion and took her out for a special meal to celebrate. I cried when I heard that story. What a wonderful idea.
She: Well done.
Me: I feel awful writing that.
She: In what way?
Me: I feel like I'm whining and betraying mum. There's a voice saying "Your mother was busy with five kids and a husband, and a household to run. She didn't have time to look after herself, let alone anyone else."
She: Tell it to shut up. Tell us the one about the wedding dress.
Me: Can I wait till tomorrow? If feel shattered.
She: OK.
After-thought: Why didn't I just put them in the rubbish? We didn't have rubbish then. Household waste was dealt with like this: vege and garden scraps went in the compost. Bones, and other things were burnt in the burner at the bottom of the garden. Every home had one. The only rubbish that was picked up was the ash-can. Can that is exactly what it was; a can of ashes from the fireplaces that heated the houses. The ash can sometimes contained hot embers, and if you put other rubbish in there it was likely to burst into flames and burn down your shed, so not advisable. Any waste that couldn't be dealt with those ways was taken to the tip. A trip to the tip was quite an event, and didn't happen that often. Just to give you some perspective, hardly any food came in plastic then (this is the late 1970s). Milk was still delivered in re-usable bottles. There was no such thing as tetra-packs (the juice, milk and liquid containers so common now. Meat, fish, bread, cheese were wrapped in grease-proof paper which could burn. There was not such thing as individual servings of anything. So we didn't have a rubbish bin that I could shove sanitary pads in. They were a category all of their own!
____________
I was having a silk wedding dress, that was for sure. I bought the material myself, from Ballantynes in Christchurch. It was a beautiful colour -- milky tinged with coffee. I was not having a white wedding dress.
Originally, it was going to be a cotton and muslin dress, elegant hippy style, flat sandals, with a huge armful of lupins from the side of the road out to the beach. That of course, wouldn't do, and while I was trying desperately to avoid being bullied into anything about this wedding, I had to agree that a hippy outfit would look ridiculous at the town hall Victoria Chambers, where my parents decided the wedding would take place.
So I dropped the muslin for lush silk. It was gorgeous. Mum was against a silk dress. Silk crushes, wilts, has flaws in it. Totally unsuitable. I, on the other hand, was committed to a natural fabric, cotton and muslin were out, then it would be silk. End of that story. I'm 23 at this point. I paid for the material myself. Oh, and I'm the one getting married.
Balantines shipped the bolt of silk to the dressmaker, and she got busy with the dress. Mum and my future mother-in-law wanted to come to the first dress fitting. I thought this was a bit odd, but then thought it was sweet that they were interested and wanted to be involved. So off we went to Pat Pope's place in Mataura.
When we walked in her sewing room, there was a dress hanging on the wall, disturbingly similar to my pattern. It wasn't my dress though. It was the wrong colour, the wrong fabric--I could see that from across the room. "Who's dress is that?" I asked. "It's yours!" said Pat. "But it's the wrong material. It looks kind of yellow. It's not my silk..." And I started wondering what had gone wrong. Did Ballantynes send the wrong fabric? What had happened? I was so confused.
And then they all started talking at once. The silk material had a flaw in it, we had to return it to the shop, we got something very close, nobody would know the difference. It's polyester (polyester!!) so it won't crush or wilt. It's going to look great. You'll be thankful on the day.
"But why didn't you tell me this happened?" "We didn't want to upset you."
This was a total lie. The whole thing was a farce. Mum didn't want me to have a silk dress, so they changed the material, made the dress in nasty cream polyester, and expected me to wear it. Which of course I did, because... well that's just what I did. I was a good sport.
Was there a flaw in that silk? Who knows. Who cares? That's the beauty of silk. The pattern was full and gathered, a flaw in any material would not have shown. I knew that. I knew this was a lie. I was not the kind of person who would be "upset" by revisiting a flawed fabric. I was very upset about being tricked and bullied out of the wedding dress I really wanted.
But I took it on the chin and moved on. I also allowed myself to be bullied into wearing high heels to that wedding. Did she tell Pat to make the dress a couple of inches too long, so I had to get up on heels? Who knows. I only wore the dress once for the wedding, and on numerous occasions at drunken parties when it was pulled out the dress-up box at mum's place. I always hated the scratchy feel of that fabric.
She: Are you feeling OK?
Me: I'm getting that tight throat feeling, but it's not too bad. Back then my throat constricted so much I couldn't speak. Maybe my silence was seen as consent. But not, I felt powerless. On some level I knew I needed to stand up to mum on some of these things. Say "this is not your call -- you have no right to do this." But she would cry, and say she was only doing her best to be helpful, and I had no idea, and how could I think she was being anything but... " Blah blah blah.
I just remembered the nights when I was in 7th form, 17 years old, planning my career after high school, deciding that I was going to be a journalist. We always sat at the table for dinner, and talked. When I talked about doing anything beyond high school that didn't involve staying home and getting a job in and office in town (which is what mum did), mum would cry. This was not an isolated incident. It happened often. Her family would be broken up. Why on earth would I want to leave home, leave the family? What was wrong with getting a job and staying at home?
I suppose I could have seen this as loving and charming, but it was horrible. I had talents and hope and dreams of being a writer. I needed to get away from home and invercargill. As it happened, I stayed until I was 21. I still dream regularly about being trapped in a house with my parents and sisters. They are still back in the late 1970s. I am myself now. At some point in the dream, I wise up and say to myself, "Hang on, I don't have to live here with these people. I have my own money. I can get a car, get my own place, and get out of here!"
At 21 I was desperate. I decided to enrol at the university in Christchurch, and spend three years doing a degree and getting myself sorted out. I had saved enough money, so I didn't need any help from mum and dad. I didn't tell them I was doing this until I had received my acceptance letter. Then I told them. Then they protested mightily. But I just went. I was so tired of being under their thumbs.
I got to Christchurch and found a great flat with a lovely flatmate, and settled immediately into my classes, loving the reading, learning, freedom, wide openness. One night, mid way into the first term -- perhaps a month or six weeks after I'd left home -- there was a knock at the flat door. It was John Riack, a family friend who was a travelling salesman of some sort at the time. "Your parents asked me to bring something up for you. Will you come out to the car and get it?" Sure, great. And when I got out to the car, there was my mother in the passenger seat, come for a visit, come to stay with me in my new flat. She slept in my bed. There was nowhere else. She came to lectures with me. I was dumb, dumbfounded. She only stayed with me for a couple of days. Her older sister, Judy, lived in Christchurch, and when she heard what had happened she came over and picked mum up and took her back to her own place to stay. I was very grateful. Judy understood.
___________
I do want these stories to go somewhere else now. I don't want them to be "the complaints department". I feel like I can't preface these stories with "I don't want be be judgmental about mum..." because I know I am. I feel like I could never understand the depths of her fear and insecurity. I would never know what made her tick. The weird thing is that people who know our family remember mum completely differently, and I suspect these stories might not be believed -- or seen as gross misinterpretations of an immature adolescent.
People say these things about mum:
She was such fun! Always the life of the party.
Such a good sort. Always having a joke.
Such a good dressmaker.
She always dressed you girls so well.
She was so good with interior decorating.
She was such fun.
And I know those things were all true.
________________-
I keep getting fleeting ideas about how I didn't deal with these experiences in any kind of healthy way, and how they just stayed buried -- even though I'd talk about them, I'd never done anything with the emotions around them except stuff them down and try to be a good sport. These stories show me what a deep, dark, lonely place I was in -- I knew it was bullshit and bollocks. I totally knew. But I was always silent. Always took it on the chin. It was the only safe way. I had learned to protect myself by being silent, compliant. Accepting that what I wanted and thought didn't matter. That I was nobody.
Humans respond to that kind of situation in different ways. Some rebel and react and assert themselves. Some just don't even register it's happening and get on with their own lives. Some withdraw and go numb to deal with it. That's what I did.
We went on our honeymoon on a motorbike.
Mum didn't protest or interfere. I was mystifies. I asked her "How come you haven't said anything about our honeymoon plans." "You're married to Gerard now. You're his responsibility now, not mine." And that was the end of that.
It was interesting that later, after Gerard and I divorced, and I was not re-married, she resumed her oversight of my life, albiet from a distance. There are so many stories. They are interesting to me, but probably just sound like whining first world problems that I should have recovered from years ago. I really should just get over myself. Indeed.
But these stories, and this particular habit of withdrawing, numbing and running away from pain, has been with me for decades, and I'm only just learning about living in a different way. It's revolutionary.
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