HelenzArt-life-musings

Category: child in the1960s

  • What changes!

    What follows in the next few blogs, is simply to set the scene of my landscape as a child, teen and young adult. The who, what and how of accessible memories of my growing up. 

    I say everything changed when I was 8, yet that’s not quite true. My life was   simply that, my life with family.  No seeing of things being anything other than they ought to be. No felt undercurrents of trouble between my parents. We were never overly huggy as a family,  I was just an ordinary kid in an ordinary family. My brother was  often in trouble with dad. Leather belt or a beating went his way. Not often but memorable. 

    So, as an 8 year old, I had to share my brothers room and bed because family were staying for Christmas.   I recall my brother asking me if he could put his hand between my legs!!  To which I said no, and that’s it.  No running to tell Mum and Dad. Taking it that he didn’t press the request. Going to sleep as if he had never asked, that it never happened yet it is remembered. An existent, on the surface, memory to be recalled should it be required that my brother had respected my refusal.  As far as I then recall is that I went to sleep.  It was the same year that I started smoking. Yes, I was young. Yes, I had 2 parents who smoked, and my brother offered me one!  I took it.  I guess I wanted to be on his ‘good side’ that I wanted to fit in, be seen as an ally.   I just did it, and there’s no thinking that this wasn’t good for me, or how cross my parents would be at me or him.  With the hind sight from where I am now,  it’s easy to see the people pleasing aspects that I was already cultivating, that I was already conditioned into. Along with a disregard of personal safety. 

    Apart from school, I didn’t have peer friendships. Most of my daily interactions were with other adults.  The casual summer workers that worked the nursery of roses. The older couple next door.  I don’t even recall much interplay with my brother, and those there were, were often of a mean-spirited Chinese burns type game, to which I never said no. Or me being in goal as he practiced at football one summer. Me simply happy to be included.

    So that sexual encounter wasn’t spoken of and pretty much wasn’t felt to be of great consequence then. It simply was. Our village school closed down and it was now catch the bus to a bigger town school.  Earlier start. More kids.  Doing well, I like to learn and like to please. I got on with most of my classmates, never not able to fit in. Though I didn’t really understand the popularity contests or the cattiness of some of the girls.    Nothing felt to rock my sunny nature.  Puberty comes all of a rush in the summer between junior and secondary school.   I see how adults react to that.  I see my brother even less now. He’s at school in a different town.  He’s drawn by the city too. 

    Settling in to senior school, start having independence to visit with a friend, go to the cinema.  A Sunday job in a newsagents. Have a close friend and we share confidences. Giggles about sex education, whispered desires and wonderings. Not sharing how I’d walked in to the living room to see my brother sat on the chair with his trousers round his ankles. Our pet dog reversed up to him!!  I dont tell anyone. I don’t recall any threats to keep quiet, so I just don’t feel the need to tell on him.    I spend time at her home, I get to experience family life other than my own.     Boys showing interest.  Older boys, men too!  I do like the attention. 

    The body develops at a different rate to the brain, exploring the sensual and sexual side of this pre-teen and teenage body that looks like a grown up, self-satisfaction to orgasm.  I lost my virginity to a semi stranger at 12 and a half. He’d always been kind when we met at the pub where my mum or my friends sister worked.   Offered me a lift home one day from the bus stop.. We chatted, and things moved along.  Was it consensual? Yes.  My body responded to his touch.  Did I feel unsafe or threatened? No. Did it feel wrong? No, not really, I knew it was legally wrong, but that’s all. Did I like having his attention? Yes.  

    Ahh, now it’s teenage years of change.  Abandonment, promiscuity, who cares? Seems like nobody does, not even me!!! Til next time.

     

  • An idyllic start?

    The loss of a loved one causes a reflection on the past.  For me that was my relationship with Gavin and family interactions. Laughter, tears, hopes and wishes, his and mine.  When that has settled, and it does settle. That looking for purpose, arises again. Looking back over ones own life, my own relationship as daughter to parents and being a sister. Perhaps even trying to see where those influences of my childhood reflected in my own parenting of Gavin. 

    So what did I recall of my childhood. From my recollections, it’s wide open spaces, in a rural setting.  Playing outside for hours. Ditches and streams to build dams in. Clay delved out with a toy spade or simply my hands to craft mini cups and plates for the fairies and creatures that were my heart felt companions.    Living in a home that came with my dad’s job, mum worked for a while at the same place.  A plant nursery.  Summers of blue skies, tall grasses. The scent and sight of a rainbow coloured field of roses. Stretching row upon row along the fields. The out-buildings, old pigstyes, that now smelt of flowers and earth, derv and oil from the old tractor.  Echoing with the Swallows that nested through the heat and Robins that sang in the winter.  A short walk to the village school with my older brother.  Sunday roasts round the kitchen table.  No other children nearby, no play dates only birthday parties with school friends.  Idyllic!? Yes, in its way.  Dad, quiet and a dry sense of humour. His smell,  of earth and tobacco in a woollen jumper that itched a bit when he gave a hug.  Mum loud, long nails that she filed and painted. over powering perfume.  Occassional seamstress or knitter.  Smoker and failed dieter.  Brother who is 4 years older.  Clever, had a spiteful streak. Chinese burns. Dropped me once when giving a piggy back! Cracked my head on the hearth.  Yet I still looked up to him.  I love them all. They were family, I knew no different, I didn’t know any other families to compare them to,  even if I had a notion  that comparisons were to be had.  So I read my books, an avid reader, and those famous fives and faraway trees of fiction were the fiction of different lives to mine. I didn’t want to be like them. I just wanted to be in the adventures with them. Crayons and colouring, crafting and glueing.  Life was good, at least I felt so in those early, seemingly care free years of not knowing anything other than this was being loved. The safety of a bed in a room of my own, a toy or two, food on  the table, clothes, even if hand me downs.  Mum, dad, brother, dog, and other pets all as it ought to be for a young girl.  Things changed a bit when I got to 8. That is for my next instalment…..