HelenzArt-life-musings

Category: childhood

  • On a path of self neglect.

    So between leaving junior school and going to secondary school, we were supposed to move so dad could start a new job with more responsibility and better pay. That didn’t happen, his boss found a way to keep us in the same place. He was where he wanted to be I suppose, I was just a kid that wasn’t told anything, which was simply the way it always was. My mum had been through various jobs from shop work to barmaid, trying out nursing was the next thing. My parents developed a social life, they started playing darts for a pub team in town. New friendships for them and I was often included in the extra social events that happened. So for me pubs were simply another place to be, part of growing up, talking to strangers or half familiar faces. Nothing felt as threatening in that environment. Rarely were there other children around, if there were then I played with them. If not, I wasn’t bothered as I would talk to the other people if they started to chat. Some did their best to include me.

    My brother was never with us, he was already going his own way. Sometimes in trouble, so the police would visit but he was often just a passing body.

    My mum left home for awhile when I was 13. Stayed with some female friends, I suppose she was trying to sort out her life. She came home. Within a year she was gone. In town for 3 weeks at a friends flat and then, poof! Gone. My summer of being 13.

    Now, I will admit that although I was probably seen as a ‘daddies’ girl, that was more because I spent most of my free time out in the fields and sheds where he was working. Yet, she was my mum. She bought me my first pair of ‘grown up’ shoes, small platforms that were the trend in the ‘70’s. We weren’t best friends nor was she someone to take into ones confidence. Yet she vanished off the face of my world. Never to be heard from again until I was married and had a girl of my own. I went back to school with that, my best friend knew. Huh! my only friend knew.

    To be brutally honest I wasn’t actually that bothered. Yes, it hurt, yet I wasn’t outwardly emotional. It certainly stung when my 14th birthday came round and there wasn’t even a card from her. Yet even then I had a matter of factness to it. A ‘that’s the way it is-ness’. Practical acceptance. My dad and me just got on with running our home together. He didn’t talk to me about her leaving, and I never asked. My brother wasn’t really home much so we didn’t talk about it either. A big, non-event. That unknowingly shaped my behaviour.

    I say unknowingly because I didn’t consciously think I would become a searcher of tender touches from where ever I could. It wasn’t promiscuity to start with. As I have said before I lost my virginity very early, to a semi stranger. Since then I had a couple of boyfriends at school, one was physically very mature, as was I, and we did take things all the way. The summer of being 14, I began a relationship with someone older by a few years. I didn’t disabuse him of what he thought my age was, though he knew I was still at school. Our school had sixth form years, to do ‘A’ levels, as they were then, so it was an easy assumption to make on his part.

    I sank into the fact that he was wanting to be with me, even if it did seem that there was always an expectation of sex on his part, and I willingly obliged. Why? Because that’s what I did, I never said no. Yes, on reflection the relationship wasn’t healthy. But I had someone who seemed to want me. He wasn’t keen on me being with my friend, or doing my own thing. I was to be with him and his friends. And yes, sex was an expectation no matter how I felt. I did what he wanted, that was how I thought things were meant to be. Our sex was unprotected so the inevitable happened. I was pregnant just after turning 15. I knew fairly quickly and went to my GP. I also knew that I couldn’t have a child and bring it up myself so I chose to have an abortion. The Doc called my dad to the surgery and the arrangements made. All very matter of fact. No, histrionics, little emotion shown. Again we had no discussions, I went to hospital, had the procedure spoke to a Doctor before discharge. Refused contraception and left. Did I feel guilty? Honestly? Not on the surface, but I did feel that I had done the right thing in that moment. It was just another thing that happened, was dealt with and then sank to some underworld beyond caring. Never raised as a subject between me and my dad ever again. No social workers came to talk to me nor any police. That my dad spoke to the police I did discover a few months later when the ex boyfriend caught up with me outside the school gates and began to make my life miserable!

  • 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…..