Ok, I have posted news of this site to FaceBook, so now people I know can take a look if they want. Scary – yes indeed, because it is not my intention to hold back in these pages. Erica Jong wrote a book about letting the mad woman out of the attic when you reach a certain age. I have waited far too long.
One of the things I have wanted to to for a long time, is to write a book based around a fictionalised account of my grandmother. She came to NZ from Jersey in the Channel Islands very young, to visit her sister, and never ever returned. In fact she never left NZ again, although her husband and sons served overseas in both WW1 and 2.
I have written the beginning of the story many times. Here is one of those beginnings.
DISCLAIMER – This is only one version of the story, and it is FICTION.
They tell me I was not an affectionate child. I did not hug and kiss and did not suffer others to hug and kiss and slobber over me. Not even my mother, and certainly not uncles and aunts and family friends. They say I would turn away and wriggle out of loving arms as soon as I could. Ironic really, when you consider what I would have given for a pair of loving arms in recent years.
I would not in fact believe this were true if it were not confirmed for me by the evidence of those whose observation I trust. Like my father. I seem to remember kissing and hugging him, but have not a single memory of cuddling or being cuddled by my mother. All I remember is dutiful goodnight kisses when I was older. And yet I pestered my own children for affection constantly and cannot imagine not wanting the physical assurance of love and care. And I know my mother is not cold. I see her fondle the cats like they were babies and play affectionately with her grand-daughters. So I suppose it must have been my fault we never loved each other that way. If fault can apply to not loving, the absence of love.
My mother wanted a boy when I was born. I put no stock by this. Many mothers want one thing and get the other. They still love their children, and I have no doubt my mother loved me. In her own way, which is of course different from my way – in which I in turn love her.
My mother had a son after me. There is no doubt she loved him and he loved her, and they showed this in all the normal ways. That is to say he was not cold like me. He was, as a little boy, sunny and loving and delightful. Like all boys, he grew out of this, but not unfortunately out of being the apple of his mother’s eye. He survived an extended adolescence in her care, and is now a husband and father in a family that offers its own challenges. He has his own issues to deal with.
After a bit of a break I got a sister as well. In the beginning and for a long while a tiny, bawling, runt of the litter. But no longer. She did much better with our mother than I did, and emerged as a strong matriarch and anchor for her own family. But as with everyone, she has her scars too.
Since motherhood seems to be emerging as an early theme, perhaps I should go back even further – to my mother’s mother, my maternal grandmother. Grandma, to me.
Grandma lived with us when I was a child. Sometimes she would disappear up north for a month or two to stay with her older daughter and Mum would sigh with relief. But sooner or later a taxi would pull up, and out she would hop, exhausted and glad to be home. And I would be glad she was home too. In fact I am pretty sure I rushed into her arms each time for a huge hug, so perhaps I was not all that cold after all. Certainly I was her favourite grandchild and she spoilt me and sided with me against my mother.
In a maudlin mood she would say I would never even think of her when she was gone. But she was wrong. She died when I was ten and I still think of her over fifty years later. Because of her I still know the words to old music hall songs, and cannot play patience without wondering if she is watching over me. I hope she is watching over me now.
Amelia Eloise Girard crossed the ocean and became first Millicent Louise Gerard, then Aperahama. At the tender age of nineteen she followed her married sister out from Jersey in the Channel Islands to New Zealand, a group of islands in the South Pacific. She never went back. No inducement and no threat could get her back. Her mother sent her the fare home and she spent it. Not once or twice, but several times. I have no idea what held her here or kept her away, and no one alive can ever tell me.
There is more, much more, even just to this beginning. But I need to think more about how I share what is yet to come.