Being a grown up

I am currently 51. You would think I have been an adult for a while, even allowing for new thinking that adolescence goes on until the mid-twenties still gives me 25 years, right? Uuhhh, no, not really. I feel like my adult kicked in emotionally about three years ago and so is still in development and settling in. Surely, yes, I did adulting and fulfilled many mundane tasks and responsibilities, all the while, inside, feeling a fraud or like a frightened child.

I finished my first degree at 21, and then I started professional training and got married at 24. By this stage I had bought a flat, was running a mortgage and running a household. All of these are deemed grown-up activities and responsibilities, and I performed this adulting with outward ease. Looking back I can see I got on the conveyer belt of adulthood after university and fell into job/house/mortgage/marriage, what might be termed conventional paths of a person brought up in middle-class England in the late 20th century.

The catch for me is, I can see now, I literally did fall into these things, as one might fall into a river. I was wandering along the path and not looking where I was going, turned around and slipped into a current stronger than Myself. It feels like I didn’t think through any alternatives, I am not sure I thought at all, I was fulfilling my destiny as a child in my adoptive family and destinies don’t often include personal choice. There was no coercion; I thought I was happy with my “choices” but that thinking proved flawed.

I was brought up in a home where education was everything and luckily I was bright enough to do well at school. Mum was set on it, her parents, from mining stock in the northeast, both went to university in the 1920s and so there was absolutely nothing more important than getting into university. Come hell or high water, and there were plenty of both, my brother and I were to study, pass exams and go to college. This was so expected that it was only years later I realised I never considered anything, not even for a second, except to go to university after school. Nowadays gap years and other routes to employment are perfectly usual but I did not have a thought of it. Friends of mine did go Interrailing in Europe, which was the closest equivalent at the time, but I did not consider that as a possibility!

In fact, for me, studying was a saving grace. I worked and worked; my study was a safe place to be in the shark-infested waters of the family home or the world outside. It was where I incessantly studied or practised the piano, both acceptable activities. This became an issue in my later school years as we all felt the rising crescendo of marital and emotional disharmony and mental illness in the family. I worked more and more, probably obsessively, so much so that dad attempted to shut me out of the study during my last few months of the sixth form in fear of my own wobbly mental health. It was not a great move as I felt more out of kilter and lost without my safety net. Notwithstanding, I still managed to get good grades at A level and my passage to university was secured.

At university I floundered. Although academically I did OK, and somehow ended up with an upper second (which pleased mum – and that mattered!) I did not feel confident or able to have fun. In my journal of the time I recorded, “What it is to realise you are unsure of everything. I want to be able to be me and not worry what others think and feel all the time.” and “I don’t want to go out to pubs and clubs, I want to be in, I am used to it. I don’t want to be an outward extrovert, I don’t want that at all, it’s surface life not inside.” Also at this time, I had a boyfriend whom I relied on heavily and whom I nearly fell into marrying, this would not have been a success! (In fact, my history with boys/men is messed up but this is a post for another time!)

The idea that adulthood should not start until later into the twenties strikes me as an accurate one, at least for me. I look now with hindsight and more maturity, seeing I was incredibly young and emotionally unready when I was taking on all those adulting roles in my first career and marital relationship. I was swept away further down the river.

This river induced a kind of hypnosis, and I continued on the adulthood conveyor belt by moving into a career in finance – so far away from my natural bent, which involves words or people development. I did not know myself enough or have the capacity at that time to make a better decision. I desired a” career” because I felt it would please my dad, but mum always maintained that they were both flummoxed as to why I chose accountancy!  I believe I wanted him to be proud of me and it felt like I didn’t have a choice; my field of vision of acceptable and safe activity was incredibly narrow and restrictive. In fact, I came to realise I am dyslexic with figures because calling over columns of figures in accounts made me panic and I could not transpose what I saw on the page easily into the numbers to say out loud. I really struggled to succeed, ending up being made redundant from my first job because I failed my exams.

It was as I approached my thirties that I became conscious of the current I was caught in. D and I made an abrupt house move south, completely away from home for the last ten years, this displaced me and I felt more and more lost and confused. That life change was sufficient, (along with some disturbing news about my past, a story for another time) to tip me into what I termed my mid-life crisis, although it was a little early! I began therapy for the first time, but continued to struggle in my professional and personal life for another five years, feeling often like I was out of control and in a large vehicle with no brakes – like the bus in the film Speed. I deem these years the Fuckwittery years, and I don’t think I am in a place where I can share them here, but by 2000 I was a bit more together and chose to start a new year by leaving my job and changing career.

This felt like I was beginning to take back some control, starting to climb out of the fast flowing river. I spent the next ten years progressing my career as a coach and personal development professional, both gaining qualification and credibility in my new field. Still, I felt a fraud and at times the frightened child inside would wreak havoc with exploding anxiety and fear – often expressed as drunken anger – none of which is conducive to a happy marriage!

Starting a new relationship with J in 2010 was another huge life change and that, plus my best friend dying early in 2011, and having enormous work stress caused a mental collapse that saw me off work for six months, only to go back and be made redundant! I have a series of events that I call my “Metre of Misery” that flow from 2009 to 2012 – literally a timeline on the back of wallpaper that is one metre long and causes therapists to raise their eyebrows when they see it. On the Holmes and Rahe stress scale I was off the scale!

The support of therapists is weaved in and out of this story, and I am grateful to the three ladies who helped at different times.  As I have recorded here on the blog, it is the death of my parents and the age of fifty that finally seem to have birthed my adulthood. I am looking forward to enjoying it now!

What do you need me to be?

It would appear that I have asked this question unconsciously in every interaction or relationship I have ever had; I want to know what you need me to be so I can best ensure that you stay happy. In everyday parlance this doesn’t sound like a bad thing;  wanting people you care about to be happy –  but it has an insidious underbelly if it is the only question you ask, not also asking what do I want to be, or what do I want from this relationship.

I became aware of this chameleon feeling a while ago as I worked on myself both in therapy and in my professional development as a coach. It is a strange experience when something that feels as natural as breathing becomes obvious to you, a behaviour you previously didn’t see becomes visible – or more than that, becomes visible and feels odd. It moves from a subjective experience to an objective one and the sensation felt like I was acting outside myself; I was watching myself during interactions and I did not have control over my responses.

This is puzzling when it first occurs. Insight is a weird and wonderful thing, wonderful in that it gives you an opportunity to change (the first step to a solution is to be able to recognise the problem) and weird because it’s awkward, like if you try to remember how to walk downstairs the chances are you will trip up; as soon as an activity we have performed out of conscious awareness is brought to consciousness we become incompetent!

So, there I was, in a psychological way trying to walk up the stairs consciously and often feeling like I was falling. My automatic response, without thinking, had been to ask the question, but now I realised that the question wasn’t always helpful and I had to work out what I wanted to do. I remember one of the first times I consciously worked on making a choice for myself, it was tough. My mum wanted me to go with her on a weekend break sometime in the early noughties, I had done this before with her but I found it difficult, not relaxing. It was also emotionally exhausting; being myself with mum was only possible in fleeting moments, mostly I worked hard at being what she needed at any point, and this had been my life’s work. I said no to this newly suggested weekend away, this invoked a hurt reproachful response from mum, and one that even made her Christmas newsletter months later when she said I “refused” to go with her so she had to ask the neighbour because it was already booked! I had responded with trepidation, knowing this may be the response and I had to work hard at maintaining a boundary so that I didn’t give in and go just to please her. This is the secondary fallout from development after you make a change to behaviour or attitude; some people can’t appreciate the change and pressurise you to return to “normal”. This old habit of mine had been to ignore my own wishes or feelings and please the Other, I had come to psychological damage previously – it had to stop!

Actually, I had come to genuine physical damage too. My first husband is a beautiful person but he and I liked doing very different things; he loves the outdoors; camping walking, cycling, running, water-skiing, windsurfing. He loves practical doing and the making and doing of gardening projects, the building of things and the opportunity to be active. I love reading and being in the emotional space with people, I love my coaching work and my one to one or workshop work with people developing their potential, and seeing them fly. I love the drama and beauty of the mental, intellectual and emotionally mature life – some academic, some philosophical, some just connections with others at a meaningful level.  This did not make us very compatible as we grew up from the very young people we had been when we met and fell in love in our early twenties. I did try the physical life, I did try the things he loved and did well, except I fell off jet skis, I hated camping, I am scared to death on a bike because I have a very poor sense of balance, but I did nearly die from water-skiing. We were in Portugal on holiday and we went out for a lesson. I can swim but not well and I am scared of deep water, but along I went.  There were four of us, and Jack the instructor. I went second. I have very little memory of getting into the water except I was brave and my heart was racing. I had seen how far away the coast seemed as we had bombed away from it in Jack’s little speedboat. I remember the sensation of my arms being pulled from their sockets as I was tugged along on the water surface, roped to the back of the boat and then attempting to stand up on the ski. I did not manage it, I slipped and fell, the ski banging my head as I went under the water, I could not breathe, and I have a visual memory of seeing the never-ending water at eye-level as I bobbed up to the surface. Jack raced the boat around and looked anxiously in the water at me, his previous chatty patter halted. I was hauled out, I shivered and was silent. I have never been back in the sea since.

I have strived subsequently to these events to maintain a level of awareness that enables me to question myself, my motives for acting. I fail spectacularly sometimes. I will find out halfway through an activity or event when I notice that I am feeling resentful, it’s a red flag that I probably don’t want to be there. Or a plan will be made and I feel scared or anxious about it, then I feel I am triggered by my feelings and I look to spend some time reviewing what is my wish, what do I want to do?

It doesn’t mean I never want to do things for others, or even that I will not put others first at times. Love and compassion are great motivators to be aware of. I wish to practice the four brahmavihāras; Buddhist virtues, loving-kindness and compassion are two of those, so I have to be awake to my own needs and the needs of others.

The aetiology of my chameleon is not complicated to work out, even if it is complex in its effect. As I have written before, I began a second life at three weeks in foster care and then, at seven and a half weeks, a third new life in another house with another primary carer. As an alien in sequential new worlds, my reptile brain was flooded with stress hormones and needed to work quickly, if primitively, to survive. It seems my flight, fight or freeze response was to freeze; I was a “good” baby, a compliant child, I froze, and, once I had worked out what was expected of me, I did that. My mum said I was fine as a younger child and teenager; it was when I left home that I “became difficult”! I was attempting to exert my independence, be myself, but that was not OK. It was many years, into my forties before I really, truly understood all I have written here, and only now, into my fifties can I see what I need to do to honour my own needs and ask myself, “What do you need me to be?”

Story of a search

I knew I wasn’t theirs and it had always seemed perfectly normal to me; it was natural not to look like my parents, or feel a sense of family.  Then when I was eight, dad handed me a small brown envelope addressed to him and mum. In the top left corner in his hesitant hand and blue ink was the simple word “DETAILS”. I had watched as he fetched the small package from a box on the top shelf of the cupboard that housed his coats and jackets and now we were sat on my parents’ bed, side by side. From inside the envelope I drew a folded and faded yellowing piece of paper. Ink from the type was visible on the reverse, and the origami performed to originally get this letter into the tiny envelope had to be undone.  Dated 25.1.67, the note informed my parents that in six days they could travel from their home near Birmingham to “meet” a baby at 12 noon in central London, with “a view to taking her home”. This was my first glimpse at my history and I read that I was three weeks premature, and was considered a “very pretty, small baby, with good features, flat ears, and a well-shaped head.”  I also learnt that my name at that time was Anna Louise Munro.

The rest of the letter was only two short paragraphs, one about my mother, one concerning my father. Reading on I discovered that my birth mother was then an unmarried, attractively slim, 19-year-old Australian who’s “very musical and also good at sports, horse-riding in particular”. It said that my birth father was British born but half Spanish, also musical as he played the guitar, and he was an engineer in the Merchant Navy, having gone to sea at 16. The letter went on in a manner that I still find terse; “The girl met him on the boat coming to England.  She did not see him after that and he never knew about the baby.”

I cannot recall now how I felt on reading these few short lines about my start in life and parentage, but I am certain I did not anticipate how life-changing these snippets of information would eventually be for me, nor did I stop to appreciate the huge impact on my adoptive parents when they had first received the news.  My eight-year-old self accepted it all purely at face value, but I could soon recount that letter word for word. That status quo lasted for over twenty years. I knew that those people from the letter were out there somewhere but they were one dimensional, stuck in that sixties moment when the letter was written. Furthermore, for me growing up, having one set of parents was trouble enough – I didn’t need anymore!

When I turned 30 I began to be more curious, I wanted to discover more about me, about my birth parents, and I started the process of learning how that could happen. A national charity called Norcap existed at that time for people affected by the triangle of adoption; birth parents, adoptive parents as well as adoptees. It had a history of making connections for those separated at birth – a reunion of the lost family.

After joining Norcap the next step was to apply see my adoption records and arrange to get my birth certificate. In England it’s a legal requirement for an adoptee placed for adoption before 1975 to be counselled by social services prior to receiving their records because before this date all adoptions were closed and no contact was thought ever to be made. I sat through this interview with almost perfunctory ease and my adoption records and birth certificate were requested.

My ease in the situation abruptly changed when my birth certificate arrived on a cold day in January. Having spent all my life thinking I was fostered from birth, I was overwhelmed, and sobbed as I found out my mother’s address was the same as mine when she registered the birth: we were still living together! This meant that I spent my first Christmas and New Year with my birth mother.  (When I got my records I found out we had been discharged from hospital on Christmas Eve, two weeks after I was born, and had then gone to a mother and baby home where we stayed until January 4nd.) This reaction was to become familiar: new information would rock my world, my view of myself had to shift and I had to rewrite part of my life story.

The local social services were proficient and quickly found my adoption records, a feat that amazes me still – paper records from thirty years ago found in what I imagine to be a very large warehouse!  On the day of my appointment I went to the small social services office in the centre of town during my lunch break from work.

Here the revelations multiplied; I found out my birth father’s name (of course it wasn’t on my birth certificate as he was not there then); I found out that he was married – the “details” letter had said that he was unmarried; I found out about the adoption process and got to see the application for adoption as filled in by my birth mother; I found out my grandmother had come over from Australia and was with her daughter at the time I was being handed over for adoption. I remember the social worker sitting with me and asking me how I felt about all this – the papers I think she meant – I wasn’t sure but it was too immense to comment on the entire story in that cramped upstairs office – the whole thing felt surreal. I remember she was appalled at the lack of information and wanted to comfort me that there would be more nowadays, including photos and maybe a letter for me from my birth mother. That seemed too much to hope for!

Most disconcertingly of all at that time I found out that my birth mother was in fact from Papua New Guinea, and, although Australian, not from the mainland as I had previously thought – again, information in the “details” letter didn’t match the reality. I felt a loss of identity or possibly homeland – another big shift for me to adjust to –  I had spent my childhood with a large map of Australia on my wall, but only the mainland. This was not, apparently, the right map!

From this meeting I had the excitement of getting to take home the letter written by my birth mother passing on my birth certificate to the adoption agency. This was my first real thing of hers; I treasured it and read it often, trying to imagine the person who wrote it. It was the only original I was allowed to keep – all the rest were diligently photocopied and presented to me, I treasured them just the same. Information had been rationed and any new piece vital at this stage, I felt.

After this heady and life changing time I didn’t do anything else for six years. Looking back now it seems I needed to come to terms with all that I had learnt, and integrate this into my life and history. I wasn’t really contemplating actually searching for a birth parent, let alone finding one!

I stayed a member of Norcap, and read all the newsletter’s reunion stories, often crying at ones that tugged at my feelings. Norcap had my name on both the National contact register and the one maintained by Norcap but neither had any matches. I remember getting the acknowledgement letter of my entry in each case and being really disappointed that my birth mother wasn’t looking for me.

Gradually I came to thinking about how it would be for the letter to arrive saying there was a match on the contact register, or how it would feel to see my name and my birth mother’s in the reunion page in the newsletter. I started to want this more and more…

In the spring of 2003 I went to Norcap and asked them to help me. I searched the records in the Norcap offices near Oxford and talked to a researcher, but to no avail. Even though I was born in London and adopted through a UK adoption agency it would appear that my birth mother had gone back overseas. Norcap staff suggested that I contact a researcher in Australia and recommended one to me – then it all seemed to happen at once. Within a week of the researcher receiving my information, she had made an electoral roll match that appeared to be my birth mother. I tried to work out how I felt about this and what I should do; this was not so easy.

During my search, I had been in contact with a couple of Aussies who had lived in Papua New Guinea (PNG) around the time my birth mother did. The contact was made through a website forum, where ex-PNG residents reminisced.  Interestingly, all the people who helped me from that site were touched by adoption issues sometime in their lives; there was a lot of empathy and understanding around. At the same time as I got the message from the researcher that my birth mother was alive and well (a great relief, but a scary reality too) I got news, via the forum, that she had an entry on the Aussie version of Friends Reunited on the web. When I looked up the entry it validated what the researcher said – we had a match!

In November, after applying to Norcap for an intermediary I took the step of asking that contact be made. I was sure now that this was what I wanted, and it couldn’t happen soon enough, although I was terrified that my birth mother would not want to know.  Happily, this was not the case and she replied by e-mail to my intermediary, Wendy, the very day she got the letter, saying she was surprised to receive it now it had finally come but had been expecting it. Margaret wanted to know how long it had taken to find her and had thought about looking for me, but resisted, not knowing what I knew of my history, or even if I knew I was adopted. I really appreciated this thoughtfulness given my disappointment of not finding a match on the contact registers; it helped me to hear she’d been thinking of me.

Wendy and Margaret had along phone conversation and then Wendy rang me to debrief. I was sat in my car outside my therapist’s house when I took the call – probably an appropriate place to be!  My heart thundering as I tried to take notes to record all Wendy was telling me. I still have them, written balancing on the steering wheel while juggling my mobile phone; they feel like the first precious things of contact and connection that I had been longing for.

Now there was a more tangible, three-dimensional history. I began filling in the blanks by email and putting the facts straight about my first weeks of life, although this job never seems to end as it takes some time to be comfortable asking tricky or very personal questions. It can take a while to absorb the answers too.

I am excited to learn every little thing and it was an amazing time, emails flew back and forth in flurries – the honeymoon period of reunion. I had to come to term with more big shifts in perception, such as being the oldest of four kids in my birth mother’s family, whereas I am the younger of two in my adoptive one. I also now know that she did see my father after the trip over from Australia, but didn’t stay in touch when it turned out he was married, and she says she still didn’t tell him about me. (I have more information about him nowadays too – but that’s a story for another time…)

In addition, I got to see people who look like me for the first time in my life.  My birthday in 2003 was very special as I received photos of my birth mother and new-found sisters; they were a marvellous birthday present.

Finally, I had a family I could call my own.

The reunion

While I was on a writing course in 2013 I wrote this composition as a piece of coursework. At the time I had not written a great deal about adoption and so this was a lovely thing to write about. Today I want to post a happy post because the last few have been painful. Here is the story of a meeting that happened in 2004:

Meeting Margaret

It was sunny outside, on what could have been a lazy August afternoon. I paced across the lounge, again, and then sat heavily on the edge of the sofa.

“It’s three o’clock! Where are they?” I shout at no-one in particular. Dan is in the garden, impatient with my impatience, and I can see out the patio doors that he is carefully deadheading the purple Cosmos, engrossed and, for the moment, not concerned that his wife is losing the plot in the lounge.

“Where are they?” I wail.

The phone in the hall starts to ring. I rush to pick it up and I hear Anja’s voice.

“Hi Roz, you OK?”

I think for a moment; yes, I am still breathing, albeit a little heavily.

“Hi, yes, just here, waiting. Where have you been?”

Anja laughs down the phone “Well, Margaret just had to have her hair done and Ron wanted to come the scenic route, so a little difficulty in the setting off time we had talked about!”

I picture the scenic route from North Yorkshire to Oxfordshire and silently I am thankful that they arrived here today at all. Their friend Anja, enjoying her role as go-between, has been tasked with transporting them to our meeting, and for the several months that passed while the arrangements for today were finalised, she and I have been in regular contact. I am, as ever, grateful for her help and support today.

Out-loud I say “Where are you?”

“We are in a street by the church. I think that pub you suggested we meet in, that’s along here somewhere, isn’t it?”

I am so busy with the details of the practical arrangements that it isn’t until I put the phone down and turn towards the door to the garden that I remember. Then I have to sit down on the stool at the kitchen bench. I am drenched in fear and anticipation and excitement, all mingling in my body; I can feel tingling and my heart pounds, blood gushing round my cells.  I find myself stumbling towards the back door where I meet Dan coming in from the garden. He puts his arms round me and meets my eyes with an inquisitive gaze.

“They are here,” I whisper…

So, finally “The Moment” has arrived, and now I find I am not prepared at all; I need to change, again, and go to the toilet, again. Eventually, I appear from upstairs and am pacing once more, this time up and down the hall.

“Come on, let’s go,” Dan says calmly, as always.

The pub I have chosen for the meeting is completely the other end of town from our house. I rue this as we tramp along the busy shopping streets in the blazing sunshine and hazy air of the centre of Witney.  I think I am silent but my head buzzes and adrenaline makes colours vivid and my step broader. By now it is 4pm; we are approaching The Green by the parish church where the sunshine has enticed people to collect outside the pub.  As Dan and I walk together along the shaded pavement beside this open grassy space I see the tables in the sun are busy.  I am searching for faces I have only ever seen in photographs; further ahead of us I spy the group we are to meet. I see a woman’s head whip round in response to a girl’s nod in our direction.  Short, newly cut, copper coloured hair on this woman is striking, and is my first and (as I can now say) lasting impression of Margaret.

I am moving towards the group, fixated on Margaret. She is about my height (five and a half foot), and I recognise the stocky build I have been fighting with all my adult life. She is dressed casually in blue jeans, and a jumper the same colour as her hair; I am burning on this hot August day, she is not, being the daughter of an Australian expat, who grew up in the tropics of Papua New Guinea.

As I approach the table I hear Margaret’s laugh, and the three people round the table stand up. She and I lock eyes of cornflower blue, and immediately I am drawn into a short but definite hug. “Long time no see!” I say over her shoulder as we are momentarily held together by the embrace. She laughs again, and I feel my shoulders drop, relaxing a little into the meeting now the ice is broken.

Dan is greeted by the man. “Hi, I’m Ron” he says in his wonderful antipodean accent, and with what I know now is a customary familiar and friendly warmth. They shake hands.

“Champagne! Do you like champagne?” Ron asks me, once the men have settled their welcome. “Margaret, would you like champagne?”

Not really waiting for answers Ron walks purposefully to towards the bar. Anja is watching us as she sits back down, smiling, and I reach for a chair, feeling a little dizzy again. Margaret and I sit and look at each other; this is how mother and daughter meet after 36 years apart following my adoption at 7 weeks old, when Margaret was only 19.

Once champagne is served and Ron re-joins the group, he and Dan strike up a conversation. I stand to take a candid photo of the gathered clan and Ron looks up at me. His eyes open wide, seemingly startled.

“She looks just like our daughter, Jeanette!” Ron exclaims.

He is not my dad (but I do wish he was!), nevertheless he can see the family resemblance.  They all agree; I do indeed resemble my half-sister.  Up until this point I have merely seen photographs of my three half-siblings sent over the internet from Australia, and they, in turn, have seen a few carefully selected ones of me. I guess it is only in the flesh that the comparisons become striking.

As I look back to this reunion, over eight years ago now, I am unsure really what we talked about but the conversation continued as we all began the impossible task of trying to recover the missing years. I do recall that the next few hours passed in a blur as we drank champagne and got warm and relaxed in that late afternoon August sunshine.

I often look back on the photographs of those precious moments; they are vivid with smiles and bright celebrations.  One of my favourites shows me sat next to Margaret, we are both looking happy, laughter not far away, but, just in the corner of the shot, you can see Ron’s hand in hers, comforting, reassuringly steady.

As the years have passed since that first reunion meeting I have found out more about my Australian family and been over to visit them in their New South Wales homes. My younger sister, Linden, and brother, Markham, have both visited me in the UK and been great hosts on the Australian tours.  During my first visit to Australia Jeanette invited me to be a bridesmaid at her wedding, even though she had never met me personally. When asked about this she explained that as I was her sister, and mum had met me and liked me then that was good enough for her.

Just after this wedding I was due to travel home, and Margaret and Ron took me to the airport. Goodbyes are tough for me and I was dreading this one. After a long lunch at the airport, spotting planes for Ron and the obligatory glass of champagne for Margaret and me, we were walking to the gates. She veered off and disappeared out of view into a card shop. Ron, impatient with his wife, huffed and paced; I had a plane to catch!

He had walked ahead by the time she appeared. She handed me a small package, laughing, but with tears in her eyes. I looked inquisitively at her, she said “Show Ron, so he knows what all the fuss is about.”  I opened the bag; inside was a pretty stone fridge magnet decorated with purple flowers that reminded me of those Cosmos. On it were the words “Always my daughter, now too my friend”. We knew then what the fuss was about.

 

The Mothership

What does “mother” mean? How does it shift if I consider that I have a birth mother, a foster mother and an adopted mother? I understand intellectually the dictionary definition – mother means a female parent, but that is what they are, not what they do.

Maybe, simply, I can describe a mother’s role to be responsible for mothering? Mothering seems to be encapsulated by the word nurturing, defined in my dictionary with phrases such as feed and protect, support and encourage, bring up and educate. OK, where do my three mothers fit into all those?

Down the rabbit hole we go…

I was conceived on a ship that my birth mother took from Australia to England where she had a short relationship with a member of the crew. She got off the ship 10,000 miles away from home and pregnant.

I arrived three weeks early and very quickly by all accounts. Consequently, I was delivered at her home in London by a paramedic. I was then with her for three weeks. In that time did she mother me, was I nurtured?  As I write this I don’t know if I was fed by my birth mother. Clearly, I was fed, but by her milk? She has been back in my life 14 years and I have never thought to ask this question! For two of those weeks we were in hospital where, she reports, staff were surprised I was to be adopted, so I am deducing that she did look after me as any new mum would.

The last week we had together before I was fostered was spent at a “Mother and Baby” Home. I wonder what protecting went on?  She was only just 19, I imagine she needed support and encouragement and protecting too, were we vying for the emotional care and the physical resources that were available? I find it heartbreaking that this week was Christmas and New Year and I don’t imagine there was much celebrating going on, while now my Baby-self remembers and cries at Christmas.

I was taken to the foster mother, Mrs Jones, by my birth mother. While I was there my maternal grandmother flew in from Australia, no mean feat in 1966, and was helping/hindering her daughter in the details of my despatch. There has been talk of her wanting my birth mother to keep me, of her asking where the baby was in her very late years after being overtaken by dementia. But my birth mother has always maintained that I was to be adopted and she wanted me to have two parents. It always was her decision, she says. During the search for my birth mother, I was given access to my adoption file, a thin and meagre set of papers that the social worker seemed to be embarrassed about for its lack of detail. However, within its contents was one telling handwritten note: “Mrs Jones reports, the girl’s mother won’t even look at the baby and the girl’s father, still in Australia, refuses even to discuss the matter, therefore, adoption is the only answer”.

I know less about the four weeks I spent in the foster home. Were there other children or babies there? Did Mrs Jones look after me with others or just her? What was it like there? I know that my adopted mother said, disparagingly, I arrived with nappy rash so she thought I had a bit less nurturing than necessary, obviously! However, I know nothing more of that time except when I left I had spent over half of my life in that house. I do know that January, the span of which covers my time with this temporary mother, has always been a tricky emotional sea for me to navigate each year and I am sadly familiar with the bleakness that can’t always be squared away with it being wintery outside.

I arrived with my adopted parents, (who I shall refer to here as mum and dad) at seven and half weeks, moving on to my third mother. This woman was already an adopted mother to a three and a half-year-old boy. Still, I am unsure how ready she was to be a mother. She had had five days notice by letter of my impending availability when she and my adopted dad travelled to collect me. This time I was destined to stay and was legally adopted at 5 months.

This mother was ill-equipped psychologically for her nurturing role. She suffered from clinical depression, not yet diagnosed at my arrival, but it manifested over the rest of her life in ways that blighted our family and created much despair for her and for me (and others). She was such a damaged individual herself; reared by parents who wanted a boy, who demanded academic excellence and dominated by a mother who was cold in her emotional neglect and cruel in harsh judgment – she once said to my mum it was a good job that she and my adopted father could not have children as heaven knows what they would have produced! Permanently feeling a failure on all counts and battered by life, my mum fell into severe depression and never really recovered for over fifty years.

Unfortunately, having such a poor role model, my mum fixated on the practical details of mothering; we were washed and clothed and fed and educated. We were not protected or nurtured; we were not loved, cuddled or supported emotionally. I remember even as a small child how I felt her lack of connection with me when washing my hair or cutting my nails; she would hold me or move me like I was an object, an inanimate thing, not warm or caring in touch or sensation.  I know now it was her lack of empathy, her inability to feel or to understand what the other feels, but then it just felt remote, harsh and strange, and it left me with a sense of being a burden or an inconvenience, a feeling which I still find hard to shake in relationships today.

I was desperate to connect; adoption leaves the child with the adoption grief – the loss of the mother – at whatever age this occurs. Sadly, my adopted mother was not available for connection, and I know this upset her terribly from conversations we had when I was an adult. She regretted not hugging us, not cuddling us but it was too late and patterns were concreted in. She said she didn’t feel she could love or was loved by anyone and I tried, desperately, to be there for her and to love her, ending in a childhood too full of caring for her, helping dad to care for her. She told me she could love me more if I was her natural daughter. This when I was 14 during one of the late night heart to hearts when I became a surrogate therapist. But it was all one way; I never dared to tell anything of mine for fear of breaking her, upsetting her to the point of collapse, which was often threatened. Being asked to stay away when I was at university, by my dad, because my being at home caused rows and upset her; being yelled at to effectively choose which of my mothers I would be loyal too when I was an adult and had successfully searched for  my birth mother; having been asked at 18 if I thought they should split up because I was so upset just before my A Levels began that I had my mum by the neck and was screaming “It’s all your fault!” over and over into her face. These, all these, lead me to suspect my mothering left a lot to be desired.

It may be unsurprising then that I decided not to be a mother myself. I felt totally unmaternal and completely put off the child rearing idea. Once I had decided, even after a failed attempt at pregnancy, that I was not cut out for it I was more settled. With all that I recount here and the instinctual feeling that I couldn’t be a mother, that Mothership sailed and I remained a childless mother as well as a motherless child.

I am learning to mother myself now.

 

Dad’s story – my eulogy read at his funeral

James Peter Arnold was born in May 1933 in Swanage on the Isle of Purbeck, Dorset. His parents ran a small holding in the neighbouring village of Corfe Castle where his dad was also a driving instructor.

Dad spent his first eleven years in Corfe, sharing life with his parents, his sister, Jill, born a few years later and his cousins who also lived in Dorset. He went to the village primary school to begin with but his parents had aspirations for him so at eight he went to Hillcrest Preparatory school in Swanage.

I think he enjoyed those days in Dorset, he told me of walking over the fields to Dancing Ledge and swimming in the sea, as well as being out on the hills over Corfe Common.

Growing up around animals on the smallholding his love of all things furry and four legged was born and we can think now of his menagerie of cats and dogs that accompanied him through his life.

At eleven he was sent to Gresham’s, a boarding school near Holt in Norfolk and he remained there completing A levels. His parents dreamt of a doctor in the family but unfortunately, dad was not too great at science!

He spent the next five years working in and around London at London Transport and at Vickers, both in admin posts. He was heard proudly boasting in later years of having signed the Official Secrets Act at Vickers, but of course, he couldn’t say why!

In 1956, at 23, he applied to the School of Librarianship at Loughborough College, where he spent a couple of years becoming a Chartered Librarian, the career he would follow for the rest of his working life.

He loved the classification work and the book binding elements of the course particularly. And it was here that he met Alfreda, our mum.

They were married in March 1959, a small wedding with just close family. They started out married life in Northamptonshire but jobs moved them around the country. By the time Chris, their son arrived in 1963 they were living in Clacton on Sea and by the time Rosemary arrived (that’s me!)  in 1966 they were living in Wall Heath in the suburbs of Birmingham.

Mum and dad could not have children of their own so Chris and I were adopted. Sometimes this fact feels easy and sometimes more difficult, but dad never once made a distinction; we are his children he would say and nothing else was important.

1968 saw a move to Doncaster and dad became a district librarian with particular responsibilities for the mobile libraries.  I think this was a job he really enjoyed and would like to have stayed in but the local government reform of 1974 saw his job literally disappear as the West Ridings vanished!

The family moved first to the moors over the west side of Doncaster and then finally to Mirfield as dad got a senior job in Kirklees libraries, based in Huddersfield. He stayed there until he was made redundant in 1985.

During all these moves and changes, one constant for the family was the annual pilgrimage at half term down to Dorset to see family and friends. Dad’s dad had died suddenly in 1960 and I know this was a massive loss for him, his sister moved away to live in Switzerland and married over there so only his mum remained and she stayed in Corfe until she died in 1998.

Every year we would go and stay with Granny Goose, we all called her this as one legacy from the small holding days was she still kept geese in her back garden. Dad’s Uncle Emil and Auntie Joan lived at the seaside at Swanage so some days were spent down there as a family or on Studland beach nearby.

Dad didn’t have a great number of hobbies during his working life but he had inherited a stamp collection from his grandfather on his 21st birthday so this was where his love of classification and order would be exhibited. He was not a fastidious man in many ways (who can forget the cat haired trousers and the fights to get him to change out of them to go out for meals!?) but the stamp collection in big leather bound files with thick squared paper pages classified by country was pristine. Sunday afternoon he would spend sorting and sticking in collections that arrived, first day covers or single stamps he wanted.

His other great love was, as I have said, the furries that he chose to spend his life with. His beloved Susan, the spaniel he had as a young man, and then Furzy and Pearl, the dog and cat Chris and I knew first as children.  Then numerous cats and dogs, all special in their own way and all, of course, great providers of the pet hair we fought over!

Dad seemed to have a way of collecting waif and strays so the pets he had were always from shelters or ones that literally came in from the street.  In the later years he and I shared many calls over Tommy, the feral ginger tomcat he worked really hard to tame. Then there was Jack who was so timid he literally hid under cupboards. Dad got them to come to him and it was immensely pleasing for him to succeed at gaining their trust and love.

His special attention was also directed outside, where he always put food out for the birds and particularly at Great Hale he was delighted with “his” family of hedgehogs always fed in the shed.

After his working life was done, dad was heavily involved in voluntary work. He used to visit Kirkwood Hospice in Huddersfield and drive for visitors and patients there. Once he and mum moved to Lincolnshire to retire in 1991 he was involved in the hospice in Sleaford as well as the voluntary car service in Heckington, where they lived.

Dad was fond of secrets, so he was ideal for a secret society and he became a Freemason during his forties and remained so for many years, joining lodges in Yorkshire and his alumni, Greshams. I am not sure this was a popular move for everyone as mum was upset about the time it took up and Granny had religious reservations. Nevertheless, he persevered and rose through their ranks, changing the colour of his pinny (his word!) as he went!

The regalia were kept pristine, in sharp contrast to his other attire; I remember as a child we always had running conversations about where the yolk from his breakfast boiled egg might end up on his tie!

As part of the Arnold family heritage he became a liveryman of the Fishmongers’ Company, when he was 21, as his father and grandfather had before him. Fishmongers is one of the oldest livery guilds in the City of London and has close ties to his school, Gresham’s.

Invitations to black tie dinners in the Fishmongers’ Hall by Blackfriars, and to the oldest sculling race in the country, the Doggett’s Coat and Badge, along the Thames were exciting to attend and dad tried to rotate his invitations so everyone in the wider family had a trip down to London.

Dad was not always the easiest of people to be with or to know. As his family, we saw the stresses and strains of his life and the struggles he had at times, but I know he lived in Great Hale as he wished and was more content here.

He had his animals and he had his own particular habits. He loved to read thrillers and crime stories and he would always enjoy a good classic old film on the telly, as well as liking a variety of musical styles from baroque and early church music to jazz and swing, but he never modernised beyond about 1950 to be honest! This lot plus his voluntary work and such groups as Probus filled his time well.

He relished time travelling with cruising on the high seas being a great pleasure. Sometimes he and mum would go off but he also went round the Baltic and across to the Caribbean as a solo traveller.

He gave Chris and me a huge gift last year when he bought us, as a family, a 5-day cruise on the Saga Pearl. We mended bridges and cleared air that needed clearing, and he gifted us the opportunity to become a family again.  I will always be grateful to him for that, particularly as largesse was not his usual style!

He was very distressed when mum passed away in 2014 and although their marriage had its ups and downs they lived in a sort of symbiosis and it was a tough blow when she died so suddenly.

His own physical health was always a struggle and he succumbed to a heart attack only a year later, as well as beginning the tricky period where falling became a real issue. This led to an unfortunate stay in Boston Pilgrim in September last year, whereupon he was so ill it was deemed unsafe for him to return home to live alone.

This was when York House in Billinghay came into our lives. He went there last October and lived there until his death, being rude to staff and blustering at every opportunity! My brother and I both visited with our partners at various times over his stay and over his last week in particular. I can say we were all moved by the level of affection and care he garnered from the staff; for all his grumpy old man (his words, again) he had a blue eyed twinkle and a little wry smile that was hard to resist even when he was being outrageous!

As I have made phone calls and talked to people about him after his death they have said he was funny or he was clever or witty, and I have heard he was loved. Thank you to all those here, and elsewhere, that helped him when we, his family, could not.

His attitude to being over there (gesture to the coffin) can really be summed up in a comment from him. Chris, Jane, John and I sat in his room at York House the afternoon after he died doing some initial sorting out, we sat as a family and laughed and cried as you do at these times.

Dad’s love of order had been so systematic that he had planned for events that needed to be attended to after his death.  He had given to Chris some years ago a Life Book as a way to annotate the necessary actions for dealing with any illness, and to help us at this sad time. Dad only wanted it to be used after he died so a section about medication was completed in his spidery writing. It said “Not filled in because when this is read I will be dead” and dead was underlined twice.

RIP 30.05.1933  – 08.08.2017

Lilli

We weren’t going to get a cat we said; we liked the freedom of being able to take off when we wanted to, and at holiday times not having to think about organising care for said cat, plus we were renting in properties that were not open to pet ownership. So that, we thought, was that.

We both had beloved cats in our past lives, and left cats behind with our ex partners. I, particularly, was bereft when D and I separated and  I couldn’t take Squiggy. It felt like I had left a piece of me behind, but she had a home and was with her brother who she’d lived with all her life, so I decided it was best to leave her as a Granary cat.

Roll the clock forward four years and my mum dies. This is tragic, and difficult enough, but she had four cats that we have to re-home…

Three of these are “new” cats – well mum had them as kittens two years previously, but I didn’t know them very well as one was a mad kitten (Perky by name, perky by nature) and the other two hid under the kitchen cupboards every time I visited. And then there was Lilli.

10476459_10153900516669045_6174357684494487292_n

She had been a tenacious rescue kitten from the RSPCA. She was found on top of a garden shed with her litter mates, none of whom survived, and she was only 8 weeks old when mum brought her home on 8 June 2001. Mum had also just got a tom cat kitten called Gulliver  and as the new arrival was so small she decided to call her Lilliput, or Lilli for short. I have known Lilli a long time and she was the only one that I considered making ours, but that meant we were getting a cat!

After mum died we came back to our house for a few days between doing the initial sorting and “death run” (collecting the death certificate…registering the death… will reading…house sorting) and the funeral. While we were back home, amongst other things, I tried to consider the effect of bringing home a cat. In a funny way I knew I would end up with Lilli. While mum was alive she had up to six cats at a time, and I would berate her for her “mad cat woman” look and the fact that often the cats ran riot in what was a very chaotic house to begin with, so it really didn’t help having lots of felines and their mess to manage. Mum would be cross and then ask if we wanted one of them. I had said I would have LIlli, but mum replied she wasn’t offering me her!

When I did decide finally that I could not bring the cats from my old life as  I could neither separate my cats, not D from either cat, I told him it was OK and that J and I would find a cat that fitted here in this house. I didn’t know then how that would work, but the universe was making the space for Lilli. She had always been in a multi-cat household at mum’s, and dad said she wanted to be an only cat. Well, she got her wish, on 4th December last year she moved in with us. Two days after my mother’s funeral we loaded up the car with her in a basket, and as much cat paraphernalia as we could muster from mum’s house. We had sprayed her basket with Fellaway, which is a pheromone spray to calm the feline nerves – worked a treat, not a peep from her on the four hour journey here, the longest time she has ever been in a car. We did refer to it as drugging the cat, but that and a plug-in dispenser of Fellaway in her room here did wonders for her settling in.

She did seem to be at home very quickly,and over a couple of weeks explored every bit of the house.10885030_10153493119384045_6181903743810070078_n The wood burner in the living room soon became a firm favourite as she craved warmth, and the winter days it was lit she was always parked somewhere near. She was a bit skinny and waif like when she arrived; no teeth meant she ate slowly, and the “new kitten”, Perky, at mum’s had taken to stealing her food. We heard her growl at him while we were house clearing after the funeral –  I haven’t heard her growl once since she has been with us.

She has always been a vocal cat, and has shouted to be heard. Mum gave all her cats voices, and Lilli’s was a yelled “HELLO! I WANT ….”. Now she is an only cat her voice has grown more varied and more mellow. She will still shout, particularly when she is saying “WHERE ARE YOU!?” as she has found herself upstairs and we aren’t anywhere to be seen, but she will also churp and wurrup when we are closer. Her food noise “MMMMM…EHHH” has been received into J’s and my lexicon as the “I want food!” demand for all of us,  and her purr actually became audible after about three months – I had never heard it before.

And so we do have a cat; she is now doing more happy cat things; she rolls, she stretches out; she does more washing of herself and she does like to be fussed (on her terms of course!) She is far more sociable than I ever knew; she will walk round the garden with us, and11403461_10153961762219045_4451546741847466703_n sit in which ever room we are occupying – particularly the kitchen where she knows ham may be in the offing. She loves to perch on our knee, and will demand we sit down for her, or she makes a bee-line for the sofa when she sees an available lap. This is a revelation as I always considered her quite a grumpy cat when she lived with mum. I now think she was not happy with lots of other cats, especially as she got older, so is relishing her queen bee status with us.

And we are relishing our cat servant status again too. She dominates our morning routines with breakfast and litter trays (and possible vomit on carpets cleaning – never known such a vomiting cat!) While at 9.40pm she will move to her intercept position on the top of the stairs on the way to her bedroom and demand we put her to bed, after her supper, naturally.

It does of course mean we have another responsibility, and more planning is needed for trips and holidays, but the flip side is we have the satisfaction of providing a lovely retirement home for the old girl, and we are all enjoying her coming into her own at the grand age of fourteen and a half.

Taking care of her is an honouring of mum too. Lilli and I shared an adopted mother and both of us had our lives changed irrevocably when she died, I like that we can be together now taking our shared past with us

 

The last few months

These have not been “frost free” months emotionally, I have been processing much about the unfamiliar life without mum, and the new life I have chosen after our big, big changes last year (moving areas, our marriage and J’s retirement).

There have been some happy days and some sad days, such is life I guess, but the roller-coaster has felt more than a little out of control at times, and with some mountainous ups and downs. When life feels like that  I tend only to write in my journal (a lot!) and any creative writing is limited to short poems. This means I have been absent from the blog pretty much all this year.

It hasn’t been an overly creative period but there are poems from the last few months that I want to share here. They concern “roots of family history, place, emotional growth and development.”, which, as I noted when introducing this site, I created this blog to explore. They talk about how it was, what I saw and how my parents lived. Not easy reading maybe (certainly not easy writing) but it is my truth and I am honouring it, moving on with it and letting it be. There is something about these words resting here that means I am letting them go, putting them down, and, finally, being freer from the past. (And thanks, Linden, for your loving conversation with me about these thoughts that helped me to start to put into words why I am sharing here.)

 

It wasn’t what I would have chosen

He said
The only tell-tale sign of regret
In those words

So,
In future
Cards go to his address
And flowers
Go to hers

 

Look mum

They all came,
the cousins and the friends.

“No one would care if I lived or died.”
She said.

Look mum,
at the warm friendship
and soothing affection.

“No-one loves me –
Except, maybe you.”
She said.

Look mum,
at all the condolence cards
and fond memories shared.

“I would be better off dead.”
She said.

 

 

What he knows now

He remembers her now
With fondness
And love,

He tells the six grieving strangers
at the bereavement group
“I loved her; I loved her for 60 years”.

He talks to her, he reads her poetry!
“She would like that”, he says,
When is the last time he did that, I wonder?

On her last day, round her bedside, we sat,
He held her hand,
“It was years since we touched” he said.

 

 

The Diaries

They crouch chronologically, as I left them
in the box I brought here
from the chaos of those times.

They hold secrets
for me; my life, her life
told in loads
of washing
and ironing, and resting
and rows.
Told in letters for Granny
and tales of pets.
Thirty years of life in that box
just like her.

 

 

Mothering Sunday

This will be the first time in, probably, 40 years I have not sent a Mothers’ Day card to my mother. Actually she had a very traditional view of this, and it was always my job to find a card that said Mothering Sunday, and not Mother’s Day, the former being the original festival. Having just Googled this I find that the term Mothering Sunday originated in the 16th century, it was a date in Lent when people went back to their mother church, and were said to have gone a-mothering. This was overtaken by an American institution of celebrating motherhood which was begun by Anna Jarvis from West Virginia in 1905 who celebrated her mother in memorial the year she died. It eventually became a national holiday in the US when Woodrow Wilson signed a declaration in 1914. As with other parts of the world in the present day, this holiday is celebrated on the second Sunday in May in the US. The UK is peculiar in that it conflagrated the two things, and left Mothering Sunday in Lent (therefore the date moves about) and overlaid it with Mothers’ Day, so, unlike many other counties, this is not celebrated in May.image

I have missed the search for the card. It was always possible to find a Mothering  Sunday card, although it did get a little harder in more current times, but it had also to be one that wasn’t too soppy or trite; as the holiday got more commercialised this became more troublesome. I found myself automatically looking at the cards in the supermarket about three weeks ago, and then suddenly realised that I didn’t need to buy one this year as I didn’t have an address that I could send it too.  It is the first Mothering Sunday since mum died and it is difficult, unexpectedly so. Given this, and the fact that I can’t  send something, instead, I will say it here, happy Mothering Sunday, mum, wherever you are.

 

Memories, or lack therof

It is a bit awkward really, I want to write and the main mode I am attracted to is creative non-fiction – either poetry or prose – but I have a small problem; I don’t remember much. In order to write about my life or events therein, particularly if it is not recent, I need to have a catalogue of memories to call on, to populate the page and to lend realism and depth to my stories. I am lucky as I have kept a journal for many years, and so can go back to those volumes to flesh out that shimmering gossamer of recollection that I would like to capture more firmly on the page, but for those things I haven’t recorded in my journal it is a bit trickier.

Visual records too may help with remembering, but I harbour this doubt; do I remember the occasion or just the picture? Over the years I have looked through the family photos many times, and I wonder, would I be able to recall some events if I weren’t so familiar with the photos?

When mum died I became the repository for our family photographs. By unspoken consent all the pictures that mum or dad had kept got passed to me. Dad announced that they were to be mine, and then handed me an overflowing box when I arrived for mum’s ashes scattering; I inherited a heap of ancient snapshots to file or discard. I have always loved looking at these pictures and now I have them for safekeeping but still I wonder, what do I actually remember?

As I was reviewing and sorting the ones that ended up in my new album collection, I came across a photo that was of me, I was clearly present, I am in it, no dispute it is me. It is in colour and shows the four of us lined up against what I imagine is dad’s car. Remarkably, and this is a notable event in photos of my childhood, my mother is the only one attempting a smile. We are all, except dad, clutching rocks in our hands, and on the back, in mum’s imagehandwriting it says Kimmeridge Aug 76. And so it is, on one of our many trips to Dorset to visit Granny, we must have had a day out to go fossil hunting. Mum is wearing a dress of hers that I loved, very 1970s with white diamonds on a moss coloured patterned background; it eventually got turned into a pinny, I do remember that! I am in a very twee mainly white frock overlaid with garish red/blue flowers (I am put in mind of Laura Ashley wallpaper), it has short cap sleeves revealing very thin arms – I am nine. Dad and Chris are in non-descript yellow tops, mum has on a yellow cardigan over the dress, the sea and sky is our backdrop, flat and slightly washed out on the picture, really not an exceptional image.

As I look at it I try to dredge up what I recall of that day. I don’t remember the picture being taken, I have vague memories of being on the beach and scouring the cliffs for fossils, but then I worry that this is a mix up with a day where I thought we went to Lyme Regis, where Mary Anning, the fossil hunter, lived – and I got a book about her so that must have happened! This past feels faint and very fuzzy.

I stare at the representation that is me, I am not sure what she was feeling or thinking; she doesn’t look very happy but this doesn’t surprise me; I was not over familiar with happiness as a child. What sort of day was she having? And did she like fossil hunting?

I am left with more questions than recollections that I am happy to pin down as factual but I do think that I can use these graphic sources to produce some interesting writing. This work may veer more to the creative side of the genre than the non-fiction, but that’s OK!