Dad and Stephen

Dad came from country Victoria. His family moved to Melbourne during the Great Depression, I think, but not sure when that was. It was after World War 11, where he served as a soldier in the Pacific, that he was stationed at Adamstown Barracks in Newcastle and met Mum. He was still in uniform when he met Mum at a dance. He left the army because the was was over. He worked in the fish markets in Newcastle, then the steel works as a shift worker. when we moved to Melbourne he worked in the Monbulk Jam factory. For three months during that job he stayed off work because he had put a steam hose used for cleaning, down his boot and burnt his foot. I remember him being at home and a nurse coming to the house. It was not a happy time due to his loud intolerance of pain. We were still living in the Dandenong Ranges at that time. He was also prone to leg cramps and would cry and groan constantly, limping and hopping up and down the dark corridor between the bedroom s and bathroom. I cried privately in sympathy at his terrible, loud moaning when his leg was cramped.

He worked in a clothing factory, then found a job driving a red van and collecting the mail from post boxes and taking it to the sorting depot. Everything was difficult for him and the stress of work put him in a bad mood always.

We went with him on his round once, Stephen and me. We sat on cushions in the back of the van and laughed ourselves silly, skidding around on the shiny floor. Then I wet myself so the cushions didn't slide wo well

Failures

Today I'm tormented by my many failures. In the past, in every area of my life I have failed. Not an hour goes by when, no matter what I am doing, something reminds me of an experience from way back, where I had let myself, and others down.
These days, sometimes I wonder if I imagine my inadequacies due to echoes from the past, especially when I say to a friend 'I hope I didn't say a wrong thing last night.', or 'Was I bad last night drinking three glasses of wine?' The friend always looks at me and says 'You were fine.' Then one of them might even suggest, 'You have low self esteem and no confidence.'
I try to be perfect. I am always kind, friendly, calm and mostly quiet when required, or vivacious when required. I always fall short in my eyes, then severely tell myself to be kind to me.
My anguish rubs raw when I try to understand how I am perceived by others. I'm probably falling short in areas I'm not even aware of. All I really want is to be treated with respect and accepted for what I am. I think I am treated with respect as a successful, self-sufficient, well-adjusted mother, who doesn't need friends, so nobody rings me. I could be imagining that too.

I put my anguish down to 'Post Traumatic Stress Disorder'. Two symptoms are, by some accounts, cold extremities and nervous fidgeting. I learnt that yesterday in my course. I have those symptoms.
Aah, my course!
I have been parking my eldest son's old car that I bought for him, even though he is away, down at a shopping centre a kilometre from my home. I walk across a flat, cleared block of land big enough to build a factory on, up a steep embankment to a road. The sandy, damp soil of the embankment has been compacted smooth between the exposed rocks from the many people other than myself who trek that way because the rail station's car park is always full. I cross a busy intersection at the lights, walk up the slightly inclined footpath next to the parked buses and the people getting on and off, including school kids, at eight-forty in the morning. I place my card briefly on the scanner and the red, plastic-looking gates let me through. I go down the escalator and wait in the open on Platform One for my train. I stand, swaying on the crowded train which dips underground just before the city. I alight, queue for the first escalator, queue for the second escalator, tag out with my card, then walk briskly to keep pace with the crowd stepping out into Murray St Mall. I walk to the road and stand at the 'Cat' bus stop; a free service. The bus is crowded. I stand, getting jolted by the stop start movements of the bus, for twelve blocks until I can get off at the front of my building. The course in conducted on the first floor. I cross the road from the bus stop, walk along through a short shopping mall to the Food Court, ascend a curved staircase. I can look down on the tables and food counters from the mezzanine floor, and up to a domed, frosted skylight. My door is on the right, at the corner of a corridor leading into the lifts, toilets and others offices. I push open a glass door covered in signage, go up to a counter, voice a greeting to the lady there and sign in. When I leave I sign out. This week I have been to classes three times.

I believe that the reason for my stress and anguish, due to trauma, is that, from the age of sixteen until I married at twenty-six, I had sex without really wanting to with more than a hundred men. A handful of those incidences were while I was unconscious due to drink or I was forced against my will. The majority were due to my inability to understand normal human interactions. I didn't know how to say no, whether I should say no, when to stop foreplay, whether I should get into foreplay in the first place. My mind had no idea; all it wanted was to find acceptance.
Sixteen was when my periods started. I at last became a woman. My Mum took us up to Newcastle on the train from Melbourne, an overnight journey sitting up in a box of four people facing four people and the luggage high on racks with a corridor running along the side. From Sydney another train took us through the beautiful scenery to Newcastle where we stayed with relatives. One friend of that family took me for a sightseeing tour in his panel van. We stopped by Newcastle beach, climbed over onto his mattress in the back and drank cans of bourbon and coke. We 'did it' and I didn't feel anything. Nothing. Looking back with what I know now, maybe he didn't actually penetrate, or did slightly then orgasm-ed.
Not many weeks after we returned to Melbourne I found myself in the floor-mattress bed of a man ten years older than me. I told him I wasn't sure whether I had been deflowered or not. I explained my experience in Newcastle and he stated "Well you are not a virgin then are you."
He played with me until I orgasm-ed. I tried to keep still and not say anything or move. He became frustrated with me and pressed so hard down on my nipples that I felt some little clicks, like tears. Many years later a lump was removed from that area where he pressed, and years after that another lump was removed. Both benign thankfully. I couldn't help but twitch when I orgasm-ed. Then his rubbing became painful so I asked him to stop. He stopped doing that, raised and parted my legs and penetrated me. He pounded, moving me as he willed, for a long time until his orgasm. I found the whole incident painful, unpleasant, uncomfortable.
That incident happened during a festival and the next day I saw him in the audience at a hall and embarrassed him by going and giving him back the small amount of money he had given me to get home. I remember feeling his semen still on my legs where it had run down under my calf-length dress with the shirred bodice.
Many similar experiences happened with his peers and those men in that set, over the next period of time. One of them had just taken off my pants and turned his head away saying 'whoo' in disgust at the smell. He still had sex with me though.
One time while I was still at school, I was standing on Ringwood railway station in a pair of homemade hot pants of the 'Austrian yodelers' style; braces over the shoulders that crossed over at the back; in olive corduroy. I had made them and felt ashamed to be seen in something that I had made. One of the popular tough boys from school saw me. I really wanted the earth to swallow me up. I looked down at my hot pants, flushed bright red, looked at him then away repeatedly. He continued to stare at me, also red in the face, with a tragic 'I feel sorry for you' look on it. Now I see that my hot pants were OK. I could have worn them with panache if I was me now.
Another time while still at school we were grudgingly allowed, at Mum's urging, to go along with Sebastion on an overnight 'Uni' camp in a house away in the Blackwood Mountains. Sebastion had uni friends. Stephen and I lay down in the lounge-room to fall asleep with the rest of the crowd. One couple sitting up on the floor behind my head were looking at me as I looked up at them . The guy said to his girl 'Poor Kid.' I looked up at them again but they ignored me. I had imaginings of being a 'peace, love, flower child'.
Another beautiful, blonde uni student took me to the beach, had sex with me in his car and then his house. As he dropped me at a tram stop I said, 'I really hate it when nobody rings me.' I gave him my number, telling him not to ring at a certain time because I wouldn't be home then. That young man rang at the time when I was out; I received the message; and he never rang back again. We were still living at the Box Hill house. I must have been seventeen then eighteen. Another man going out with someone I knew had sex with me in his car and whenever else he encountered me at gatherings or at peoples houses.

Another Sunday

Today is Sunday. I'm on my own. My boyfriend hasn't come back to me. From next weekend two of my children will be with me on the weekends for two months while my 'ex' and his wife spend time in Europe. I'm glad, even though children can't replace that feeling of closeness that being with a partner brings. I've been going out with girlfriends but haven't really met anybody to explore 'possibilities' with. My confidence is down too. What do I have to offer ? Realistically, not a lot. If I could meet a man who would marry me and support me but had his own house and was prepared to see me during the day and on the weekends at his place then a relationship could work for me. I'm dreaming.
I guess I need to count my blessings. I am very fortunate. I have health, a roof over my head, just lonely that's all. Perhaps it's a normal human condition.
Tomorrow I start a course in aged Care. That will last about two months then I need to do four weeks work experience in an old people's facility, then I need to do paid work. The 'work facilitator' who is helping me to go in this direction said that if I don't earn enough to get off my benefit then the dental treatments will not be taken from me. Two or three night duty shifts on the weekends may tip me over the cut-off limit.

Back to my story.
Trainee nurse I was no longer. I rode my dilapidated old pushbike over to Mum and Dad's house in Williamstown. From there I explored my options. I needed to work so, with difficulty, I swallowed my pride and registered as an Enrolled Nurse. Because I had completed eighteen months training, I was allowed to do that. I worked for a couple of months at a hospital in the city, commuting by train. While I was there the enrolled nurses went on strike for a day. It was a state-wide strike and I had only heard of it by rumour. Nobody spoke to me directly, so I showed up for work. The Sisters sent me to some obscure place on the ward and I spent most of the day alone while they did the work which they had planned in advance to cover.
I left after a few months and then worked at a local hospital near Williamstown, and one of the Sisters there, a kindly older lady said that my name meant 'living in a forest' and that the description suited me somehow. I cycled to work; took regular sick leave and felt the stress of trying to fit in. Williamstown is an old port suburb twenty minutes train ride from Southern Cross station, which used to be called Spencer Street Station in Melbourne. The lapping water at Williamstown Beach never lathers up into a huge surf, but because Port Philip Bay is a vast expanse, and Melbourne being a fair way south on the globe, Winter time brings gales and rough weather; choppy water and unpleasant swimming conditions. Our dog drowned on North Williamstown Beach. I was away at the time, but Mum had taken him for a walk and swim and he got into difficulties. A man waded in to rescue the dog but it was too late. That dog was probably buried in the back yard, unless it was put out in the garbage, wrapped up. He wasn't a huge dog.
After a few months I decided to move to Collingwood, an inner suburb of Melbourne. I found a job and rented a flat not far away. I worked shift work. During the day we would have to feed the patients. One lady I fed regularly would never open her mouth. I would try to force the metal spoon between her gritted teeth but she would never give in. I would walk away annoyed and frustrated that she hadn't allowed me to do my job. That lady, along time ago, curled herself up into a fetal position and stayed there; became fused, rigid.
We flipped her gently from side to side every two hours. We treated the bedsores on her bony hips. Her rubber sheet was often covered with a fluffy or kylie; a padded draw sheet, to help absorb the urine from her incontinency but these were usually in short supply so she would be lying on a rough, cloth draw sheet most of the time. Sometimes we would place a rubber ring beneath her hip.
The ward had about sixteen beds, eight on each side on the ground floor. Windows ran down one wall, a double door opened out onto a cement and brick, partially enclosed verandah with a thin view of trees and grass within the courtyard.
At one end of this room were the utility rooms and bathrooms and at the other, the kitchen where the meals were brought to for distribution and where we blended up excess lunch food for the evening meal, several offices and storage rooms.
One evening shift, a big lady in a bed on the opposite wall to the fused up lady did a huge bowel action in bed. The Sister on duty had been a nurse during the Second World War. She wanted to help me clean up the mess. We changed the bed and washed the lady. As we were cleaning up in the room set aside for that sort of thing the Sister started to dry retch. I offered to take over but she said no. I started to giggle then laugh out loud. She smiled at me between her retching. I couldn't control my laughing and doubled over in hysterics. Then urine started to run down my legs.
I completed my shift wearing those urine soaked, grey thick pantyhose as if nothing had happened. That was not the first time I'd had to complete a shift wearing smelly wet tights with dampness inside my shoes due to hysterically laughing too much.
Quite a few of the older nursing sisters working at that rest home had been sisters during the second world war. On night duty I refused to sit in the same office as the sister even if she asked me to. I just wanted to sit by myself. Between rounds I would sit in another office to her and practice writing excerpts from books using my right hand. I figured that if I practised enough I could become ambidextrous.
In truth I didn't feel worthy to sit with a Sister and pass the time. I felt inferior to her but superior to others. The other staff, during the day and evening with the same or less training than I, I felt were inferior to me so I did not entertain the thought of making friends with any of them.
Instead I clung doggedly to the strained friendships of the past. I organised a night out to see a musical. Four people came along. I may have even not asked them for the ticket money. I invited a group over for dinner and the guys outnumbered the girls eight to two. My girlfriend had started burning her own flesh with lighted cigarette butts. He boyfriend asked where the food was and I pointed to a saucepan on the stove. I had become so paralyzed with not knowing how to serve the food that I had just left it on the stove. He stared at the stove for a few seconds then went over to it and served himself. I thought less of him after that.
My girlfriend fell pregnant and had an abortion. She was always angry with her boyfriend and didn't want to have his baby. Privately I didn't agree with abortions so ignored her needs if I saw them at all when she came to my flat after the event. Her boyfriend picked her up from there. They were living together. A year or so later they broke up. She moved into her own place. She would say to me; 'Three.' What does that mean to you Sylv?' I had no answer. 'One and one and one.' She would say grouping three cigarettes together. 'What does that mean to you?' My friend. She completed her three years nursing. She worked as a qualified sister, had a drivers license and a car. She kept herself clean and bought nice clothes, all things that made me jealous of her.
When I went to Tasmania she visited me, but when she moved back home to Gippsland we lost contact. I heard later that she died an accidental death from a prescription injection, one side effect being sudden death. My friend. RIP.

I left my job, moved out of the flat. Mum helped me do battle over getting the bond money back on account of a big red wine stain on the living room carpet.
I moved into a room in a flat above a shop. the other room was taken by a guy in the pub circle I frequented. A new acquaintance I met at one of the pubs helped me to move in. We drank a lot and smoked cigarettes. He got me to have sex with him. The lease holder of the flat was out. A cigarette butt dropped though a hole in the mattress cover and was lost amongst the kapok. It was an old mattress from home. We forgot about it. The guy wanted me to have sex again with him. I didn't want to. I became hysterical as he chased me around the flat not taking 'no' for an answer. I ran into the other bedroom and tried to close him out but he had his foot in the door. He eventually he led me back to my room for sex. I didn't enjoy sex. It hurt. Sometimes they couldn't even get inside me because my muscles were so rigid.
He dropped me back at my parents place. The guy with the lease on the flat contacted me in a fury. The place was filled with smoke when he came home. Was I trying to burn it down? The lost cigarette butt I'm thinking. 'Get out', He says. The mattress now filled two drums downstairs. My stuff was downstairs. Take it away now. He never wants to see me again. I hired a minivan to collect my possessions and moved back home.

The first day....

This is the first day of the rest of my life.
I've been a single Mum for thirteen years. Two of my kids are now at university studying law/science and the other, engineering. Last child is in year eleven. All I want from my life is to be able to support him so that he maintains the effort to get into the course that he wants to do. It is probably going to be law/arts. He likes learning japanese and ancient history over the science subjects although he is pretty good with physics, chemistry and maths.
The 'system' is pressuring me to get a job. I am poor. I'm not afraid of work, but I don't like getting so tired from cleaning houses that I'm grumpy and don't feel like getting dinner. I do art and try to sell my cards and fridge magnets. I pick up and drop off from school. I'm around during the holidays and on teacher development days. These things are important because my kids know that they are not alone in their quest to reach their full potential.
I am considering doing a course for looking after the aged. After all, I did do an amount of nursing in my younger days. If I did that course then registered with an agency then I could choose to work night shift on the weekends. I have been moderately enthusiastic about that plan and will suggest it to my Job Network interviewer today. The only problem with that is if I go off my benefit then I won't be entitled to subsidised dental treatment. My son is midway through having the braces on his teeth replaced with a double set. He has a strong bottom jaw and has been enduring orthodontic treatment since primary school. He suggested that when his top braces come off he doesn't bother with the double set. I'm not sure myself whether he needs them to stop the teeth of the bottom jaw creeping in front of the top teeth. I also need four crowns and the preliminaries have been done for those. The fillings will last a few weeks, but if they crack or break then they will need to be re-done and that costs hundreds of dollars. Students will do the crowns if I can be fitted into their busy study schedule. I may not get them on until next year. If I need to go out to work I will no longer be eligible, I'm guessing, to have my treatment completed. My estimate is sixteen thousand dollars by today's prices at a dentist, to get our work completed. I'd be lucky to make that in a year.

So, back to my story....As a child we had to do things persectly first time, without any practise. We had to be perfect or get shouted at. We had to just do things and know how to do things.
A child must get on a bike and ride it. Just do it or risk a belting.
A child is given a jigsaw puzzle and Mum stands over her, shouting the girls name in fury as the girl tries to put a piece in. Mum snatches it. Shakely she reaches for another piece. She tries a spot, again it is wrong. Mum screams at her. She moves the piece over the puzzle, tries a spot; she has chosen in the wrong spot. The little girl is shaking and tears are beginning to well up and she didn't want to pick up another piece. Mum was calling her stupid and building herself up into a froth of hatred towards the girl.
A small child is called to his Dad who is seated and the Dad calmly asks the boy if he knows what he did wrong and why his is going to get a beating, and the obedient little boy nods 'yes' fearfully.
The Dad stands up; towering over the boy he holds the boy by the shoulder, Dad raises his arm then slams his open hand into the boys buttocks and upper legs and the boy is bending backwards under the onslaught. Other family members are witness but say nothing. The boy is crying. He is let go and runs off.
A little girl is sitting in a high chair, tears streaming down her face, choking and sobbing and her Dad screaming in her ear and holding her jaw closed with both hands yelling "Eat it. Eat it!" Food dribbles from the corner or her mouth as she tries to swallow something she finds gross.
A ten year old girl is standing in the bathroom without her pants, holding up her top so that her brothers, aunts, uncles, who are invited, can look and comment on the premature arrival of one pre-pubescent pubic hair.
This was our upbringing.

At School

One evening while still at school I had my first vomiting experience due to alcohol. We had a party in the Dandenong Ranges house under the house, in a bottom flat where Sebastion slept, as a kind of farewell to the house. I drank scotch and coke and still remember that smell in my throat and the total feeling helplessness in the face of pure physical annihilation. The bottom flat of that house was free for us to use after we moved to Box Hill, and I spent some weekends there on my own or with Stephen, before it was rented out. The flat consisted of two living rooms, a tiny kitchenette, and a bath and washbasin between both rooms with a third door going under the main body of the upper house opening into the base of a dark stairwell with a locked door at the top. A shower, toilet and laundry were in this area under the house, next to a garage area with closed double wooden doors where the light seeped under, and where Jason had slept on his visits.
For a short time, Sebastion and I would come down those stairs after breakfast to use that shower on a daily basis when we were living there. But Dad told us not to because the tank water would run out. We had two large tanks at the side of the house. We had to buy water, which the fire brigade delivered, two years in a row.
While still living there, once when we were catching the bus to school, one of the popular girls with high blonde pigtails and a short, neatly creased summer uniform sat down next to me on my bus seat just to hold her dress next to mine for comparison. The white squares between her blue checks were white and smooth. My white squares were brown mottled and wrinkled. She stood up and walked away down the bus, leaving me none the wiser as to why she looked so good and why I didn't.
After we moved to Box Hill Mum worked in the city in a railway cafe serving and cleaning tables. Stephen and I would visit her sometimes if we had a reason to go into the city.
After school I would catch the train to Box Hill and walk home. In the evening Mum would arrive with a cooked chicken in a bag, and some coleslaw.
Later she changed to an office job and loved it. She bought some very smart pants suits and took alot of time over taking care of them.
I discovered an antique shop on the walk home from Box Hill railway station. I bought a brass vase there then took to calling in every day after school. At first I'd look around then leave, then I started going in there and sitting down, waiting for the young man who ran the shop to engage me in conversation. Then he started to avoid me by retreating into the back of his shop when he saw me coming, through the front, plate-glass window. So I stopped calling in.
Our rickety, weatherboard house backed onto the railway line. I could look into our backyard going to and from school. Trains thundering by on their embankment and the rattle of kitchen windows soon became a part of our lives as we grew used to the place. I had my own room; second door on the left off the hallway which led into the lounge and the beyond that, the kitchen. A linen closet and beyond that, a bathroom opened to the left off the lounge. The boys had rooms as did mum and dad. Sebastion was still living at home but would soon be travelling and then getting married.
The house had two fire places backing onto each other. The one in mum and dad's room wasn't used. Their window opened onto an open front verandah which was hung with fancy wrought iron lacework. We fed the lounge room fire with brown coal briquettes from Gippsland. A pianola stood in the lounge. We would take it in turns to pump the pedals, holding on to the wooden frame beneath the keys as they moved by themselves. It was a strenuous exercise. We would all sing along, reading words printed next to the wind holes on the old rolls of paper. Sebastion's friends loved coming to our house to sing along to the pianola and pump its pedals. They also played alot of card games with us in that lounge room. One of his friends enjoyed kissing me but it never went any further than that. Then another friend enjoyed kissing me. The third friend went further than kissing, but I was seventeen by then.
Standing in front of the narrow strip of mirror above the mantlepiece I cut my hair off once. Stephen hovered behind me anxious to help, but not knowing how. It didn't matter. I just wanted a new, more individual style.
Around that time I discovered the teen magazine Dolly at the newsagents. I read that magazine from cover to cover and felt I had a friend, then lived and longed for next months edition.
Most weekends I would go back to the Dandenong Ranges to stay at a friend of a friend's house. I never classified her as a friend because she was younger, and we just fell together. We would walk the cold, forested, winding roads late into the night singing loudly 'It's one for the money, two for the show, three to get ready....blue swede shoes.'
Everyone called my friend's friend by her nickname, Lizard. Lizard had boyfriends. Sometimes we would walk five kilometres or more to meet up with them. I wasn't interested in having a boyfriend.
One older boy decided he liked me. We were in a group at Olinda and some of us were going to get a taxi. An older women with us pointed out his obvoius liking of me. I ignored it. Then the boy took off his heavy coat and insisted, despite my objections, that I put it on over my light jumper and jeans. I didn't want to wear it, but reluctantly luxuriated in its warmth for a time. The taxi hadn't arrived yet and the boy was starting to shiver uncontrollably, rubbing his bare arms and bending forward making hissing noises from his mouth. I took the coat off and handed it back to him. The taxi arrived and even inside the taxi he couldn't stop shivering. Cold, black, windy, wet and about minus two degrees celsius is how I remember the Dandenong ranges during Autumn, Winter and Spring.
During Summer though, when we lived there, we would swim at the Olinda pool. I owned a beautiful yellow bikini swimsuit and loved meeting kids at that pool wearing it. One local boy kept holding me down under the water until I fought him to get to the surface and catch my breath. Another time he grabbed me forcefully from behind and insisted on us doing rude things together. I fought him off again, but felt soiled and unhappy.

My schooling ended after semi-satisfactorily completing year eleven. Later in the next year I would start nursing training. To fill in the next ten months I found work in a clothing factory in Box Hill. I left that job to work for the railways. Then I left that job to pack meat in a supermarket.
I visited Lizard on the weekends. Her family moved down from the mountains into a rented house in Upper Ferntree Gully. We would buy alcoholic apple cider and take it to a vacant block to drink it. Later in the night her motorcycle riding friends would turn up. We'd go back to her place, taking over the lounge area. If any one of the guys talked to me I would get cross and go to bed. I slept on a top buck in the set of two in her room. I woke up one night, looked over and down and saw her boyfriend lying on top of her under the covers of the bottom bunk opposite . They both froze, looking up at me. I turned over and went back to sleep. The next day she said that I had caught her at it. But I didn't actually feel that I had because I didn't actually see anything happening.
Lizard lived with two older brothers and a Mum and Dad. I asked Lizard once about the bruises she always had on her thighs. She told me that her Mum said that she bruised easily. So I thought that maybe she had a blood complaint of some sort. Once Lizard told me that she was the one who burnt down the gymnasium of the Tech school along her street. There had been a huge fire and thousands of dollars damage. I refused to believe her. She ranted at me that it was true but I just wouldn't believe her.
We wore dark mascara, eyeshadow and lipstick and disdainfully scorned the boys who took us into a local pub and bought us a drink.
We walked out on another boy who had invited us into his home when his parents had gone out because his music collection wasn't up to our standards.
We hooned around in a car with some boys chasing a terrified cat through bushland, refusing to say one word to the boys in the car.
Lizard and I were drifting apart by the time I started nursing training. After orientation I was no longer guaranteed of weekends free.
Mum decided to move again. They bought a home in Williamstown. By then I preferred to stay in the nurses residence and when I moved in with three other nurses into a rented terrace house I hardly saw my family.
The orientation for nurses took place away from the hospital. I was bunking in with a religious girl. She lead a group of us for a run around a nearby oval. This exersion had me nearly collapsing, out of breath and totally flushed on all fours on the ground. I took a liking to a girl in one of the other rooms. She was a bit older and had the appearance of experience. I tried to hang out with her and tolerantly, she didn't turn me away. Orientation finished. We moved into the nurses quarters at the hospital. Six months later I moved into a house with her and two other nurses. By then I drank as much and whenever I could, smoked cigarettes and pot and experienced several trips on Lsd.
I passed exams without studying; completed ward shifts; shirked the responsibility of getting experience by doing procedures that had to be ticked off on my record.
My woeful slowness at making beds drew comments from patients. I broke thermometres when shaking them by accidently hitting them on the end of the bed. I would hide in staff bathrooms to have a cigarette, return to the patient and expect her to still want her back washed with the bowl of water, now gone cold, I had left there twenty minutes previous.
Before night shifts I would drink two large bottles of beer which really annoyed my house mates. "Go and drink it in your bedroom, one would say, not out here." I would often end up with the lounge room all to myself and my housemates hiding away from me. At work, with a hangover, I'd disappear into the ward kitchen for ice cubes to suck on for my thirst.
On one social occasion a group of us decided to go out to a restaurant. I wasn't going to go because I didn't want to spend money. One very friendly girl called Ruth encouraged me to go along. She offered to pay for my meal. We all sat around a big table. I didn't know what to order, and in spite of many suggestions I ordered a lobster meal. Seafood was always raved about by my mother especially lobster, prawns and oysters. Mother was the only person that mattered in the universe of my home. So I ordered something that she would like. The girls looked at each other and one mumbled to Ruth "I'll help you pay for it."
Another time I joined a breakfast with a group of friends and was very hungover. We were all seated on the floor in the living room of a terrace house. Effort had been made to serve cut grapefruit with glace cherries, among other things, like toast and eggs. I was very thirsty and tried to get hold of more grapefruit. Ruth very kindly gave up her grapefruit for me.
After eighteen months of training I failed an exam. The Nursing of Children exam. I just couldn't see why I would have an interest in the care of children and refused to take the topic seriously. I was given two weeks notice. One tolerant tutor whom I had taken for granted completely as being a pushover, came up to me on the ward with the instruction to take down the hem of my dress and apron. It was disgusting. It occurred to me that she had never liked me all along.
I had taken up the hems myself so that they were very short. I didn't turn up for work again, but was only rostered on as an extra anyway. My nursing career came to an end. I also moved out of my room in the terrace house. My housemates were glad to see me move out judging by the way they avoided me especially in my last days. I moved back home to the house in Williamstown and a room of my own.

Saturdays

On Saturday mornings I would watch Rage, an 'Australian Broadcasting Commission' music video show on tv. I really wanted to learn piano. Back in Newcastle I had been given piano lessons for 2 years. I was supposed to practice every day for an hour but didn't. Instead I got Mum to sign my book saying that I had done my practice.
I asked to take up lessons again. Stephen was taking singing lessons and Sebastion was learning to play trumpet. Mum wouldn't let me do piano. She thought I should try another instrument. The closest I could think of to piano was piano accordian. I was booked into a studio for lessons on a saturday in melbourne.
I would catch a bus at the end of our street, a train from Ferntree gully Station then a walk up Swanston Street to the studio above a shop. The lesson lasted half an hour. I sometimes wandered around shops, browsed record stores. The whole round trip took about four hours. Once, a boy who liked me at school and had taken me to the pictures once already, came with me into town. He tagged along with me, surprised and not that happy at my rigid routine that I wasn't budging from. He wanted to look at better music, not just pick up the latest top 40 list. He wanted me to share his broad experience of music, and for me to open myself to appreciating what he liked. My rigidity put him off. After that trip, to my dismay, he avoided me at school ever after.
The accordian lessons lasted about a year. I had my own accordian and carried the heavy thing with me each trip. It came in a beautiful blue case with pink crushed velvet on the inside. The instrument itself was pitched slightly off key so that it couldn't be played with other instuments. It didn't matter to me, and I participated in the end of year concert in a big group rendition of Dr Chivago's 'Somewhere My Love', even though I had hardly practiced.
During those school years I joined a 'one off' out of school orchestra organised by one of Sebastion's friends mothers. I played the triangle. It seemed like the best experience to be part of an orchestra. I also joined the chorus of two musicals at school and made two new friends Gay and Angela. One of the new friends Angela victimised the other new friend Gay whose place I had been to once and we rubbed each others breasts until we were both excited. But she said we couldn't do anything else or go any further, which I couldn't undrstand but had to accept. Not that I knew what else we would do, but I couldn't see any reason for frustrating that feeling of excitment. I had been staying over at her house for the night so we just went to sleep after that. At the same time I had fallen totally in love with the other friend Angela. The incident between me Gay was not mentioned by me to anybody. Angela had a mean streak and tried to send Gay away from us by being cuttingly nasty to her. Gay would sit meditating during rehearsal breaks, in a Swarmi position with her hands praying and eyes unblinking. We would try to make her blink but she never would then we would go off laughing. Angela said I could hang around with her at school after that musical was over. I could think of no-one and nothing but her. When school started again and I did try to hang out with her I discovered that she already had a long-term friend who she was hanging out with. I tried for a while to be with them but in the end I stopped loving her and hung out on my own again. Gay was victimised by Angela at school too until she went back to her own long-term friend to hang out with.
Another friend I had at school's name was Sonya. I had been to her house once, but by the end of year nine, our friendship had become strained. When school started the next year and I saw her in high ponytails and perky breasts, my anger bubbled over. I marched up to her, interrupted the bright conversation she was having with some other girls, grabbed her arm and spun her around. "Have you got a bra on?!" I said, accusing her.
She looked at me scaldingly, "yeah!".
She shook me off and turned back to the girls she was talking to. That friendship ended right then.
I was never given a bra, nor did I get a proper fitting one until I bought one for myself. One of Mum's friends passed on some huge, wrinkled second hand bra's to me once, but they looked ridiculous on.

By years ten and eleven I would sit by myself behind the sports pavillion and try to eat my sandwiches which were huge salad sandwiches. The other girls would always swap a peanut butter or vegemite sandwich with mine then walk away. So that every day I never ended up eating any of my sandwiches.
Once I was given the remnants of some potato crisps in a bag and a girl from my street pursued me all over the playground to get me to share with her. I wouldn't share. She was rarely given treats and neither was I. But sharing was an alien concept to me. I didn't know how or why I should.
I was a slight, pretty girl with a good body. Some boys like me. I fell madly in love with one boy, but pretended to like his mate instead. On school camp though we exchanged chewy's mouth to mouth going to Wilson's Prommentory by bus. I did not have my period but thought I was probably going to get it, all the other girls had theirs. So I took a big pack of pads with me on camp, but didn't use any of them. At sixteen my period arrived. It came every three months for years after that. On one excursion, I had an encounter with a boy who felt me at the beach with gritty, sandy fingers, I thought, but maybe I had sand in private places from doing a wee in the dunes.

Another boy allowed me to borrow his flippers on an excursion to the beach and I lost one of them in the surf. He was good about it, even though it didn't wash up before we had to get back on the bus.
I had a party and some of the tough boys came, staged a mock fight then left early. One of the tough guys even came to my house before the party. Mum and Dad weren't home. I showed him around, even taking him into my room which I called a storeroom, curtained off in the loungeroom. He said 'I thought you said this was a storeroom."
"It is." I said.
I thought this boy may have had a soft spot in his heart somewhere. This caused me to not respect him. Cold, hard, flint is what I was becoming and what I respected.

Mum worked in a factory in Ferntree Gully. I also worked there over one school holidays. By Year eleven, Mum decided we had to move. We moved to Box Hill. From then on we caught the train to school. Sebastion had to leave school and get a job to help make ends meet because they weren't going to sell the other house which meant two mortgages. Sebastion studied maths at night school but gave up because it was too hard.
I caught the train to school. Some of the girls wagged some of the classes. I decided to drop maths, so if they were free I'd go with them back to one of their homes that was closest. We'd raid the biscuit barrel and sit around in the pleasant loungeroom and kitchen. I soon became not welcome there. Perhaps by eating and drinking too much always.
During the evening at one girl's house we sampled the liquor cabinet. I became quite drunk on straight gin.
I failed year eleven and would have had to repeat if I was going on to year twelve. But my marks were good enough to get accepted into nursing training.

Melbourne

Plans were being made for us to move to Melbourne. I moved back into my bedroom but by the end of primary school we were on a train and going to Melbourne. We left our house and most belongings behind for the relatives to pack up for us. I was almost glad to be leaving because I could sense that the transition to high school for me was going to be friendless and challenging beyond my capacity to cope.
The relatives in Newcastle pointed out to Mum later, in a letter, and she passed this onto me, that my room had been swarming with fleas and this had caused alot of discomfort for those packing up the house ready for sale. These comments re-inforced my already entrenched feelings of shame and inadequacy.
In Melbourne, we were at first taken to Grandma's house in East Brunswick; a little, old, corner house with shop front, dark and heavily draped windows, heavy tablecloths, stuffed furniture and red carpet, but clean inside. My mind's image is of an aloof, smiling, big bosomed, long skirted old lady in a long, white apron; her thin, grey hair pulled into a bun at the nape of her neck, and not very tall.
We stayed there then moved in with the Aunt and Uncle who had visited us in Newcastle. They ran a guest house in the Dandenong Ranges. We had visited them once before on one family road holiday, when they ran a guest house in Healesville.
We were put in dark, cold, clean rooms, separated from Mum and Dad who had their own bungalow. We helped with chores like drying up the dishes and were made to eat stewed apple and rhubarb which caused me to dry-retch. I liked to stay inside in my bedroom, possibly due to fear and anxiety about not knowing what to do, but the Aunt often chased me outside.
I joined the primary school, repeating my last year because of the different systems between the states of NSW and Victoria. We walked to school with our male cousins; one of them I fell in love with. The feelings I had for him were petrifying. He must have felt something for me too because he asked me to go off with him to the bushes when we were hanging out at the Recreation Reserve, but I couldn't. Trembling inside, I pulled my hand sharply out of his when he tried to drag me away. I stayed with the others. He kind of deflated and gave up on me. Much later he was killed in a traffic accident.
I tried to be good and I tried to please. But my unfortunate personality caused me to be either ignored or treated with disapproval and disdain. I loved Sunday school.
Mum took us to church every Sunday, and this continued when we moved into a house of our own, even though it was further for us to walk. School was further away as well. Stephen and I walked the couple of kilometres every day. Then I started high school and caught the bus with Sebastion.
My bed was in my parents room at first. Then a space was partitioned off for me in the lounge room. The boys each had their own room, and when Jason came to stay, he had a bed in the garage area under the house.
I played netball for a time, but it didn't work out. I was the least skilled on the team and usually a reserve; I didn't practice. My red spotted uniform was not regularly cleaned or ironed, I didn't bring cut up oranges for half-time when I was supposed to. But probably I 'knocked' all the other girls if they tried to excel. In the end the fat coach stood up for the other girls and sent me away. I recall a vague, unpleasant feeling of walking away into the recreation reserve, away from the hostility, in my polka-dot uniform.
In our house excelling was taboo so I tried to stop others from excelling as well.
I joined the girl guides. As a leader for a short time I tried to encourage other girls to bring money so we could buy cigarettes for our walk through the bush.
We became friends with other children in our street. My brother Stephen had a crush on my girlfriends sister. We all used to hang out at the Recreation ground, the 'Rec'. She asked me to tell Stephen that she only liked him as a friend.
I told him that she hated him and why would anyone like him anyway, that nobody would. I laid into him, trying to destroy and crush any feelings of self-worth he may have contemplated having. Later, the girl asked me what I had said. I told her and she became shaken and tearful, understanding why Stephen was now seriously avoiding her. He was not the type to challenge anyone. He just tried to be acceptable by being quiet and not attracting attention to himself.
We caught the bus to high school, or walked if we missed the bus, but we weren't each others allies. Once, for my birthday, Stephen gave a friend of his some money for a record for me. The friend took the money but didn't give over the record. I yelled and screamed at the friend to hand over the record but he didn't give it to Stephen until months later.
I was vomiting one afternoon before getting on the school bus, I couldn't stop vomiting so the bus driver stopped every hundred metres so that I could get out to vomit or dry retch.

After school and on the weekends we would go chestnut hunting. We'd open the spikey pods using the heels of our shoes, spend hours walking and collecting big bags of them then weigh, bag and sell them at our roadside stall on the weekends. Mum always said, put a little more in than less. I always put alot more in and our price was very reasonable. I secretly thought that nobody would really want to buy our chestnuts. As with daffodils. A girlfriend and I had a daffodil stall and she couldn't understand why I wanted to give two bunches for the price of one, but she let me do it and I felt exraordinarily low in her eyes, also depressed and unworthy to be asking anyone to buy our daffodils. She didn't feel the same way and didn't like me for it, but she was younger so didn't challenge me.
I was walking along the main road with a huge bag of chestnuts I had spent a long time collecting when a car pulled over and asked to buy the bag for one dollar. I didn't really want to hand it over because it hadn't been weighed and I suspected it was worth alot more. But the man, an Italian I guessed, was very persuasive so I handed him my bag and took the dollar. That day I felt real rage.
All my hard work for a dollar, then deprived of the slim pleasure of weighing up the chestnuts and seeing how much they were really worth. I pictured them weighing in at about three dollars. I seethed, walking home with empty hands and nothing to do when I got home. I fantasised about having a wonderful father; one who came along just when I needed him and told the Italian guy to F-off and leave me alone.
While we lived in the Dandenong Ranges we experienced snow two winters running, and then bushfires two Summers running. One year we were evacuated from high school because of the fires. The sky had turned black. I really wanted my parents to collect me from the evacuation centre, but instead a neighbor took me home when the emergency had passed.

The TV

Hi! My sorry news today is that the gift of the new tv is not as wonderful as I had hoped because metal prongs have been wedged into and broken off the back portals where the video or game cube leads would connect into. So we can't use either of these. This tv is strictly for watching tv on. I may move it into my bedroom so I can listen music videos on a Saturday morning without getting out of bed I'll use the remote and tune into RAGE on the Abc. It means I'll need to tidy up my room; and about time too I say.
Today I exercised at the lake and saw three large waders, the type with long splayed toes, sturdy red beaks and metallic blue breast feathers chase the female across the grass, climb on her back and mate with her, one male, then another run and another mounting. Meanwhile bright lorikeet parrots feasted on gum blossums. Clumps of grey rain clouds scudded across the sky blotting out the patches of blue above the trees. I wore a raincoat and too many jumpers.
My mind today is weighed down by anxiety and fear of eventual doom. Sometimes I experience little glimpses of happiness despite my humble, self effacing routine of service to my children. On the whole though I am a creature governed by worry and fear, and preferring the quiet of my own company yet lonely and craving some understanding. With two children living at home still, I am not alone all day long. One child drives home from University, the other I pick up from school in my car. I'm pining, fretting and aching inside today.
Anyway, back to my story. It was decided that Nana would come to live with us. Mum and Dad moved to the other side of the kitchen, a garage area partitioned off for Sebastion. They were on the other side of his wall in the dark garage area. Nana had Mum and Dad's room to sleep in. My room was turned into a sitting room for Nana. It was painted bright yellow and furnished with thick, heavy arm chairs upholstered in ribbed velvet subdued floral. I loved the room. I slept in a single bed in Stephen's room on the other side of Mum and Dad's original bedroom. The cat slept with me often, and once I was caught with the cat asleep on my face. My and Dad shook me to see if I was alive but I pretended to be asleep until they went away. We had a baby dog so tiny it would yelp to be fed by its mother in the night. I had bought a plastic doll's bottle from the newagancy gift shop. I cut the top off it. Mum showed me how to warm milk by standing the bottle in warm water and it was my job to get up and feed the puppy which was housed in a play pen in the loungeroom. Nana stayed until Mum became hysterical with the worry of it then she was taken to another relative in Sydney and ended up in a rest home where she died eventually.
I remember Mum crying, sitting on the edge of her bed in our house in the Dandenong ranges. I wanted to comfort her but Dad told me to leave her be. So I wasn't allowed near her.

It's Sunday

Nobody is probably ever going to read this I'm assuming, and I don't mind because I'm doing this to keep myself from lapsing into a depression. I'm trying not to shrivel up and waste away with loneliness. I'm a Libran!! I function best in a relationship. I need love, intimacy, conversation. Don't we all?
I'm doing this for me, because I've never told my story before. In the past I have tried, but haven't been believed, so I ended up inventing a more believable me.
My believable story goes like this: - We moved to Melbourne because my Dad's family owned a factory in Richmond. They needed his qualified engineering skills to maintain and upgrade the automated factory equipment. It was a clothing industry factory.
I attended a very lofty Anglican private girls school near St Kilda. I took a train and then tram to get there from the Dandenong ranges, or sometimes my Dad would drop me if he wasn't running late for work. I started nursing training but quit because I fainted at the sight of blood. So then travelled extensively over the world, settled back in Newcastle where I met my professional husband who now pays huge school fees for an exclusive Anglican School where our kids go, or have gone.
Some is true, some isn't.
Today is Sunday. I have walked around a small nearbye lake using my water bottle as a dumbell, mainly for my weaker right arm. I'm left handed. I stopped at three of the four exercise stations. I love that colourful gym equipment. Trees and birds, tranquil water, rushes to look out on; it's the best gym in the world. Then I drew out some money from the bank, drove to a hardware shop in my eldest son's small 'bomb' car just to keep it running; he lives in Melbourne and at last passed his driving test when he was here a few weeks back. Over the Christmas brake he is going to have to get his hours up; that is twenty-five hours sitting next to a qualified driver, not a "P" plater. Then a computer test then he'll be on "P" s. Hooray!
I bought a long handed squeeqee and a rectangular bucket. I cleaned most of my high front windows from a step ladder. I have a beautiful view from my home of leafy suburbs, and lights at night. I then vacuumed both cars.

Here is more of my real story. We are back in Newcastle and I'm still under twelve years old. An Aunt and Uncle came to visit from Melbourne; Dad's brother and his wife. The Aunt seemed to like me. She promised to send me a hairbrush by post. We all used a communal hairbrush kept in a jar in the kitchen. I waited and waited, beside myself with excitement. The parcel was not mentioned. Eventually I asked Mum and Dad, but they turned on me shouting wrathful accusations of greed and wanton materialism. I needed to forget about the parcel. A long time later I was given the hairbursh.
Fear governed my relationship with Dad. We knew to be careful not to act like we cared about anything otherwise it would be taken from us. We had to be tough. He was teaching us how to be good, tough little communists and to blame the 'state'. It wasn't him, making our lives a misery, it was the system.
Mum had only the capacity for navel gazing. She dwelled and focused on her needs and seemed incapable of 'seeing' that anybody else existed. Later, when Stephen was getting mentally sick he would often retort when being verbally attacked which was the main form of communication in our house; "You don't see me."
None of us 'saw' or cherished each other.

Wow! I have been tidying up the lounge and dining area because the daughter of the elderly couple next door knocked at my open door. The screen is propped open with a door stop for the cats, although the cat from across the road takes advantage of this and treats our home and food as its own. But my neighbors daughter didn't come in, just opened the screen and knocked on the wooden door which is what I heard. She is over once again from Brisbane and has bought them a bigger flat screen TV so the smaller flat screen TV needs a new home and did I want it. I am relatively cashless and a flat screen TV would never have been bought by me in the near future. She stepped in and had a look at my small, old fashioned deep, box-like tv. The room had clutter all around it and a mattress on the floor with a crumpled doona as if someone had slept there, books, cut up paper from my art, school clothes over the arms of chairs. We sit on the mattress to watch tv or read or do homework. The wicker chairs and couch or pretty uncomfortable.
I asked how much and she said I could have it. I thanked her and said a big 'yes' with a hug. So the room is now ready for when her brother comes later. She will get him to carry it over. I have the Lava lamps going; blue and bright green, two table fountains running. One is a waterwheel beneath a mountain, the other, black cups on a wide plate stand, one cup builds on the other, four in all up to the top where water bubbles down. Pebbles are clustered around the base of both fountains. All the clothes have been put away or hidden in other rooms.,
The place is neat, clean and uncluttered and I'm only sorry my ex-husband and a number of ex-boyfriends aren't here to see it now. The tv has been delivered. It is quite deep too and only marginally larger than my old one, but it is flat screened so can be viewed from any angle. That, is one step closer into the modern world of tv. I pressed upon my neighbor's daughter a bag of cards, fridge magnets, mounted prints and soap; all my own work. We hugged again along with the other two people with her; her sister-in-law because the brother was playing golf, and my elderly neighbor Harry.

Back to my story.
One Christmas I was given a doll with long golden plaits. Dad told me not to undo the plaits. I tried not to. In the end I ran out of ways to play with her so undid them to see her hair. Dad discovered me in my room with the doll's hair undone, and he hit the roof. I tried to re-plait the hair but it never looked the same again.
At one point in time I remember sobbing very loudly in my bed and calling to Mum to come and sleep with me. She did come in and get under the covers with me and stayed for a little while then returned to her double bed with Dad. When I called and sobbed again she didn't come back.

More Family

Our household consisted of Mum and Dad, Sebastian, me and Stephen. We were born two years apart starting two years after mum and Dad married in a civil ceremony followed by a big sit-down feast. I've seen the photos. Then there was Jason, a half-brother twelve years older than me.
Mum was pregnant with Jason when she married his father in a presbyterian church in Sydney. She was about twenty. Some years later her husband was put in jail for assault; a drunken brawl, she said. She visited him in Goulburn gaol. One time the husband of her sister offered to drive her there. One the way home he booked them into a motel. She became pregnant to him then had an abortion. Hearing this later in my life, it seemed that these were very radical behaviours for a christian woman in the 1930's. Mum had a habit of spilling her secrets.
After growing up and becoming a new person from psychotherapy, I came to the conclusion that some of Mum's truths were either toned down or tarted up depending on what was needed, to spotlight her in the rosiest of blameless glows. It wasn't her fault. Life had dealt her undeserved tragedy.
At some point she fled Sydney with Jason, divorced her husband and married my Dad.
Jason hovered spasmodically on the periphery of our lives. I do have fond memories of him. There are some good and not so good events involving Jason, like the time he bought me a book 'Born Free' and the single playing record of the same name for my birthday. I still have that book.
One evening he rang for his mate to pick up dim sims on his way over. The mate thought he had said 'Vincents' headache powders and turned up with them instead and no dim sims. I can still feel the disappointment. We rarely had treats.
Another time at Nana's he quizzed us as to whether we thought the clear liquid in the bottom of a lemonade bottle was water or lemonade. Stephen and I really wanted to drink it if it was lemonade. But it looked like water so we guessed water. Sebastian, two years older than me, guessed lemonade. He was right so Jason gave him the bottle, and much as we pleaded he would not share with us. The motto for our family could have been "Every man for himself."
For another of my birthdays Jason took to me the movies to see South Pacific. We sat in a pub across the road from the movie theatre on stools at the corner of the bar. He ordered red and then green 'fire engine' drinks for me until I couldn't fit another one in. He drank beer after beer for what seemed like hours on end. We left the pub and saw the movie and the memory of that evening is still treasured by me.
Jason was going to get engaged. He brought her to visit us. I loved her so much. I laybyed a small cruet set of cut glass on a silver tray with a basket handle; Salt, pepper and vinegar bottles of tall, rectangular shape. I paid it off little by little at the newsagency gift store we walked past sometimes on the way home from school.
By the time I gave it to her they were already in the process of breaking up. I remember her gracious, reserved smile thanking me for my gift.
Jason had gone to gaol for assault. Mum visited him in Maitland prison.
Much later in his life Jason married and divorced. He worked as a plant operator on mining sites in Queenstown, Tasmania, Mt Isa, Queensland, and Dampier, Western Australia. The defacto relationship he had ended. She left him. His drinking built upon itself over years until he ended up drinking a two litre cask of wine per day, by the time he moved back to Newcastle. Then the doctor told him to stop. It was too late for one foot and the other one had also started going gangrene. He died, aged sixty, an alone, childless, alcoholic, diabetic, amputee. RIP Jason.

Newcastle has the best beaches. As children, mainly under the age of ten, and cousins the same age we spent alot of time at the ocean baths of Merewether beach and in the surf or waist deep in rock pools. One cousin had a period pad under her swimmers. It sogged up so she pulled it out in pieces throwing them up onto the rock ledge surrounding the rock pool we were lazing in. Our shoulders and noses were always sunburnt and peeling. One of our tasks at the beach was to collect perewinkles which we would pluck from rocks at the unstable water line, bring home, boil up then dig out of the shell using a pin. Gritty and chewy with an unpleasant flavour, even dipped in vinegar is how I remember them.
The best times were when the Mums and sometimes the Dads would create a picnic in the cement pavillion. We'd run to them at the cement table where they would be talking then we would run back again to the water. Sometimes one of us would be stung by a blue bottle, or slip on the oyster covered rocks around the headland and run back stinging with welts, or bloodied and crying.
To this day I exhalt the sound of crashing, hissing surf, seagulls cawing and salt sea wind in my ears, blue sky and sparking sea, but mostly the firm crunch of apricot coloured sand on the broad beaches of Newcastle.

Relatives

Once when I was walking across the grass in the playground at school, I saw a group of boys in their section of playground helping a younger boy by walking him towards a teacher. Blood streamed down the little boy's face. I realised the boy was Stephen, my younger brother.
I burst into tears. People came up to me. "Mum's in Sydney" I burst out, blubbering through my mucus. "Mum's in Sydney." I said inconsolably. A few days later when she arrived home, Dad was in big trouble for not taking Stephen to a doctor. He had been hit on the eyebrow by a speeding cricket ball and should have had stitches. It was too late by the time she arrived home. The scar, a white streak in his brown eyebrow remained noticable all his life.
Mum liked to visit her sisters in WoyWoy, then Sydney, by train. WoyWoy is a water-lovers paradise half way to Sydney and at the gateway to some spectacular rugged gorge and rocky bushland country banking down to the sprawling waters of the Hawkesbury River inlet. That rail journey is a scenic wonder and takes about three hours from Newcastle Rail station to Sydney. The line winds through tunnels, by the edge of oyster farms, across bridges, past tiny settlements. WoyWoy is almost snared by the creeping tentacles of Gosford these days, the next biggest town to Newcastle north of Sydney.
My Mum had relatives who lived around Newcastle as well. They often came to our house and talked about important topics, seated around the big kitchen table, such as preparation for the May Day march, Communist party meetings and the Christmas party each year where the kids wore their best clothes and were given a present. One uncle liked me to sit on his knee and I loved to do that as physical affection was running short in our house. But something happened one time and after that he could never coax me back onto his lap again. Alas I have no memory of what it actually was that caused me to not want to go near him again.
A big crowd would often sit around that kitchen table which was covered in a long, plain, linen tablecloth that I used to wipe my fingers on under the table, then a plastic lace one over the top covering the middle of the table top. The piles of jars of jams and sauces and the sugar basin never moved from the middle. Crumbs always covered the table and flies crawled, flew short flights and buzzed.
We were taught strict table manners. Our parents inevitably flew into a fury at each meal time because they just couldn't stand the way we ate. Chew with your mouth closed and don't make a sound. Elbows need to be pulled in tight. Knife and fork must be held and used properly. Everything must be eaten on the plate. Nobody can leave the table until everyone is finished.
A cousin exploited this last rule once. After the main course was finished he ate twelve bread slices one after the other which he buttered with butter then vegemite, strawberry jam, peanut butter until all the children, especially my elder brother, who was head of the kids in our house, were beside themselves with fury. The grown-ups didn't seem capable of putting a stop to his mischieviousness..

Juliana and Rose

Juliana was a year under me at school and lived two doors down from me. Under that the low tin roof and rickety, single fronted terrace verandah in a terrace of two single storey weatherboard dwellings lived Juliana, two older brothers and a mum and Dad. The Dad was a sales rep for a soft drink company.

The house, entered by the front door, was quiet, dark and sagging. Dark red carpet along the hall sunk with the creaking floorboards. We always had to be quiet going along that hall, as if someone was asleep in the front bedroom. We tiptoed along to the heavily shrouded lounge then into a kitchen at the back where windows let in a little light. I never met her parents, except maybe seeing her father as a looming dark figure in the house as if by accident.

Juliana and I played at my house by throwing a ball up against the wooden wall on the verandah outside my bedroom which opened onto that verandah as well as onto the hallway inside.

We would bounce the ball against the wall and think up colours for our wedding dress. My favourite was apricot. We'd go through names of fruit, flowers, depending on how many we could do before dropping the ball.

We'd play hockey on the near turfless dirt of our backyard using sticks and any ball we could find. Our brothers plus local boys also played. We had a chook run on the left at the back corner and side fence and a gate at the back fence opening onto a vacant block leading to a busy road. My elder brother fell off the roof of the chookhouse once and broke his collarbone.

We ran out onto that road beyond the vacant block to chase a ball and Mum was very upset with us incase we were killed. I just couldn't imagine a car being that heavy. A garage was to the right at the back of the house past the rotary clothes line where we had made a string and tied there with paper on the end for a cat to chase, round and round as we ran, pushing the line fast until the cat fitted.

Dad loved to fix his car and tinker with just about everything. He was a 'jack of all trades' but master of none. He worked shift work at the steel works.

I was often bored at home. Sometimes when I asked Mum to give me something to do she would tell me to cut newspaper into squares then thread them with string and hang them in the toilet which was along the L-shaped back verandah in the other direction from my bedroom. She was never big on housework so never told me or showed me how to do that. Sometimes we were made to do the dishes, but usually as a punishment. Cutting up newspaper for the toilet soon lost its appeal because nobody ever used it. The toilet paper didn't run out. It was a futile and useless job. Once when I was doing that job, Juliana brought some boys, one was her brother and they wanted, in no uncertain terms, to go into our outside toilet with me and her and touch our private parts with theirs. I found this thought terrifying and only remember the fear not anything about what actually happened.

Another time Juliana and I were bored so we went into my room from the verandah door. My room had a carpet of clothes strewn over the floor, a double bunk where I slept on the bottom and nobody had the top, an open bureau for storing clothes where a cat had given birth to a litter once and they werent discovered until the kittens were cute and fluffy with their eyes open and exploring. One wall had been strung with my recent birthday cards. We started a game where Juliana had to close her eyes and feel along the wall to guess what she was touching. We had to be quiet because my Dad was on night shift and asleep in the next room.

Juliana was feeling along the row of cards when a huge huntsman tree spider darted from behind a card and stopped a little way up the wall. Juliana opened her eyes and screamed loudly.

My Dad was out of his room and into mine. He grabbed my shoulder and whacked furiously into my upper legs and buttocks with his hand. I started to cry. After about six stinging whacks he disappeared again. We may have retreated outside after that. The worst part of the incident from my point of view was Juliana witnessing the whole episode, along with the feeling of unfairness.

Once I remember standing in my Dad's and Mum's darkened bedroom beside the bed. He was standing in front of me saying 'go on, touch it'. His 'tossy', as a penis was called in our household, was about chest height to me. I kind of remember the feeling of warm skin moving over a firm 'tossy'. But don't remember anything else about the incident.

The thought of the word 'tossy' has always caused alarming feelings of retreat and revulsion in my mind.

Juliana and I would buy boiled sweets at a local shop if we had money and we always fought over what to buy. We collected tadpoles from small ponds on the side of a hill not that far away. We'd put them in a bucket at my place and fight over who would get the biggest.

After we moved to Melbourne when I was about eleven I lost touch with Juliana. But much later, on a visit back I heard that she had been gangraped in one of the caves at the beach.

Lumps of coal wash up on that beach. A mammoth, pacific surf rolls onto the apricot coloured sand and crashes over the ocean baths where I learned to swim. The baths were nestled next to a headland that could be navigated by climbing over rough boulders at its base. Bits of sand, more boulders more sand and caves to crawl into under the rockface. Modest houses with magnificent views dot the top of the headland. Winding roads with expensive housing offer panoramic views over Newcastle from up on its shoulder.

We lived on the flat. The houses were small and roads trimmed with coblestones at the gutters, from the 'old days'. A metal 'silent policeman' or 'fried egg' as we called them squatted in the middle of each intersection of the streets we crossed to get to the beach. Dad taught us to swim by throwing us in then holding us under the belly when he was waist deep in water and telling us to kick and move our arms.

Rose lived closer to the beach than us. She was the same year as me only in the 'B' class. I didn't give her much respect for that. Even though she invited me to play with her at school with her friends when I was walking across the fields alone, I always declined.

I was always late for school. "I couldn't find my shoe" was one excuse I used. Then Rose started to come by my house to pick me up. She would clean my shoes and try to hurry me along. I would sometimes walk home with her to her house. She had large cages of finches in the backyard. Her Mum had no teeth. There was a stepdad with the nickname Golli. Rose had her periods at ten years old. She showed me what the tail end of one looked like - just a brown smear on a pad. I was just a stick child compared to her.

My mother joined me up to a gym, she was so worried about me being so small and skinny. Twice a week after school I caught the bus into town. Sometimes Rose came with me. Once, a cousin did. I was supposed to do exercises. The attendants sometimes coached me but soon left me alone, especially if I had wet my pants and didn't have clean clothes. My clothes were never clean and I was unwashed. I ended up going on the bikes for a bit then sitting in the steam room, then didn't want to go at all.

Rose had boobs, frizzy, brown hair and an eye with a slight cast. Her family moved house closer to the beach. Many years later I ran into her as she served my fish and chips in downtown Newcastle. She had a daughter from a relationship that hadn't worked out, but was now happily involved and living with a woman. She told me she had been raped by the boy next door

at the time we had been children together, and also her stepdad Golli had interfered with her and so the Mum had kicked him out.

Rose still lives in Merewether, far as I know.

Born in Newcastle

Looks like my boyfriend and I are finished. I haven't heard from him since Monday.

The house I was carried into after being born in Newcastle hospital was at Warners Bay on Lake Macquarie which is half an hours' drive south of Newcastle on good, asphalted, suburban roads that wind, rise and fall over and around semi-populated, eucalyptus covered hills, through leafy stretches of modest houses on the main road and side roads, and unpretentious shopping strips.
The house being built by Dad never really got finished. Inside cladding of walls had never happened. The dark splintery wood of upright beams joined other beams below a roof of tin sheets. The ceiling was non existent.
We moved to Merewether some years later, and into a run-down weatherboard house two kilometres from the beach. Merewether is an innner suburb of Newcastle.
The first memory I have of living at the Warner's bay house was of me being by myself under the house which was propped up high at the front by grey, spintery posts over ground which sloped down to a quiet road.
The steps to our front door off a patio ran up next to where I sat spinning an upside down bicycle wheel. Dad came home and went up the steps without speaking to me.
He did see me though, because then Mum called me from the back of the house. I clambered out the side and to the back door where I was taken into the kitchen for a shameful little talk about the wrongfulness of having my hand down my pants.
My second memory of that time was being with a group of kids, neighbors mainly of about four or five years old. We were seated in a circle in a back shed situated midst stubbly grass tufts and eucalypts up the hill along a broken path from our back door.
The game I wanted to play 'rudies' meant taking our pants off and touching each other. The kids at first hesitated, as if giving it some thought, then seemed to bolt gradually, out of the shed leaving me alone with a feeling akin to, if I'd known, humiliation. It is now my belief that long before that time a rough grown-up thumb and finger aroused and confused my mind and body by touching its secret places, and the fleeting image of this happening and the sensation of repugnance combined with arousal re-visits my inner eye occasionally.
Mum had a 'nervous breakdown' when Stephen was born. She stayed in bed for a long time. I attended kindy at the local school. Then we moved and I went to school near Merewether.
Once or twice I was invited to birthday parties over the years by friends at the Merewether school. One party was in a beautiful house with beautiful people and beautiful food. Before the party I tried filling a half empty perfume bottle up with water because I didn't have a gift to give, but it went cloudy. The other party I was invited to was completely forgotten about. The expression on the face of the girl who invited me creased with hurt on the next Monday as she asked me why I hadn't come to her party on Saturday.
I don't remember being invited to any other parties, though I did have other friends. One friend tap danced. She demonstrated in front of the class once and she had taught me the steps so I could join her but I forgot them half way through so just stood with hands on hips and tapping my foot while she finished her routine. We would walk home together the long way which was past her house, then I would go on to my house two blocks away. Sometimes I would be invited in to eat cakes at her house.
One day her mother was crying because she had grabbed a hot cake pan accidently when the tea towel fell away while taking it out of the oven. I stared at her with something like cold curiosity and when she glanced at me I felt the naked hostility of her thoughts toward me.
That stare was possibly justified as I believe the trait of aggressive negativity had already become established in me. I'm ashamed of admitting that I may have enjoyed seeing her suffer. Once I was stung by a bee in their yard. That Mum kindly pulled out the sting and applied a blue liquid to my hurting foot.
Sometimes I'd walk the quicker way home with a girl one grade below me who lived two doors down. We had to pass a lot of houses with gardens behind wire fences and grass up against them, then the footpath, more grass then the road. On the grass next to the fence of the last house before a pub on a corner we would often squat with our pants down, pretending to search our ports but doing a wee wee. We didn't care if the road was busy or people came in and out of the pub. Nobody noticed us.
On the way to school in the mornings I would often find an empty cigarette packet in the gutter outside that pub. I'd take out the silver or gold paper and discard the box then look for the most beautiful rose that I could find. I liked them full blown and large. I'd reach over a fence of one of the lovely gardens on that street, break the rose off and wrap the stem in my cigarette box paper to make a corsage for my teacher.
At school I'd put it on her desk along with twenty other corsages brought in by the other girls. She always chose a bud. She never chose my corsage.
Once I found a dead baby bird in the gutter on the way to school, and thinking the teacher would be pleased with me because I had discovered an interesting science object, I searched for an empty cigarette box. I put the dead baby bird in it. At school I stood in front of my teacher with other girls around to watch her delighted interest as she flipped the lid of the cigarette box. But she kind of jumped back, turning her head away, handing it back to me in disgust and shock. My dismay and sad feeling of rejection went unnoticed. I often wanted desperately to please my teachers but somehow never managed it.
In that school the boys were segregated from the girls. I was in the 'A' glass of girls, and a snob because I was smart. I always achieved A's in my report. Once my Mother was given the opportunity to send me to a special school because I was bright yet underprivileged. She couldn't get past the fact that the school was five suburbs away and she didn't know how I would get there. I wasn't allowed to go.
We lived in a run-down, single-storey, weatherboard house of rotting floorboards beneath old carpet and a rusted tin roof. The place sagged, like my friend house two doors down. Both houses needed painting, or pulling down, which they were a long time later. My bedroom window opened onto a narrow side path where fushias, geraniums and lilies of white with one yellow stamen grew close to the house in shadow of the old lady's house and wooden fence between us and her next door. I ran away as far as the front gate once by climbing out of my low, wooden, sash window. I wanted to find my real family; someplace where I would be loved. I didn't know where to go though, so didn't go.
The blank front of our house had no verandah, just three steps to a double front door that nobody used, except for when all the relatives sneaked in for Mum's 50th surprise party.
That day we were yelled at to get the washing folded and off the couch, by Dad. The side path came past my window and around to a back verandah and back door which everyone used. There was a solid door, usually left open, and a half screen door. The screen wire was wrecked and in tatters. Both doors together opened onto the kitchen; a large room painted green and yellow and covered in fly spots. The swarm of flys in there provided sport for my older brother and his friends who chased and squashed them using rolled up newspaper or plastic fly swats. I have always been sickened by the sight of squashed flys, or any insect.

schizophrenic brother

When my borther died I was living in Port Hedland, married to a professional. We'd been married about eight years and had a 2 1/2 yr old. I hadn't seen my brother for nearly that amount of time.
My brother's body was taken back to Newcastle for burial near to where Mum lived. I didn't go to the funeral.
About a month later I was in Melbourne. I visited my father and he came with me on a tram up Elizabeth St. I had bought sweets for the residents of the night hostel where my brother Stephen had collapsed, and thinking back maybe it was a dumb thing to buy, money as a donation may have been more useful.
We spoke to several guys working there. I handed over the sweets which were accepted with cordiality. One of them had known Stephen and was there when Stephen turned grey and slumped down a wall. They called an ambulance. The guys were polite. My Dad was less than polite. He insisted on collecting Stephen's bag. They couldn't find one belonging to him
"He would of had a bag. Come on you bastards whre is his bag?"
The guys maintained cool polite reseveredness. I thanked them and moved my Dad away. "No. He wouldn't have had a bag." I had descended into tears. The guys watched as we moved away from the office area returning to the road where we could catch the tram back to Flinders Street rail station.
About ten months later my husband and I had a second child. I often think of him as the re-incarnation of my brother Stephen.
Dad lived in Melbourne but had disowned Stephen. It's doubtful whether Stephen spent one night under Dad's roof after being sent to Melbourne from Newcastle by my mother. We were all 'dirty bludgers' to my father. He would never have allowed Stephen to 'bludge' off him.
There was nothing wrong with Stephen, according to my mother. Even though he attended Watt st psyciatric clinic and lived in a hostel nearbye. It was because he smoked pot that he had problems. However I think he was causing problems between her and her boyfriend.
She told him to go to Melbourne. His left his bag on the railway station at Newcastle. It must have had some identification attached because it was returned to her.
Mum was very good at hiding facts and glossing over events. In reality she may have seen him off on the train. He may have never packed a bag or carried his wallet. She may have handed him his ticket and a little cash for food. One never can tell when the story comes from Mum.

Mum and Dad separated after twenty-five years of marriage. She came back to the Newcastle, Sydney area of her youth. Dad stayed near his family in Melbourne. Stephen didn't last a year living rough on the streets of Melbourne. I heard stories sometimes from Mum that he had often been preyed upon and his belongings stolen. She always maintained that she didn't know where he was during that year. I had tried to find out his whereabouts by sending a photo of him to the Salvation Army. I later informed them that he had died.

I often think of him and cringe. Once when he and I were little (my older brother always seemed so grown up, Stephen and I were always the little ones)we were at Nana's. Mum and Nana were talking in the kitchen. They were impatient with us hanging around. Mum, crossly, told us to set the table in the lounge room. We carried thing in there. Stephen was carrying a big glass jar of honey. Just before reaching the table he dropped it and it smashed. He must have been about six years old. With great sobs he tried to pick up the honey which was now mixed with ash spilled out around the fire place. It ran through his fingers. He'd bend down to get more blindly groping through tears to put honey up on the plastic lace tablecloth.

Another time a watched him coming home from school. We were both somewhere near the front gete, but we never were friendly enough to walk together. He was balling his eyes out with diarrhoea running down his legs.
I could have felt sorry for him. Only no-one was feeling sorry for me. I could never get to school on time. I didn't know how to look after my clothes, hair or to be clean, and be like the other girls in my class. The playground was a frightening place and I'd never go into the toilet block because of bullies. One year a crippled girl in class had to stay inside during lunch and it was the best thing for me to be able to stay with her as a companion, but then I was banned from doing that. She, or somebody didn't want me anymore to be with her . Bannished to the playground, I wandered the vast tracts of low grass pretending to be friends with fairies and other small creatures making homes beneath the crawling dark green canapies of weed.

About six hrs after my the last text, my boyfriend sent one back "Your contsant untrue accusations against me have cost you my love. sorry."
I replied, "That tells me that what I know to be true, is true."
"Stop bullshitting yourself."
"You have a problem with honesty John."
"Forget me and my problems." he says.
"That sounds like goodbye. Is it?" I ask.
I while after that he replies with, "Should I ring you later?"
"If you want."

Communist? no.

I was born into a communist family. My father, christened an Anglican, converted to communism after serving in the second world war. He met my mother at a dance in Newcastle and she joined 'the party' too. The three of us kids were given 'welcome' parties instead of christening parties. The certificate card I still have reads "Welcome little comrade to this plot of troubled earth....."
Years later though my mum had us all baptised into the Anglican church. Even though she was brought up strict presbyterian she never returned to that line of worship, or back to communism.
That was another reason for the arguments in our home. He wanted her to stay a communist, and I think she did deep down, but without his passion. One of the main arguments in our house ever since I remember, was whether the Russian ideology was superior to the chinese version. My father believed in Russia, my mother, China. I grew to hate the word 'dogma' the phrase 'ruling party', capitalism, deliberate keeping of a Labour pool, fascists. Nothing else was talked about. We were indoctrinated to feel that all our ills were due to the ruling party and their need to manipulate poor people. Meantime we were screamed at, neglected, physically abused and I believe I was also sexually abused.
My father always vowed that he would go to Russia one day. Don't think he ever made it. We had been estranged for about eight years before he died.

We grew up poor. We could never want anything. All the toys in the shops were for other people, not us. Blame the country. Blame the system. Don't blame the parents. Most of my parents money was kept for themselves. They did not like spending on children.
I remember wanting something once and was asked by an uncle or my half-brother "How are you going to pay for it?"
As a child under ten, it was impossible for me to say how I could pay, nor did I realise that a more generous grown-up wouldn't think twice about buying a child something.
I was filthy, as in not washed, and neglected. My clothes were always dirty, crumpled, no clean or good underwear. We were fed but stood over to eat everything on our plates. In my parents' totally self-absorbed way they looked on their children as possessions. We had to behave in a certain way; be what they wanted us to be. Only they were never satisfied. No matter what I did, I could never please them. It was a case of what can we do for them, not what can they do for us?
I remember battling with my younger brother along the hallway, tray to tray, each of us with tea things trying to get to our mother's bedroom first to give her a cup of tea in bed. I think I may have pushed him and spilt his pot of tea, just so I could get ahead. Another cause of shame to me, the fact that I was bigger, and it was 'every man for himself' in our family. To be the smallest was a disadvantage.
My youngest brother only survived until he was thirty-three years old. He died schitzophrenic on the streets of Melbourne. His teeth were rotted, and from eating out of garbage bins he developed septocaemia, collapsed in an old man's shelter, was rushed to hospital but was unable to be saved. I rang the hospital and spoke to the doctor who had treated him. The Doc was very upset with me because he could't save my brother. So I couldn't get much information except that my brother was in an appalling state and how could anyone be allowed to deteriorate so severely?
I feel guilt and shame and confusion over the family dynamics that produced that death of my brother, and also a kind of bewiderment that I have transformed myself into a 'private school Mum' with highly successful, motivated offspring.

Hi! My so-called boyfriend just sent me a text -"You can't go around and accuse people (Cynthia and me)of lies Sylvia. Can't do it."
I texted back -"Why? If its true?"
He said in reply"You need to find out in your mind what the real truth is."
"You tell me..." I texted.
"I've told you a thousand times its all in your mind."
So I texted back "Do you want to be with me and nobody else?"
He didn't reply. A few hours have passed.
He has been my on/off boyfriend for the past three years. Cynthia is supposedly my girlfriend.

How do I find other bloggers?

Hi, I wonder if anybody reads this. I haven't managed to find anybody elses bloggs yet.
I'm in need of help. I think I need some online counselling. I'm wondering if there are any such sites on the internet.
I'm falling to pieces. Don't know how to carry on.

Saved By Psychotherapy

At age twenty-six I had six months of psychotherapy, two hours a week. I worked hard and changed my outlook, faced my childhood and started to like myself. One thing though, I declined to be hypnotised for the purpose of delving into how much sexual abuse actually went on. I was afraid to know, to re-live. One day I might perhaps, but that is beside the point of what I wish to express here...
Now, at almost fifty with children still at home, divorced and keen to get them to reach their full potential using tools of love, kindness and support, I feel I'm now coming to some sort of breaking point.
The reason I feel is that after psychotherapy, I changed and could no longer relate very well with my family. Before it, I fitted in with them in a tortuous kind of way but was a total misfit in the wider world. Now I fit in nowhere. Not in my family or any groups in the community. I prefer to be by myself and focus on where my kids are going.
But without support or understanding coming from anywhere, I'm struggling. The strain of having to reject the idea of a stepfather in the house is due to my own theories of our home being a haven for us all where no stranger will be asked to live. No lover stays around long enough to bond with me and my children with the purpose of gaining our trust. I'm continually being betrayed and dumped by lovers who feel I can't give them enough so they go elsewhere, even while still seeing me. I've been divorced twelve years. I married my ex during the last stages of my psychotherapy. After that I gradually changed into a really good person, the person I am happy to be, whereas he has stayed exactly the same and I'm not saying that's bad, but I think we could no longer understand each other.
I'm trying to be positive, but life seems a little desolate from a personal perspective. Does anybody know what its like to saved by psychotherapy then find that nobody can understand the 'new you'?