Chapt. 2 mums story- domestic violence, love and loss.

Chapter two.  Mother’s story.

Victims and negatives.

Brother and his future wife were expecting a baby at 19 yrs of age.  They stayed in the house for 6 months in the bigger bedroom at new house.  That didn’t work out as my mother and new wife didn’t get on.  My brother and new wife moved out at 20 years of age and my father moved into his room, where he stayed.  The atmosphere became worse and worse during my teenage year.  One time there was a terrible fight and I came home to mum with her nose broken and a black eye.  I used to come home with my boyfriend and sit on the back step with him for half an hour just to see if I fight would break out before he left. My mother sleep with a hammer underneath her pillow.  I was told to tell no one of what went on in the house.  I ran around and shut all the windows so no one would hear.  My mum would use excuses to others that she had walked into a door or got hit by a tennis ball at her tennis games.  Everything was always covered up.  When my mother had her nose broken I was 15 yrs old and I asked my mother to move out with me as I was working and wanted to move to my Uncle Daves.  She wouldn’t come.  I stayed at my Uncle Daves for about 3 months.  My mother rang me at work every day crying to come back. Eventually I came home.  Another night I went to a party and I felt uneasy at the party and asked my boyfriend to take me home as I felt something was wrong.  When I got home I heard that my father had broken an umbrella over my mums head and blacked one of her eyes again.  I defended my mother as often as I could and was always standing between the two of them.  When my dad he could be very funny, calm and quiet man but if he drank he was a different man.  On the weekend he did not drink at all and would just drink Monday to Friday but it seemed the alcohol was still in his system, so it didn’t take much to top it up the next week. 

I soon got engaged to my boyfriend.  My 19^th birthday we were going to get married, but I decided against it as he felt more like a good friend to me.  We broke up and I started a relationship with another man and due to that relationship I fell pregnant.  He didn’t want to live with me, though we were told we had to get married and he lived with his family and I lived with mine.  We had lots of arguments and one day he tried to run over me when I was pregnant. I had my son and was really a single mum.  I went back to work when my son was 6 months old and my mother looked after my son.  So that kept me in the family house. By that sage there were no more arguments.  My parents were elderly as they were older when they had me.  I think my son brought a lot of joy into the house.  When my son was two yrs old I took him on a cruise with a friend and I met an English waiter.  It was a Christmas cruise and he said we are sailing to England next year and would I like to join in on the cruise to England.  I saw that as a way out of my life at home.  My mother was becoming very protective of my son and I thought it was best that I got out and made my own life.  We sailed to England together with my son in April, 1969.   

When I told my mother I was going to England she fainted on the floor as she did often.  She also fainted at the wharf as the ship sailed out of Sydney.  My mother didn’t say much as he was a man of few words.  By this stage my father was very ill with emphysema from his smoking.  He just wished me well.  I rang my mother from the Australian states as we sailed towards Perth and she would cry the whole 3 minutes on the phone each time.  I decided to stay in England with my new boyfriend and my mother would write me a continuous letter that never ended, it just went from one day to the next, week after week.  We stayed in England for 2 years.  Whilst there we married and we then decided to come back to Australia when I found out I was pregnant again. 

My marriage to this man was very happy for a long time.  He was a very nice man and was always making jokes and we laughed a lot.  He found work straight away when we returned to Australia. He was a very hard worker.  We were very happy, but he never really bonded with my son because he wasn’t his natural father, I believed. However, he was a good father and coached my son’s soccer team many years in a row.  We were very happy for at least 10 years.  We never told my son he wasn’t his natural father or my daughter who was born in 1970.  Revelry between my son and my husband became worse in my son’s teenage years and I think we fell out of love with each other.  I left my husband after 15 yrs of marriage.  

Chapt 2 domestic violence 2nd generation

Daughters story>"I don't know how I got here", the words choke in my throat as I try to hold back tears. I'm lstanding in a one room granny flat with my baby swinging in a pouch on the front of me talking to my friend. I was speaking to my friend I hadn't seen in two years, Ali, who had been living in Scotland. We had gone to school together and soon after she'd left school she had travelled to Scotland to staywithhermums  long term pen pal who had the freed her the stay and work in the hotel on a lake, The Lake of Menteinth to be exact near Edinburgh.  It so happens on the rest of her story tale life so far that she met and fell in love with her mother's friends son who happened to be tall dark and handsome Scotsman as well. Not that I was feeling jealous or anything, but she had just shown me the most beautiful wedding pictures of her traditional Scottish wedding on the lake! Ali had now returned home with her new husband and was planning to settle back in Adelaide with him. Meanwhile, I had managed to meet a tall dark and handsome man myself two years earlier, but thats where my own fairytale ends.. After a turbulent two years of moving out of home away from my mother whom I was sure was menopausal and depressed to live with the dreamy looking guy I'd been introduced to whilst babysitting two boys who lived locally with their single mum. Marc was this mother's brother who had whirled in from God knows where. I should have taken his sisters warning to me of, "I'm not sure I should introduce you to him." But she relented and I was immediately in 'lust' with him. He had penetrating green cat like eyes and dark short wavy hair. He was tall and well built like he'd had time to spend in the gym working on his muscles. I hadn't met anyone like him. He seemed charming enough and soon asked me to go to lunch with him in the city.I agreed and as he had no car- warning sign number 1 and no money for a taxi- warning sign number 2, we caught the bus into town. Marc took me to his friends trendy hotdog cafe. His friend, Chad was equally dreamy looking but with blonde hair and blue eyes. I later found out they met whilst on modelling jobs in Adelaide together. After our lunch of 'free' sauerkraut hotdogs we walked up Rundle mall where Marc proceeded to grab my hand and hang on my every word like I was the only girl in the universe. We found we did share some equally spiritual beliefs about life, as you do have in a naive way at our young ages of 20 and 24yrs and we waffled how we wanted to help others and change the world. Marc by outsting the fraudulent non-democratic governments of the world including our own countries, which he believed were out to get us all (blaming others-warning number 3) and me by becoming the next mother Teresa and saving the poor and disadvantaged. So there we were two naive lost souls not knowing really what we wanted to do with our lives but secretly wishing it was something that the whole world thought it needed and would one day realise we were young entrepreneurs of some kind with forthright that would make people sit  and listen and rewards would come. Once we came back to reality we learned - well I did, that I wasn't going to get any rewards unless I worked hard and what I was good at was studying. So I began a community services course and Marc was a pretty good self taught- half trained cook so he got a job doing that in a small restaurant/pub in the city. I tried to get part time work but failed. The main reason being that I  had no confidence. I could get volunteer work but was tired of my mums nagging in getting a real job and work. This was easier, to do volunteer work, as I put no pressure on myself to get that, so I worked volunteer in a cancer council shop and for the Adelaide hospital working in children's ward. I loved it, but didn't stay long as my mother said I was wasting my time and should get a real job. I was getting tired again of my mums nagging and Marc and I wanted to see more of the country so we took off on a train to Byron Bay for a 2 week break. We liked it so much we signed a six months lease and Marc got a job as a cook in the rsl. I went looking for my course to continue in the new year and it was fun for a while.  Then things started to slowly change. Marc would go to work in the evening and stay out most the night. He said he was just having drinks with the staff he worked with to cool down, but it didn't maKe sense as he had told me lots of stories of how he had argued with most of his colleagues. Them at some stage and nearly lost his job several times. Marc would sleep half the day, get up grumpy and pick on the littlest things in the house. Like the towels were not straight on the drying rack or dinner was disgusting if I cooked.  I tried getting work at the local stores but had no luck. Again, no experience and no confidence didn't help. I couldn't wait to get back to college but I was secretly nervousness about having to travel by bus to a college in Noosa each day in the new year.  I was nervous about most things in life.  I tried hard to make the house nice with whatever I could put together including cardboard boxes for side tables with cloths over them! I'd wash and read and clean all day. We'd go into town most days and joined a local gym. Marc loved the gym and liked showing me how to do all the equipment in the gym .  He talked about how I could improve my body mostly.  Sometimes he was really sweet and would write me poems or read to me from Shakespeare. Other times he would get angry about something trivial and not let me leave the bedroom until he had finished his rant.  If we went out and another male would talk to me in a shop or look my way he would get very angry ( what number warning sign are we up to now!!) I stayed though, I didn't want to return home and tell my mum she was right and I should have stayed home and got a 'real job'. Like a job in a stuffy office working in admin. alongside her in a law firm where she worked as a secretary and I felt I would rather pull my own teeth!  So I stayed. Marc strongly always talked about having children and one day confided in me that he had had a child with his childhood sweetheart and saw the boy occasionally, his name was Perry and he lived with his mum in Adelaide and was 3 yrs old. That is why he had returned to Adelaide where I met him from the Northern Territory where he had been living with his dad and step mother for a short time.  I was shocked but I tried to understand and believed it wasn't his fault that this girl fell pregnant. It was getting closer to the new term starting at college and I knew I had to talk to Marc about our life in Byron bay long term or maybe moving to Sydney where college seemed easier to get to and my dad was living with my new step mum.  Money was very tight and I felt I had no control over any of it. The pay checks would just disappear and soon we were given a eviction notice if rent was not paid. I told Marc I wanted the rent given to me each week to pay as I was so embarrassed.  Next door a young couple lived and had just brought twins home.  They were so cute and I thought it was lovely seeing them all out together on the weekends. I loved babies and small children but wasn't sure why as I had nothing to do with them growing up as there were no younger kids in our family bar me.  I was steering towards wanting to study child care as my elective in community services.  Marc continued to talk about having kids one day with me but I never really thought much of the idea yet. I wanted to be set up better and at least finish college.  I learnt later that Marc's mother had left the family when Marc was young and I don't think he ever got over it. I feel this is why he would cling to women in his life and spoke of having a child with them just to secure there place with him.