Wednesday, 21 December 2016

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 19th 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.  

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