When did you last see your mother?
Growing up in Everton during my infant and primary school years seemed void of sentimentality. The wounds of the war years were not solely received on the battlefield. My mother and father had dumped me at a time of my deep neccessity for love. I was three when I found neither parent available to me and was bereft of both physical and mental parential attention. I may as well have been left on some stranger,s doorstep in a carrier bag;
thank God that abortions were tricky, (old wives tales didn,t work, I,m alive to prove it) messy and difficult to negotiate.
In my most tender years I thought that if left in my mother,s care, I,d have been starved, beaten or even poisoned to death. Anything to get rid of this dirty, crying third mouth to feed.
I grew up wanting desperately to be mothered. Wanting to be liked if I couldn,t be loved. Tolerated if I couldn,t have friendship. An acquaintance if I couldn,t have have acceptability.
Nobody ever told me why I was given away at such an early age. Was I a crying baby? Was I a mistake? Was I even my father,s, and a disgraced feotus within my mother,s womb?
Time has proven a great healer, and, whilst still a teenager and fresh from school, I tracked down the woman they called "my mother" to a large flat in Rock Ferry, a particularly sorded district of Birkenhead.
Throughout my life I,ve recalled a phrase she used that day. On finding that she had no milk for a cup of tea, and volunteering to go looking for a shop that was open to buy a bottle, she called from her doorstep after me,"You will come back...Won,t you?"
It may have been this pitiful remark that helped me through the years to cleanse and heal the unfeeling I had for her for getting rid of me, and giving me to someone else who couldn,t support or afford to keep me in the way that young sons and daughters are supposed to be reared.
Many years later on seeing "mother" on her death bed, surprisingly looking better than I,ve ever seen her in the past. Cheeks rosy and hair brushed back, I thought about the miserably short life that she had lead and the loveless marriage that she must have had to end up alone on a hospital bed with no family all around, holding hands, grieving, mourning the mother she should have been.
I think the most endearing words that I heard at the funeral was, "thank God shes,s gone."
Nobody is supposed to love you like your mum and dad. The love of a partner can fade with time, often it does; But the love of a parent --- or at least of a good parent --- is with you forever. You can,t lose it no matter how selfish or stupid you sometimes might be. And when a parent dies, it is like the brightest light in your life has just gone out, snuffed out at a pinch.
Anyone losing a parent to cancer or Alzeimers knows that it,s cruelty is boundless. In the end these diseases narrow life down to pain, suffering and humiliation.
To see someone you love go through that breaks your heart. When death finally comes, at least you know that the person you loved is free from suffering.
But why is it still so very hard to say goodbye, in an intensive care ward, to a mother that never was? :hug::PDT_Aliboronz_11:
written in 1980 after the Christmas death of my mother.
My early learning years and junior salad days
I remember the day that I started going to school, Heyworth County Primary. Going up Heyworth Street in my grey shorts and new brown sandals, holding my gran,s hand. I wasn,t scared like some of the other new starters who were crying and having their tears wiped away by concerned mums. I was looking forward to playing and mixing with new friends. I went into the little hallway which served as an assembly point in the mornings, sitting cross legged listening to Mrs. Fisher, who I first thought was one of the girl,s teachers. We never saw the girls at all during our time at the school as they were segregated from us before, during and after, school.
My teacher at the infants was a Miss Wakeman who I liked. We played with plasticene and sand and had rides on our class rocking horse. In the next class a year later, I remember making a paper mache model of a road system with zebra crossings, lamposts and pavements, and little cars were placed on the roadway, and I played with them all morning. I had my first accident in this class running around in the playground I fell over and broke a bone in my little finger of my left hand. I wore a sling for two weeks after.
The next year I was in Mrs. Fisher,s class. I don,t remember much about her other than she was a bit sharp and we were all wary of her. Then there was Mr. Narva and Mr. Drew who was a bit of a stern bugger who loved using the cane. Then there was Miss Lovat who was a well rounded lady who just loved pulling up one of your trouser legs and slapping you hard on the fleshy thigh. She was well worth avoiding when you did something wrong. And finally came Mr. Jones who was a bit of a dodderer but could get right bad tempered and turn quit nasty. Mr. Masheter was our headmaster at the school and not having had him for any lessons, didn,t know what he was like.
There was a play centre at this school for two hours every night with about four or five teachers on duty overseeing us kids playing games of draughts, chess, snakes and ladders, art, games in the hall underneath the school next to the swimming pool which also was used once or twice a week. These teachers must have been very patient and long suffering to work such hours each week. It was in the pool one time when I thought I,d override my fear of water, and try introducing myself to it. I was walking about dithering and splashing a bit try to get used to the gasping feeling of the water getting higher and higher as I gingerly sidled about, when all of a sudden I was pulled under the water and gasped and splashed about in desperate fear, coming up I started moaning and groaning and made my way to the nearest bar round the pool, which happened to be at the deep end, and franticly hauled myself out, much to the amusement of the other kids. I was told to go and get dressed, and not in a sympathetic tone either. I put my glasses on to see who had done such a callous prank on me, and there laughing his blonde haired fat face at me was that little monster from up the entry in our street, Steven, who years before had whacked me with a muddy rope while I was in my go chair. I wanted far away from him as possible so got dressed and ran home.
Two "accidents" in my trousers I remember while at Heyworth Street School. I was so in pain one day that I put my hand up and asked the teacher if I could go to the toilet and the pain in my face must have been evident as she ushered me on my way with waves of her hand. Running across the yard in the playground where the toilets were I cried and made a mess of myself. So instead of going I ran all the way home and cried in fear and embarassment to my nan. This happened in the first two years in the infant section of my education, while the next "accident" was when I was ten in the juniors. It was Miss. "slappy Lovat,s class. I put up my hand to ask permission to go and she ignored me as she was in full stream of a story about something or other which to her was more important than my tummy pains. I started sqirming and uttering quite noises but she refused say something like that there was only twenty minutes left to go in the lesson, I could surly hang on till then. I hung on as long as I could and then...gush...At the end of the lesson I darted out of the room as fast as I could go and left Miss. Lovat the consequences of her refusal. Nothing was ever said about this incident.
Some of the lads in my class in the junior school were Alan Roberts, Alan Rose, John Beesley, Chris Felton, who I believe last time I heard worked in a solicitor,s office; Norman Holmes?, Dennis Higham and Roy Williams. I have since had a photograph sent to me of a class picture with some of these lads on. Some went onto the senior school with me while the rest went to other various schools in the vicinity. I took two eleven plus exams in two different regions because I had a spell in another school in Huyton when the social services got "the family" together for the first time. More about that later when the social services let me in on my early life that involved them.
The eleven plus exam was a test to see had you any chance of being brainy and could go to college or a better educational unit. Good God if I had have been brainy enough to go to college, my guardian, my nan, would have had a screaming blue fit because she wouldn,t have been able to buy me a uniform or any of the trimmings that would have been needed in a better school than the secondary modern that I was destined to go. Apart from the usual uniform, there would have been sports clothes, shirt, shorts and shoes and stockings each year. Also football or rugby gear as well as a good satchel or schoolbag instead of the dufflebag that I took to Prince Rupert with me.
When I was ten I joined the St Benedict Church Choir, not that I felt religious or anything, but it did pay 7/6d about 41p) a month, which was a cool profit for singing like a scalded cat at someones wedding. Needless to say that I only lasted a month, got my 7/6d and left before they found out where the scalded cat was located.
I borrowed Brian Bennett,s bike one night after school rode up our street across the main road into Kepler Street and down over the hump in the road going full throttle at six miles an hour when I found that there was no brakes. I crashed at the bottom of the hill into the raillings next to the Police Station where I was hauled in and had a dressing put on two cuts. One on my split forehead and the other on my right leg. I was whizzed by ambulance with flashing light to the children,s hospital in Myrtle Street where I was more concerned with the little sore on my leg that the dirty big gash that was being stitched on my forehead. I lay there till my Auntie Kitty came to pick me up and take me home. Her being the only one available with any money to get the bus and bring me back on the bus.
I went into assembly late next morning, the day after my accident. Limping down the back steps as the kids were singing a hymn. They all turned to look at me on entering with a bandage round my head and another round my leg. I was the talk of the class all that morning untill they found out how I did it.
Although I was not allowed to leave the street I usually ended up in one of the parks or playground areas within a mile or two of our street. The nearest one was Rupert Lane swing park, which meant crossing Heyworth Main Road which was something really taboo for me. The park in the summer had a punch and judy show in a railled off enclosure which you had to pay 1d (1/2p today) None of us could afford this payment so we stayed outside the raillings and saw and heard it all for nothing. There was also a park attendant here whose job it was to keep the park clean and tidy, and to chase people off the grass. There were signs in all the parks before the 70s to "keep off the grass) We called these attendants "cocky watchmen" after the men who used to look after building sites after the war. The were to make sure nobody pinched the materials and keep playing kids away from the dangerous grounds. Each night they would be found around a roaring fire to keep warm during the colder nights.
When we were in the swing park and swinging high or up the ladder on the slide, we could see into the top storey of the police station of Everton Terrace. We used to pull faces at the policemen working there. The windows looked as bad as my nan,s back ones, could have done with a good clean.
While I was going to Heyworth Street School I remember the death,,already mentioned in my story, of my grandad. He used to come to the house now and again all dirty and whiskers as if he needed a shave. He wore a long dark overcoat that reeked of ciggarette smoke. I,m not sure why he didn,t live at home in the house I was being brought up in as he used to. I think it had something to do with the fact that I saw him kicking my gran and making her legs bleed once. She used to cry in bed of a night when I was sleeping with her. I did too because she was. I remember, Charlie smoked rolled up ciggies and I watched him making them from old stumps he found in the street. Although grandad was absent from the house, when he took ill once, grandma would go to the hospital in the freezing cold and snow blizzards, when she could get the fare to go from somebody. More often than not I would go too as there wasn,t anybody to look after me. It was a long way to Fazackely Hospital and two buses. I wasn,t allowed in the wards in those days being a child. I would sit in a room and read a magazine, well look at the pictures. One night nan came back crying after being away a long time. I asked her what was the matter as I was always upset when grandma cried, I felt afraid and insecure in case I was to go away to someone else to live. "Grandad,s dead." she replied weeping into the grubby piece of rag that once lay on our bed keeping us both warm. On the way home, red eyed, she couldn,t contain herself and must have been thinking of the days together when gran and grandad were happy together. I asked her later how grandad had died and she was quite graphic about it. "He bled from his eyes, his mouth, his ears and his nose, of cancer," she squarked. I was frightened and stayed quiet, thinking my own thoughts, the rest of the way home.
Is this the end of Chippie,s stories? Not just yet, but not far off.
You gentlemen are too kind, thank you for your support and response.
As the next one will bring me up to my second school ages from 11 to 15 I must leave my story there for awhile as I intended only to write about my childhood. When I left school at the age of 15 I became the one and only wage earner at home for awhile and so my story must go to the adult stage, which I,ve not prepared to write about just yet.
On saying that I may go backwards a bit and tell about a more recent time in my life when I was working for the mod in Liverpool and the friends I made there.
:hug:
Adventures and misadventures of a kid growing up
The Guy Family who lived in the end house on our side consisted of the mother and father, Maggie and Billy, and their five kids, Arthur, Jean, Leslie, Margaret and Stephen. Another brother, Tommy, lived opposite them on the other side of the street in number 42 with his wife, Barbara, and their kids, Tommy Jnr., Raymond and Julie. There was enough kids to these two families to play with the rest of us kids in Dessy. The two around my age group were Stephen and Tommy who I associated with more than anyone else in the street.
I remember one day playing outside between our house and Lily Emery,s house next door. We were playing "house," which was a few sheets off someone,s bed turned into a tent. I was the dad, Margaret was the mum, and Lily and Stephen were our kids. There was no water to make a pot of tea so I peed in four cups, which was convenient at the time because I didn,t want to go in to use the toilet. I said to the rest, "Come on let,s have our tea," and we raised our cups. The rest thought that I,d got some lemonade and gulped theirs down whilst I only sipped at mine to see what pee tasted like. There were coughs and splutters all round and shouts of "Oh you dirty get!" And I wasn,t flavour of the month for a week or so after that little escapade.
Margaret said that to drink ones pee was awful and that you would die if you didn,t eat meat right away. She always seemed to know about these things. So I legged it into our house to see if there was any meat around. Ha, meat in our house was like saying there,s snow in hell. Fortunately for me and my longevity that day, there was a couple of cold chops from my uncles tea the day before and I managed to to beg one of these from my nan telling her how hungry I was. I came back out and finished playing with my friends and stayed out until after my uncle came home looking for one of his chops that was for his tea today. There was a bit of an argument about it apparently but it blew over quite quickly. and I lived to see another day.
Another time with the Guys and Lily we were playing "hide and seek." Stephen, Margaret and I were hiding in the flats at the bottom of our street where we had full view of the length of Dessy from one of the stairwell windows. I climbed up onto the sill to open the top part of the frosted window, and my new glasses fell off my nose and crashed to the stone floor and smashed. I was especially upset as I wasn,t to wear them until the first day back at school, which was the following week, but I was so sick of my taped up old ones, I,d put my new ones on. Nan would go mad if she knew I,d worn them for playing out. I went home and swopped them in the case for my old ones. The following week while getting ready for school and my new class, I got my glasses case from the drawer in the sideboard, and, while putting my coat on I "accidentally dropped" my glasses case containing my new specs, onto the floor. Opening them up we "discovered that they were broken" and I would have to wear my old ones until I could get the new ones mended. I was a right scheming swine in those days. I think I had a degree in "How to hookwink my nan."
On another occassion, Stephen and I went for a walk, well an adventure really, and ended up a very long way from home, well it was for two little ten year old lads. We had walked to Great Homer Street and across the very busy dual carriageway towards Scotland Road. Thinking that Scotland Road was very nearly in Scotland and we had walked enough already, we just looked around the street we happened to find ourselves in, and would head back home. We came across a huge desserted yard that looked as if it had housed animals in it as there were bits of straw around and animal droppings. There were large metal hoops halfway up the wall with thick ropes hanging from these. In one corner of the cobbled yard was a huge wooden structure suspended on two wooden beams coming out of the wall. We both climbed up the wooden ladder about seven or eight feet high and went into the room.
There was evidence of pigeons in there, all over the floor was droppings and feathers, and the smell was not very nice. Uninterested in this structure, I climbed down from the far side of the building and went to nose around the rest of the yard in more interesting corners. I heard a terrific rumble and shout behind me and turned to see the pigeon loft upside down on the floor and heard Stephen screaming in fear on the inside. I ran over to get inside to see him crouched in one corner. I lifted him up and scrambled with him outside of the loft and found that his foot had been damaged and he could hardly walk.
It had appeared that when I had got out of the loft his weight had overbalanced the whole thing and it had slid off the beams and toppled over.
We made our way with great difficulty to the nearest hospital I knew which was called " The John Bagot Hospital" in Netherfield Road North. We rang the bell outside as the main door was closed and a man came to see what we wanted. After explaining what had happened and what difficulty we were in, he told us that there was nothing he could do to help and that we would have to go to the children,s hospital towards town or "The Royal" which was a little nearer, but still miles away. So we started off to walk/drag ourselves to town and another hours pain for Stephen. We got there eventually and we were there yet another hour before Stephen came away with a badly sprained ankle and he had to stay off it for awhile. When he got home yet another hour away there was commotion in both our households that we had "gone out of the street and look what happened," and was never to do it again.
Another time in the street the older lads were playing cricket. I not wanting to interupt their game went round the back of the batsman as he made a swing for the ball, which he hit for six and the momentum of the bat struck me on the side of the temple knocking me over and out of the way. About half an hour later there was a lump as big as an egg on my forehead, where before I had cracked it open on my bicycle crash. The lump stayed there for about three weeks.
One fine evening I was sitting on the pavement outside our front door playing with some toy cars. Uncle Ronnie came down our lobby doing an "Alex Young" with a plastic baby,s bottle belonging to my little cousin Sheila, and took a side kick to it with his left foot kicking it towards me and shouting for a goal. Not being too bright in how to handle the situation, I just sat there and took the bottle in the face smashing my glasses. I,m good at this glasses smashing lark.
I could feel an irritation in my eye and had to be taken once again to the children,s hospital to be examined for splinters in my eye. Luckily none were found and I was back home a couple of hours later.
Only one more time do I remember going to the Children,s hospital and that was the time I felt that I had a fish bone stuck in my throat after eating fish and chips. Along I went with my nan, stuck there waiting to be seen, and, eventually having a long metal spatula type instrument plunged down my throat making me gag all the time. The doctor said that he couldn,t see anything down there and sent us on our way home again.
What its like being a child with all the ups and downs and ins and outs of doing childish things. What happy memories one has.........