The Little Me

The Little Me

Last weeks blog was about being a small child talking about mathematics and other things. I thought I’d go back to the bit that was hinted at in the blog.  The fostered years.

My mother and her mother clashed like billyo. Some of this was due to my grandmother, who was American, having a very traditional attitude towards children. This meant that my uncles received an excellent education and my mother quite frankly didn’t. This, I think, is one underlying reason why she rebelled so much. My mother is highly intelligent and would have been deeply frustrated. Fortunately it never interfered with her love of reading which she still does avidly to this day. But then the swinging 60’s happened and my mother was a teenager. I imagine, like the education thing, there was one rule for the boys and one for the girls. Consequently my mother was thrown out presumable for breaking too many rules and potentially bringing her name and the families into disrepute.

Somewhere along the line she met my father and at 19 became pregnant with my sister . They married, as you did then, without little thought for whether they were suited to a married life together or not or indeed compatible. 15 months later she had me. Barely time to think about life, consequences etc etc. She talked about being pregnant with my sister because I remember her saying that at one point my father had broken his leg and she had to push a very large Scot around in a wheel chair while being very pregnant. She also said the cat used to sleep on top of her bump. Nice shelf and warm too.

It soon became apparent that my mother and father weren’t suited. My mother said about my father , ‘having two children was enough!’. I can only imagine that he was young and immature. I say that but he must have been about 10 years older than mum.Never the less a shock for him too to go from having a girlfriend to having a wife and two children in the blink of an eye. I like to think he matured well as he married a second Mrs Fraser later and produced my half sister. Unfortunately she never knew her father well either as he died at about age 44 from a heart attack as far as I remember .

Anyway, mum threw him out.

She then had a problem. No real income to speak of due to the fact she had no qualifications. She thought about her choices which were either to bring her daughters up in abject poverty or go and get some qualifications. If she went for the later it meant she would have to have us fostered . She chose the later.

She went off and finished her nursing training and then midwifery and then health visitor training.

I have had many people in my life who cannot understand her decision, ‘I’d never part with my children’ etc etc. All I can say in her defence is despite what happened I have always felt that my mother loved us and my sister and I seem well adjusted individuals . More so than some I’ve met who have had supposedly ‘normal’ upbringings. Whatever that may be. I’m guessing two parents of opposite sexes who stay together.

One thing I don’t know is how the first family were found. I’m guessing social services were involved because throughout that period we had to refer to our foster parents as mummy and daddy and this woman who came to visit was known as Aunty Ruth. This happened when I was just under 18 months old and Fi would have been just over 3.

I remember nothing at all about the first family but rumour has it she was interested in fostering because she couldn’t conceive…we arrived and within the year she did. Conceive that is. Apparently that does happen. We’d only been with them a year and she didn’t want us anymore. Over that first year  we had got to know the next door neighbours, Gladys and Birt  or probably more realistically they’d got to know us and they said, ‘We’ll have them”. Some how this was all agreed to. Could you imagine social services doing that now? Oh – you can’t have them anymore..what about the people next door. They look nice enough!

We were fostered in total for four years so that means I must have been five and a half when we went back to mum and Fi just coming up to 7.

Throughout my life my sister has been there and we have never been separated from each other thank god but she joked all the way through life about how she’d ‘brung me up”. I just used to laugh and it was well into adult hood I realised that she must have felt an incredible responsibility towards her little sister and what a pressure for someone who was only a little munchkin herself when all that happened. She really must have felt she was bringing me up.

So, what do I remember about Gladys and Birt?

They had  two children Geoffrey and Nicola. 18 and 16 respectively. My sister remembers being dangled over the stair rails by her ankles by Geoffrey and I have a vague memory of one or other of us getting a needle stuck in our big toe because a lost one was hidden in the carpet.

I also remember that I was a little tom boy dressing as often as possible in shorts and a T shirt and my sister was more girly than me. Nicola, to my little admiring eyes, was gorgeous and everything I aspired to be on growing up. I have a clear memory of sitting on a high stool watching her applying make up and being totally captivated.

Somewhere in the back of my mind I know that in my high chair stage I liked pinging spoons of food around the kitchen..who doesn’t and that if I played the clown and made people laugh they would like me at least and may even love me! I still find that often works these days although I am far more aware of why I might do it and whether I need or want a specific person to like or love me. I no longer want to be loved by everyone but throughout my younger life I tried so hard to be liked by everyone…even people I didn’t like much myself. How barking is that. It didn’t always make people like me either as I find out on more than one occasion in my life.

My feeling about that time was that it was happy. Gladys and Birt were lovely people who thoroughly enjoyed having two little ones around. The strange aunty who visited us was just an odd thing and I have no clear memory of that at all..apart from when she came to take us away.

That happened when I was five. She came. We were presumably all packed up and she popped us and our things in the car. On the drive away she said,’Don’t call me aunty Ruth anymore I’m your mother”..at least that’s how I remember it. I remember it like that and I remember being shocked but not knowing quite what to say.

One huge regret is that we, or mum, kept no contact details for Gladys and Birt. I am assuming they would be dead by now but they may not be but I don’t even know their surnames.

The lasting effect of this period in my life is that I expect people to leave me. In terms of my personally relationships it meant that I made sure it happened i.e. I either left them or I engineered it so they left me. At least once you realise the patterns you create in life you can stop doing them and I am glad to say I have. I, no doubt, have my vulnerabilities due to this start but don’t we all.

So there you go…the first bit of life as I remember it.