Unknown brothers

I've written much about my fathers side of the family. Not much if anything about my mothers side. In part that's because I lived with my fathers mother for some years whereas I never spent more than a few days at a time with my mothers family. My early childhood memories are thus biased toward the people I spent my time with.

I do remember being bedded down in a tiny room close to Half Moon Bay in 1958 but for the most part we were day visitors. It was a long (for a 4 year old) journey from West Footscray Station to Flinders Street, change to the Sandringham train and catch a bus to Black Rock. I remember on one occasion watching a woman eating chocolate wafers on the bus. She saw my hungry gaze and offered me a wafer. Embarassed I refused and hid my hands behind my back. She shrugged and continued eating and I remember masticating in sympathy. I really wanted one of those wafers but it was too late to accept a kind offer.

It felt to me at the time that there was something going on between Mum and her mother. Some kind of tension that I couldn't, at the time, understand. Those polite words hid something. Yeah, I know it's the accumulation of years since then that makes me think that but even at the time I knew that Mum and her Mum shouldn't be speaking to each other quite in that way. Impotent anger.

In later life I discovered the reasons for this; it seems that my mother had comitted the unforgivable sin of becoming pregnant out of wedlock in 1952. Hmmm. If I had a dollar...

My mothers mothers response was to ship Mum off to a convent to hide it. We weren't catholics. My elder half brother was born in early 1953 and adopted. In a strange coincidence my best friend in 1967 St Albans (a then outer suburb of Melbourne) was the son of the father of my half brother. I can barely remember that kid and I don't remember his name.

My mother had never, through all she'd endured, forgotten her first born and when the laws on adoption in my home state of Victoria changed she took her chance to be reunited with him. He was seeking his birth mother too and they were reunited.

Thus I vividly recall the day, in November of 1982, when I discovered I had an older brother. Until that day I'd been the oldest. And suddenly David was sprung onto me. I and my sisters coped well I think. We took him to our heart and did all the stuff you'd imagine you'd do if you were in that position.

But 1982 is a long time ago and I've long since lost contact with David. It wasn't deliberate; perhaps it was more to do with the fact that we'd had such vastly different childhoods that there was not much in common.

In 1972 I was taking out a girl. She was the first girl I was taking out in that sense. Mum stopped me by the front door and embarassed me at the time; she handed me a condom with the suggestion that it might become necessary. At the time I had no inkling of Mum's history but now, a third of a century later I can only applaud my mothers good sense and be glad that I'm my mothers son. She's had a hard life and I hope she has nothing but happiness between now and when she passes away.

I'm looking forward to giving her a long hug when I'm back in Australia, 11 days from now. Three and a bit years ago she and my wife met. Not a lot of conversation but a few minutes later Mum and I went for a walk together. Mum said she liked Sonya!

That condom went unused. Much regretted at the time. Now? Still regretted! :-)