Mommy Dearest - Part Four

Part One
Part Two
Part Three

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When I was 11 we moved from our quiet little home on the island, to England. It may as well have been a different planet compared to the life we left behind. Living there was an entirely different reality than visiting.

I was excited. Happy to be in a country that smelled like a long lost homecoming. If I could have only "lived" there it would have been a dream come true for me. A new life, family, and a chance for a fresh beginning.

Unfortunately my uncle and father found me a very good school. An all girls diocesan school. Life for a child with an accent was fragile. Especially an extremely shy introverted child. It was my absolute worst nightmare - everyone wanted my attention. They wanted to hear me speak, which was the last thing I wanted to do. I would hide in the washrooms at lunch, and during PE class. I was eventually caught - and pled sickness. I was sent to doctors, given mis-diagnoses, dietary changes....and they didn't do a thing to cure my social phobias that were the cause of my odd behaviour and faked illnesses.

My father had trouble finding work. He was older than most job-seekers by a good margin. He was also an architect specializing in custom homes. England has very little raw land, most homes are remodelled over a few hundred years. They've also been in a recession for the last half century.

Our savings were dwindling.

My mother had little to no marketable skills. She had married before her high school graduation, and hadn't managed her diploma. She had no post-secondary education. She gardened and knit. It came to a point where she was given a lecture by my father about the reality of the bank balance and how she would have to find work and start helping the family.

I wasn't present for that conversation but I witnessed the aftermath. Her sulking, and increased hostility to everyone. It was embarrassing for me to visit my Uncle's home and have her speak to them rudely. Or not speak at all. She managed to get a job at a fabric shop and she was in her element. She still resented the fact she had to go to work, but she enjoyed the actual job itself. And it left my father home with me.

For the first time in my life my dad was home all day. He would walk me to school, and meet me at the gates afterwards. It was easy to imagine us living there alone, until she came home at night.

On the weekends we would travel around Southern England, touring castles and visiting landmarks. One of our trips during the summer was to Portsmouth Dockyards. My father was not someone who could sit and read for a long period of time. The only books he read were historical novels featuring Horatio Nelson. A small niche. The HMS Victory, Nelson's ship, was in Portsmouth and this trip was essentially for my father.

After eating out packed lunch we started walking around the dockyards. And then I got sick.

I was in a great amount of abdominal pain, and the need for a toilet was often immediate. My father was off on the ship, having a look around. My mother had patience for the first rush to the washrooms. She lost patience by the second. And by the third I was crying in not only pain, but embarrassment at the cruel comments she made during the entire experience. I wanted to die.

When we left, I laid on the floor in the back of the car and closed my eyes. I was imagining

myself somewhere else.

Less than 2 years later I would have given anything to be back in that car.

On April Fools Day we moved back to Canada. We stayed in the above-garage apartments of family friends, and eventually I was registered back into public school (my Dad somehow wrangled them into letting me skip a year) and the eventually bought another house. He bought a computer and created a home office in the basement of the new home. My mother created her own little room and substituted her previous hours spent in the garden of our old home with this room. Once again, I wasn't supposed to speak to her when she was in there, and it was an off-limits area to me.

I didn't care.

I had my father home when I needed him. I spent 18 months there at ease.

When I was 15 I found my father dying on the living room floor.