Not a normal little girl.

 

When I was very young it became apparent to me that my Mother was not like others. She went to the hospital a lot and had a lot of bandages and dressings on her hands. Her hands didn't work like other Mums. She was sick. I didn't know exactly what that meant, only that there were a lot of visits to hospital and a lot of time with people staying at the house looking after us for days and sometimes weeks at a time.

My priorities were not the same as other little girls. My friends would ask Santa for dolls but I would just ask for my Mum to get better. This often got sad looks from Santa. Being the precocious child that I was, I didn't believe in Santa anyway the fact that I had seen him in more than one shopping centre on the same day was enough for me. I told one Santa that if I couldn't have my Mum get better as a present that I would settle for a green tonka truck. He told me that he didn't think that it was a thing that he could make for little girls. That was the end of any belief I had in Santa or any other fantasy creature. 

One morning, when I was around five years old I was taking some rubbish out to the bin. I opened the lid and was horrified and saddened to see that my very first report card from Kindergarten was stuck to the bottom of the bin, wet and stained from the rubbish that had been on it. At that moment I knew that it didn't matter what I did, I was not a priority. Now don't get me wrong, I was not treated poorly or beaten or abused. In fact, I was loved but not the way I needed to be. My brother on the other hand was my Mum's special little boy.

This was further cemented by the amount of photos and items that were kept of my brother and the lack of them for me. I have one baby photo of me and a few through ages 3 to 6 then after that nothing. For my brother there was a baptism certificate and engraved silver cup. I don't know if I was even baptized. there is no evidence. I was very close to my Dad, his princess he would call me and I think perhaps this rubbed my mother the wrong way. It was almost like they chose one child each. 

Now I was very good at school, I loved learning and could not get enough of books. I could read when I was three but my learning started suffering the sicker that my mother got. My hair was long and platinum blond and my Dad cut it short because my Mum couldn't look after it and brush it or style it due to her hands becoming more and more twisted due to Scleroderma.

In one of my school photos you can see the bags under my eyes because by the time I was six I could no longer sleep properly. I had terrible dreams of death and rooms filled with bones and skulls and I would hear Mum getting up in the middle of the night in pain as she would have to change her dressings on her wounds. This would become my job before long. My mind would wander at school and I started to daydream during my school time and my lunches at school were pretty lonely for the most part. I had a lot of trouble relating to the other kids because of what was happening at home.

As time went on my parents fought a lot. My Mother got quite cold and bitter towards my Father and it eventually drove him to the arms of someone else. This left me, a seven year old with a full time job as a carer for my Mother and little brother. I wasn't ready to let go of my Dad but had no choice in the matter. In the beginning he gave me his work number by writing it inside of my school bag and promising he would be there whenever I call, I committed it to memory. So when my Father eventually got sick of me ringing him after he moved out it didn't matter when he scratched it out of my bag. I knew it off by heart (the start of my somewhat photographic memory for phone numbers).

After Dad had moved out he came and took us for weekend visits but still fought with Mum. He would get angry and threaten that he would get custody of us. So we moved.

Mum moved us from Marrickville to Thirlmere. We went from high density multicultural concrete everywhere to a farm in the middle of nowhere with the school being 11km away. We moved in with family friends. Uncle Owen and Aunty Margaret. They had two kids but they were 3 and 1. So not really friend material for a seven year old.

She did not tell Dad. It was a secret. I was not happy.

I had lost my school, the only home I had ever known, the couple of friends that I had and most importantly had lost my Dad. Over the coming months, I started to prepare all of my Mother's dressings for her ischemic ulcers. These were horrific. The slough has a smell that never leaves you. My job was to cut the dressings, tape etc and have them ready. Use a sterile pack to clean the ulcer with saline or hydrogen peroxide depending on how bad it was, and put a new dressing on. My Mum would be in excruciating pain while I was doing this and was not able to take anything stronger than a panadol or vincents powder which was her particular favourite. Inflicting the kind of pain that I had to changes you as a person, particularly when it is your Mum and you are just seven years old. 

I went to my Mum crying one day saying that I missed Dad and wanted to call him. She said that if he loved me he would have made an effort to see me. After my pleas falling on deaf ears for weeks, I had a nervous breakdown. I wouldn't eat or sleep or even try at school so my Mum starting watching me like a hawk in case I called Dad. I wasn't to be left alone. The only way I could see myself getting to my Dad was to convince everyone that I was fine.

The way that I managed to cope was to hatch a plan to contact my Dad. I had to convince my Mother that I was ok. That it was safe to leave me alone while she had a shower or cup of coffee. So I started following Uncle Owen around like a shadow. It was pretty fun for the most part, he was always very kind to me. He would take me everywhere. After a couple of months, we were sitting at the main house all having lunch and Mum asked me to run back and grab her cigarettes. I said I had to go to the toilet also and she said ok just be quick. Now was my chance!

On the old wall mounted dial phone, I called my Dad's work number and he answered! Hearing his voice was so calming but I didn't have a lot of time so I quickly told him we were at Uncle Owens and that I loved him and missed him. 

At around 3am  the next morning, Dad turned up. He was not happy.

Family friends had betrayed him, Mum had stolen his children and I was failing to thrive. Anyone that knew my Father, knows that he was not to be trifled with. Mum was a lot sicker due to the weather being a lot colder there and they talked for hours. During the next day my Dad sat with me at the edge of  a pond that was outside our cottage. He sang to me and cried and told me how much he loved me and that he was sad that he didn't get to see me for so long. He promised me that he would come and see me on weekends from now on. He did for a while, but it was a long way from Bondi Junction where he was staying.

Eventually after a disagreement between my brother and the 3 year old over a fruit tree, Dad came and took the three of us back to Marrickville. We moved into a unit at the top of four flights of stairs. This was not practical for a woman with ulcers on her feet who was about to have toes amputated. So I took the responsibility for all of the household grocery shopping, buying medical supplies and paying the bills. I was eight.

My life was not what I expected. We were poor as Mum lived on the pension which was not very much in 1980. Meanwhile our Father was living in Bondi with his girlfriend who was just ten years older than me, enjoying his freedom. 

And this, was just the start of it.