Grampop

Sun, 07 Oct 2007 22:37:47 GMT

GRAMPOP

My Grandfather died, once, long ago. I forget when exactly and I can’t go back home now. I don’t think I really cried. Nana said that he had only just gone, that he had waited for me to pull up in the driveway…I wanted to say goodbye. I saw him lying there in his bed, peaceful. He reminded me of David Bowie and his Thin White Duke days, complete with Morphine.

I told him things and spoke with him for a long while but I can’t remember all the things I said, except ‘I love you’. He was warm but I could not decide if it was because he just died or the heat from the waterbed that cushioned his frail body. The rigor had started to set in while I held him – so – I dunno. He lay in his bed, comfortable, just like he liked it.

It warmed his bones. I miss him so much I am chilled to mine and I weep.

Sometimes I am convinced I smell his Three Kings Tobacco, wafting. I sniff and breathe deeply, his rolly was always thin and wet at the mouth, like his lips and grey with age. The end of the cigarette almost stuck to the corner of his mouth. but he would twist it and roll it with his tongue and a wry smile. I remember his lips, they were so thin. When he ate an iceblock the ice would sometimes cut and make them bleed. I saw this once.

My Grandfather died a long time a go and my heart longs to smell him and feel his silky soft hand in mine. I see his face, his kind beautiful eyes and feel his loving heart. He showed me how to recognize love and how to find my love…and I long to sit beside the fire too, and rock side by side, remembering ___________

He brought me my first bike and taught me to ride. That was scary and exhilarating all at once. He stood at the top of the road (hill) and told me to pedal as fast as I could down to the bottom – I learnt pretty quickly where the brakes we’re! He was so proud of me but a bit worried when I brought my first motorbike…I remember on our way up North to the batch at Omamari Beach he would let me steer the Chev sometimes. His white 1963 Chevrolet was his pride and joy, and mine. I loved sitting beside him, on the big bouncy bench seats.

When we got to the Ruawai straights, if I was asleep, he would wake me so I could see the graffitied grain Silo’s and Mt Toka Toka. Sometimes we would stop and pick Bull Rushes for Nana. His was the only taxi on the Hibiscus Coast for years, and the Chev was often used for weddings. I would love to see him all dressed up for the occasion, very proud. I always wanted to have the Chev, but I knew it wouldn’t be mine. But I know he is grinning now because I have one and it has a bench seat too!

My Grandfather died and we said goodbye at the RSA. A full soldier’s salute, hauntingly moving. It was an honour to see so many. Even strangers in the Military came to honour their WWII Veteran. He was MY Grampop and I loved him to my very core and I know he loved me by the warmth I felt around him. My Grandmother is dying now and I am afraid to see her die. I don’t want to talk about it. I am proud of them both for 60 years of marriage. I want to be content like that and I want Grand-children too.

My Story

Mon, 01 Oct 2007 13:43:16 GMT

It felt like torture. Complete mental, emotional and physical abuse. There was no other word for it. From the moment I woke up to the moment he came home. I was permanently on edge, wound up tight like an old fashioned clock. I never knew what was going to happen although a certain amount of it was predictable, the cycles for example, but it was the unpredictability that was unpredictable. I remember thinking I must be due for a hiding because I hadn’t had one for a while and I was starting to feel a kind of build up. It got so bad that my brother would make up stories about how I had done this or that to him… and he would try to make himself cry Crocodile tears for added authenticity. He could see that I was targeted and he made the most of an easy situation. He was always such a small, weak boy. He was called a fairy a lot. He did what he had to do. I knew that he would be believed and I would get a hiding. I knew he would mock me.

He was a horrible man, my step-father, but also very humorous. This made him loveable in the eyes of my mother who thought the sun shone out his arse. And what an arse it was. He was an obese man, a heavy drinker, on a poor self indulgent diet and a heavy smoker of 25+ Winfield Red per day, for however long I can remember. And let’s not forget, abusive. He was not allowed to treat Mother badly, not like us anyhow, she was different. She got off on thinking she was providing some sort of protective role for me, and would sometimes lay the law down about what he could and could not do to me. But, it didn’t amount to much. I hate to think what he could have done to me if he was allowed to fully vent his frustration. The verbal abuse was the hardest to handle as it was. He would forever all me ugly and fat. I was the ugly step-daughter. I got very emotionally damaged but while this was occurring over time, I also created a lot of miraculous ways to cope.

Firstly, I developed a way to remove myself from the situation, and eventually ANY situation that caused me anxiety. I could daydream, then completely disappear. In fact, one time I watched a black shadow fall down my field of vision like a blanket. I remember waking up looking down at myself walking up the driveway to our house. I flew down into my body, did a psychic scan of my parts to see if I was all there, and wondered where the hell I had been! I had no idea how long I was dissociated for, but I suspect days if not weeks. School was different again. I howled my lungs out when it came time for me to start Kindy. I didn’t like the other kids. They absolutely petrified me. I couldn’t relate to my family let alone other kids, and when I did I was a bully. I did the only thing I knew how and that was turn in to my step-father. I got a whack over the back of my head with a lump of 4x2 and knocked unconscious by this boy I had been terrorising.

My self esteem was very low by 5years old and I was not a likeable child. I was a try hard. I had to appear to be good girl so that I was praised and the rest of the class could see how good I was. This lead me to be picked on by the other kids who didn’t have to try so hard. Those kids were loved and were allowed to speak. They also had parents who actually cared about how they were doing in school. My parents would have looked down on them as being ‘up-themselves’. Now that’s making a real statement. After attending 17 different schools (averaging one every six months), I had fully developed my technique for making introductions, building initial rapport and was starting to make friends. But that was as far as it would get before I moved again. I never learned how to maintain a positive friendship. To this day I struggle with it and have lost many friends through my bad behaviour or my role as scapegoat. That target is still painted on my heart.

I remember my childhood as a series of events. This story, that story. They are the same ones I've been telling others for years. Like the time we had a beautiful black and white cat. I can't remember her name, but we lived in Lysander Crescent on the North Shore. Dad was fiddling around with a gun. A slug gun or air rifle. He jokingly said he wondered what would happen if he shot the cat. He convinved my mother to pick the cat up and place her on th verandah rail. Mum was holding it to stop it from jumping. He positioned himself, laughing. Mum was laughing with him but at the same time asking him questions about whether or not it would hurt or (God forbid!) kill the cat. He was desperately trying to convince mum that it would either go straight through or bounce off... I was horrified! I was standing not more than 2 feet away from the cat, mum and dad. As dad aimed the gun, the cat started meaowing and mum freaked out at the last minute and took the cat down. It was a big joke.

To be continued…

Jodine's Art Space: Memoir

Grampop

My Story