Emotional volatility affecting one or both parents is difficult for a young child to understand, let alone manage. In looking back to early childhood years, the strikingly consistent memory is of periods of relative household stability interspersed at regular intervals by the rapid evolution of an argument between my parents. There was no obvious rhythm or pattern to the eruption of conflict, but it was always there. Just around the corner. It was only a matter of time before the next one broke out.
I accept that my perspective on the causation of arguments between my parents is deeply skewed towards my mother. I don’t think this was necessarily always the case, but I am cognizant that as years progressed and evidence built over time, this was the inevitable outcome. Please feel free to arrive at your own conclusions as you construct a picture of family life and dynamics within that red brick house.
By Australian standards, Melbourne can be a frigidly cold city during winter. It doesn’t snow, well actually I’m told it did once, but climate warming fixed that from happening again. It might as well, because it feels cold enough, and there are ski resorts four hours away, although these seem also to not get the season snow cover I recall them having in the past. Nope, no data. Just anecdotal stuff.
Anyway, I digress. I’m going to talk about ADHD in one of my future posts. We’ll come back to it.
Dad is (was? – this conundrum in itself requires a post or two at some point) a man who could fix or build most things around the house. In our corrugated iron garage a large pine storage box on wheels held most of dad’s tools. He had of course built it himself and it was perfect. Thigh high to an adult, a few feet wide. I recall this particular day. My sister standing holding the edge of said tool box, little more than a year old I suspect. By extrapolation, I was no older than five at the time. It was a bitterly cold Melbourne winter’s day. In need of the toilet (to those who have read prior posts, no this is not a theme), I crossed the wet lawn of the backyard and up the stairs to the glass door of the family room. Inside, the gas heater was on. The room was delightfully warm. But strangely, the house itself was uninviting. Despite the intense cold, I wanted to be out in the garage. Walking down the main hallway, mum and dad’s bedroom door meets the dogleg off to the toilet.
The bedroom door is closed. The rest of the house is silent. Mum is in bed. Since the most recent unprovoked argument, where someone had accidentally said or done something that had precipitated another blow-up. Usually it was something to do with dad. Or dad’s mum. Or her brother or his wife. But it seemed that dad was the focus point on most occasions. I don’t remember how long mum had been in the bedroom with the door shut on this occasion. Maybe just today. Maybe since last evening, since the arguments seemed to often happen when dad got home from work. After the initial yelling, accusations and on occasion discharge of whatever happened to be in her hand at the time, she would disappear, crying and angry, to the bedroom. On most occasions that would be the last we would see of mum until the next morning. Though, this was always an uncertainty. Sometimes, even then, she would not appear. On occasion, it would be days in duration. Door closed. Very little, if any extrication but for a cup of tea or food. Sometimes, I would gently turn the wooden door handle and slowly creak the door ajar to see if she was ok. She was usually either asleep or crying. Sometimes angry. Not infrequently, I would slowly walk around to her side of the bed so as not to precipitate a further outburst to ask her if she was going to come out. There were inevitably pros and cons to this however, as the precarious and fragile truce was just a wrong look or word away and we would be back where we started.
I don’t want to make it sound like this sort of thing happened everyday. It did not. But it did happen often. And like all distributed behaviours, there were more frequent but seemingly less recallable episodes smattered between massive arguments, occasionally punctuated by physical acts of aggression (on my mum’s part I might add, never did I see my father once lift a hand to my mother. Not ever). For a long time, this fragile sea of uncertainty, of egg shell walking was just normal family life in just another red brick house in suburban Melbourne.
It’s not my intention in writing this blog to select out stories that vilify a particular individual. The recollections and memories that I am documenting are my best attempts to move memories of childhood experiences to a place where I can see them on paper, where transparency and clarity are a priority. There is much more volatility to discuss, but for now this is enough.
What gets written is, to the best of my memory, my lived truth. And that’s all that counts.
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