Every horse’s birthday in the Southern Hemisphere is the 1st August. I learned today that in the Northern Hemisphere that date is the 1st January, and the reason is to define the start of the foaling season. So Happy Birthday Rab (the affectionate nickname given to him by his mother and I, due to the way he used to chew on carrots as an infant sitting in one of those cheap $40 IKEA high chairs). I think any parent looks back at their life, the challenges, the joys of bringing a child into the world and trying to set them on a path of confidence, ability, joy and love when their kid turns 18 years. In Australia at least, it is essentially the transition to adulthood. In the ‘olden days’ kids would get their licence at 18, nowadays most are driving before they are 17, although the Y chromosome ensures that their decision making and intellectual functioning are still equivalent to a 5 year old. Although, I might leave that rope unpulled for another post… In Australia, you can legally drink alcohol at 18, go to a casino, place a bet, etc. Are ‘Fake IDs’ still a thing? I have no idea. I hate that I never get asked for ID anymore. Possibly the grey hair, glasses and dad bod that suggests there’s little need.
I might write another post about the joys and challenges of parenting, and some reflections today as my son makes the inevitable leap from child to manhood. But that is not what this post is about. This post is about recording the ongoing theme of family dysfunction that has infiltrated my life. I last had contact with my parents more than two years ago. Possibly three. I rang my dad for Father’s Day. Prior to that I had not had any contact with my parents or siblings for about 12 years. There is a lot to discuss in relation to that, for another day.
On the occasion that I did ring, my dad picked up the phone. He and I had spoken on the phone a few times over the months prior and it seemed that we were slowly building a relationship of sorts again. The calls had been amicable and friendly, though nothing of depth was discussed, especially in relation to the issues that had led to me being estranged from them in the first place. That would have been all too difficult for them to do. Nonetheless, our conversations had been good, I had told dad I missed him and that I was pleased to be back in contact. He had said similarly.
On the day that I rang for Father’s Day, my initial conversation with dad was much as the others had been. My sister and her husband were at their house for an evening meal of roast pork. They have two boys of their own, similar in age to my own kid. After a few minutes talking and covering niceties, dad said that mum wanted to say hello to my son. I hadn’t really had time to prepare for this eventuality since my mother and I had not spoken for over a decade. I put the phone on speaker so that my son could chat with her.
After a brief discussion of how he was, how school was etc, etc the conversation somehow moved to their situation in Melbourne. I was told that they had moved to a brand new two storey house in Brighton, just around the corner from my sister and her husband. This had occurred some 18 months prior, though I was never informed. No text message, no email, no letter. In fact the only reason I was able to still phone them was because the number had been shifted to the new address. Apparently, my sister had ‘encouraged’ my parents to sell their previous single storey home in Dingley (yes the one next door to the water pump) and to put all their money into this new house. Mum made it very clear that my sister had financially assisted this arrangement, which is of course accurate since there is no way my parents could have afforded to relocate to such a suburb without significant financial assistance.
Mum was very happy to tell us how nice the house was, how my sister’s husband was always over mowing their front lawn for them and keeping the place neat and tidy. The bedrooms to the house were upstairs, with one on ground level as I recall. Bare in mind that at this time, my elderly father was in his early 80s and the entire reason for selling was because he had been struggling with mobilisation and upkeep of the single storey house. And so my sister helped them buy a two storey house. With bedrooms upstairs. Dad said on the phone that day, that he could manage getting up and down the stairs once a day to go to bed and return. He had actually had some sort of surgery on his spine in the year or two beforehand, something else I only learned about years afterward.
So what we have here, is a brand hew home in one of Melbourne’s most affluent suburbs, co-purchsed by my CEO sister and her husband with $700k of sales revenue from my parent’s home. This would have represented every cent of their accumulated savings for dad’s lifetime of work. To buy a house that my father had to walk up a flight of stairs each day just to go to bed or have a rest and lie down. If anyone sees this situation as actually caring for your aging parents, and not just a convenient mechanism to purchase an investment property, then please feel free to let me know.
So the phone call continues, and all I hear about is how my sister’s business is doing so extraordinarily well and she is very high up and important. I hear about the kitchen in the new house. I hear about the husband of a close family friend who had been our neighbour when I was growing up in Keysborough had passed away. Another thing I was unworthy of being informed of. When I was growing up, my mother would frequently complain how she couldn’t stand talking to her brother on the telephone because all he talked about was himself. The irony of this is not lost on me. I had not spoken to this woman in over a decade. There was no enquiry as to what had been happening in my life. Was I married? What work was I doing and where? Was I well? Nothing. Zip. Nada. The conversation ended ‘amicably’ though after I hung up from the call I quietly felt broken.
I felt as though my family had really just got on with their lives for the last 10 or 12 years without a care or need to keep me in the loop in any way at all. I felt sorry for my son. I feel sorry for him everyday. I feel riddled with guilt and shame that I have created this distance (both physically and emotionally) between him and his extended family in Melbourne (he and I reside 2600km away on the other side of the country in Perth, which in itself I realised some time back is very telling..). I think I have had that guilt for about 15 years now. It commenced in reponse to a telephone conversation with my mother which ended with me dropping the secret of her adoption, that I had known of for nearly 30 years but had held alone in my mind to protect her. Let’s cover that another time.
My mother rang my phone today and left a message wishing my son a Happy 18th Birthday. I didn’t recognise the number and didn’t answer it (my usual passive-aggressive functioning. I own it.). The message to text conversion dictated the voicemail. I had actually spent the last few days wondering if we would hear from anyone from my family today. At least she made the effort. I tried to ring back two minutes later but was met with voicemail response. They must be so busy. So I left a long, detailed and emotional text response suggesting that my son would be appreciative of hearing from his grandparents today. And that he would probably have appreciated having his extended family involved in his life for the last 13 or more years. I am so angry. I am so utterly devastated. I do not understand how I have carried the guilt and shame, the blame even for this for so many years, and there is absolutely no insight or understanding from anyone else in this family as to what has occurred. It is completely beyond me. I realise now this is why my mind and every aspect of my functioning has been completely f*&ked for as long as I can remember.
I remember the day my then partner (and now one of my few friends) and I informed my parents that we were pregnant. I had been studying overseas for a few years and had not been back in Perth for a year before we met. We fell pregnant unexpectedly and relatively quickly, but I was 36 already and quite cognizant of my age. I had also always wanted to have children. That was never in question. My partner had not actually been to Melbourne at that stage, and she had not met my parents in person. I was excited about becoming a dad, but I was completely terrified by what the response of my mother would be when she was informed of the news. Not my parents, my mother. On some deep level of wishful thinking, I hoped and prayed that she would be happy for us, that she would reflect and realise that I was not getting younger, that I had achieved really an enormous amount already academically considering the relatively middle class upbringing I had had.
It wasn’t to be so. My deepest anxieties about how this would play out were confirmed in full. Talk about positive reinforcement and Pavlov’s dog. So we went to Melbourne for a week. It was very early, and we weren’t ‘showing’ as yet. The week went seemingly well, everyone seemed to get on reasonably well. My anxiety escalated. I built internal dialogues about how mum might actually be accepting and happy with the news. I had no idea how to tell her. So it got to the last day when we were to head to the airport to fly back to Perth. The roadtrip from my parent’s home to the airport is a good 40 minutes. Hold that number in mind. Forty. Minutes.
So we’re just about to get in the car to drive to the airport. Mum’s standing at the kitchen bench at the house in Dingley. Not the one behind the gym, the one next door to the pump. Keep up. Black fake marble benchtops with pale pink cabinetry. I’m on the other side of the bench, dad standing at the other end near the fridge. It’s now or never. “So, we have some umm news”. Gotta keep going. “We are pregnant”. How do you say those words in these circumstances, so that it has less of a glass-shatter impact? Answer – You can’t. The entire tone of the room changes. There is silence. I can feel the anger and animosity brewing inside mum. There’s no smile. No hug. No love. There is only, what even is that? I don’t know what it is. Despise.
“So what was it? An Accident?” gets spat across the kitchen bench at me in return, with as much vile, venomous tone as she could muster. I don’t remember much of what was said or how I responded or what after that. It was possibly one of the most horrific moments of my life. Right there and then, I should have booked us a taxi to go to the airport. Instead we ended up in the car. The anger and disgust emanating from mum’s front seat as we drove was palpable. There was no conversation. I think we just sat there in the back, like teenagers who had done the wrong thing. At the airport, I think there was a brief hug goodbye.
Now, I have no problem with parents responding in whatever way they need to news of this kind. Its a shock. Its unexpected. There’s obviously an element of anger, maybe even grief that what parents expect will evolve in their children’s lives is different from reality. But what has hurt the most is that there has never been any apology. There was never anything said about what was said, or how it was said that day. I am certain that it has never even entered anyone’s mind as to how hurtful and damaging that day was for my partner and I, least of all my mother’s. We were both permanently traumatized and scarred by that event, by the utterly unnecessary and abhorrent words and actions that were forced upon us. We have never forgotten it, we talk about it sometimes. Like today. On our son’s 18th Birthday. A simple apology for the nature of the response because it was a shock and we didn’t know how to react, would have gone a long way.
I’m still waiting.
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