If, as I am, you’re of a ‘certain age’, there will be albums and boxes of your own and possibly your ancestor’s photographs stowed away in an attic or basement. We often don’t know who the people in those photos are or where a scenic view sits. And that’s a shame, for behind each is a hidden story that will never be told.
Our ancient ancestors did not have such things as photographs to leave behind, therefore they told their tales in pictorials drawn on cave walls or papyrus rolls. They also passed them down verbally, word for word, from one generation to another.
And so, in my way, let me tell you a story…..
Look down….waaaay down on the left side. There I am as the flower girl at my parent’s wedding. I was four years old. At today’s weddings, no one bats an eye if one or more kids escort their parents down the aisle, or a heavily pregnant woman dresses in a beautiful white gown. However, in 1946, unless every guest was a relative or friend and knew the back story, there was a fair amount of eyelid batting goin’ on!
Way back in the “olden days”, my Mum married my Bio Dad. I recall her telling me she was nineteen at the time. She had already been delivered a couple of life’s really nasty hard knocks (I call them IPC’s: Instant Pivotal Crises in my book, “Born to Bounce Back”).
Mum adored her father. Imagine a twelve-year-old daughter, in 1932, having to helplessly watch as cancer consumed her father’s body until he mercifully passed away. At his funeral, a well-meaning person, thinking they were being helpful, admonished her not to cry, saying her father would not want her to be sad. For the rest of her life, this stayed with her and she desperately fought back tears when shedding them would have been a healthy thing to do. As a result, she underwent many physical illnesses, no doubt caused by repressed emotional distress.
When Mum was sixteen years old, her mother needed surgery. Unfortunately, her Mum developed post-surgical pneumonia and died. Mum was left alone in the world as her only sibling, a brother, was in the Navy and would soon be fighting WWII. This was the period of the Great Depression. An aunt and uncle brought her to live with them. Soon thereafter, her uncle died suddenly.
Mum was in High School now and had a boyfriend. She married him when she was nineteen. I came along when she was 21. The marriage was disastrous. He was in the Army but worked in an administration position from home during the war. The marriage ended when he became physically abusive and she reported him to the Army Chaplain. A divorce followed. Mum enrolled in business college, became a stenographer and worked for the Vancouver Sun Newspaper.
Mum met “Dad” at a YMCA dance. She always told me how enamoured he was with me and that he married her to get me as a daughter! Soon after the wedding, Mum approached Bio Dad to sign papers giving up all rights to me, so Dad could legally adopt me. He signed and I had a new Dad. The happy ending is that from when I was four years old and the flower girl at their wedding, I had a Dad who loved me. They gave me a brother and a sister and an upbringing in a family of five.
Any man can be a ‘father’, but it takes a very special man to be a dad’.
Today they rest in peace, no doubt still dancing at the YMCA.
