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About Me
- Flo:
- I was born in a small Irish village, Co. Galway back in 1963. There were no siblings. My first few years were spent in an Industrial School. My parents were both from 'good stock' as they say. She the youngest daughter of a Catholic farmer, he the oldest son of a Church of Ireland landowner. However, fortunes weren't to favour them-he had a wee bit of alcoholisim, and she had a wee bit of mental illness. He knew he'd not get a scrap of land if they married, but true love and all that. 'Romeo' and 'Juliet' aka Jack and Dympna tied the knot in unholy charmony, and all of our fates were sealed. Wasn't the most ideal upbringing, but it wasn't the worst either. I grew up in the day's of hay turning, butter churning and cow milking on my cousins farms. Even though my father didn't own the land, I still had a strong enough tie to farming life to have loved everything about it. Driving a tractor at full speed past the local sargents house at twelve years old was only a part of the 'juvenile deliquency' us 'culchies' could manage. Bording school, nurse training, motherhood and a bit of writing in the media have brought me to now.
I have very few memories of my own mother and the last time I was with her was 1955 or 56 when she left Ireland, my father and her children, and went to England where she had some kind of a life, though she remained notorious in a small rural area of Ireland until her death in 1980. Within a few months of her re-marriage in England myself and my brother were carted off to an Industrial School.
ReplyDeleteDuring my time in those places the only information I received from the nuns about my mother was that she was dead - basically that I was an orphan - and that my mother was a tramp and no good to anyone. That she was a wicked woman who was burning in the fires of hell where she would remain for eternity. Yes, that's what Irish nuns used to tell children about their mothers in those places. I wasn't unique in this kind of familial denigration because so many children in those places were from broken homes.
Although my mother was buried in August 1980 she actually died a long long time before that - for you see I BELIEVED the nuns - she was eventually dead to me when I was in those places.
The tragedy, to me, is that this denigration of my mother by the nuns prevented me from ever seeking her or her family out until it was too late. The nuns made me feel ashamed of my mother and the community from which I was taken, indeed they made me feel ashamed of myself at time, and this shame has haunted me.
That's so sad Knitter, did she not try to find you and your brother?.Don't feel shame for something you had no control of, why let your future be ruined by your past. I have times when I wish I could turn the clock back and be kinder to my mother - but the reality is, even if it were possible to have my life over again - I'd probably be no different.
ReplyDeleteI blamed her for all the embaressment, shame and humiliation I went through growing up. And for not protecting me from harm or hurt. But it's easy to look back with an adults understanding on the life of a child and say 'I'd do it different now, because I understand'. The child in you has to be allowed free of any shame - and the adult in you has to know that and accept it.