I began this personal history chapter with the heading, “There Is No One Left,” because it denoted both Mary’s and my circumstances. In The Secret Garden, the protagonist, Mary Lennox, is forgotten in the house she shares with her parents and a multitude of servants. However, after her parents as well as a number of the servants die, everybody else runs away. Mary is the only one left in the house, and experiences feelings of abandonement and desolation at the thought that no one even bothered to look for her. I had similar emotions when my father passed away and my mother, sister, and I were forced to leave our home and move to my mother’s parents’ home in another town.
I extracted words and phrases from the chapter with the same name in the novel, The Secret Garden, and constructed a free verse poem because these words expressed the melancholy gloominess of my life as a young child—which paralells that of Mary’s fictional life experiences. I began this introductory section with the phrase, “It Is so Very Bad” because it symbolises the circumstances I was placed in. In The Secret Garden, these words are uttered by Mary’s mother, imploringly, to the young police officer who brings the news that everyone is dying of cholera in the village. This is all that Mary’s mother could say because she still believed she was untouchable—but she and her husband died a few hours later, leaving Mary all alone to face the world.
In the previous chapter, I explained why I chose to use The Secret Garden as a creative nonfiction devise for composing this thesis. I discussed the research methodology I adopted and shared information about the context in which the study took place. I introduced my research participants, my critical friends, and the contribution they made to my study. I provided a detailed account of
28 “There Is No One Left” (Burnett, 1969, p. 1).
29 “‘You are going to be sent home,’ Basil said to her, ‘at the end of the week. And we’re glad of it.’ ‘I’m glad of it, too,’ answered Mary. ‘Where is home?’” (Burnett, 1969, p. 8).
30 “Is it so very bad? Oh is it?’ Mary heard her say” (Burnett, 1969, p. 3).
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every research practice I used to generate data for my study, and reasons for selecting these practices.
I described the ethical issues that presented themselves during this study and demonstrated how I derived trustworthiness for my research methodology. I highlighted the challenges that confronted me during the study and explained how I overcame them.
Samaras (2011) explained that if I want to get to know and understand myself better, and reflect on my learning, writing about my personal history is one way of examining how my past experiences could have informed my development as a teacher educator. Furthermore, Samaras, Hicks & Berger (2004) suggested that adopting a personal history self-study method would provide me with the opportunity to explore how my life history and my past learning experiences could have played a role in moulding and shaping me into the teacher educator I have become. Hence, in this chapter, I discuss my personal lived experiences from birth through to childhood.
I was born on 1 June, in the mid-1960s, at St Aiden’s hospital in Durban, the first child to my father and mother. Two years later, my parents were blessed with another girl. Sadly, my father suffered a cerebral aneurism and died at the age of 34 years old, leaving my mother a widow at the age of 25.
My sister was just 19 days old, and I was two years old. I believe I was quite a problematic baby—
having been born with a very weak chest, I constantly got chest infections. My mother was always taking me to clinics and doctors and even resorted to spiritual healers in the hope of getting me healed. However, after my father passed on, my mother was emotionally traumatised and I somehow got stronger and healthier on my own. Maybe at such a young age, I could sense that my mother was in no fit state to be caring for a sick child, as well as a new-born baby, without a husband.
During my data-generating process, whilst contemplating how I was going to represent my early childhood, a very sad and alarming realisation dawned on me. I did not have a single photograph or object from my younger years, before school, that I could use as my artefact. On enquiring with my mother and other members of my family, it seemed that no one had anything, not even an item of clothing, photograph, or toy of mine. I did manage to get a very tattered and torn photograph from my mother, but this was from when I was a little older (Figure 3.1).
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Figure 3.1 Only photograph of me as a young child
When I looked at this photograph, the tattered and torn pieces of it were depictive of my childhood.
My life was torn and shattered when my father’s death occurred. My mother took my sister and me and relocated from Durban to Pietermaritzburg because she was literally chased out of her parents- in-law’s home. They felt that she needed to now become her parents’ responsibility because she had two little children, she did not work outside the home, and would become a burden to the family.
Our little family was lost—we did not know where we were going. My mother had no idea what was going to become of us so she returned to her maternal home and was forced to do menial tasks like housekeeping to sustain us because her parents were average income earners. Nevertheless, it was a very significant moment for me to find out that no one ever bothered to take a photograph of me or my sister because we were just two children forced to live with family because of circumstances. Probably, if my father had lived, he would have made the time to take photographs of us.
I felt like Mary Lennox in the novel. I never felt I belonged to anyone or to a family who would take the time to capture important moments of my life. This affected me as an adult when I had my own family. I took videos and photographs all the time and did not know why I had this obsession; but reflecting on this photograph has made me realise I did not want my children to look back one day and feel as I felt when I looked at this photograph.
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