I made this heading up from words in the novel, The Secret Garden, because it depicted Mary’s trip across the moors the night she arrived. It was also representative of our moving to a new house. By the time my grandfather died, one of my aunts had married and moved to a bigger house of her own. My grandmother was now alone so my aunt and her husband offered that the rest of the family come and live with them. This is a photograph of our new house (Figure 4.6).
110 Figure 4.6 Photograph of the new house
Reflecting on this picture of the new house, which I took on 11 July 2016, I had mixed emotions. I was excited that we had moved into a house where my sister and I had our own room at last. It made me nostalgic because I missed the family togetherness and stories at the old coal stove. My grandmother had to sell all her old furniture because the new home was modern and my aunt and uncle were not having old stuff in their new home. There was no more listening to the radio either because television was now available. It all became so impersonal, with each one of us glued to the television screen and hushing each other because we wanted to hear the words clearly. I felt sad but as a child I soon got over it and our lives became governed by the television set.
I felt very grown up and took such joy in setting up my stuff in the cupboards. My uncle found a new job driving trucks and travelled all over the country so my aunt and granny were in charge of the home. It was a trying time for all of us because we had to pitch in together to make sure everything was running smoothly in the home. My grandmother stayed at home and cooked and cleaned as well as cared for my aunt’s two children, who had just started school, while my aunt was expecting her third child. After school, we had to assist with caring for the children and doing small tasks around the house. We helped with the children’s homework, and bathed and dressed them for bed. When my aunt came home from work, she was extremely exhausted and we had to be very careful to stay quiet and to keep her children from troubling her. This meant we had very little time for ourselves and our homework. My sister was younger than I, and the responsibility was left to
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me to ensure that all the chores were done. My mother had taken a job out of town and lived with a family in Rosetta where she was a private nurse to an elderly woman. She very rarely came home because it was quite a distance away. Therefore, we were basically left to our own devices. I cannot ever remember a time when I was asked whether I had homework or an assignment; it was understood that I went to school and the school work and homework were my problem. If my report at the end of the term was not acceptable, then my mother was telephoned and she would arrive and scold me appropriately, never once asking if all was going well at school.
For me, all was not going well at school. I loved playing music and took up playing the recorder.
This required me to practice the recorder constantly to improve myself. There was no opportunity for me to practise because, by then, my aunt had had her baby who slept in the afternoons so there had to be no noise. When the baby awoke, it was my responsibility to change the nappies and feed the baby a bottle. I would watch all the other children playing and I so much wanted to play on the street with the other neighbourhood children, but I had to lug the baby around on my hip. This is a photograph, which I took in June 2015, of the vacant field in front of the house where I yearned to play with the other neighbourhood children (Figure 4.7).
Figure 4.7 Photograph of the playground in front of the new house
Looking at this photograph made me realise how much of my childhood I really lost whilst babysitting. I had yearned as a young child to join my friends in the sand and grass, and to build sandcastles and camp in the open field. As an adult, I now have the freedom to do all that but,
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obviously, it would never be the same as when I was young. I promised myself that I would allow my own children much freedom to be children and enjoy their childhood. My children are grown adults now, but we still talk about old times and watch videos of them when they were children.
This photograph actually inspired me to watch the old videos and the joy and laughter on my children’s faces as they frolicked in the sand and rolled on the grass brought me such peace. At least I gave my children that opportunity—I never restricted them. They used to come in at night with dirty faces, scraped knees, and filthy hands but I never complained because I wanted them to be children. Unlike me who never really had a childhood.
What stood out in my mind was that there were no disposable nappies and the baby wore a towelling nappy. I was but a child myself, but I had to change the soiled nappies. Sometimes I was too lazy to change the nappy and left the baby with a wet nappy and, because I was carrying the baby on my hip, the nappy gave me a rash on my hip and the baby got an even worse nappy rash. I got many a boxed ear and scolding for being so lazy but all I wanted to do was play like a regular child, not babysit. Here the bleakness of Mary’s initial life on the moor was so like my life that it made me empathise with the anguish she must have been through. This episode in my life was something that I wanted to wipe out forever, but it remained in my memory as a constant reminder of my bleak existence as a young child. I felt the strangeness, loneliness, and absolute devastation Mary felt when she first saw the moor. By the time my aunt came home from work, I would be too exhausted to do my homework or practise playing my recorder. As a result, I was not performing well at school.