we tend to remember our lives in a series of vignettes, incidents and impressions. This is certainly how my childhood is remembered. It is common for adopted people to recall suddenly appearing on a path or a floor, as if they landed from outerspace, and to have very early impressions and images of the new mother figure. In my case my mother was ironing, I stood in a corner watching her. There was no communication going on. The impression which goes with that memory is one of a distant person. There I was, about 6 years old. A thunderstorm was brewing, the sky was dark. My mother, this new mother, stopped ironing for a moment and put a folded note into a small purse and sent me to the shops. I would go up our street, turn left onto the main dividing road, cross the road and go the shops. I made it to the corner of our street when the thunder began. It cracked overhead like a whip and I huddled against a fence, terrified out of wits. A woman came up to me and asked where I lived, I pointed and she led me by the hand back home. We both got caught in the downpour.
Adopted children are sometimes treated as intruders by other family members and relatives, but the way I was treated by mother and grandmother throughout my childhood led me to somehow magically conclude at the age of 12 or 13 that I must be adopted. I was often sent to bed without dinner for things I hadn’t done. I was separated from other children and not allowed to play with them, even my own relatives. I was sent to bed prior to dinner for the slightest reasons. Perhaps this was a way of hiding me, my origins, and the fact she could not have children of her own in the post-war 50’s nuclear family.
My grandmothers attitude toward me was resentful and hostile. She was openly hostile towards me. My mother though exhibited something more like cruelty and child abuse. The cane thrashings left me bleeding and with welts that lasted days. But the punishments for things like bed wetting came straight from secret police training in torture techniques I’m sure. She was a big boned woman like her own mother, and strong. She dragged me by the arm or the hair to the shower, which in those days you stood in the bath to use. She tied my hands on the fixed shower head railing and turned the cold water on. In Sunshine in winter at this time of the morning grass lawns and verges were iced over. It could be as low as 1 or zero degrees. We had an open fireplace that was not lit in the day hours. It was freezing, but worse I gasped for air and the shower was one of those old round types with large radius. She left me in there for 5 or more minutes before undoing the ties.
This punishment ultimately had the effect of terrorising me. It went on for years. I never stopped wetting the bed. As I grew older I would hide under the house to avoid the torture, or at least delay it.
I had a bad flu as a child. I was ignored and not fed. By now they had become alcoholics. I was still sick and weak as Sunday morning come up. I could hear them getting drunker by the minute in the kitchen. Then suddenly my mother burst into the bedroom, steadied herself against the wall, and demanded I get up and do dishes. I was too weak to stand due to sickness and fear and collapsed a couple of times to my knees. They gave me a stool to sit on to do the dishes.
The affects of a childhood like this, neglect and abuse, changes people and makes life as an adult more difficult. We have very advanced brain imaging technologies which can show us where attachment is located, for example. The brain of children from these backgrounds are different, less dense and complex in certain areas, there is a diffculty in developing a good sense of self. Life becomes a battle, a series of battles, often with addiction to alcohol or drugs. Somehow I managed to avoid that.
erasing sunshine 