Dirty Family Secret

I briefly got to know my then 34 year old uncle when I worked in Ireland in 1986. I was a 19 year old computer science student doing a work term placement overseas (where I instigated & developed the prototype for a very successful automated tax software program, the first of it's kind). Up until that point this particular uncle had been shrouded in mystery and, well, infamy.

In those days, he was labelled retarded. Today, looking at pictures and knowing a lot more of my family history, I recognize that he clearly had what we identify as Fetal Alcohol Syndrome.  So yes, that means that my grandmother drank her way through his pregnancy. I can imagine her now, always with a waterford sherry glass filled on an afternoon and a waterford tumbler with gin and tonic in the evening. She was a champion national golfer and I really need to flush out a wiki page with more information. She has a brief mention here.

In 1952, in a pseudo-upper-middle-class Victorian Cork household, this high functioning level of drinking was perfectly acceptable. In fact, she continued drinking like that until her death in the early 1980s. I had a complicated relationship with her due to the fact that she clearly loved my sister better than me. I wish I had an opportunity to have known her as an adult.

But back to this uncle and his uniqueness. When I spent time with him as a child during brief visits back to Ireland I was astonished and thrilled with his Lego collection.  He was mentally very close to my age so he actually was kind of mean with the Lego. He would only allow me access to a very small portion of his vast collection.  I see now that he was likely retaliating at the limited amount of contact he was allowed with me, his eldest niece. By the time I was 19 we were both allowed free access to each other and I was able to enjoy him 'showing off' his more mature obsessions: taking photographs and stamp collecting. He was a bit of an idiot savant (I see that in hindsight). His cobbled together panoramic pictures were exquisite in their perfection. His thoroughness in documentation of his stamps suggested a commitment to detail that I still admire in others.

But his infamy? Alas, that's where the real story begins. It's one I just recently shared with Daughter and was surprised that I hadn't previously although it really does require a mature mind to understand it.

You see, this uncle was not only a fetal alcohol syndrome victim.  As is common with many FAS children, he was also sexually deviant. However, in the early-mid sixties in Ireland, that was not the label given to him. He was retarded, and, a pervert. So, as a pervert, his contact with my sister and I was severely limited (to the point that when my sister and I spent a summer in Ireland during my early adolescence, he was shipped back to Canada for the entire time).  By the time I was 19 he was very heavily medicated so the situation was 'under control'.

This skeleton in my family's closet cloaked a poisonous veil around sexuality and that was how the topic got raised with Daughter. Narratives around sexuality that are driven by church imposed guidelines are bad enough but when you've got an actual 'pervert' in your family it is quite another matter. I am just beginning to see the effects it had. It has affected my inability to give voice to the difficulties I have faced in my own situation with multiple sclerosis and the effects it has had on my sexuality.

In today's world (in Canada) this uncle would have been identified as FAS fairly early and, ideally, his sexual deviance would have been identified early and given appropriate treatment and support. In early sixties Ireland, his inappropriate advances were responded to with panic and medication and deafening silence. He was isolated from his only nieces and many others. His world was very small. And, at 39 years of age, after over two decades of carcinogenic medication, he was riddled with cancer and died within 6 weeks of first going to the doctor with a pain in his shoulder.

What lessons do I feel my uncle and his sorry tale leave me? Part of me will always feel enormous sorrow for my uncle. A victim of alcoholism and the pharmacological medicalization of his deviances. But, also, I feel his story allows me to start to see the tendrils that skeletons leave scattered throughout a family. His story gives me a deeper understanding of my family's narrative around sexuality. It gives me a personal understanding of my grandmother's plight as a woman blazing new trails in golf clubs in Ireland (and elsewhere) with a sorry state of affairs back home. And, at the heart of it, his story gives me a nugget of courage to start to tell my own tale. Watch for more, in this space.

Shattered Family Ties

Daughter is home today after 22 days with Mother. September 1st is move in day at her university.  I have exactly one month left of her at home.

I continue to sift, sort, trash, recycle and gift the possessions in my house.

Yesterday I opened a package that Mother has yet to bring back with her to Newfoundland.  It was the below picture, in a frame.

I held the picture for a good few minutes.  This woman has been dead for nearly twenty years.  She is my aunt by marriage.  She married Mother's 3rd brother and they were the only extended family that we had in Canada and we spent a little bit of time with them throughout my childhood.  Sister and I were flower girls in their wedding.  They came to the big life events of good catholic households:  first communion, confirmation, wedding, etc.  This particular uncle was legendary in the family since he started smoking by eight years of age and started charging interest to his older siblings for loans at about the same time.  He is now a senior banker and has resided mostly in South and Latin American countries since shortly after his wife passed on, suddenly.  He quit smoking years ago and used to run marathons with XHusband.  I believe he still runs.

I thought about how I'd love to have known this woman, my aunt, throughout my adult life.  She passed away before I was comfortably esconced in adulthood - I was merely 25 years of age and living in a town about 2 hours from where she lived.  My memories of her are of a woman that had a fabulous sense of humour and a wry take on life.  I believe I would have enjoyed her immensely if I had been given the chance to live closer to her as I raised Daughter.

And then it hit me.  The loss of this woman was preceded by the loss of another woman that I was not given a chance to get to know, even in childhood.  The loss of my maternal grandmother.  I was shattered.  I was gripping the frame and choking back tears.  The loss of these two women left an enormous gap in my family structure and the subsequent decades of dysfunction - which show no sign of abatement - seemed to mirror their deaths.

My aunt, just before she died, suddenly, in 1992.

It struck me how the glue that holds families together seems to exist in the maternal bonds.

Mother was a young adult in a different country when her mother passed away.  A country that was extremely expensive to get to or from relative to the inexpensive costs of travel today.  My maternal grandfather did his best to keep the family relationships alive and together (with a healthy dose of solid dysfunction added) but after his death in 1996 the shreds of familial connections started to fray. At this point in my life I feel very little connection to the sixteen younger (living) maternal cousins and various and sundry second cousins that are still springing forth due to the fact that I am the eldest and the youngest cousins are still toddlers (I have two uncles that reproduced as seniors).  There are a couple of exceptions to this but living in a far away country makes it difficult to maintain any sort of intimacy.

Daughter, at seventeen, willingly chose to spend 22 days with Mother.  Would I have done the same at her age?  I was not given the choice since both grandmothers were dead at that point in my life. I do know though, that most of my entire life I have felt like a buoy that is not anchored.  Yesterday was the first inkling I had that the anchor I missed having was real and not just a product of years of reading self help books that described dysfunction in detail but rarely beyond the immediate family.  My maternal grandmother was an anchor that kept my maternal family afloat and her tragic loss before her family had grown left a gap that still reverbrates. And the loss of my aunt did the same - shattering the one meager extended family relationship I had on the new turf her, my uncle, and my parents chose as home.

And today, having found and named the lost anchor I feel I have actually sealed the cracks in my foundation. Mother is writing a memoir about her mother.  I eagerly await getting to know my lost anchor and feel enormous gratitude that Mother's anchoring presence is still in my life.

Darwin's Penetrative Force

"OMG, I allowed that man to orgasm in me. Without protection!  I wantonly willed it!"  My (68 yo) mother and I (45 yo) shared these thoughts together, yesterday on the phone.  We have both marvelled at the wonders of the biological clock over the years and at the choices we made when our own clocks were a buzzing.

"that man" is my XHusband (and "that man" for my mum is my Dad, her XHusband).

My mother, the slut (sarcasm alert), conceived me before an actual wedding date was set.  So my very being necessitated a hasty marriage to my Dad.  A marriage that was prompted by a cleverly planned emigration from Ireland (so no one was told of my conception).

This forced-marriage-emigration ploy by my parents was followed by a turbulent 15 year marriage.  An emigration to Canada (wtf? why not somewhere warm and kewl, like Australia or exotic like South Africa?).  All of which was finally sorted, for me, in my thirties (yup, it took me twenty years...longer than their feckin' marriage).

XHusband and I were married nearly 3 years when our first child was conceived (I was 26, he was 27 and this was the early 90s, so quaint).  The child that miscarried.  He impregnated me with Daughter a few months after that miscarriage but also started his dating life with his current wife.  I was very needy after that miscarriage.  I know he tried.  But he wasn't in it for the long haul and today, after 17+ yrs, I have to admit that I wasn't in it for the long haul for the right reasons either. BTW, it is only hindsight that allows me to admit this.

XHusband texted Daughter this week asking if she needed the money he had for her upcoming university gig.  He, a 46 yo grown man, texted his 17 yo daughter and asked her if he was allowed to use her university money for house renovations.  The house renovations that involve eliminating a bed in his house for her. A renovation that leaves her homeless if her other parent, moi, chose to do the same.

And today, all I can think of is:  A mother's instinct never fails.

Daughter needs protection from this imbecile I allowed to impregnate me.  And so, I will.  Continue to.


In whatever way I am able.  Just like my Mum has done for me.  


And I'm the first one to admit that I'm not perfect and I'm not enough.  But it's all we got.

Time is an invention

The concept of daylight savings time has always hurt my head.  The fact that only some locales observe it, even within countries, makes it especially ache.  As a child I noted the difference since sometimes Mom and Dad came home from work in the daylight.  I also noted that at times, I would have to go to bed in the daylight (no fair!).  We are told that the spring forward time change leads to an increase in accidents due to people being tired.  We are also told that the extra hour in the fall soon wears off and people go back to their sleep deprived ways, pronto.  These factoids, and the knowledge that most of the world no longer observes daylight savings time, do little to alleviate my head hurting.

I took off my wristwatch in 1996.  I was 29 years old and there were no pocket sized consumer cell phones back then that would allow you to tell the time immediately.  The circumstances under which I made this decision was a total frustration at the lack of time keeping by my Irish family whom I was staying with whilst on a summer vacation.  Time seemed to have no meaning in Ireland back then.  I have not been back to Ireland in awhile so I do not know if the digital age has changed this cultural norm.

Later that same year, when I was back for a second trip to help bury my grandfather, I recall this same uncle pointing to a train pulling into the Cork city train station and saying "That'd be the 10 a.m. train pulling in from Dublin."  My other uncle, long before deviated from his Irish roots by emmigrating to another country, looked at his wrist watch and pointed at it to my mum and I.  It was past 11 a.m..  I knew right then and there that I had made a good decision.  The man was seriously stressed by the lack of respect given to his wrist watch by the Cork train company.  To me, it was a moment that vindicated my decision.

Humans need structure.  But we must balance that with spontaneity in order for our creative bursts to see daylight.  I wonder if by taking off that wrist watch, long ago, I was publicly declaring my allegiance to the creative spontaneity I am continuously drawn to.  

Today, having 25 hours with which to ponder these thoughts, I wonder how I may nurture that creative spark a little more without disturbing the minimal structure I have imposed on my life.  The shortening daylight hours make me want to throw structure to the wind and hibernate till spring equinox.  But perhaps this year I might find the balance that has eluded me for years.