One thing I am absolutely certain of, is that when you are six years old or around that age, summers seem to last forever and it is always sunny.
I can barely remember any storm clouds in the sky as a child, apart from the nights my dad would take my sister and I to watch the storms off the beach, and it never rained. Every day was endless sunshine, summer holidays did not last for 2 months, they lasted years! Those years were spent running up and down my street with my best friend Gabby, my first and only friend made in Kindergarten and still one of my best friends to this day. We all ran wild in our street, playing stupid games, buying lollies with our saved up $5 pocket money for the week (big deal back then!) and only returning home when it was absolutely pitch black and you knew it was dinner time. I hardly even remember watching any sort of television, apart from my earlier days with my mum, watching Playschool, Art Attack, reruns of The Monkees and rather unfortunately, The Bold and The Beautiful.
When we weren't running around our street, we did attend the local Catholic primary school. My memories of that place are quite mixed. The school work was never challenging and the first week was always spent colouring in a title page or learning some ridiculous song. I kind of loved it there and will admit I also quite liked reading scripture and knowing things. I've always loved knowing things, but I was quite the little show off, which my sister hated, being two years above me at the same school. I did earn the nickname 'Teacher's Pet' for a reason, I always did sit up the straightest, which seemed to my peers to be a sign of a suck up. Probably true.
Segregation in the playground was an unspoken, but very important social rule. Big kids (Years 3 and above) got to play in the upper playground and the rest of us had to stay behind the path which separated the two. Having a sister two years above me, whenever I got lonely I did seek her out, always anxious about being dobbed in by someone to a teacher. I shouldn't have bothered though, big kids did not want their little siblings to be hanging around with them and their friends. That put me off quite a bit. Sisters can be so cruel. It didn't matter much, I had Gabby to play ridiculous hand games with, some kid was always getting "married" behind the cricket nets and later we had hand ball, which we were all highly competitive about. Some people just could not accept that they had to go down to Duns!
Apart from all the fond memories I have of the place, I did get bullied and I certainly hated one particular aspect of the school and that was sport. I've hated sport my whole life, even now the thought of standing in a line and knowing you're going to be picked last fills me with dread, or having to go to an athletics carnival (shudder). I was always picked last. I hated sport, I was never good at it, I'm never going to be good at it and with the Olympics on at the moment, I'm not going to waste any time going on about the subject. Sport is dreadful.
Perhaps the oddest part of trying to write out my memories and experiences between the years 1997-2003, is that I can barely remember them as well as I can other, probably more important, years of my life. They're my very own forgotten years and I had to think about them seriously for a long time before some wispy memories came through. The only things I remember, apart from school and playing in my street, was the fact my mum doesn't really frequent these years too much in my head. I feel very guilty now for somehow forgetting her without knowing, because it wasn't like growing up with separated parents, it was as if her entire existence had been erased because I had forgotten her in some way. She was certainly never spoken about and none of my childhood friends ever asked about her. I do remember my sister was gone for some months because she wanted to be with her, only to return back to my dad and I, with my mum dropping her off and then leaving again. I don't even think I really missed her until I had her back again properly.
In the years 2000 until 2003 I gained a younger half-sister Gabrielle, who I barely know, a stepfather and an ex-stepfather and I lost a grandmother. I had quite a bad bicycle accident, having been flipped over my handle bars, which ended with me sliding across the concrete on my face (it hurt). Photos of me at the Sydney Olympic Games show the damage, since half my face was covered in bruises, scabs and cuts and I had quite a magnificent black eye. I made my Holy Communion and my Confirmation with the saint name Therese, so I was and still am, an adult in the eyes of the Catholic Church. I got to see my mother again, properly this time, although it would be quite a few years before we connected properly (it never starts well when they think you're 8 and you're actually 10) but when we did, I went from being my father's daughter into my mother's baby. A late conversion.
The years 1997-2003 are my forgotten years and have been the hardest to write about (having to leave out a few memories), but surely the easiest to read. After all, I did promise I would try not to depress people and I hope I have succeeded. It wasn't bad from what I can remember or from what I have written, but I'll admit that some things are better left kept in our heads, not for the world to read.
No comments:
Post a Comment