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timmy
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Has no life at all |
Location: UK, in Devon
Registered: February 2003
Messages: 13828
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Yesterday, en route to the hospital, I went to my mother's house. It's an ugly house, suburban London commuterville, and exceptionally bland. It was designed by my godfather, and was the first house he ever designed. I was raised in that house, though it never felt like home.
Yesterday I saw another reason why it was not a home.
I tried to find something, anything, personal to take to the hospital to make her stay there more bearable.
The house has no personal things in it at all. Very few clothes, even. Almost no books, no mementos, nothing that shows that anyone actually lives there. The only ornaments are those we have given her over the years, and we think they are only on display because it would be embarrassing if not.
The garden is neat and tidy, but, when a plant starts to look beautiful she orders the gardener to chop it back. It's plain, and bland, and devoid of personality.
I came out feeling very sad. I visited her in hospital. yes, she is improving, and has decided to live, but it will be a long haul yet. After the visit I walked slowly to my car, feeling like sobbing my heart out.
The house is symptomatic of the sterile environment I was raised in. Everything about my childhood and teenage years was sterile. I'm not sure it was their fault, exactly, but it was, is, strange. It just feels so wrong, somehow. Such an odd way to raise a child.
I had no room of my own. I don't mean I had no privacy, though a closed door was always investigated, especially when I had a friend round to play. I mean that there were three bedrooms. Theirs and two others. I moved like a gypsy from one to the other as aunts came to stay. One preferred the back and the other the front room. I had no priority at all.
You notice I have never said "my mum". She was known as "Mother". "Mum" was a common word, and one she refused to use to her own mother. I never had a mum and dad. I had a mother, and a father. Or I did as soon as calling them "mummy and daddy" seemed too babyish.
Talking to my cousin in the phone he reminded me that they also used unusual words for things. A "willy" was a "whistle". Odd, that. You blow a whistle. We were never so common as to do a poo, or a number 2 (I do hate that one), we "did a motion" after the phrase "bowel movement". We were a prissy family. And that always made me feel the odd one out. I had to learn the real words for things in order not to be thought to be weird at school.
This all flooded back yesterday as I walked to the car and drove home, and made me feel low. I can see very clearly now why I fell into obsessive love with John. He was make believe, except that he was real too. The world I created was one of blissful love, and it was a wonderful, yet horrible escape from the sterility of my upbringing. I so wanted him to take me away from it all and make me know I was loved.
Today I have to work out how to modify her house so she can live in it when she gets out. I was thinking of pink, fluffy wallpaper.
Author of Queer Me! Halfway Between Flying and Crying - the true story of life for a gay boy in the Swinging Sixties in a British all male Public School
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