The big secret

27th January, 2004

Her comment has often crossed my mind in the intervening years and I have thought more about her side of the family. I could give you all sorts of small insights into relations that stand in the shadows and on the sidelines of our little unit, but not with regards to my mother. Five or six years ago now, well before any of us knew she was ill, I had sat down in her living room, pencil and notepad at the ready, to take down as many notes as I could in order to start compiling our family tree. She was, as usual, very vague on the subject. In fact even with some coaxing the only new facts that I came away with were my grandfather's Christian name and that we might, just possibly, have a relation who emigrated to New York and became a nun. I'm a little embarrassed now to admit my naivete over the years because in retrospect it should have been blatantly obvious all along that the sheer lack of family detail and little anecdotes smacked of a big cover up.

It's funny how life works out. Had she not made that one comment, doing a family tree may have remained only a vague thought at the back of my mind, one of the many small projects that good intentions lead us to file away for some undetermined point in the future. If I not had a stroke I would have had other things to fill my time and the idea of undertaking research would have faded in priority. Instead, that one comment piqued my interest and time is now something that I have by the bucket load.

At the end of last year I took the very first step by making the simple decision to send off for her birth certificate. This at least would give me the full names of my grandparents to be getting on with. To my surprise the records office came back with just one possible match but the name of the mother noted in their register was not the one I had been told all my life. It was, however, one that was familiar to me. I phoned to check if there were other possible matches but I was told that where the records do not match the information given, they will offer up all possibilities before issuing a copy certificate. In this case there was only one entry. The truth was confirmed when the full certificate landed on my doorstep. The person that I always knew as my aunt was in fact my grandmother and it is obvious from the birth certificate that she was an unmarried mother.

It has been, and still is, hard to know how I feel about this. Part of me understands completely why an unmarried mother in the 1920s would place her child in the care of her own parents to raise. I understand my mother's need to hide her beginnings because as a child of another era she was ashamed of the 'bastard' label that would have automatically been applied. The bare bones of a childhood were the only facts my brother and I were offered when we asked about her past. Now I know why. As I had hoped, discovering 'the big secret' has enabled me in some ways to better understand the person she was and the sometimes curious and hurtful way she reacted to certain situations.

All of this I understand and accept but there is a whole gamut of emotions emerging too that I am having greater difficulty in dealing with. I'm angry and frustrated and at the risk of sounding totally self indulgent, I feel betrayed, not just by my mother but also by my real grandmother. A relatively short physical distance separated my brother and I from our grandmother yet it might as well have been half the globe because we only met her once in her life. With the knowledge I have now I have tried to think back how she reacted to us when she came to visit on that one occasion, and how she and my mother interacted, but I was simply too young to retain those memories. In retrospect I'm left feeling a little uncomfortable about this meeting now - that we were wheeled out like prized possessions to be shared and gawped at for a day or two and then placed back in the safety of the trophy cabinet.

There was a period for us in the 1980s when the world had moved on sufficiently far for this 'big secret' simply not to matter any more. The issue of unmarried mothers was no longer an 'issue' but had become the norm in our modern world. All of those in our family who might have been hurt by the truth had passed away, my brother and I were both liberal minded adults and more importantly there was another generation to consider - I had children. My attitude to relatives was shaped by my parents and it's clear to me now why I was not encouraged to meet relations on either my mother or father's side. I'm angry then that there was actually a time when four generations of our family could have been together and healed the past. I feel that not only would this have been a healthy example for my daughters to carry forward into the future but it would also have left us with some very precious memories. Instead, through lack of communication, the relationship between us all by this point had been reduced to virtually nothing. I remember the day I heard the news that my supposed 'aunt' (in reality my grandmother) died. I was at my mother's house when she received the letter informing her. There were no tears. She read it out with virtually no emotion in her voice. I moved forward to hug her in comfort but my embrace was met the same way it was the only other time I had tried to do this as an adult - no reciprocation and no warmth, as though such physical gestures were of an alien world. She went over to the mainland to attend the funeral alone and my 'aunt' was barely mentioned ever again.

I'm frustrated at myself that I didn't figure out long, long ago that something very odd was happening. When I think of it though I suppose I was always brought up to unquestioningly believe and accept what my parents said. Ironically, for us as children telling the truth was of paramount importance. To tell a lie, or even try to conceal the truth, especially to Mother, was the ultimate sin. I suppose I mistakenly assumed it was a deal that worked both ways. My childhood indoctrination has left me virtually unable to tell lies and I tend to apply my standards to others, becoming terribly hurt when others show themselves to be false or dishonest. In fact I find dishonesty almost impossible to forgive. To be let down like this by my own mother is something I'm therefore having difficulty in accepting. As with all other people who have lied to me, I now doubt everything she told me, so that even the bare bones of her childhood as relayed to me are now called into question.

This big secret - this big lie - has taken away part of the blueprint of who I am. I can't ask my grandmother about my grandfather. I carry his genetic material but that part of me, and my children, and their children onwards will have to remain an unknown factor. I can't ask my mother what she knew because she made the decision to carry what information she may have had to her death. Even my father doesn't escape my current feelings of turmoil over this. About two years ago I told him I was unhappy about my sketchy knowledge of my mother's side of the family and asked him to tell me all he knew. I got the impression from his wishy washy 'non-answer' that I probably knew more than he did. This leaves me with the uncomfortable feeling that he was either well aware of 'the big secret' and prepared to perpetuate the lifetime of lying or that he actually knew very little about his own wife. Either way he doesn't exactly come up smelling of roses.

Then there is the final niggling question: why did my mother make that statement, just two weeks before she died? One thing she often triumphantly claimed was that she knew me she so well. If she did then she would know for sure how those few words would strike me so significantly and ultimately set me on this uncomfortable path of discovery after her death. How ever much my logic reminds me of all the initial reasons for such a lie, a lie it remains and lies inevitably carry with them a price. This is all rather raw right now. I'll chew it all over in my mind for some time to come until it has been reduced down to manageable chunks and no longer seems of such gravity. The lasting impression though will never escape me: a confirmation that in reality my mother really didn't know me at all. The person sitting here would have welcomed honesty and cherished the opportunity to be part of healing old wounds and bridging the great chasms that existed between mothers and daughters of the old generation and the new.

Since this journal importantly for me plots my recovery back to health, I make no apology for finishing on the more mundane. I'm working my way out of my disabilities, I really am. In the last couple of weeks I have started to try walking a few steps without placing my stick on the ground - effectively walking unaided therefore. I'm not doing too badly. My walking style at the moment is like a toddler's in that it's a little stiff and rocks slightly from hip to hip. Like a toddler, however, I imagine that practise will provide a greater elegance and fluidity to the movement. I still can't tackle stairs, which is annoying. Partly this is because our stairs to the first floor are narrow and steep so they were actually a little scary even before I had my stroke - in other words they don't encourage one to practise. I'm not quite sure how we'll tackle this obstacle but we will.