8. Traumas

There followed a decade in which I wasn’t much aware of anything happening that was not part of mundane reality – except for little things like knowing, when the phone rang, who would be on the other end when I answered; or getting a sort of idle daydream about someone coming to visit unexpectedly and then, a little while later, they’d turn up. But the other Holmeses girlses sometimes mentioned those kinds of experiences too – particularly the phone thing – as inexplicable and mildly strange but only of passing interest. There was an unspoken mutual agreement to place them just within the bounds of normality, even if mysterious.

Perhaps it’s just as well there was nothing stranger to worry about. I had more than enough to cope with in ordinary life! 

The Wicked Stepmother 

(as I have called her ever since)

When I was 15 and my brother 11, my parents divorced. My brother and I were completely shocked. I think many of their friends were too; they had appeared happy and well-suited. I found out a lot later about the trials behind the scenes – particularly for Mum, due to Dad's serial infidelities. (‘If only he hadn't always felt obliged to confess!’ she once wailed ... but not until I was an adult myself.) Both remarried immediately: Mum in new love; Dad on the rebound, and for practical reasons, to a rich widow he’d only just met. Dad was granted custody of us during school term; we went to Mum in school holidays. One of the problems with that was that Dad’s new wife lived in a different State, in flat, dry, inland country.  (That was one of the practical reasons; he wanted to get out of Tasmania, where everyone knew his marital history.)  For most of the year we were taken away from everything we knew, including the town and landscape we loved, the extended family we’d grown up with, and all our school friends. An even worse problem was that our stepmother turned out to be alcoholic, abusive to us, mentally castrating of our dad, and I think quite mad. Our 21-year-old step-brother, suddenly presented with a replacement father and an unknown new sister and brother, was cold and nasty too.

I did, however, get a step-sister only 18 months older than me, who became my great friend and ally. (She hated her mother.) In fact our relationship continued long afterwards, and we always regarded each other as sisters. Without her, life in the new place – I can’t call it a home – would have been hellish indeed. However, she wasn't there all the time; she attended a finishing school in Melbourne. My little brother didn’t even have that buffer. For much of my life I felt deep-seated guilt that I hadn’t been able to protect him better – until, as an adult, he pointed out that I was only 15 at the time, and he knew that I was bullied too. 

Our stepfather, by contrast, was wonderful. We had great holidays with him and Mum! I didn’t tell them what was happening the rest of the time because I thought that, as the court had fixed the custody arrangements, there was nothing to be done about it. I didn’t want to worry them to no purpose, and in any case part of my survival was to wipe my mind of all the horror during the time of reprieve when I was in that happy place – which I did experience as a home. I found out years later that my brother was telling them as hard as he could, but because I was saying nothing, and when they asked I went all vague, they thought he must have been exaggerating. No-one could believe that our dad, who had always been a lovely father, would allow us to be seriously ill-treated. No-one had ever realised just how weak a man he really was. 

However, after two years we got away. I finished High School and enrolled in university in Melbourne. By that time Dad had finally realised Denis couldn’t possibly stay longer in that environment. He arranged for him to come to Melbourne too and both of us to board with our aunt and uncle in Pascoe Vale. Thank God! Uncle Tommy, Dad’s youngest brother, was always the favourite uncle for all his nieces and nephews, and Aunty Ev became my second mum forever after.

University was OK. I was shy, the daily commute took a long time, and as a student I didn’t have much time or money for teenage fun. Nevertheless, I enjoyed the studies and the campus. After the first year, I moved to a women’s hostel in town which was much closer, and later again to a house closer still, which I shared with a couple of other young women I’d met at the hostel.

My stepsister Merrie was already living permanently in Melbourne, doing nursing training, and took me under her wing. (We used to refer to each other as sisters, not stepsisters, and got some amusement out of people’s surprise that we looked nothing alike. We didn’t enlighten them.)

First Love and Heartbreak

I fell passionately in love at 18 with my distant cousin John who was nine years older, and he with me – entirely unexpectedly for both of us. (We’d known each other since I was seven, but at that point hadn’t seen each other for a few years.) We talked about the possibility of getting married. We weren't close enough cousins for that to be illegal. But he was Roman Catholic. His father eventually said to him (and he told me):

‘You shouldn’t marry Rosemary. It wouldn’t be fair to her. She’s an intellectual and you’re not. You won’t make her happy in the long run. You know we have to marry for life. You can’t afford to make a mistake.’ 

We never saw each other again. (He lived and worked in Queensland by then, but had been on a long leave, visiting family down south.) I was broken-hearted, and resented his father for a long time afterwards – but in time I came to realise he was right.

John didn’t marry until many years later. From all I heard on the family grapevine, it was a very happy marriage.

Moving on

I didn’t know what job I wanted. I went to uni to study Literature and Philosophy, not to fit myself for employment. I knew I didn’t want to be a teacher, a nurse or a secretary – the main options for women in those days, besides housewife. I had thought of maybe becoming a psychologist, but Psych 1 at Uni cured me of that. What we were taught in the sociological component I found offensive; the way it was presented seemed to me to endorse the class distinctions it described. Also the Statistics component was compulsory – and I was hopeless at Maths! I managed to pass the subject, by dint of a lot of grimly determined rote learning of the Stats, but Psychology went from being one of my projected Majors to being included in my degree only as a ‘single subject’. I switched it for the Philosophy Major, but Phil and Eng Lit didn’t fit me for much besides an academic career. I had chosen not to do an Honours course, which would have taken me an extra year, and I didn’t think my marks would be good enough for me to become an academic – even if I had wanted to, which I didn’t. My thinking at the time was that I wanted to get out and experience Life at last, not enter an ivory tower!

Mum kept saying, 

‘I think you’d make a lovely librarian.’ 

In the end, because I couldn’t think of anything else, after I finished my degree I enrolled in Library School, which was held at the State Library of Victoria. (Librarianship was not yet a university course, though it became one soon afterwards.)

Mum was quite right! I very much enjoyed working in libraries, was good at it, and over the next few years I had a fairly rapid rise in the profession. I was a cataloguer, which I loved – and I eventually helped introduce computer cataloguing into municipal libraries, thereby putting myself and others like me out of that job, as it all became centrally organised for the whole country. 

I started in a suburban children’s library, transferred to the adult library when that position became vacant, eventually became Deputy Librarian, and later moved to be head cataloguer in a ‘special’ i.e. scientific library at the State Electricity Commission headquarters in the city.

During much of this time I was nursing my broken heart, which it took me many months to get over – but in time I began going to town hall dances with a friend on Saturday nights. There were traditional ballroom dances, but it was also still the rock’n’roll era.

This is not one of my best poems, but I like it for what I caught of that time:

Generational Adolescence

 

I was just fifteen

when everything changed –

when freer children,

who were allowed to go

to movies like that,

leaped up and jived in the aisles

to Rock Around the Clock,

even – or especially –

in staid country towns

around regional Australia.

 

I was still fifteen

when Elvis arrived.

Handsome as the devil;

voice of an angel.

The mothers and fathers hated

his slim gyrating hips. 

We loved the tilt of his lips,

the wicked light 

in his laughing eyes,

and the singing, the songs, the beat.

 

At seventeen 

I moved to Melbourne.

Every Saturday night

there was a Town Hall dance.

Hawthorn, Caulfield, Albert Park, Box Hill.

Diane Rosewall and I went to them all.

We wore circle skirts, wide belts,

flat ballerina slippers,

and white flouncy petticoats 

hemmed with ropes.

 

We were good middle-class girls.

One night two real-live bodgies

claimed us for a dance.

Oh how those wild boys moved!

swinging us through their legs

and up on their hips.

Oh how we twirled and swirled.

But we must have seemed tame to them.

They thanked us very politely

and went hunting faster girls.

 

Tall lads they were,

in the extreme of fashion:

skinny black pants, long jackets

with shoulder pads and shiny lapels,

their hair slicked back

into lovely ducktails.

Oh how our careful parents

would have disapproved!

That makes anything

more exciting.

 

Or anyone. 

I ended up choosing men

who worked with their bodies,

rode motorbikes, 

knew how to use their fists;

men who swore.

Later I preferred

beards and flowing hair.

I wore long robes. We sat and smoked

in dark coffee lounges, listening to Folk.

 

But that was after the era ended;

the wild boys and girls and the rest

all sang ‘That'll Be the Day,’ 

and cried when Buddy died.

And it doesn't matter where I am,

every time the band 

plays Rock Around the Clock,

I'm up and dancing

and shouting the words

till I drop. Till the broad daylight.

© Rosemary Nissen-Wade 2007

Note: Bodgies (boys) and widgies (girls) were the forerunners of Rockers.

 

 

 

First Marriage and Divorce

I went on dates with some of the young men I met, and had a nice time, but couldn’t get serious about any of them – until finally I met Don, who would become my first husband. 

 

First

 

Hawthorn Town Hall, Saturday night.

The best band, playing hot.

The tune was Mack the Knife.

 

He turned, a suave stranger.

‘May I have this dance?’ 

 

That wicked smile! 

I stepped into his arms

and we began.

 

… Oh, the shark has 

pretty teeth, dear ...

 

 

© Rosemary Nissen-Wade 2002

From my Secret Leopard: New and selected poems 1974-2005.

 

Also in Chronicle 26 Aug 2005.

It was a very brief marriage. He turned out to be a compulsive gambler. It was before poker machines; horse racing was his downfall. I was working by the time we married, and we kept our finances strictly separate. I became very thankful for that. Even so, it was extremely stressful never knowing whether I was going to come home to a house full of brand new furniture or no furniture, depending whether he’d won or lost that day. I’m not exaggerating! 

He wasn’t willing to make any attempt to change.

We loved the same kinds of music. We both enjoyed the theatre. Like me, he was a great reader; he even introduced me to some books I hadn’t yet discovered. He was a champion ballroom dancer with shelves of cups and medals to prove it; I was a poor dancer, but when I danced with him I not only looked good, I felt it. He was a sophisticate who loved wining and dining, and was knowledgeable about both. We had a great time in each other’s company, both before we married and after we separated – just so long as we weren’t actually living together. When he decided to move to Sydney, I saw him off on the train and we both cried uncontrollably. But we knew the marriage was irretrievable.

The legacy is that I have never since gambled, even in the smallest ways.

Nervous Breakdown

While Don and I were still married, and still regarded it as permanent, I had what’s called a nervous breakdown. I suppose the stresses of the marriage contributed, but it’s clear that my parents’ divorce and the two years under the Wicked Stepmother’s roof were the real triggers.

I started having bizarre experiences. Experiences? Perhaps moments is a more accurate word. I was on a tram, and suddenly the face of the stranger sitting opposite broke into pieces and reassembled itself all over the place, like a Picasso painting. Or the chirp of a bird overhead formed a word, like a specific message for me. 

I knew these things were hallucinations, even though I seemed to see and hear them physically. So I figured I wasn’t mad, otherwise I would have thought them real – but I must not be quite sane either.

At a party Don and I held in our home, one of a number (he was a convivial host and I was happy to entertain with him), after a few drinks I suddenly found myself shrieking that I hated my father and wanted to kill him – which astonished me as well as everyone else; I had not previously been conscious of such extreme thoughts (my conscious hatred had all been for the Wicked Stepmother). I was unable to stop. It broke up the party! I had to be sedated and put to bed.

My doctor referred me to a psychiatrist.

I was so lucky! I learned later that there's an awful lot of bad psychiatrists around. Some, for instance, are basically just pill-pushers. I got one who was excellent. He put me into group therapy, which was his preferred method of working with those patients it suited, for two reasons. He explained that (a) it was cheaper for the patients, but he still got the fee he needed to earn for that expenditure of time, and (b) ‘If one person tells you you’re being paranoid, it’s easy to dismiss it, but when a whole group of people tells you you’re being paranoid, you’re more likely to listen.’

I spent six years in therapy. I’ve always been thankful. I think it was vital.

During that time, Don and I separated and divorced. I was 25 when I married my second husband, Bill Nissen, whom I stayed with, for the most part happily, for 27 years. By the time I left therapy, Bill and I had two sons and also a foster-son.

It was my decision to leave; my psychiatrist felt I could have benefited from longer, but evidently didn’t think I was too crazy to be let loose on the community without the weekly sessions. In fact, he didn’t think I was crazy at all, albeit dealing with disturbing stuff from my past. I wonder what he would have made of my more paranormal childhood experiences? I don’t think he would have considered them part of reality! But during that time they never arose for discussion.

Note: This stage of my life had little to do with the focus of this memoir. Obviously I can’t ignore it entirely; it would leave too big a gap. I’ve skated over it as quickly as possible, compressing it into this one chapter and leaving out many details.