This series of stories will be titled 'I'm surprised I turned out as well as I did, given my childhood ...' 33

Grandmother kept everything spotless and so did her daughters.

Not my grandmother, but... ooh sometimes...

I’ve already mentioned the conflict between my mother and my grandmother. I suppose that conflict was exacerbated by my grandmother’s opinion of how my mother took care of things.

On the one-hand, my elder aunt was fastidious in her cleanliness and kept her bigger items – sofa for example – for a long time, and on the other hand, my younger aunt was also clean but had new furniture whenever it suited her – usually long before they were worn out.

There is nothing wrong with either way of living, I’m just making the comparison for my story.

My father has never been one for looking to a long-term career. He lurched from one sales job to the next, then pyramid schemes and other get-rich-quick ‘opportunities’ and as a result, we were often living from hand-to-mouth.

Because my father never really had a regular wage, my mother had sometimes three jobs to go to on a regular basis just to make ends meet.

I remember having to go to our next door neighbour to choose which shoes I wanted to go to school in because mine had worn out to the point of no return. I’d worn the soles through, they’d been repaired with cardboard insoles so much that when it was wet, my socks had cardboard soles rather than the shoes having insoles.

For school?

I chose these... and wore the 'borrowed' shoes until those soles became detached too.

Back then, my friends’ dads were all working (usually as miners) and they had clothes whenever they needed them – and often when they didn’t.

I wore hand-me-downs from my cousin across the road – my cousin Paul…

Nothing wrong with hand-me-downs of course, ‘make-do and manage’.

When our situation became so bad, they would invariably go to my grandmother to ask for help. ‘A hand-out’ was what she called it and she never missed the opportunity to let us kids know just how generous she was.

Personally, I don’t think kids should be involved in financial affairs of their parents until they are old enough to understand. They should never be used as pawns in a game of ‘who has the most money’ – especially if that game is between parents and grandparents.

My mother was never good enough in the eyes of my grandmother, I knew that from too early an age and I started calling my grandmother out for it.

She criticised my mother for her lack of housecleaning expertise and called her filthy. My mother was never filthy. The house wasn’t as fastidious as my grandmother’s or either of her daughters, and it wasn’t tidy, but it wasn’t ‘filthy’ as she claimed.

She didn’t like the gobby little granddaughter I was becoming and one Saturday night, when we were at their house because my parents were both working, she threatened to not allow us to stay there again.

Bearing in mind I loved spending time with my grandad, that was a massive punishment.

“Well, I don’t want to come here if you’re going to keep calling my mum filthy,” I said.

My grandad had to talk to me and calm me down and it took him a while as I recall.

I stood up to my grandmother at a young age. That was more than either of her daughters dared to do.

My father had stood up to her a few times. She had wanted him to train to be a hairdresser (sound familiar?) but he didn’t want to, so she made him take a job at the local coalmine.

My other aunt was taken to one of the local factories and she took a job as a sewing machinist. All her children took jobs that she dictated. None were allowed to follow a career they wanted.

No one had had the guts or the nerve or the confidence to tell her ‘No, that’s not what I want to do and so I’m not doing it!’ until me. And that knowledge shook her. She didn’t like it, not one little bit.

My mother was playing in a game that she had no way of ever winning.

They were always poor and so she took on extra jobs. If she had stayed at home to clean and keep the house, she’d have been criticised. Because she worked, she was criticised. Not only for not taking care of the house, but also for not taking care of the children.

At every opportunity, my grandmother pointed out her flaws and inadequacies – to anyone that would listen.

She was still trying to control me even when I was married and I’d had my first child.

Danielle was born on April 3rd 1989.

The date marked my great-grandmother’s birthday. Remember my great-grandma who lived on the bottom row when I was a child, living on the top row?

Dani was born on her birthday, my great-Aunt Rose’s birthday, my cousin Dionne’s and my great-Uncle David’s birthday.

My grandmother phoned after I got home from hospital with Danielle.

“Are you going to name her after my mum?” she said.

To be honest, I’m surprised she asked rather than told me what I was going to name her.

“No,” I said. “I’m naming her Danielle.”

“I think you should name her after my mum,” she said.

“I’m not, I’m naming her Danielle,” I said. “Danielle Kerry.” My cousin Dionne’s middle name was Kerry that was as far as I was prepared to go.

“You should name her after my mum. She was born on my mum’s birthday,” my grandmother said, exerting her Matriarchal privilege.

“She was born on Uncle David’s birthday too, and I’m not calling her David, either,” I said. “I’m not naming my daughter ‘Ethel’ for anyone. It’s not going to happen.”

I don’t think she ever forgave me for that, but she did seem to understand I was beyond her influence and would never bow to her bullying tactics.

The threat of removing my dad from her will kept him in check for as long as I recall and unlike my mother’s mother, who joked that she kept my father’s name on the corner of her will because it was easy to tear the corner off, his mother was deadly serious.

One day I had the opportunity to tell her she could keep her money, I didn’t want any of it, I had my own. That’s not a conversation between grandparents and their grandchildren.

No disrespect to the Ethels of the world, but not for my daughter

I learned a lot about parenting from my parents and grandmother – most of it is ‘How NOT to parent’.