First Children's Home - Taken

 I wanted to title this Taken because that's what it felt like but no one would understand that title however I was literally taken. Called back by the head teacher tricked and hustled in the back of a car no explanations no choice.

The home was masquerading under a friendly name it was called Holmlea. A huge old house through gates with newer buildings tagged on throughout like a maze the foyer was impressive and a little forbidding consisting of dark wood paneling and a huge curved staircase. It wasnt a home though it's real name was a reception centre which described it perfectly. Like an airport you were stuck in waiting for what? Help? Love? The thing was you didn't know if or when a plane would arrive or even where the destination would be.

I was one of the youngest at 10 but there were about 45 children ranging from about 8 to 16 years of age.

It becomes apparent very quickly that there is an us and them atmosphere. Most of the children were probably from poor and neglected homes or there by unfortunate circumstances. Everyone of them hated authority in any guise and you quickly learned to keep their loyalties.

To say I was shocked would be a huge understatement I quickly disposed of any personality or characteristics that may make me unpopular and learned that the best way to fit in was to become quiet, to listen, copy and try and take in this strange new world with no parents or

 communication outside of Holmlea.

I never expected to end up somewhere like this whether it was due to overly concern from well meaning neighbours or the school remains unknown but I have to say that my upbringing to that point may have been a little chaotic or different but I was thriving there, easily dealing with classes, dance and happy with support ( a freedom that was free to children in the 60s) and love in abundance. At the point I was taken into care I went backwards and spent the next 8 years trying to figure out who I was how I could succeed and waiting to be 18 and free again.

It's difficult to explain how it felt to be thrust into this world I look back and realise it was institutionalised. You had no personal items no wardrobe no choice. Your clothes were folded on a chair next to the bed in a dormitory and I remember crying quietly at night missing home and my friends. I learned about home made tattoos, hiding cigs, stashing anything away that could be, swopping pocket money with older kids who   then looked out for you and how to forget the outside world and look for interest and love in hidden places like the homes cat in the cellars and her new kittens.

But there were times of closeness to others as I realised most of the children were sad and lonely and hadn't had as many chances is I had. It certainly gave me an insight into people and to this day I can pick up very quickly on a person's feelings.

I could almost write just about this time there is so much but I did experience something that would recur in an unusual way throughout the years. One night I wanted to use the toilet it must have been in the early hours. I was in the old part of the house which was very old and you had to walk across a corridor to a bathroom. As I left the bathroom I felt scared and looked to my right there was a man floating backwards away from me he looked like a cavalier. Wearing a large hat white collar and his face had a small moustache and beard. I ran and hid under my covers I didn't tell anyone but it stayed with me this experience.

The strange thing is over 40 years later I realised that this person in various forms over the years has visited me both in real life and art. He always signifies huge change and I've seen him 4 times. A ghostly apparition? An over active imagination? Im not sure but this person has definitely been a part of my life maybe in the past?but that's another story!

I met an old school friend a few years ago she was aghast and said everyone at school were so upset I was just taken and disappeared from their life it's hard to understand how the courts felt this kind of action could possibly be in the best interest of anyone....I hope times have changed but I'm not be sure they have.

Holmlea wasn't a bad place but it couldn't provide a warmth or love there wasn't anyone to scoop you up and reassure you when it was really needed. the second home was a different feel called Princess Street and this was to become my long term placement for the next 4 years.

The Meeting

It wasn't a doctor I needed it wasn't counselling it wasn't sympathy from well meaning friends or strangers, I needed salvation.

My first meeting was at the Chapel it was a typical uninspiring building a maze of rooms with that same smell that pervades in every church hall a little like the school dinner smell, you know it but its impossible to describe. I sat calm and not smug but confident yes here I am my names Sue I'm here to support my son, still being the perfect mum.

The hall was made over with the literature of the current hire group of the day but pushed in between was the local notices of volunteer and brownie group requests. There is a friendly welcoming atmosphere where I at once felt comfortable.

There is no better feeling for me than being with an alcoholic that is sober. It fills me with a joy that is impossible to describe and I feel like i have come home and am wrapped in a warm blanket of love and that is the feeling I have now sat supporting my son but feeling prior to entering this group lost and with a pain in my throat unable to speak or know how to steer in any direction.

I am the daughter of an alcoholic.

My son started to drink at 15. I almost feel an alcoholic. That must seem a strange thing to say especially to the people that bravely attend the meetings who live with and confront this on a daily basis.

The hole that you have that you try to fill with addiction is the hole that I have from addiction that I cannot fill because I have failed.

I know the emptiness and pain so well I have  lived it, I even tried it myself, I couldn't even manage to do that right either and it all became tangled inside somewhere and for some reason i am destined not to do the same but to walk alongside holding its hand treading the same path, to be tortured by it in a need to try and not only understand and live along it but to know intimately both sides of this journey. Daughter or son mother or father grandmother or grandfather and to feel enough pain to be able to either learn how to help myself and son or to steer and offer some crumb of comfort to others.

I am thankful to have staggered and I do feel I staggered in here and very nearly ran out It gave me a glimpse of the type of courage it must take for an alcoholic to walk into that first meeting. There is no judgement in this room, but there is the chance to be who you are an acceptance of you as you are and hope.

As i leave the meeting I feel numb Its like all the air in my lungs has collapsed I have not found salvation but truth the utter utter truth that I have always known but never accepted because I always thought It was my fault my mum died and if I tried even harder I can save my son but there is no answer I cannot change anything, I am not to blame, I cannot cure him. I am exhausted I cannot see any light.

The years of misery tumble behind me the pain and effort of a fight that was never mine.

I am in awe at the rawness and honesty of the people who have the courage to speak. They are strong even if they do not see it, they speak from a place many will never experience and from the heart . I thank you for your courage and hope that one day I can take heart and still the pain inside that is created by addiction. Thank you for your strength and your story.

Faith, Hope and The Broomfield Academy

                                          @Flickr creo que soy yo

I didn't want to go to another dance school, why would I? I knew about dance it was woven into the fabric of everyday life like a strand of DNA mum had knitted inside me, but the dance of our lives was chaotic, it danced at bus stops and sang at the top of our voices in fields, it bubbled through the television and jumped off the vinyl records in a topsy turvy willy wonka world.

I never liked being in crowds unless I could melt into the wall. This involves either becoming seamless or needed like the dinner lady in the line at school, accepted, quiet, passed over. It's something I perfected and still use today to feel comfortable but I couldn't be unseen in this excitable gang of budding ballerinas, dressed in their pretty pink tights, satin ribboned shoes and high pitched laughter. As mum spoke to the figure at the front I stood as far to the back as possible and waited. The woman at the front commanded your attention and it wasn't through speech. She glided above the floor her body and arms gracefully moving, her head slightly tilted as though she she was about to take flight and as her eyes took in the unruly gaggle the noise suddenly hushed and the girls turned, faced the front  and pressed their feet into the floor their arms dropped and curved into an O shape.
I was fascinated by the way these little dancers moved together, swimming through the music and it completely immersed me, for a while nothing else existed as I became the movement itself one, two, three, one, two, three, one, two, three. A pair of dark eyes looked straight into my soul and I had found my escape from everything.

The Broomfield family themselves were also a richly coloured tapestry and their personalities and zest for life was infectous, each member bright, intriguing and welcoming they were unlike any family I had encountered and it was in this wonderful atmosphere that friendships were formed and laughter and creativity ruled alongside the regal tortoishell cats  that allowed us to inhabit their home alongside them. For a while Mrs B's home itself became our dance studio I remember pushing my foot over the undulations of a thick cream carpet, bookcases becoming a bar and Mrs B sat at the end of the living room hunched over a table laden with papers, she missed nothing and should your arm drop below a certain level she would peer over and correct you, the noise filtered through from the hall as the next class arrived, shoes, tops and coats strewn across the stairs and Fiona shutting out the noise to cook dinner in an environment of creative mayhem.

I didn't become a ballerina I wished I had for Gwen but I formed the core of who I was to become. I learned love, discipline, strength, determination, humility, the thing is I felt cared for and my dreams became her dreams above all I learned not to give up and to be the best person I could be what more could you ask for?

For Mrs B

Its My Party, I'll Cry If I want To

                                          @Flickr daveynin

8 its a big deal, awareness of friendships, important stuff like lovely mums and homes, party dresses  excitement because your friends fight for your attention to be asked to your party, like I said a big deal..

The day itself started with hope and normality. The house cleaned for once and space made for pass the parcel and musical statues  with lots of little toys hidden under the stairs for prizes which I checked constantly in a glee of anticipation. We had sausages on sticks with cheese and pickle and dad had dropped off all types of pies, cakes and goodies from Aunty Edna's bakery.

As the children appeared with parents I sensed an apprehension from them, would their child be allright?  what were the plans? what time should they pick them up? I could see they relaxed as they cast an eye around the house prepared and set for a party, maybe the rumours they had heard were not true but their gestures of nervousness did not go unnoticed and a sliver of  apprehension sat inside my stomach.

Mum never had a problem with any child she had that ability to make every child want to be the one she picked. They clung to her dress and vyed for her attention, shouted her name and jumped up and down hanging on her every word and true to form she rose to the performance.

A few hours of fun and frolicks occurred the children were heady at the lack of formality and structure and for some unknown reason or maybe because it was the only thing she knew we were out of the house and off on an adventure. My party stopped at that very moment in time as I fretted over what the parents would say, what would my friends tell them ? where were we going?

The Conservative Club of Ashton was not a venue most parents would choose for a child's party everyone sat on the benches laughing at the strangeness and excited at a new experience but I sat there in horrror the smell of old alcohol from inside and the humility of  the situation I just wanted the ground to swallow me up, I begged to leave and the day turned sour. As we made our way home she was completely oblivious to any feeling of innapropriatness and the reaction on the parents faces to me said it all, my friends were excited they'd had a great time and left bubbling, laughing and tired a rich epsiode in their minds but for me the worst had yet to come.

I burst into tears I decided to leave and run to dads, a calm, constant oasis about half a mile away in the village but the door was barred by my two friends, mum tied me to the chair with an extension lead and anger and tears and fury coursed through my body as I cried and then fell into silence and stillness (my ultimate weapon and course of protection).

The thing with alcohol is it has no boundaries, it takes no prisoners, it destroys common sense, laughter, security and love and at eight it was a demon I was struggling to cope with.     

Alcohol Legacy

I awake today with an old friend not depression but the carried pain from a life of past occurances. Its a strange feeling to acknowledge the return of something you want to shut away but in some ways there is a comfort in the well trodden path because this usually signifies a pause followed by numbness for a while.

This day though feels different the strength of emotion that screamed last night will I fear not be silenced so easily. As if a huge wormhole appears and flat spins you into the past whoosh......I wonder how to continue when the force was so strong it made my body as paper, and I begin to think the pain is not only necessary but my path to take.

If something recurs throughout your life then shouldn't you listen?
Maybe acceptance and challenge will ease the pain and stop the cycle?

I am sick of being tossed around in the recurring spin cycle of weakness, guilt, recrimination and abject misery of alcolhol addiction that pulls generation after generation through and causes hurt and pain to anyone around you leaving only utter lonliness.

Today I have no more words.I do not want to even think its name.

A Stepford Life

A stepford life is how I live
You take each day for what it is
A dome that fits around your head
You look alive inside your dead
Your eyes they see the film that day
Sometimes you have a part to play
Detached it seems you have become
Where nothing in the world is fun
The most perplexing thing I find
Is people can be so unkind
They know that you have gone away
Lack the words know what to say
It's very easy to say I'm O.K
To pop a pill and sleep all day
If you see me and I'm not there
Make a gesture show you care

Peter Pan Life

Mum was born a sickly child prone to "bilious bouts" prescribed Guinness and dancing classes and took to it like a duck to water.
An older mum when I was born I missed her most productive years when she was a British version of the American musical dream, creating Fame long before it arrived here. With a huge dancing school producing pupils and row upon row of smiling perfect girls in sailor style bows and frills. She enthralled proud mums and promised a new future for their would be Ginger Rodgers and budding Fred Astaire's . Becoming affluent and savvy and full of promise in her late teens by her early twenties she had become disillusioned and craved the pull of the stage.

                                          @Flickr JD Harrock

We skipped along the wooded edge of the field and into "The Skitters" our private woodland playground as it seemed, following my leader , my leader, my leader, following my leader everywhere we go. The tune plays today in my head and I see her flowing auburn hair and hear her laughter dancing in the wind.

She loved Peter Pan and just like a pied piper all the local children followed our trail, raising an arm, or bobbing down or jumping over an unseen obstacle. I'm sure we were viewed as an oddity among the rest of the small town where grown ups were just that whilst we lived in a whimsical, fantasy land full of whatever we wanted to create, songs and dances, pictures and dens or poetry anything was possible.

A puppet like four year old with part of the bed sheets tied in my hair and vermilion dots in my eyes I was pulled along bus, train and taxi "stop here!" we pulled in outside a row of brightly coloured shops with large dummies, lollies and bright toys. I sat in the back as the intrigued driver watched with a bemused look on his face (not his usual cab ride I would have bet) and then she swooshed in with a flat plastic bag and tuts of "It will have to do". It was only as I was placed central to a room full of people that the contents of the package became apparent and I looked in horror at the largest plastic blow up dog I had ever seen and at least twice my size which sat foreboding in the bottom right hand of the stage. With diligence I duly performed  "How much is that doggy in the window"  falling over trying to pick the prop up won the day, I cant remember getting home just mum being happy, me losing all my medals and being surrounded in a whirl of characters that had come to life from the pages of the night time tales mum read to me.      

 And so we floated in protective bubbles keeping out the drab grey everyday existence in a glossy, grease painted make believe world which wasn't to last.