Day 03 – Your parentsMy parents met in the Army. My mum (Gail) was dating a friend of Dad's, and my dad (John), while he actually had the hots for Mum started going out with one of Mum's friends. Then the two friends ran away and eloped together, leaving Mum and Dad in the lurch. Dad moved on pretty quickly, making his intentions known to Mum, but she resisted for a while. Eventually, she gave in to persistence, and after dating for a period of time I'm not sure of, they got engaged.
My parents are very much a classic 'working class made good' story. Dad grew up in Footscray, which, back then, was pretty rough. Dad was the eldest of six kids, with one full brother and five half-siblings. His father divorced his mother and took off and when she remarried, his stepfather would be violent, both to my grandmother and to her children. It wasn't a nurturing environment, and from an early age (he left school at 14, to support his family), Dad took his responsibilities as the eldest son very seriously. He joined the Army at seventeen, and wound up involved in the Borneo-Malysia conflict as well as Vietnam. When he got back, he was involved in recruiting and training and reached the rank of Warrant Officer. He quit the Army when I started high school, and after a number of temporary, feed-the-family type jobs, including selling insurance and bartending at a local pub, he got a position as a personnel manager at an aged care facility. The year my brother and I both left home, he had a nervous breakdown and finally began treatment for Post Traumatic Stress Disorder.
Mum is the eldest of four sisters. She did well in school, but wasn't allowed to go past Year 11 because her father didn't see the point in educating girls. They initially lived in Melbourne, then moved out to the country, the same house I used to visit my grandparents at years later. It was a small hobby farm, rather than a production farm - they raised chickens for eggs and grew their own vegetables and had some cows for milk and meat. Mum grew up a tomboy, like Dad extremely mindful of her responsibilities as eldest child. She joined the Army as a way of getting out of the country, initially in the Transport Corps (the same corps my brother would later join when he enlisted) until she was told women wouldn't be allowed to do anything more than drive VIPs around in cars/jeeps. She switched to Catering, since there was at least more room for promotion, and stayed enlisted until she married. Once my brother and I were old enough, she did her nursing training and worked as a nurse for the next twenty years, before finishing off as a physiotherapist's assistant in the same aged care facility Dad worked at.
Mum was four months pregnant when she got married. She was hugely embarrassed by this and hid in the house and disguised her baby bulge from everyone, to the point that, after I was born, people were surprised she'd been pregnant at all. I was born on Mother's Day, which was good timing on my part, as it earned Mum and Dad a lot of freebie baby stuff which they desperately needed - Army wages didn't factor in wives and children at that stage and times were tough back then. I grew up on stories of orange crate furniture and eating lots of rabbit.
I take after my Dad. We both like to laugh and tell stories, we both have a keen interest in people, and we both have the same tendency towards moodiness and depression. I'm a Daddy's girl, always have been - we've always been on the same wavelength. He can rile me up like no-one else, mostly because he knows my buttons, and when we start on politics, Mum usually winds up kicking us out of the house.
Mum and I haven't always got on, mostly in my high school years when I just utterly confused the hell out of her. As I've gotten older and better at talking to her, we've gotten past that, and she has been a confidante in many situations where I couldn't talk to anyone else. She is strong - one of the strongest women I know - and proud and great at leading. She's the source of my scary organised side and my tendency to take charge when I see people flailing.
Mum and Dad grew up in tough conditions, but they swore not to do the same to their kids. They worked hard to provide for us, made sure we had every opportunity they never had, supported us as much as they could. They went without so we wouldn't, and they pulled themselves up past the limitations that had been placed on them to make more of themselves. For that, I'm bloody proud to be their daughter.
( and the restCollapse )Also, to the blocked phone number who called me on my cell at 5:50 this morning? NOT. IMPRESSED.
deathpixie
nano_wrimo) this year, but I'd like to try and get back to posting regularly. So, a 30 days meme, grabbed from 
jefferyab
sick
accomplished
blah
silly
contemplative
curious