I miss the phone calls

My mother and I had a strange, strained but mainly superficial  relationship , there was an underlying theme that we never explored, the elephant in the room ,

As explanation I was born in 1947 my mother was 17, my father 19 , in comparison to teenagers of the present time they were innocent babes,  neither had a great academic education , they were both from circus families to whom artistic skills were more important than the three R's. They met when my mothers Hungarian  family worked on my Grandfathers  Circus in England . Mother was an acrobat / contortionist and my father was a clown , animal trainer, horse rider , mechanic, ,a true jack of all trades, but this was normal in Circus life . Privately he was something else, nowadays his conduct would be classified as abusive and threatening  but in those days domestic violence was a fact of life,  the difference between a slap round the ear and a punch to the head was negligible.

My details are unimportant for as the 21st century advances we hear stories of child and adult abuse both mental and physical that are heartrending and sickening , we have grown as a society and no longer tolerate such atrocities but back in the '50's enlightenment was still a generation away .

1952 my story took a strange turn , I was 5 years old and was put into the hands of two lovely people in Stourbridge , The Rodens , George and Rosa .    they were friends of my fathers family and at some point my father and his sister Violet were left there to go to school ,  20 years later I was left with them for the same purpose , by this time George had retired from a life working for the railways and both he and Rosa were in their '60's, They were wonderful generous , openhearted  people  but being presented with a precocious 5 year old must have been a poisoned chalice, at the very least I was  a ferrel child with little or no social graces and , I spent the next 5 years going to school and in the holidays a luggage label was put round my neck and I was put on a train to be picked up by various relations on whatever circus /theatre they were in and spent time with them , in retrospect  I don't remember getting Birthday or Xmas card/presents from my parents during that time but that wasn't strange as i didn't know what parents were supposed to do. My memories of those years are at best minimal , I have flashbacks of moments but they comprise of a few snapshots but nothing substantial .

I don't write this to get a sympathetic response but just to explain how it affected my later life and  more importantly my relationships .

From  my 10th  to 15th birthday lots happened to affect me,  my parents were divorced, they both remarried , my mother got custody in the divorce and put me in boarding school , I ran away and ended up with my father but we had a  physical  altercation and I left him to get a job on my own in a small circus owned by a relation .
 In my first 15 years that final decision was the only one I made as an individual , until then every one was taken without my inclusion or involvement .