ONLY THE NAMES ARE CHANGED

Teen Pregnancy and A Lost Home

Memoirs 2 — An escape route from incest …

The following preamble to my birth is based on what I heard from a number of different extended family members. The dialogue does reflect the way that I remember each person spoke. The words are not necessarily the words spoken at that time, but they could well have been.

In late fall Bev became pregnant though she didn’t realise it at the time, nor even think about the possibility of becoming pregnant. Her morning sicknesses had made her mother suspicious enough to ask Bev about her menstrual cycles.

“When was your last period?”

When my mother said she hadn’t had her period for more than a month, my grandmother’s suspicions were confirmed. Always the good, dutiful wife, she told her husband about Bev being pregnant.

“What? Bev is pregnant? How could you let that happen? First B and now Bev. What kind of mother are you?”

“I didn’t let it happen.”

“Who is he?”

“I don’t know, probably that boy she was seeing earlier, that French boy.”

“Bev! Get down here immediately!”

She stood meekly before her father.

“You are no longer my daughter. Before this day is done I want you out of this house. You are a whore, a shameless woman fornicating with papist pigs. Now go, get out of my sight. You sicken me!”

My mother, pregnant with me, begged my grandfather to relent, tried promising him anything he wanted, anything, if only he would let her remain a part of the family. She couldn’t imagine not having her mother and her siblings in her life anymore.

Her mother was shocked by my grandfather’s decision even though he had done the same thing with their eldest daughter, B. Bev pack a few things she needed, with help from her mother who promised she would work on her husband and make sure Bev would be able to return home.

My grandmother said my grandfather would change his mind, especially when he saw the baby. If my mother was lucky, the baby would be a boy and my grandfather would be pleased if Bev would name the boy after him.

It was January, 1949 and Bev had lost her family and home.

Of course, I didn’t know this when I was a child. It is not something which gets talked about. It took me a quite a few years of life before I realised I was conceived before my parents were married. It was many years later before I learned my English grandfather had disinherited my mother, even though I was born and given his name as my first name.

Being expelled from her family because of my conception would have been enough of a trauma to affect my mother’s ability to deal with her first pregnancy. It was made even more traumatic by having to deal with the anxiety of not being married, and finding herself in a strange, chaotic world that was to become her replacement home. She grew up in an English home and suddenly she was surrounded by the French language and a completely different culture.

To add to the context of my mother’s situation in life at the time of my conception, I learned later in life that she had been sexually abused by her father, just as her older sister before her had been sexually abused. My English grandfather was not a good man.

There is no question my mother’s own short history would have added an even greater psychological distress to an already extremely stressful situation. Rather than lay blame and stoke the feeling of anger and disgust, I have to tell myself, and to remind you the reader, that the sins against children go back generation upon generation.

And through the generations, everyone becomes both a victim and an abuser. It then becomes the duty of the wounded children to grow up and become conscious, become aware of their roots and their own damaging life scripts, in order to bring an end to the cycle of wounding.

Having almost no choice in the matter, as she was pregnant and had been thrown her out of the family and her home, my mother turned to my father and his family for rescue. Though he was working with his father, Lou was still dependent upon his own family and needed their help in dealing with the crisis.

My father wasn’t yet an independent man with a career, nor did he have the capacity to provide a safe and stable environment for a wife and child-to-be. He needed his own mother and father to take on that responsibility for him.

His parents welcomed Bev into their home already filled with their own children ranging from their eldest child, a young man of nineteen, to a three year old boy. Bev was almost the same age as their eldest daughter, L.

The family made space for Bev and took charge of planning a wedding so the child-to-be would be born in wedlock. In the month of February, 1949, Lou and Bev became husband and wife.

Bev was a young woman in love, and in love with the idea of being in love. This man she had married, though a stranger to her in almost every way conceivable, was her husband. She really didn’t want to be a mother yet, as she was barely out of childhood herself. But if that was what it took, she would become a mother.

Bev knew she was pregnant and what that meant. But somehow, it didn’t seem real. Yet, being pregnant opened the door to a life she was sure would be filled with love. With Lou, in her bed, she didn’t have to worry anymore about her father coming to her bed in the middle of the night. Maybe this baby would be her passport to a life where she could live happily ever after.

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