HERSTORY History

” You’ll never guess who came around today?” Jills mum exclaims!??

‘Gwennie Clements.’

Today, almost 70 years later, Jill shares her memories of my mother.

“Gwen was a lovely person.”

But my anger is still one of my biggest challenges to delete eThe monument of the Queens Hotel, a constant reminder. The hotel where beautiful Gwen played the piano and the place where she fell in love with the publican.

I imagine her fairy tale wedding to my movie star looking father Basil. I cherish the wedding photos. IT is not hard to imagine the bliss. My beautiful Poppy’s arm looped through his beautiful daughters arm as they softly scale the stairs of St Stephens church. A season of joy. But like all seasons, finite.

My arrival and growth was captured in numerous monochrome images, my treasures.

“You were a beautiful baby, ” says Aunt but you were also a handful.

I wonder if that was one of the reasons my mother took off with the publican of the Queens Hotel without me and my brother.

The publican must have loved her and she him for her to leave her home town and her family. Many hearts and relationships snapped as new relationships formed and grew.

The publican had a daughter, the daughter who would call my Mother, Mum.

‘You will take the kids over my dead body!’Dad.

In latter years, Julie shares ‘But I was never YOU.’

Back to the present, the family heritage building where I am scratching around like a chook, straining for every piece of family while there is time.

JILL knew my Mum and Poppy. Joy.

Jill was dumbfounded to know that my mother would desert her children. But I am tired of treading the same old highways and byways of wondering why. Enough to say that I was reunited with my mother and another season of joy returned. I was also honoured to be the daughter at her side as she drew her final breath.

It is interesting how quickly one’s life can take a dramatic turn.

I had never envisaged returning to the home of my birth, the place where my ancestors appeared to be magnetised to. It was the need of a close friend that drew me in.

My heart was strangely warmed with stirrings of memories FAMILY. A symphony of a choir of ghosts. A family torn away at too early an age either through death or circumstance. I became hungry, insatiable.. ‘Is there anyone out there who knew my Mum?

And the desire runs even deeper.

The founding left on the doorstep in the lovely town Melksham in the shire of Wiltshire. Needing to know more.

Maryborough.. This heart longingly cherishes as HOME. And I am not the only one who feels this way.

I have returned HOME to get to know my family while there is time.

Investigative journalism not unlike my ancestor who was a ‘town crier’ in Melksham. Finding out and spreading the news.

I imagine that I would always have been a free spirited creative person but I often wonder what it would have been like to grow up, raised by my own mother and not by a woman who despised me. Hmmm.. Cinderella comes to mind.

And like most fairy tales, I am hoping this one will have a ‘happy ever after.’

Today is Market Day.

We love Market Day.

I shall sit on the Town Hall green, occasionally glancing at the monument of the Queens’ Hotel. Silently thanking Mum for the lesson in forgiveness.The first image is a studio photo my Mum organised before she left for good, an image that my brother and I would have of her.

The second image snapped 13 years later by my aunt shows my Mums joy. This is four generations. A season of bliss. I am 16 with a baby in my arms and one in my belly and I had dyed my hair black. My mother thought I was the most beautiful thing in the world!

But O!!!! The joys that would eventuate from those painful beginnings.

.. and they shall live happily ever after.. my prayer.

Robyne