Wandsworth Carers Series 2023: 'My Childhood Memory' by Bernadette

This piece is part of our 2023 Community Writing Series showcasing new writing by the Wandsworth Carers Centre Writers Group, in observance of Carers Rights Day 2023. You can read more about the background to this project in our introduction to this series, find out more about Wandsworth Carers Centre on their website, and find them on Twitter @CarerWandeworth.

 

My Childhood Memory
by Bernadette

 

I remember my first week at my Catholic Boarding High School...

How the fear of leaving my parents, my siblings and my home built up as my drop-off day fastly approached, never had such fear in my ten years of life...

I remember how I was made to cut off my beautiful long hair...

How I watched with ignorance as the hair stylist repeatedly drove her sheers through my head, plucking off my God-given gift...

I remember when the day finally came...

How my heart overweighed my being as we drove pass the extensively lengthy school walls leading to the entrance gates...

I remember having the feeling of being sold away by my parents as they handed me over to the Reverend Sister and drove away...

How my fearful thought of migrating from free to lost became more real...

Being put in their care meant growing up fast, enduring torture, and discovering yourself in hardship...

I remember how the seniors bullied me as a junior...

How they ignored my plea for empathy and allergies from manually cutting wet grass...

I remember how that first week I got home-sick and wrote a letter to my father, asking him to come rescue me and take me home...

How my teared baggy eyes gave me clear insight and acceptance that my father was not going to answer my cry for help...

I remember many more stories of my childhood after that first week at my Catholic Boarding High School...  

How I had to protect my sisters when they were brought in later years to join me in the boarding school life...

I remember that hot sunny afternoon when my mother came to the school gates with tears, feeling empty and lost, to inform my sister and I of how she was forced out of our home and her marriage by my father's family...

How I had to grow up quickly again as a child to care for my mother and my siblings, always sharing my school provisions and teaching my siblings to do the same...

Many stories but a few shared...

Now I've had over forty years of life, I see that my father's rejection to my cry for help was his gift of tough love, to make me stronger to survive the remaining years at the boarding school...

Now I see clearly, that my father's actions helped build my independence, taught me lessons of life and how to face its challenges...

Many years I forgave my father and mother, as is the habit of love to keep conquering many actions...

Through life's waves, I am thankful for courage...