Immigrants – a beginning
I had a cold the day we disembarked.
I know only two details about the sea journey my mother and I made, decades ago, as we morphed from being Scots into our new identities as Ten Pound Poms.
The first detail is evidenced by photographs. I had my second birthday on board and that was the flashiest party I’ll ever have. I can’t predict birthdays to come, but I suspect ocean liner catering with waiters won’t be a feature. In the photos I’m wearing a hand-knitted jumper and a kilt, of course. My mother was always proud of that jumper, with its fair-isle details.
The second detail, my cold, is backed up only by my mother’s telling of it, over and over again, as her dementia erases more recent memories. I’m told we stood at the ship’s railing, my mother and I, and there was my father waving from the dock. “There he is,” she said.
It had been a year since I last saw my father. He’d gone ahead and settled into his new job in the Australian Navy, responding to the general invitation and generous fare subsidy offered by the government, because this country must ‘populate or perish’.
“There,” said my mother. ““That’s him. Wave to Daddy.”
“Where?” said I, searching, sniffling and wiping my dripping nose on my sleeve. “Where is he?”
Not a very dignified entry to my new life, but here we were, knowing nothing about what our futures held. Was that a mercy? Perhaps.
***
This is my 250 word story for The Unicorn Challenge, hosted by Jenne Gray and C. E. Ayr. I’ve ventured into memoir for the first time here for The Unicorn Challenge, and my first reader (hubby) tells me it works as a stand-alone. Fingers crossed. I am interested in using one’s own experience in writing, and I seem, lately, to want to do this more than I used to. I’ve started, in my reading, to search for books where this has been done well. Getting older? 🤔
Below are some photos relevant to this piece of writing.
Onto the page 
A touching and deeply personal glimpse into the story of your voyage “home”. A very lovely write, Margaret.
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Thanks, Nancy. Perhaps a little self-indulgent this week. ☺️
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Not at all, Margaret! It was lovely reading about your adventures on the New Australia making your way to the Land of Oz! It was a delight to read all the little details that have become such sweet memories for you. Thank you for sharing them with us.
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Beautifully told, Margaret, and yes, definitely works as a stand-alone.
Or as the beginning of an adventure?
The understated way you introduce your mother’s dementia brings added poignancy to the story – my thoughs are with you for that difficult situation.
And the details – a hand-knitted fairisle jumper – hats off to whoever knitted that!
The things that stay in the memory – wiping your nose on your coat sleeve.
Maybe not dignified, but we’ve all done it!
Looking forward to more of your memoir writing.
(And PS Delightful photos!)
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Thank you, Jenne. I wasn’t sure about posting this. If I’d done my usual thing, and left it to ‘stew’ overnight, I know I would have changed my mind, but I went right ahead and posted it, so that’s that. I like reading memoir, sometimes, and I know lots of people do it, but I’ve never really been brave enough. It takes a bit of nerve, to put yourself out there – exposing your private life to readers. I also felt my life wasn’t interesting enough to make it worth writing about. Yes, my mum’s dementia is so difficult to watch. She’s 96, and was fine until three or four years ago, so it’s been a relatively sudden decline, and I think this has made me a bit sentimental and wanting to record things. I don’t know, really. I’m just going with it, and trying to avoid the sentimentality showing in what I’m writing. So thank you for commenting so encouragingly on the understatement. That makes me happy.
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Well, Margaret, you were a wee cutie, weren’t you!
I have found that the more I write, the more I include or interweave (semi-fictitious) personal history.
This piece works very well, I think.
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We’re all a bit cute at two, C.E., but thanks anyway. And thanks for saying the piece is ok. I had my doubts. I’m interested that you’re including more personal history in your writing. I believe everything I write has something of myself or my family in it, but clothed in fiction, as you indicate. I guess we can’t avoid that. But I am becoming very intrigued by how to approach that in a more deliberate way, hence, as I mention in my post, I’ve been trying to find books and articles by writers who do it and talk about it.
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what an excellent (and engaging) tale… the memories we retain over a lifetime, sometimes if seems they are sorted out for a reason from the time they were formed, other times it’s tempting to think they are maintained to provide for a need not.
also! learned something new*. Ten Pound Poms
*always a bonus in this ‘hop…. a did’ja know this?
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I’m happy to have contributed to your learning, Clark. 😊 I guessed the ‘ten pound pom’ nickname would be unfamiliar to non-Australians. I am enjoying revisiting old memories and experiences, and experimenting with how it goes when I put them onto the page, and it’s probably a good writing exercise. With fiction, the story is as new and unknown to the writer, at the start of the process, as it is to a reader, but memoir is a different animal. So the difficulty is to tell it in a meaningful way without boring the socks off your reader by all the explanatory details that you could include if you weren’t strict with yourself. Anyway, I don’t want to bore you with all this detail, so I just say thank you for your lovely comment.
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As someone married to a Ten Pound Pom, I’ve heard the stories and I can relate. And good to see you didn’t turn out a Whingeing Pom but then again Scots don’t do that. 🙂
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No, Scots don’t do that. You’re right. They just pass around the whisky or Drambuie and sing all the old Scottish songs if they feel like whingeing. At least that’s what happened in my family. Not so much now that the decades have passed and succeeding generations have regenerated (like Dr Who) into true blue Aussies. The memories are strong, though, passed down.
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How interesting, Margaret, and more would also be good.
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Sorry for the delay in replying, Chris. Your comment went into spam! Thank you for responding – glad you found it interesting.
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So glad that you fished me out!
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What a delicious memory! And I love the name of the ship. ‘populate or perish’ – it is funny to see how outdated that policy and attitude is today. But back then, I think people truly believed it.
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Thank you so much for that. The memory, or my mother’s version of the memory, is ‘delicious’ to me, so if some flavour of that has come through in this piece, I’m very happy. Yes changing times bring changing values, and changing language.
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I liked this very much. Vivid, and also its blending of present concerns (mom’s dementia) with the fragility of the past, held in the palms of those remembering.
Top notch!
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Oh I do like your ‘top notch’! Thank you for your lovely response, Liz, and all the likes on the other comments above. Your observation about ‘the fragility of the past, held in the palms of those remembering’ is just beautiful. There’s a poem in those words.
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