An endangered species?

I have a therapist, unpaid, unintentional. She wants to be a doctor, she is only 16, but on current showing she should be a good one. We have a new project, 15 lycee (grammar school) students have been organised by perhaps, social services, to write the life stories of selected elderly people in these ‘Residences’. We meet weekly. A problem has arisen; her background is so interesting I want to write about HER, the project is to write about ME. She is younger than my first great-grandchild, so there is a four-generation gap. My parents separated when I was 16, her age now. Her father is Russian. His parents divorced, he had a row with HIS father, never resolved, grand-dad died when my girl was 10, never any contact. She does speak to granny by phone; Russia does not do Retirement homes, family are expected to do the caring.

And the therapy? She says many interviewees refuse to speak of their childhood. Some were at the initial meeting. One brought up in East Berlin. Another, mother died when she was a year old, brought up in an orphanage. She is not taking part, claims shame faced with others here, lots of teachers, can see her point, they are apt to be elitist and superior. But I’d like to hear the stories of these two very underprivileged ladies.

We can all talk about ourselves - some of us think we are more interesting??? This exercise is SO different. Varnish the truth? Exaggerate? Sob story? The truth took over. Parents rowing, unhappy. My father’s shouting, could be heard 5 gardens away. I was ashamed; I still hate shouting, people losing control. Watching London burn from our front step during the blitz. Then the village took over. Mr Squelch milking his goats, tethered on the village green. Walking up the lane, leaning over the wooden bridge, the weeds in the stream made horizontal by the current. The perch and gudgeon in the clear water. A ditch in front of our houses, catching minnows and sticklebacks and keeping them in a jar. Catching butterflies, so many varieties then, on next door’s buddleia, putting them in a killing bottle and pinning out on a board. The ‘burrs’ which you picked and threw at your mates, they stuck to everything. A stalk you could hollow and use as a pea-shooter. Life just concertinered. Then, TV, on Tamil Nadu, South India, back there with Mr G, the temples, markets, colours, smell, noise. At the same time reading a book set in Guadeloupe. Trois Rivieres, black sand from volcanic lava. Picnic breakfast with Mr G, so exotic, such experience. My picture is, to me, sad, because late marriages, divorce, early death deprives people of grandparents. I only knew my mother’s mother, Nanna, formidable, my heroine? Army wife, 13 children, 4 died young, her youngest daughter died of cancer at 39. But Nanna and I went down Brixton market, adored horse racing. My mother the antithesis. Can you bridge the generation gap? 

The Gardener

A Moodscope member