SCOTLAND ZEN and the art of SOCIAL WORK by J.A. Skinner
Chapter 35
Saturday 7th June
Drugs can relieve symptoms of involuntary movements, depression and mood swings. Speech therapy can help improve speech and swallowing problems. A high-calorie diet can help maintain weight and improve symptoms such as involuntary movement and behavioural problems.
It’s a beautiful morning. The sun is shining and there is a warm breeze stirring the trees. This is more like summer and the high pressure in the atmosphere seems to lift everyone’s spirits. I got through my usual domestic routine in jig time this morning and the children are happily being looked after by Betty for a few hours. When they are settled in her back garden playing I carry on to Mam’s house trying not to let the impending visit bring me down. Mam surprises me by meeting me at her garden gate and saying she fancies a walk in the grotto as it’s such a nice day. She is calm and pleasant which leaves me a bit puzzled, but maybe the sunshine is working miracles here.
We walk into the grotto, and I take my Mother’s arm. We set off on the main path and there are a few Saturday strollers enjoying the warm sunshine and the scent of all the flowers blooming after the overnight rain. We walk along in silence for a few minutes and pass an old woman holding her rosary and muttering to herself, her words joining all the echoes and memories of millions of prayers and hymns sent heavenwards from this place. If prayer was visible there would be an enormous white swirling cloud over Carfin, big enough, like the Great Wall of China, to be visible from Space.
We come to a bench near the statue of Saint Joseph, and Mam leads me to it and we sit down. Mam sits very straight looking ahead but her hands start rubbing and worrying each other in her lap. I don’t why she is getting nervous now and this ‘wee talk’ seems as if it will take a while.
‘Whatever you have to say to me, whatever, please don’t get yourself into a state like this.’ Her lips start to tremble and I want desperately to hug her, but I just know this wouldn’t be the right thing or the right time. I put my hands over her fretting fingers and stare straight ahead to give her a chance to get some control. Saint Joseph towers over us, sculpted with a stern look. He did not look like the friendly joiner father of Jesus that I used to imagine. Nevertheless, I bet if he had had a daughter as well as Jesus he would have made her a cracking dolls house. I am having all these silly random thoughts and my Mother is having a nervous fit beside me.
‘The first thing is Margaret, you don’t have Huntington’s disease, definitely not, and Kathleen doesn’t have it either.’
What a shocking opener, I’m scared to breathe in case she stops talking but a little flower of relief starts to open in my chest. I’m still not sure I trust her and she hasn’t mentioned Mickey, so I start to panic all over again for him.
‘We know Kathleen is okay because all the tests she and Phillip had to have recently showed this, so there’s nothing to worry about there. Really nothing.’ She’s dithering and the suspense is making me crazy.
‘Are you saying that Dad had it, is this what it’s all about?’
Yes, Margaret, but…’
My God why didn’t you tell us, why didn’t we know?’ I’m nearly shouting now, all concern for her gone, ‘You’ve lied to us.’
‘Please let me tell the story Margaret, this is very difficult for me, try to understand.’
I take a long overdue deep breath and lean back against the bench. I’ve waited a while for this, I can try to wait some more. I let go of her hands and grip both of mine together.
‘As I said Kathleen is fine,’ she seems obsessed with Kate, then she turns on the bench looks directly at me with glassy eyes and says,
‘And I know you are fine, and you children are fine, because you have a different Father.’
Jesus wept, what was this? Nothing could be more alien than what I was hearing. I felt the blood draining out of my head and my mouth hung open with shock.
‘I want to be very clear Margaret, Peter had Huntington’s but you don’t, he wasn’t your natural Father, but he never knew that.’
Well, well, I had prodded and nagged and pried for answers, and now this seemed too much to take in. I had a million questions and a hundred emotions swimming in my head. I felt a sob deep in my chest, an aching for my poor dead Dad, who loved me so much, betrayed by this stranger sitting beside me.
‘I can hardly believe what you’re saying Mam but why would you lie now?’
‘There have been too many lies and I’m tired of keeping secrets. Your Dad made me swear on you three children’s lives that I wouldn’t tell you about his illness. I think it brought his heart attack on, the worry and the guilt that he may have passed it on to you.’
‘Why didn’t he want us to know?’
‘He believed that if you knew, you would go through you lives constantly worrying whether you were going to be ill, when the symptoms would show up and it would affect every decision you made, when in the end you might not have it.’
My Mother continued the sad story of Dad’s deterioration, she said it was a blessing he went when he did, before he got too bad. He had begun to notice the small involuntary twitching of his hands and feet, she had noticed mood swings and his loss of balance, his increase in drinking. His own family were no help at all, as they had lived so long with the denial that they couldn’t or wouldn’t give any support. When things got worse and Dad finally faced up to it, they were on their own. Instead of it bringing them closer together, Mam became bitter that he hadn’t told the truth from the beginning that his own father had died raving and hallucinating, and they grew apart. I felt I was listening to someone else’s family story, surely this couldn’t be mine. All these lies, all along Dad’s Mother, my kindly saintly rosary grasping Granny insisted that Granddad had Alzheimer’s, and so the secret was carried on.
‘Instead of making the best of our time together, knowing this time was very precious, I spent all my energy diverting attention from your Father, making excuses for his drinking and his moods, only worrying what other people would think, I was a terrible wife to him.’
Mea culpa, mea culpa, the refrain that women all the world over have been taught to sing.
‘That’s got to be wrong Mam, you were a great wife, you looked out for him all the time, you never criticised him, you loved him.’
‘What do you know, Mags? Love was a children’s game to you.’ Tears are flooding down Mam’s cheeks now, she is staring at the ground and looks completely defeated. I began to realise that she had lived with this time bomb of information for years, trying to protect us, what toll had it taken on her?
‘It all started to unravel at John’s funeral, but I thought maybe at last it was time to open the door at on the past and let a few truths blow in.’
‘How could we not have known…’
‘Because you were children and we didn’t want you to know, now I suppose you will want to know who your real Father is?’
‘I can hardly take all this in, but of course I want to know, and I want to know why you got pregnant with another man.’ I felt a ridiculous little triumph that my Mother, after a lifetime of respectability, was revealing her feet of clay. I could not for the life of me imagine her having an affair. Obviously I didn’t know her at all.
‘It was your Fathers best friend Martin, I slept with him once, and you were the result of my one infidelity.’
I vaguely remembered this tall dark man coming to visit us one Christmas, bearing gifts and drinking beer with Dad.
‘Did he know he was my…’ I couldn’t bring myself to say Father.
‘Oh yes I told him, but I also told him that he must never tell you or anyone, I didn’t want you to feel different from Kathleen and Michael, and of course Peter never knew, it would have broken his heart.’ He desperately wanted to come to your christening but I wrote and persuaded him that it would be a mistake.
‘Were you never tempted to tell him? How could you keep all these secrets?’
‘It was my action, my responsibility,
‘Did he love you Mam, did he want you to leave Dad?’ I don’t know why I’m asking this, possibly it makes it easier for me to accept, if it wasn’t a drunken one night stand.
‘Yes he said he loved me, but leaving your Dad was out of the question, that didn’t happen much in my day. Divorce was a dirty word, you had to stick with your man for better or for worse.’ My mother assured me that she wasn’t the only woman keeping secrets, in the days before the pill. We sat quietly for a while. I was crying now, I don’t know when I had started. I felt relieved for me and my children, and confused as if something vital had shifted inside me, rearranged itself.
‘Margaret, you have to believe that you were the most loved child, you have grown up beautiful and sunny, and when you were a baby you had a cheeky smile, just like Martin, that used to take my breath away.’
Mam has never spoken to me like this, I am enthralled by this affection, she is crying again, but they don’t seem like bitter tears. I pull her hard against me and hold her tight, I feel her tremble and my heart aches for her. She speaks into my chest,
‘I know I’ve been a bitter old nag at times, maybe keeping secrets has soured me inside, robbed me of the ability to say how I really feel, but now the story’s yours to do with it what you want.’
‘What about Mickey?’
‘Well, you know the children of sufferers have a fifty- fifty chance of getting it so Mickey might be sitting on his own time bomb, God help him, I have offered prayers and novenas all my life for him and Kathleen, asking God to spare them from this.’
‘Will you tell him now?’ Mam stops crying now, wipes her eyes and seems to suck up all her emotions into that private place of hers and immediately looks more like my Mam, in control.
‘I’ve thought about it a thousand times, but how could I? It would change his life in a heartbeat. I tried to harden my heart to the possibility of Kathleen or Mickey getting ill, but I had to live my life. You know, it’s like a knife in a wound, if you leave it alone it’s bearable, but if you keep touching it, moving the knife about, it bleeds over and over again.’
It could be a blessing that Mickey doesn’t have any children, and is not likely to have any, but it doesn’t make it any better for him. Mam takes a small white box from her coat pocket and hands it to me,
‘This is all I have to give you from Martin, I think it’s beautiful.’
I opened the box and saw a tiny silver bangle, lying on a soft white silky cushion, how lovely, precious.
‘Thanks Mam, it is really special, what a nice thing for you to have kept it all these years.’
‘I almost gave it to Theresa, but then thought some day I might give it to you along with the truth.’
‘You’ve certainly shocked me with the truth today and I have loads more I want to ask you but I have to run and pick up the kids before Betty has a breakdown.’ My life as usual, bounded by the clock. We stood up and I hugged my Mam with more sincerity than ever before,
‘Thanks Mam, for telling me all this, it must have been hard, not just today but all your life.’
‘Don’t you worry about me Margaret, I made my own choices, go now, I want to spend some time here on my own.’
I looked back before I hurried out the gates of the Grotto and Mam was still sitting on the bench, very straight and proper looking. I was still amazed at all her revelations. She has a real past, she was a real person, a young woman in love, not just my Mam.
Chapter 36
Monday 9th June
There is extensive research into possible treatments for Huntington's disease. One technique is the use of transplants of foetal brain cells, which appear in some cases to repair and rejuvenate the damaged area.
John runs in from school and says,
‘Thousands of germs and bacteria live all over your body, all over, like worms,’ that upset the girls and pleased John no end. They all shouted together that they wanted to go to see the twins again but I explained that Aunty Kate and Uncle Phillip had to have some time on their own to get to know their babies and we could probably visit tomorrow. I told them yesterday about Tommy’s Mum dying in hospital and they all felt sorry for him and Theresa said they should make him a nice card to cheer him up. She’s an angel.
When they are all settled in bed and I am, as usual, perched at my bedroom window smoking and watching the world go by, I think how my life has completely changed from one day to the next. My Mother’s confession of Dad’s illness and my relief at not inheriting it make me feel quite light-headed. My Mother being unfaithful to dad is still very hard to take in, but it seems to make me love her more. She kept her secrets so as not to hurt anyone else, and to save her marriage and her family. My bangle is a treasure, I don’t know what I’ll do with it, and it’s not the kind of heirloom I can bandy about. My life at the moment is hoachin with important events. I think I’m turning ecumenical, I’m going to attend a double Catholic christening, an Indian wedding, and a funeral at the Sally Ann this evening. I also have to fit in John’s football début and Theresa and Rosie’s dance exhibition and get started knitting for Amy’s baby. Do I really have time in my life for anything else? For instance, a romance with Tommy, a proper reconciliation with my Mam and a heart to heart with my darling brother to tell him the hard facts of our family inheritance. But as Mam said, the secrets are mine now to do with them what I want. Mickey will surely be delighted if I tell him about Mam’s infidelity, he may even feel confident enough to come clean to her about his own life, although I know she knows already, she’s not daft. I go in to check my children and soak up their warm loveliness. They are rosy with slumber. I am so lucky
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About the author
Janette Skinner was born in Maryhill and grew up in the east end of Glasgow. She has lived and worked in Scotland, Canada, England and Spain. She has had many diverse jobs such as a waitress on roller skates, an auxiliary nurse, a child protection social worker, a teacher of English and an assembly line worker in a paper factory. She is now writing full time, which is what she was really aiming for all the time
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Bibliography
A brief and true report of the New found land of Virginia 1588 Thomas Harriot
Tobacco Roads Duncan Brown
Socialist review 227 Feb 1999
The map of Tenderness William Wall
Online Mendelian Inheritance in Man McKusick-Nathans Inst. Generic Medicine
National Library of Medicine Bethseda,MD 2000
The Huntington disease association
The Huntington's disease Association exists to support people affected by Huntington's disease. The HAD also provides information and advice to professionals whose task it is to support Huntington's disease families.