21.
My estrangement from my father stems from him not liking me very much. This is sad, really, considering that Dad and I got along when I was a kid. Well, okay, Dad and I got along most of the time when I was a kid. Sometimes kids are kids, and parents are parents, and there are inevitably going to be conflict of interest. One prime example of this is turnips. When I was a kid, I thought that turnips were utterly disgusting and believed that I was completely justified in refusing any turnips that were served to me. Dad, meanwhile, believed that turnips were a valuable source of nutrition, which further fuelled his belief that hitting the wall with his fist and exclaiming that I wasn’t going to bloody well leave the table until I’d eaten all of that turnip was a good idea. The whole thing came to an untimely end when I found myself needing to go to the …show more content…
There was no set bedtime, we never got into trouble if we swore and no one cared if we didn’t keep our room tidy. Mum was one of those people who didn’t care for minor trivialities. If there was one word to describe Mum, it was ‘busy.’ She was one those people who always had two or three—if not four or five—things on the go all at once. At one stage I can recall that she was studying at TAFE, volunteering at a homeless shelter, working a part time job and planning her wedding to Darren.
23.
My parents, I should probably explain, were never married, and nor had they ever been in anything that one may define as a romantic relationship. When they met, Mum was the seventeen-year-old daughter of hippies. My grandparents did not believe in things like supervision—they figured that their teenage daughter was just going to do whatever she wanted to do, regardless of what rules they laid down, so it just seemed more pragmatic for them not to make any rules in the first place.
My estrangement from my father stems from him not liking me very much. This is sad, really, considering that Dad and I got along when I was a kid. Well, okay, Dad and I got along most of the time when I was a kid. Sometimes kids are kids, and parents are parents, and there are inevitably going to be conflict of interest. One prime example of this is turnips. When I was a kid, I thought that turnips were utterly disgusting and believed that I was completely justified in refusing any turnips that were served to me. Dad, meanwhile, believed that turnips were a valuable source of nutrition, which further fuelled his belief that hitting the wall with his fist and exclaiming that I wasn’t going to bloody well leave the table until I’d eaten all of that turnip was a good idea. The whole thing came to an untimely end when I found myself needing to go to the …show more content…
There was no set bedtime, we never got into trouble if we swore and no one cared if we didn’t keep our room tidy. Mum was one of those people who didn’t care for minor trivialities. If there was one word to describe Mum, it was ‘busy.’ She was one those people who always had two or three—if not four or five—things on the go all at once. At one stage I can recall that she was studying at TAFE, volunteering at a homeless shelter, working a part time job and planning her wedding to Darren.
23.
My parents, I should probably explain, were never married, and nor had they ever been in anything that one may define as a romantic relationship. When they met, Mum was the seventeen-year-old daughter of hippies. My grandparents did not believe in things like supervision—they figured that their teenage daughter was just going to do whatever she wanted to do, regardless of what rules they laid down, so it just seemed more pragmatic for them not to make any rules in the first place.