Pick an Ancestor

I opened up a document to write about my ancestors – only to find how little I actually know about them that I haven’t already talked about in other stories and poems.

Then I thought I might be the skeleton in my own closet – only to realise how boring and uneventful the good parts of my life have actually been and I have absolutely no intention of going into the other parts because they just aren’t worth recording.

Therefore I have decided to step into the future – not mine, but my sons’ whose own children continually beg for stories of when their respective fathers were young. “Tell me some of the things they did, Nanny” is a constant request, much to the mortification of the fathers themselves, especially when I hit on something they thought I didn’t know about.

Sean was 2 the first time he scared the daylights out of his grandparents and me. With his soldier father overseas, we had moved back with my parents. My father was a handyman, Sean was his shadow, and we lived in a very old house in Nambour that always needed some kind of fixit. Pop was never without pliers and screwdriver in his pocket, but a screwdriver can be dangerous in the hands of a toddler. Improvisation was therefore called for and he found the perfect substitute in his grandmother’s long nailfile with its blue plastic handle. A PowerPoint was a convenient slot – put the two together and we had everything the little explorer needed. The nailfile met the PowerPoint and the old wiring did the rest. Fortunately, the wiring was very old and the fuses delicate. Every fuse in the meter box blew but the jolt melted 2 inches off the end of the nailfile, threw Sean across the room and brought a bloodcurdling shriek from his grandmother. From down at the clothesline and almost ready to deliver my second child, I found out how fast I could move that day as the bang sounded like an explosion. What I didn’t realise was that the bang was the big transformer on the power pole down at the end of the driveway having a melt-down. This plunged the entire neighbourhood into darkness for the next 9 hours till it could be replaced with a new transformer that had to be brought up from Brisbane. By the time I had soothed my mother and son and mopped up their respective tears, all the little thrill seeker wanted was to “do'gain, mummy, please.” He went on to join the Navy and spent 20 years as a sparky!

Sean, although a light smoker himself now, used to go to extreme lengths to stop his grandmother smoking – stealing her lighters and cigarettes on numerous occasions. Mostly she was able to find them, but then he came up with an ingenious solution. There was a pipe at the back of Poppy’s school bus big enough to take them if he just bashed the corners of the packet in a bit. Pop was most surprised to be pulled over by the local police that afternoon when they noticed flames and a lot of smoke coming from the exhaust pipe. His comment? “I thought the old engine was running a bit rough. Little bugger’s got a pretty good imagination!” Said little bugger got a good talking to by Pop and the police but it proved rather ineffectual as all found it hard to keep a straight face when he told them about hiding his grandmother’s cigarettes “because they make her all stinky.” They told the five year old crusader to find a different hiding place, which he did – after that he used to climb the big mango trees and wedge them in the forks of the branches. Agile as she was, there was no way she was going to climb 20 feet up a tree just for a smoke. It took her 20 years, but she finally did stop smoking – unfortunately too late to prevent the onset of emphysema.

I wonder what he will say when his son and daughter get on our website and read this story!

Mango trees featured fairly large in another aspect of Sean’s life – in Rockhampton. He and his auntie had a running battle. He was outspoken and she insisted on having the last word no matter what or how – a recipe for frequent explosions. After one such incident when he had been told “remember your place. I’m the adult.” He decided to retaliate. His aunt had been nurturing a particular Bowen mango tree in their front yard, looking forward to it getting large enough for a bench underneath where she could sit and enjoy a beer and a book on a hot afternoon. She had talked so much about it and chased the kids away from it so often that Sean decided to use it for the ultimate revenge. He used his uncle’s tomahawk to ringbark the tree right at ground level. She knew he did it but she had no proof and he was keeping shtum, but his triumphant smile and a quiet pat on the stump every time he passed it when we visited, told their own tale. He is now 45 and still talks about it as being his greatest victory over a bully.

Seamus developed a real talent for getting lost, and since I had taught them both to have a healthy respect and trust for policemen, his first port of call when he wandered away from me was to find a policeman and greet him with the statement “ My mother’s lost. Can I have an ice cream please?”.

Over his childhood he got lost many times and scored many free ice creams and I was the recipient of much good advice about keeping an eye on my son – it seems he and I were the only two who realised that he often got lost when I told him he couldn’t have an ice cream so close to lunch-time!

There are many many stories about both my sons that will bring great entertainment to my grandchildren, so I will gradually add them to this story. They have been the centre of my greatest joys - and my greatest embarrassments (but that is a story for another time) - and I think it is time for payback.