In My Room
There's a chance that we might fall apart before too long
When I was 9, my parents went through a tough time. I think it started with my mother. We were living in Scenic Drive, in Titirangi. It was a great spot and I have some good memories, but also some very dark ones.
The Beatles had hits throughout my childhood. This year. 1966 they were singing “We Can Work It Out.” The lyrics seemed to tell our story pretty well.
“Life is very short, and there's no time
For fussing and fighting, my friend…..
There's a chance that we might fall apart before too long”
My mother wasn’t well. She was suffering from feelings she didn’t understand and didn’t feel right. She went to the doctor many times and was told that she was suffering from depression and prescribed drugs like valium to calm her nerves.
She didn’t agree with him, but he was the doctor and in those days you did what the doctor said.
It was perhaps the beginning of the age of The Passionless People, where tranquilisers and antidepressants were dispensed to New Zealanders by the handful.
Things got worse and my parents argued a lot. I remember nightly raised voices and my mother crying from behind their bedroom door. I felt terrible. Sometimes I would try to listen at the door. I didn’t like what I heard and was helpless. I felt very insecure.
These fights went for hours and of course, it affected me pretty severely. Eventually, my father moved out to a batch that had previously been home to family friends at Titirangi Beach.
Ironically that batch was one of the places I stayed at for weekends when the stress was too much. The people who lived there, family friends, were very bright and interesting people. He was an American draft dodger, who left the country to avoid being sent to kill people in Viet Nam. I enjoyed spending time with them.
Often I was left as a 9-year-old, with a brother of 3, sisters of 2 and 1 to babysit, on some afternoons, when my mother was at work. Sometimes there would even be another 2-year-old from a solo mum that my mother had offered to look after, forgetting that she wouldn’t be home at the time. She couldn’t say no because we needed the money she gave her to look after her child.
I remember one day when I was driven to despair. I had 3 kids on potties. It’s funny in hindsight, but it wasn’t at the time. I was on my own with 4 kids. 3 of them were busy filling potties in a row. One of them stood up and the potty stuck to their backside. Then it dropped with urine pouring onto the carpet. I must have yelled out, they got a fright and bumped into the next kid and there was a domino effect.
Next thing I am standing there with 3 naked toddlers, all of us upset, 3 upsidedown potties, and an unsightly smelly mess on the carpet for me to clean up while getting nappies and clean clothes on the kids. I can still see it all happening in slow-mo.
There was no one to turn to. No cellphone to ring someone for help, no neighbour I could call. I dealt with it. I know, that was probably normal for lots of people back in the day, but it was probably the straw that broke the camel’s back for me.
The Beach Boys song couldn’t describe my situation better. My parents were in the process of breaking up. Life was very stressful. Lots of shouting and arguments behind closed doors. I was really struggling. My security and sense of home had become a place I needed to escape from, to find some sense of peace.
I don’t know how it came about, but I started staying with different people for 3-4 weeks at a time to give me a chance to get away from the terse environment. One couple who kindly took me in was Peter and Manuela Hill.
One of my regrets is that as an adult, I never went back and thanked them for providing me with a safe haven.
I spent a lot of time with them just sitting in their spare bedroom reading and listening to records. Peter was a radio DJ at 1ZB and had so many great records. One of them was a Beach Boys album and one of the tracks that expressed where I was at, was In My Room. “In this world, I lock away my troubles and my fears.”
“Now it’s dark and I’m alone
But I won’t be afraid
In my room
In my room”
This was where I first read The Hobbit and Lord of the Rings. I was 10 and the 4 books allowed me hours and hours of escape. I was Frodo Baggins. I read the series a few times.
When I was in Form 3 at Kelston Boys High a few years later, the Hobbit was one of the books we had to read. I was more than happy with that. I still have my school copy of that book. One of my treasures, ironically from another place that I didn’t want to be, but more of that later.
The Hills were so kind to bring a child into their French Bay home. They provided an environment where I felt safe and secure. They shared my love of music, but most importantly, they gave me space to just escape. My times at their home were like 3-4 week-long sighs of relief.
Peter also kindly gave me a number of records to take ‘home’ with me after my last stay. The Beach Boys album was one of them. He also gave me some treasures, 78s including Little Richard’s Tutti Frutti and George Formby, I’m the husband of the wife of Mrs Wu, which I performed at the Titirangi Folk Club on the mandolin banjo. I had learned that instrument when my fingers were too small for the guitar. Later I would play mandolin, tea-chest bass and guitar in a jug band.
Kind of funny because I barely understood that the song, which was banned from radio, was fairly suggestive. “In the market square of things I bought a few, the tried to sell me silk pyjamas too, I said I might admire them, but don’t think that I’ll require them. I’m the husband of the wife of Mr Wu.” I loved playing the strummed solo.
It took a couple of years, but eventually, my mother’s stomach started getting bigger and bigger. It transpired that all this time that she was feeling like there was something not right, and the doctors fed her more and more drugs, there actually was, and her body had been trying to tell her. After a couple of years, she went to the hospital and they operated on her, removing a huge tumour. Fortunately, it was benign. She hadn’t needed drugs at all, she needed a good diagnosis!
By that time I was living in Holland and that’s another musical story.
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