This series of stories will be titled 'I'm surprised I turned out as well as I did, given my childhood ...' 36

I once saw my father’s eldest sister, my aunt vacuuming the path outside the front of her house – No, REALLY I saw that. A huge picture-window along the front of their bungalow and she was vacuuming the path so people didn’t track grass into the house after her husband had mowed the lawn.

That's the exact window. Two panes of glass rather than three.

She would fill the sink with hot, soapy water after every single dish, cup, pot was used – she washed dishes as soon as they were set aside. She couldn’t just leave them til she had half a dozen or so and do them in one go.

She always took ‘clean’ to the next level – the slightly psychotic and sometimes scary level.

Remember I was ‘employed’ to clean the mirrors in her salon every Sunday? Well, I found out years later, that she used her day off (Monday) to go in and do them again, ‘properly’.

Not a smear did I leave on those mirrors, yet she ‘found’ fault and did them herself. What exactly was the point in a) employing me to do them, or b) letting me find out my cleaning was never up to her standards?

Neurotic about cleanliness, she’d get angry if she found a fingerprint on her windows and bloody HELL was she scary when she started screeching.

If my younger aunt was buying a new sofa, she would give her old one to my mother – whether she wanted to accept it or not. My mother was always grateful – as was I when my aunt donated her old sofa to me when we moved into our first new house.

But I’ll tell you something. I never accepted anything ‘in charity’ from any of them again.

Wow, talk about having to prostrate yourself with gratitude at every turn. That sofa was mentioned at EVERY opportunity – to anyone that would listen!

Sorry it's blurry... it's the only pic I could find!

I would overhear part of a conversation along the lines of:

“Well, I just had to buy a new sofa and chair so I could give them my old one, didn’t I? I couldn’t let Michelle live in that new house without any furniture.”

How about giving with true generosity, not telling anyone about the donation and just being happy that you helped?

The fact that it was an expensive sofa, it was only two years old when she had to give it to me because we had no furniture, it was good quality and she could have sold it rather than given it away… you name it, I had to be grateful for it and, ‘Thank you, I really appreciate it,’ was never enough.

I was grateful, of course! We both were. We had bean-bags to sit on in the first few months of setting-up house – and they were beanbags I made. I begged and scrounged fabric from places and I made them. I worked at a furniture manufacturer and could sometimes bring home cushions and they were used for seating too. So the donated sofa came in very useful.

I kept that sofa longer than my aunt had had it before she gave it away.

BUT the thing is, we KNEW we would have nothing when we moved in. We bought the house and mortgaged ourselves up to the hilt to do so, but we had a house. We had our foot on that first step of the property ladder and that was good enough.

Trev’s mum and dad had bought him a new bed and we took that. That first week was SO cold and the heating didn’t work properly so we set up the bed in the living room and ‘camped out’ next to the miserable gas fire. We took some bedding, sheets, a few towels and other ‘sundries’ and we moved in to our first home together.

A few months in, we had a fold-down metal frame bed-settee donated from the lady that lived next door to Trev’s parents and we had a fridge that worked (eventually) within a few days. And we’d moved the bed up to the bedroom – it’s the little victories…

We still live in that same house, the one we bought when I was not yet 21 and we weren’t quite married.

We had a brand-new microwave – set up in the living room, in a corner, on top of two lengths of 2x2 wood so there was ventilation beneath the microwave. We cooked bacon in that for sandwiches and they tasted awesome because we were on an adventure.

The fact that I had to re-cover the arm of the sofa where her dog lay on it constantly never came into the guilt-trip conversations. Neither did the fact that it smelled of stale smoke – they smoked; Trev and I never have and you do notice it – it didn’t just smell… it had had two years or so of absorbing cigarette smoke and the sofa ‘unabsorbed’ that into our new house.

In the morning, the living room, having been closed-up overnight – oh boy! It hit you first time you opened the door.

I can only imagine what my mother had gone through whenever she accepted any of their cast-offs.

Their criticism was scathing. Nothing anyone else ever did was ever deemed good enough.

fishwives...

Yes, I know my father couldn’t settle into a ‘respectable’ career. He was clever enough, he just worked really hard at the newest ‘get rich quick’ scheme and none ever lived up to hopes or expectations.

We had cupboards filled with shampoo that we never used because it left your hair feeling like straw. Pyramid sales schemes came and went and no matter how many he tried, none ever worked out. To say he was an expert salesman, he didn’t half believe some of the same bullshit he was dealing out.

I understand why my grandmother would be huffing and puffing as she signed the next cheque for his next car that he needed for the next sales job that he’d probably end up leaving and losing a lot of commission as he did so. He usually paid her back – but there was that one time…

Some pics from Google, Pixabay, etc. Others from my collection.