He was a terrible Father.

He was a terrible Father.  To start with, he dropped me on my head doing gymnastics in the bathroom when I was three and a half, possibly just before my Brother was born.  I was knocked unconscious and had retrograde amnesia, had a partially dislocated neck and spent most of the next few years in bed.  However, my dear Father was in denial, and I was always in bed because I was sickly, though without any exercise or fresh air it is little wonder I became asthmatic and susceptible to every cough and cold.  Years later, I found out the reason I never had any visitors was that my Family all believed I was a malingerer and did not want to encourage me.  I asked him about it when I was in my Twenties, because I must have remembered people talking about, and he agreed that it had happened, but added, ‘Fortunately, there was not lasting damage.’

When I was Six I was sent to the Mercy Hospital for a Tonsillectomy that was supposed to cure my susceptibility to illness.  I don’t know how susceptible I was, but I do remember that nearly every year, even when we rented a house down the Peninsular, I would only need to sneeze once and I would be confined to bed and the local Doctor called.  My room had all its vents sealed, the windows were never opened and the Central Heating (one of the first in Melbourne) was always turned up.  While there, I was abused by the Sisters of Mercy, but could not tell anyone and became even more introverted than I had been.  It was sixty years before I blurted it out to a General Practitioner who sent me for Counselling.

He was a man of great personal self-confidence and unassailable initiative.  He expected the same of me and never forgave me for my lack of initiative and a raft of other personal failings.  While other Fathers, particularly Jewish Parents, put pressure on their children to achieve, he kept telling me I could do anything and he wasn’t going to be like other Fathers, as long as I did something Professional.

He did not take me into his business as an adolescent during vacations or whenever, when I could have learnt useful skills, because he did not want me to work ‘in Trade’ or whatever he called it, though I don’t remember him referring to anything.  He was himself largely Class-free, and dealt equally with everyone man-to-man.  I think he saw the world as a meritocracy based on personal achievements, and he had risen to hob-knobbing with Princes from peniless refugee, and expected I could do the same, without his help.

He prevented me from more than a career in Industry, though ironically I was streamed into Commerce at High School, presumably based on my Father’s occupation, not on his aspirations for me.  He also prevented me from turning a childhood hobby of Puppetry into a career in Entertainment.  So it was all stopping me from what he did not like, but never helping me or encouraging me or indicating what he did want for me.

I saw all my cousins under pressure to into Law or Medicine, but I had no such pressure; I could do anything, which to my mind was the same as nothing because ‘nothing’ and ‘anything’ are both ‘not something’. I grew up thinking I was rather stupid anyway, mainly because I was away from school a lot and never seemed to know what they were learning about when I went back after being sick.  I have report cards showing I was away more than I attended some years in Primary School.  Of course it didn’t help when he was always telling me I was stupid.  Whenever I didn’t do something that I hadn’t known he wanted me to do, or started to do something in some way he hadn’t expected, he would say, ‘Don’t be stupid.’  After some Psycho-Drama at Augustine Centre when I was in my Forties, I eventually convinced him to stop saying that, and we eventually became good friends for the last few years of his life.

He had fallen out with his own father who had died a couple of years before I was born.   Although my Grand-Parents lived in the same street in St Kilda, they belonged to Synagogues on different sides of the Highway.  My Maternal Grand-Parents were part of the British Establishment. My Grand-Mother was proudly British, with siblings born throughout the Empire and a birth in London’s East End.  My Grand-Father never lost his Yorkshire accent or his love of Cricket.  Australia was mostly half Anglican and half Irish, Roman Catholic, but unlike other countries we had social harmony because there was no overt display so everyone looked the same in public, and in that environment, Jews could remain equally public and religiously anonymous.  Everyone knew we were Jewish but the only difference from everyone else was that we had different holidays, didn’t eat certain things and went to Synagogue on Saturday instead of Church on Sunday.  I think that was it.  We kept a wishy-washy sort of Kosher, avoiding forbidden meats, but not worrying about the rest.

My Father’s Parents belonged to a traditionally Orthodox, European Synagogue, where my Grand-Father had been a community leader.  Not long before he died, he had been part of a break-away group that later grew into one of Melbourne’s leading Orthodox Communities.  I don’t think he was exceptionally religious, and I reject epithets like ‘ultra-Orthodox’ for people who are just traditionally Observant.  My Father wanted none of it, and being in Business and active in sport, was as secular as he found the rest of the community.  This must have started when they lived in Montreal before coming to Australia.  Anyhow, my Father had fallen out with his Father, but I did not know this as a child.  I occasionally saw my Grand-Mother, who died when I was about eight, but visits to her were often tinged by the presence of refugees from the Holocaust.  Australia had joined the rest of the world in turning its back on the plight of European Jews, which was already quite well known in military and government circles, even if not widely discussed publicly.  Australian Jews were Patriotic, fighting in the Australian Defence Forces, but were noticeably not Zionists.

I had a minimalist Religious upbringing, with a Bar Mitzvah that was form without content.  A few years later, when my Mother died after an agonising illness of ‘Women’s Disease’, I was quite unprepared for the religious expectations that came with a Jewish Funeral, and missed out on everything that might have come at that time.  I was always very introverted, remember, so I could not go out of my way to learn or participate, but needed to be included and wanted, which I was not.  I blame my Father for growing up without any sense of belonging.  He had done it, as a child-refugee, but I had not had his experiences, lying in bed dreaming of adventures at the early age when he had been having them.  For example, lined up in front of a firing squad and being sent away at the last moment because he was but a child.  Did I ever have a similar sense of my own impending demise, while I was lying in bed with Asthma, unable to move or breathe, thinking I was at my end?

One thing in his favour was his attitude to punishment.  I don’t know where I got my attitude to Morality, but I don’t think I ever did anything wrong deserving punishment.  There was one occasion, perhaps a year or so after we moved, so eight or nine when for something that I cannot recall at all, he announced he was going to smack me.  I was terrified as he had never behaved like this before, usually ignoring me.  I recall running into my bedroom and round the back of the bed.  I don’t think any actual hitting occurred as I was by then hysterical and the whole thing was stopped by my Mother.  I have no idea what evil I perpetrated.