Auntie Mary

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First Thoughts
I've heard of the new auntie less than 48 hours. And I'm fascinated. I seem constantly to have been thinking about her, who she is. Where she has been. Where did she come from? Goodness knows how this has affected my mother- how did she cope? Stunning news she called it.

And my grandmother- all those years of silence!  How did she cope? Did my grandfather ever know? And great-grandmother who lived all those years with them- a sad conspiracy of silence between mother and daughter? Did they ever speak of the child? Surely great-grandmother knew!? Grandma was only 19 when she married!

Reflection
This is not uncommon of course. Even in my childhood there was no shortage of unwanted children. Pregnancy out of marriage was a social stain even in the seventies. Let alone fifty years before. Social security was nonexistent too. As a little boy I can remember us taking children from the local orphanage on a picnic along the Rocky. Their mother had died and their dad had no family to care for them. Many parents gave up their child for adoption in situations like this. I never knew the details but one of my parishioners, in her middle seventies, told me one day she had discovered she might be a twin, but had never been told. I don't know if she ever found out.


More News
Apparently a distant relative, the genealogy buff of the family, was researching our branch of things back in the seventies. In my grandparent's entry in the state records he found a strip of white paper neatly glued under their names. Fascinated, he held the page up to the light and read the details of a child Mary, who was unknown to any of us.

My grandparents were still alive and he agonised whether to say anything. He decided to remain silent, and now, years after their deaths, has approached the oldest brother. Uncle passed the story onto my mum who lives in the right part of the country to begin searching.

Mary was born in 1921. Grandpa's mother was about to nurse a sick relative who lived some distance away. So Grandma and Grandpa brought their wedding forward. Mary was born six months after the wedding. They had gone to a distant locality to live so no one in the family could have seen them. Mum remembers one of the great aunts saying that Grandma had been very ill after the wedding. It appears that they shifted from their own district well over a hundred miles away during this 'illness' so no one who knew them knew about the baby.  When Grandmother had 'recovered' they simply returned to their home as they had left- childless.

Of course, it was not simple, for Mary was left behind, fostered to another family. 

Why was this so? Was Grandma really too ill to care for her? Or in 1921 was it too shameful to return home with an early baby? Our era is easily tempted to assume the latter, but it does not add up well. A couple more months away before returning home and no one would have been able to tell the age of the baby anyway. And this was no private informal agreement for adoption. We have the welfare officer's notes, which sounds to me more like a child being held in trust until her family could care for her. 

But at the age of six Mary was formally adopted by her foster family. Was it too hard to go back? Having left her, could they not face her? Did they feel it was wrong to take her from the only family she had known? Leaving their child goes against everything Grandma and Grandpa believed in. We cannot understand. It must have been an agony for them.

In 1929 the next little girl was born. Her father chose her name. He called her Joy.

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