Day 3 - Parents (in great detail)
I'm posting this now as it's Mutti's birthday tomorrow and we're out for the day and may well forget about this in all the excitement, so count this as tomorrows post please :)
Ok, my parental situation is...somewhat complicated. As far as I'm concerned I have 2 sets of parents; those who conceived me biologically and those who “adopted” me.
I'll start with my biological mum and dad and do each in turn.
Mum
Firstly I'd like to say my biological mum is no longer with us; she passed away 2 years ago, at the age of 58, on the 27th June after being taken into hospital with Thrombosis in her leg. Being bed bound for so long she contracted Pneumonia which took her life. I was 22 years old then and those 22 years with my mum were not the best 22 years of our lives, but regardless of all our problems I loved her dearly.
Catherine Hunter was born at home in Pollok on the 19th July, 1950. She was the daughter of George and Colina Hunter and the sister to 3 brothers and 1 half-sister, the eldest being Gina (the sister), followed by Robert, George, my mum and then Thomas. At 12 years old she began smoking through peer-pressure at school and at 20, just before her 21st birthday, enrolled in the army and became a member of the Royal Signals. I forget exactly how long she was in the army, but it wasn't very long for sure before she was discharged for medical reasons - mental health problems. When alive she spoke highly of the army and of her time there, but I'm led to believe that really this is where things began to really go downhill for her and was the beginning of her alcoholism and deterioration of mental health.
Long before I was born, and sometime after leaving the army, my mother was married to a man by the name of Robert Hackett. I would just like to input here that my mother had extremely poor taste in men and always ended up around complete nutjobs, as you will soon see. Mr Hackett and my mother lived in Iona Court and were married for around a year or so from what I can remember and piece together from old stories. Robert Hackett was a drunkard or more technically put an alcoholic. He spent all his money on drink and he and my mother would fight all the time, verbally and physically and once she even threw a glass ashtray which hit him on the head - she ended up in jail for a night for that one :/ In the end she left him and they got a divorce but many times I asked why she married him in the first place and all I got was “I loved him”. I guess people really are blinded by those god-awful hormones :/
I'm not aware of any men in between Robert and her meeting my dad, but apparently they met in a pub and all I want to say is I hope to god I wasn't conceived in a pub toilet! I haven't asked, so I don't know and I don't think I'd like to! This part of the story I'll leave for my dad's section, but lets just say I'm a bastard child and they never married, though my mum appeared to love him very much once in her lifetime, but due to extenuating circumstances really grew to hate him. Growing up I didn't really know my dad very much. He came round once in a while and I have some photos of us all together, but it was really only every couple of years or something, so essentially a stranger. My mum used to tell me he never wanted anything to do with me and never really spoke about him and I never met him properly for a really long time.
After my gran died my mum really lost her shit - drinking, smoking, drugs abuse, string of abusive, alcoholic men (one of which tried to kill her by raping and strangling her) and eventually turned to trying to take her own life. I spent a whole year in foster care between the ages of 8 and 9 before being released back into her care only at 10 for her to take one too many overdoses for social services to take and I was shipped off to live with various relatives. Until the day she passed away my mother never really stopped trying to kill herself, getting progressively worse from drinking, drug abuse, to bottles of pills, throwing herself down stairs and finally trying to set fire to herself. Trust me when I say that getting a phone call from the police late at night to explain the situation when you live in ENGLAND is not the most pleasant!
In her later years she was not only diagnosed with very bad epilepsy, but she'd had at least 1 stroke, angina, recovering alcoholic and bipolar disorder. I wanted her reassessed because beside all these medical conditions I was also 100% convinced she suffered from paranoid schizophrenia as she would frequently say people were at her door at night and she could hear people talking about her and threatening her and that kids were coming in to steal things from her and all sorts, but in the end that was never confirmed.
Growing up through all that we did still have our fun times, don't get me wrong. I'll never come to terms with understanding the urge she had to end her life when she had me to look after, but let me tell you about some of our better times. We didn't have much money as my mum never worked. We lived in a tenement flat in pollok and with her bad smoking habit and drinking habit, money was even tighter than it needed to be. I never went without though at birthdays or christmas. I may not have had brand name clothes or trainers or anything, but I did have pets and my mother let me raise tadpoles every summer! We'd go to the pollok park every summer and catch fish and frogs and feed the ducks and horses at the stable. We also spent a lot of time with my gran and during summers we'd often visit family too. I always had a computer console and plenty of games to play on it and there were never a shortage of friends coming over to hang out, have dinner and stay the night - so it really wasn't all terrible, but the terrible things are hard to erase.
Dad
First off, this section will likely be shorter than my mothers, not because I love him less, but because I don't know as much about him.
Daniel McConnellogue, 59, born sometime in June. He and my mother met in a pub and things got off to a great start - they fell in love, screwed like rabbits and I was conceived, The down side to this beautiful romance is my dad was already married with a kid and having an affair. What makes this worse? My mother knew! What makes it even worse...she got pregnant deliberately and wanted him to leave his wife and kid for her and me..../facepalm. He refused to do this and this is the reason why my mum hated him and she was the one who decided she didn't want him to have anything to do with me. Good times, huh? :p
For 16 years of my life I didn't really know my dad. I knew his name, what he looked like from the odd photo and that he had another daughter called Lynn (who I get along with brilliantly!) At 15 I turned to Lewis one day and said to him “I'd like to try and find my dad” and we did start by checking phone books. A couple of months in to no avail I got a phonecall from one of my mother's brothers saying he'd found an article in the newspaper of a Danny McConnellogue looking for Emma Hunter and to get in touch if they knew where she was. I couldn't believe it, it was like something out of one of those trashy magazines my mother read, like “Take a Break” or “The Bella”. I called the number almost right away though and sure enough it was my old man and before I knew it we were arranging to meet up and have lunch. I was positively terrified and took Lewis with me, but he was the same as I remembered, perhaps shorter and fatter and without the horrible moustache and mullet combo, but cheerful, loving and rough around the edges :)
My dad worked as a groundskeeper at Pollok Park until his health started playing up and has been living off benefits ever since. He loves animals, and has a cat currently called Koshka. He loves fishing, walking and enjoying nature and once upon a time owned his own fishing boat. Now he spends most of his time relaxing in his house on the Isle of Bute or somewhere in Cumbernauld with his girlfriend Janice.
Recently we all had a scare when he had to be rushed to hospital with heart problems, but with proper care and medication he's doing well and his heart is working the way it should be.
I don't see the man as often as I'd like, but we all know where the other is now and we talk via text mostly and arrange a meet when we're not busy or out of the country and altogether the relationship is relaxed and as far from suffocating as it could get, which is just fine with me :)
Now we get to my other parents - Mutti and Vati.
Mutti and Vati, known to the wider world as Sandra and Kenneth Gordon, became my other parents back when I was at the tender age of 16. My mums brother and his wife kicked me out because I was a burden and never really welcome there in the first place and Mutti and Vati took me into their home, though I barely knew them. Two essentially complete strangers adopted a second daughter without barely a second thought and the rest is basically history.
Mutti (Sandra) is your very stereotypical mother figure who bustles about, into everything you're into and there for all the good and the bad! It drives me nuts when she pesters me to make important phone-calls or eat something when I'm not hungry etc, but I wouldn't change it for the world because that's what she's meant to do and it's nice to feel loved and cared for. Besides all that she has regressed mentally to the age of Gondor and I and pretty open-minded for someone of her generation. The three of us can sit around and talk about ANYTHING at all from our love-lives, sex, friendship, work, school...literally anything and not be uncomfortable, in fact it's not the first time mutti and I have gone condom shopping together and had a girly giggle over some of the more bizarre things you can buy - I've never had that with a mother figure before, so it's really pretty nice !
Mutti has a love for wildlife, much like myself and likes to feed all and sundry that comes into our garden from foxes, birds, squirrels, mice, you name it, it gets fed :D We also have reasonably similar taste in men and can 'ooh and ahhh' quite the thing when such an object of our affections graces the television screen!
Before she gave birth to my best friend she used to work as a comptometer operator, but gave that up in favour of motherhood and hasn't regretted it at all, which is good all round because motherhood suits her well.
Vati (Kenneth) is a genial, gentle-mannered man with a balding head and caring smile. He's much more solitary than Mutti but will never turn you away if you need help or advice or fancy a strum on the guitar! His main passion in life is music, more specifically playing guitar, and has a fair collection. Besides this he has a love for motorbikes (one of which he used to own in his youth), maths, physics, reading and photography. A few of our hobbies are well matched such as photography as we share a love for the outdoors and nature and can be found taking off for a few hours to go walking in parks or the hills.
Vati and I have bonded much more in the past year than we have in all the time I've lived with the Gordons and it all happened when I started going to college with him in the mornings - we get up silly early, get to college and dopily veg in the internet cafe sipping strong black coffee and grouching about; weather, teenagers, work, college, traffic, politics and just about anything. Our drives back from college are usually much more pleasant where we get to discuss our day and hobbies and various other nice things and thus we became much more like a real father and daughter and THAT is the one thing I will thank 5am mornings for!
Ok, my parental situation is...somewhat complicated. As far as I'm concerned I have 2 sets of parents; those who conceived me biologically and those who “adopted” me.
I'll start with my biological mum and dad and do each in turn.
Mum
Firstly I'd like to say my biological mum is no longer with us; she passed away 2 years ago, at the age of 58, on the 27th June after being taken into hospital with Thrombosis in her leg. Being bed bound for so long she contracted Pneumonia which took her life. I was 22 years old then and those 22 years with my mum were not the best 22 years of our lives, but regardless of all our problems I loved her dearly.
Catherine Hunter was born at home in Pollok on the 19th July, 1950. She was the daughter of George and Colina Hunter and the sister to 3 brothers and 1 half-sister, the eldest being Gina (the sister), followed by Robert, George, my mum and then Thomas. At 12 years old she began smoking through peer-pressure at school and at 20, just before her 21st birthday, enrolled in the army and became a member of the Royal Signals. I forget exactly how long she was in the army, but it wasn't very long for sure before she was discharged for medical reasons - mental health problems. When alive she spoke highly of the army and of her time there, but I'm led to believe that really this is where things began to really go downhill for her and was the beginning of her alcoholism and deterioration of mental health.
Long before I was born, and sometime after leaving the army, my mother was married to a man by the name of Robert Hackett. I would just like to input here that my mother had extremely poor taste in men and always ended up around complete nutjobs, as you will soon see. Mr Hackett and my mother lived in Iona Court and were married for around a year or so from what I can remember and piece together from old stories. Robert Hackett was a drunkard or more technically put an alcoholic. He spent all his money on drink and he and my mother would fight all the time, verbally and physically and once she even threw a glass ashtray which hit him on the head - she ended up in jail for a night for that one :/ In the end she left him and they got a divorce but many times I asked why she married him in the first place and all I got was “I loved him”. I guess people really are blinded by those god-awful hormones :/
I'm not aware of any men in between Robert and her meeting my dad, but apparently they met in a pub and all I want to say is I hope to god I wasn't conceived in a pub toilet! I haven't asked, so I don't know and I don't think I'd like to! This part of the story I'll leave for my dad's section, but lets just say I'm a bastard child and they never married, though my mum appeared to love him very much once in her lifetime, but due to extenuating circumstances really grew to hate him. Growing up I didn't really know my dad very much. He came round once in a while and I have some photos of us all together, but it was really only every couple of years or something, so essentially a stranger. My mum used to tell me he never wanted anything to do with me and never really spoke about him and I never met him properly for a really long time.
After my gran died my mum really lost her shit - drinking, smoking, drugs abuse, string of abusive, alcoholic men (one of which tried to kill her by raping and strangling her) and eventually turned to trying to take her own life. I spent a whole year in foster care between the ages of 8 and 9 before being released back into her care only at 10 for her to take one too many overdoses for social services to take and I was shipped off to live with various relatives. Until the day she passed away my mother never really stopped trying to kill herself, getting progressively worse from drinking, drug abuse, to bottles of pills, throwing herself down stairs and finally trying to set fire to herself. Trust me when I say that getting a phone call from the police late at night to explain the situation when you live in ENGLAND is not the most pleasant!
In her later years she was not only diagnosed with very bad epilepsy, but she'd had at least 1 stroke, angina, recovering alcoholic and bipolar disorder. I wanted her reassessed because beside all these medical conditions I was also 100% convinced she suffered from paranoid schizophrenia as she would frequently say people were at her door at night and she could hear people talking about her and threatening her and that kids were coming in to steal things from her and all sorts, but in the end that was never confirmed.
Growing up through all that we did still have our fun times, don't get me wrong. I'll never come to terms with understanding the urge she had to end her life when she had me to look after, but let me tell you about some of our better times. We didn't have much money as my mum never worked. We lived in a tenement flat in pollok and with her bad smoking habit and drinking habit, money was even tighter than it needed to be. I never went without though at birthdays or christmas. I may not have had brand name clothes or trainers or anything, but I did have pets and my mother let me raise tadpoles every summer! We'd go to the pollok park every summer and catch fish and frogs and feed the ducks and horses at the stable. We also spent a lot of time with my gran and during summers we'd often visit family too. I always had a computer console and plenty of games to play on it and there were never a shortage of friends coming over to hang out, have dinner and stay the night - so it really wasn't all terrible, but the terrible things are hard to erase.
Dad
First off, this section will likely be shorter than my mothers, not because I love him less, but because I don't know as much about him.
Daniel McConnellogue, 59, born sometime in June. He and my mother met in a pub and things got off to a great start - they fell in love, screwed like rabbits and I was conceived, The down side to this beautiful romance is my dad was already married with a kid and having an affair. What makes this worse? My mother knew! What makes it even worse...she got pregnant deliberately and wanted him to leave his wife and kid for her and me..../facepalm. He refused to do this and this is the reason why my mum hated him and she was the one who decided she didn't want him to have anything to do with me. Good times, huh? :p
For 16 years of my life I didn't really know my dad. I knew his name, what he looked like from the odd photo and that he had another daughter called Lynn (who I get along with brilliantly!) At 15 I turned to Lewis one day and said to him “I'd like to try and find my dad” and we did start by checking phone books. A couple of months in to no avail I got a phonecall from one of my mother's brothers saying he'd found an article in the newspaper of a Danny McConnellogue looking for Emma Hunter and to get in touch if they knew where she was. I couldn't believe it, it was like something out of one of those trashy magazines my mother read, like “Take a Break” or “The Bella”. I called the number almost right away though and sure enough it was my old man and before I knew it we were arranging to meet up and have lunch. I was positively terrified and took Lewis with me, but he was the same as I remembered, perhaps shorter and fatter and without the horrible moustache and mullet combo, but cheerful, loving and rough around the edges :)
My dad worked as a groundskeeper at Pollok Park until his health started playing up and has been living off benefits ever since. He loves animals, and has a cat currently called Koshka. He loves fishing, walking and enjoying nature and once upon a time owned his own fishing boat. Now he spends most of his time relaxing in his house on the Isle of Bute or somewhere in Cumbernauld with his girlfriend Janice.
Recently we all had a scare when he had to be rushed to hospital with heart problems, but with proper care and medication he's doing well and his heart is working the way it should be.
I don't see the man as often as I'd like, but we all know where the other is now and we talk via text mostly and arrange a meet when we're not busy or out of the country and altogether the relationship is relaxed and as far from suffocating as it could get, which is just fine with me :)
Now we get to my other parents - Mutti and Vati.
Mutti and Vati, known to the wider world as Sandra and Kenneth Gordon, became my other parents back when I was at the tender age of 16. My mums brother and his wife kicked me out because I was a burden and never really welcome there in the first place and Mutti and Vati took me into their home, though I barely knew them. Two essentially complete strangers adopted a second daughter without barely a second thought and the rest is basically history.
Mutti (Sandra) is your very stereotypical mother figure who bustles about, into everything you're into and there for all the good and the bad! It drives me nuts when she pesters me to make important phone-calls or eat something when I'm not hungry etc, but I wouldn't change it for the world because that's what she's meant to do and it's nice to feel loved and cared for. Besides all that she has regressed mentally to the age of Gondor and I and pretty open-minded for someone of her generation. The three of us can sit around and talk about ANYTHING at all from our love-lives, sex, friendship, work, school...literally anything and not be uncomfortable, in fact it's not the first time mutti and I have gone condom shopping together and had a girly giggle over some of the more bizarre things you can buy - I've never had that with a mother figure before, so it's really pretty nice !
Mutti has a love for wildlife, much like myself and likes to feed all and sundry that comes into our garden from foxes, birds, squirrels, mice, you name it, it gets fed :D We also have reasonably similar taste in men and can 'ooh and ahhh' quite the thing when such an object of our affections graces the television screen!
Before she gave birth to my best friend she used to work as a comptometer operator, but gave that up in favour of motherhood and hasn't regretted it at all, which is good all round because motherhood suits her well.
Vati (Kenneth) is a genial, gentle-mannered man with a balding head and caring smile. He's much more solitary than Mutti but will never turn you away if you need help or advice or fancy a strum on the guitar! His main passion in life is music, more specifically playing guitar, and has a fair collection. Besides this he has a love for motorbikes (one of which he used to own in his youth), maths, physics, reading and photography. A few of our hobbies are well matched such as photography as we share a love for the outdoors and nature and can be found taking off for a few hours to go walking in parks or the hills.
Vati and I have bonded much more in the past year than we have in all the time I've lived with the Gordons and it all happened when I started going to college with him in the mornings - we get up silly early, get to college and dopily veg in the internet cafe sipping strong black coffee and grouching about; weather, teenagers, work, college, traffic, politics and just about anything. Our drives back from college are usually much more pleasant where we get to discuss our day and hobbies and various other nice things and thus we became much more like a real father and daughter and THAT is the one thing I will thank 5am mornings for!