If walls could talk, they’d tell stories of falling in love, eating soap and the arrival of an eccentric thespian.
(an excerpt)
…
Was he just giving me the good parts in the school plays because he had the hots for my ma?!
When the drama teacher started visiting us regularly and gazing at Mum with doe eyes, it was clear he’d fallen for her, big time!
He was in a relationship with another woman, though. A woman whom he’d been with for ten years. It was complicated, as his feelings for my Mum were deepening by the day and he simply couldn’t ignore them.
A tall, dark, and handsome man, with a large nose. He could pull off scruffy in denim dungarees, or be a dandy in a tweed three-piece suit, but he always elevated his attire with a silk scarf or bow tie, a peaked cap, or Theodora hat. A visibly eccentric thespian.
My Mum welcomed his advances; the feelings were mutual, and as soon as he knew for certain, he packed his bags and walked away from his relationship, leaving behind his partner and her son, his precious collections of books, instruments, and vinyl.
It was a brave move to step into this all-female family of three. My sister, Mum, and I had been a team for so long, it was normal for us to talk openly about ‘female issues’, and we secretly reveled in his blushes as we discussed bodily fluids around the dining table.
He was thoughtful and considerate, though, and did a good job of stepping into a tight-knit group, cautiously, sensitively, never offering advice unless advice was requested, never trying to parent these teenagers with an attitude that had come as part of the package.
Living with my sister and me through our adolescence can’t have been a breeze, but perhaps the work he did as a psychiatric nurse before he took up teaching was helpful to him at this time? A calm understanding of our intensely emotional reactions to just about everything.
He was smart too. I mean, highly intelligent, with an IQ in the top 2% of the general population. A member of Mensa. And entertaining. A great storyteller. Through his nursing, he’d realised that the imagination has the power to heal. He took this clinical philosophy into his teaching, championing oral storytelling, not just as entertainment, but as a vital therapeutic tool for mental and emotional development.
He was obsessed with stories of every kind, and his mind had filled with a wide variety over the years. They could be about the ‘Knights of the Round Table’, or a psychiatric patient from his nursing days:
‘I used to clean a patient’s false teeth for her every night, and every night she’d say the same thing to me: “You brack ‘em, you pay for ‘em!”’