A Practice of Loss: Memoir of an Abandoning Mother

My second memoir is now published with a changed sub-title. In Spring 1972, my ex-husband phoned me from Los Angeles. His raspy, nasal voice crackled over the phone.

‘I’m on my way to Boulder Colorado with the girls. I’ve taken a job at the university there. You are a deserting wife and an abandoning mother  and you’ll never see your children again!’

I put the phone down and sat in shock for what seemed like hours. Last time we had communicated about this, he was to bring them down to Sydney to stay with me for two weeks in the school holidays, and we would talk with our lawyers about shared custody arrangements. He had warned me a few weeks before that he was considering taking a job in the US, but had agreed to discuss custody issues further with me. So … thus it was. The end of my life, and the beginning of a new, strange, in-between life where I had no place and no safety. I had lost my identity as a mother of three delightful little girls and the wife of a successful computer scientist (the second part meant nothing to me, which was my downfall) and I had nothing to live for but hope… that I would be able to see them again and keep our love alive. I had lost hope that I could keep them with me. That died when he threatened me with murder and suicide if I tried to take them from them.

The years of their childhood from then on were a book I couldn’t read and certainly couldn’t write. I had access to it from time to time, under his licence, but I had no say in how it was written, and there was much that was hidden from me. He married a woman who was an ambitious academic with two children. It became a dysfunctional, hierarchical, abusive extended family. They came to stay with me twice a year, once I got access to them (which took nearly two years) and it was always a short-dated love affair, where I had to send them back to the family they didn’t want to be with.

So they grew up, traumatised, and I survived, and gradually, we grew together and started to unravel the knots that had been tied in fear, pain, anger, jealousy, revenge and guilt. We have grown together over the years and become each other’s best friends and soul sisters, and have freed ourselves of that patriarchal burden of ownership, control, and fear. We live our lives as our true selves and are grateful for the dark gifts we were given, which had taught us unconditional love and forgiveness.

Watch my Home Page for notice of publication.

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You will know, if you’ve been following my blog, that I have submitted the revised ms of my second memoir to my publisher, Ginninderra Press, and it’s been accepted for publication in 2021 (towards the end of the year).

It is such a relief to have got this far. At times, it’s seemed like a neverending story. I began writing it back in the late 1990s, after my eldest daughter said to me, “Mum, you’re my writing mentor. But you haven’t written anything yourself!” That shocked me into realising that I really do have a story to tell and it was time to start. So, from a few scribbled notes in a school exercise book, I went back to university and did a Master of Creative Arts degree, and then, after a couple of years break, I began a PhD in life writing. I had many memoir pieces that became part of my thesis, and essays and articles, and an autobiographical novel. I had naïve dreams of publishing the novel, but I soon found that the world of publishing is a minefield for an emerging writer. Two postgraduate degrees, writing prizes and short-listed award entries were not enough to open that door for my writing.

Twenty-odd years later, after many rewrites, peer support and help from other writers, and finally, a major structural edit from a published author and editor, I felt it was ready. I resisted the urge to send it back to my editor, or to find another one to give me a second opinion, and I sent it to a publisher who has already published two of my books. I respect Ginninderra Press, a small, award-winning independent publisher. They produce books of high quality, and for me, a strong drawcard is that, once they accept an ms, they do not demand substantive or stylistic changes. After having had the story pulled apart, discarding a third of it and adding the same amount of new text, killing off lots of darlings, I didn’t want to go through any more cuts to the body of my story. I want to keep ownership of it, even while I recognise that once it is published, I have no control over its readership.

I am well aware that mainstream commercial literary publishers usually insist on lots of changes to make the book more saleable. They are out for quality, but equally, they are out for sales. Their reputation and viability depend on both. For me, this is where the fine line comes between memoir and fiction. In my rewriting of A Practice of Loss, I had to write several chapters and passages where I had little or no first-hand memory of the details of what happened. My editor said I needed to fill in these gaps to keep the reader engaged. So I did, and it was bloody hard! The hard bit was imagining/making it up while staying true to my remembered experience. The truth of memory, especially when there is post-traumatic stress, is that it is like a garment that has been worn and torn, with lots of holes and thin patches. To turn it into a seamless, intact garment would be to turn it into something fictional.

The last touches to a book are important. Key ones, for me, are finalising the title and selecting a cover image. Again, if I were with a mainstream publisher, I would have little or no say in this.

The image here is taken from an old, fading photo taken by a small camera about forty-seven years ago, after my daughters were abducted by their father and taken to live in America. It is poignant glimpse of three lost little girls; their faces reflect the stages of their understanding of who they were and what their life was like then and would continue to be. The little four-year-old, on the right, is open, sparkling, expecting, perhaps, to be loved and kept safe. The middle one, the six-and-a-half-year old, looks resigned, stoical, perhaps a little expectant, but unsure, a little wary. The left-hand one, the eight-and-a-half-year-old, looks dreamy, wistful, sad, remote. By now, they have realised that I am not coming to join them, but they don’t understand that I cannot, because their father is blocking my access to them, and the American consulate is refusing to grant me a visa. It has been a year and a half since they last saw me, and it will be another three months before they see me again. But they do not even know that. They have been told that I am not there because I don’t want to be. They have not been told their father is blocking my access. They were told, when they first arrived there, that they could choose if they wanted to live with him or with me. But if they chose to leave him, he would die.

This is the bondage he has cast over them, and it will keep them from me for most of their childhoods.

And so, in 2021, forty-eight years later, the story of my lost daughters will be told. The ending is, paradoxically, a joyful one; for we have each, in our different ways, lived through the trauma, the grief, the regret, the anger, and as adults, have been able to rebuild our broken bond and turn our losses into the gifts of unconditional love and self-realisation.