Patricia Ward

My mother was one of thirteen brothers and sisters and yet, for forty-seven years, none of them knew of my existence!

One day, while I was working in a store in Watford, I served this lady. As she signed her cheque I told her that she had the surname I’d been searching for, because I’d been adopted and was looking for my natural mother. She remarked that it was an unusual surname and wished me luck - I found out later that she was my aunt. She actually went to see my mother, who was in a nursing home by then. She told her all about our conversation in the shop, but didn’t look for a reaction. On her next visit, though, she found my mother crying. She asked her what was the matter and mother answered, You’ll never know what it’s like to lose a daughter.

By the time I found out who she was, through a will, she had died. I discovered that she’d been living not twenty minutes from me.

I often wonder what my mother went through after giving me away. One of the overriding things that I would still like to know is why she never married my father. Apparently, they were living in a house in Balham, with her other child, an illegitimate daughter she’d had twelve years before me, although she’d kept her. When I met my half-sister, she said that she remembered being in the front bedroom with her mother, but that he (my father) had been in the back bedroom, so he was there for her all the time that she was expecting me. My half-sister even remembers my mother showing me to her and then explaining that the baby didn’t actually belong to her and that she was going to give it away. Mother never married. She was the eldest of thirteen children and, as her own mother never enjoyed good health, she was there to help look after her siblings.

The person who I would have most liked to meet was my natural father. Perhaps, one day, when I go up there (points skywards), I will.

He had been a professional football linesman and referee during 1918 – 1926, but the address he used when he applied to become a referee was for a boarding house. I think he may have been married and so couldn’t marry my mother. Divorce was so unacceptable in those days and whether that was the reason or not, I don’t know. He was well known to my mother’s family and I know his name, although I haven’t found out that much about him. I’ve been told that he came from Newcastle and that he had very red hair. I do have something with his writing on, plus a few photographs of him, but that’s all. I’ve just finished a scrapbook about the first forty-seven years of my life and there’s a page in it that has this enormous question mark, so I feel my family tree is unbalanced without his input. A lot of adopted children say that they don’t want to know their background, but it’s always bugged me. I wanted to know who I was and where I came from.

My cousin spent a lot of time with my real grandfather, who was an excellent artist. He taught her a lot about art and she eventually got a career as a very knowledgeable textile and fashion expert. I often wonder whether if I had been brought up in that environment whether my artistic talent would have developed more, because I do paint and draw quite a bit now.

Six years after they adopted me, my parents had a daughter of their own and people always used to look at her and say things like, Ooh, I can see that she’s got your eyes, or, Isn’t she the image of so-and-so, and, of course, no one ever said that to me. I remember my aunt and my mum coming into the bedroom when I was about eight years old and explaining to me that I was adopted. They told me that my real mother hadn’t wanted me – I think that they could have put it better, but it was said out of ignorance and not malice.

My mum used to tie my long red hair back in two plaits and then fold them in half to form a circle. I took them down about three times on one particular day and she said to me, If you take them down once more, you won’t go to the pantomime. I didn’t go to the pantomime. So, I was quite stubborn, but not overly rebellious and I never really did anything that I shouldn’t have done.

I suffered from headaches and was supposed to wear glasses, which I would carry to school in a bag that my mum had made for me. I never wore them. I also had this very red hair and children used to call out after me in the playground. At school, being left-handed, I was forced to write with my right hand and this made me develop a nervous stutter. We had to make a card with an Easter chick on it and, because I was forced to cut it out with my right hand, it was all jagged, which really upset me and, in the end, my mum told the school to leave me alone and allow me to write with my left hand.

I remember once when my adoptive parents bought me a lovely pale turquoise winter coat. It may have been beautiful, but I wanted a coat with the ‘new look’, which was dark green with a modern swing-style back. I got it in the end!

One of the worst times in my life was seeing mum in hospital after she’d fallen and broken her jaw. She’d been suffering with Parkinson’s disease and because of the anaesthetic she developed double pneumonia. She decided in her own mind that she didn’t want to go on and to watch her shoving every bit of food and every bit of drink away was harrowing.

When I married, perhaps, in a way, I got married for the wrong reasons; I wanted to have a child that was a part of me. I had three children, two sons and a daughter, and I ran a business with my husband. If he was ever away I used to get really frightened at night and when the children were young I would gather them into my bed and barricade the door. This fear of the dark stemmed from my childhood when we’d lived with an uncle during the war. There hadn’t been enough room for me to have a bed in his house and, at night, I would have to go to the woman’s house next door, but she wasn’t always at home. One night, the bedroom door started to slowly open and the cat jumped on the bed. I never, ever told my mum or expressed my fears, though, and, for many, many years, I hated the sound of planes flying overhead, because of the doodlebugs.

In later years I ended up looking after two of my grandchildren during their school holidays. When their mother had first come into my eldest son’s life, she was my best friend and we got on enormously well. Then her personality changed because she became an alcoholic and would abuse everyone. She was pretty horrible to the children, so they were taken away from her aged just three and five and didn’t see her for several years. They did see her again, at her father’s funeral, for the first time in about eight years, which was such an emotional time for them. She was then very tiny and they had grown bigger than her and weren’t frightened of her anymore. They wanted to spend a day with their mum at her place in Brighton, but they still didn’t want to see her on their own. It was very sad, because she died three months later. They handled it very well, but I can remember my grandson saying, I can’t remember what it is to have a mum and now I never will. They did go to Brighton because they wanted to see where she’d lived, and my son and their other Nan did take them down to help clear her flat. They were quite amazed to find that it was really a kind of shrine to them both; with every postcard and every photograph they had ever sent her there on display.

We never did get to the bottom of her alcoholism. Although she really wanted the children she would have preferred them to be more like living dolls, it seems she didn’t like them to get dirty and they weren’t allowed to play with their toys. I can remember when the children were living with me and they were modelling some ‘Playdoh’. My grandson looked up at me with really worried expression, saying, I’ve got my hands dirty, so I said, That’s all right, you’ll wash, it doesn’t matter. He flew out to my husband and shouted; Mama (that’s what he always called me) says that I can get my hands dirty! He was absolutely amazed that he was allowed to do this terrible thing.

I’ve got five grandchildren but I’m closest to the two I looked after. My granddaughter’s just passed her GCSE’s and she wants to be a heart surgeon. She grew up very quickly, because she always tried to look after her younger brother, who, in my mind, completely missed out on his babyhood.

One of the saddest things in my life is that my own children don’t seem to respect me and I don’t know why. I haven’t seen my daughter for seven years now. She said something rude to me at my ex-husband’s funeral and I picked up on it. I’ve written to her, asking to see her, but she won’t. That hurts. Rejection has always been a part of my life and, to a certain extent, it still is.

I do feel lonely sometimes, but I’m not lonely for friends. My remedy is to keep busy with all the things I do and get out and about when I can. All my friends are from different areas of my life, as I know a lot of people from my work as a Kinesologist, which is an alternative therapy, and I belong to the U3A in Witney. I will always befriend people and it’s getting to the stage now where a friend will ask me out to the pictures, then another friend will say, But you always come with me to the pictures.

I joined a group called the Friendship Force. The idea being that people come over from another country and stay with you here, then you can go abroad and stay with them. In the summer, sixteen Japanese people came over and I had a lady staying with me, which was a very interesting experience. We’ve been invited back there, but there’s always this thing with money – can I afford to do it? I couldn’t just go abroad and sit in the sun all day, without experiencing any of the culture.

I’ve been to China and that was interesting. My sister is going to Antarctica to see the penguins. She is very well travelled and has been to places like Peru and on an African safari – she’s been everywhere. I thought I’d beat her in going to China, but about four weeks before I went, I received this card from her with pandas on it, which made me sick – she’d beat me again (laughs).

The most satisfying thing in life is that my children have all done well for themselves; none of them have been dropouts or anything like that. Things were good when they were children, even though we didn’t have enough money, I did the best I could. They might not have been the perfect children, but then I wasn’t the perfect mother, although I can honestly say that I never neglected them.

During the years that I was bringing up the children, my husband was very important to me. I thought that when the children had grown up and gone, I would still have a friend and companion, although I don’t know what he thought about that, as he never said. I’d never been brought up to have a lot of touching in my life and, in the early days, when I first started courting my husband, it was lovely to be cuddled and made a fuss of. When we got married it was a way of having sex, because my parents certainly wouldn’t have allowed me to sleep with anybody. I remember once, before we were married, when he came to stay with us and he crept into my bedroom in the middle of the night. I was absolutely terrified and said, Go back! What would happen if mum and dad find out?

I do wish my marriage had been happier. My husband always hated me doing Kinesiology, which came about sixteen years ago, through me attending Yoga classes when the teacher introduced us to essential oils. I’ve never found another Yoga teacher like her and she became President of the British Wheel of Yoga. Through that I did massage and then started doing something called Touch For Health. I got good results from that and wanted to go further and so trained to be a Kinesiologist.

I talk to people’s bodies through an arm response. I do it to cure people’s fears and phobias, such as spiders, flying, mental problems, children with learning difficulties, allergies, bringing people to their full potential, even physical illness. My husband hated it when anyone walked into the shop and said, Oh, I do feel much better now, as you could almost see all the prickles coming out of him. I don’t know why, because I would have willingly taken him along with me. There are a few Kinesiologists who work in partnerships with their husbands or wives. He used to say; You’re too independent for your own good. He meant, of course, I can’t keep you there, (presses her thumb on the table). I think today that men are having a hard time and it was probably during my generation that things started to change for them. The pill came out and men found that they weren’t in charge of what women did anymore. I don’t think that the two sexes respect one another these days.

I remember once getting tangled up with three clients of mine – a husband, a wife and the wife’s lover. The husband knew that there were problems in the marriage and I was just hoping that he wouldn’t say to me, Do you know if she’s having an affair? That’s one of the most difficult conversations I’ve had during my Kinesiology, because I’m quite an open person and I don’t like secrecy. My clients can tell me some quite upsetting stories, but I don’t carry it round me afterwards. You can’t stick a plaster over the world’s problems.

I am also involved with a three-year project for Age Concern and Brookes University in which we record elderly people in West Oxfordshire with voice recording and photography. I would like to do more for others, but I wouldn’t say that I don’t do enough. I’ve recently turned seventy and I do worry about the future, with a little bit of fear that if it became difficult to look after myself, what support would I get? I sit in meetings where they’re always spouting on about keeping elderly people in their own homes, which looks good on paper, but whether it’s actually feasible is another matter. When I had a fall and broke my ribs, I sat in the house for quite a few days. I couldn’t stand up for more than a few minutes and the pile of washing up grew and grew and I was eating cold stuff. There was no one I could ring for help, because most of my friends are younger than me and they were at work.

I’m very proud of what I do and although Kinesiology can be odd, even weird sometimes, it can be tremendously powerful. I think I do have undeveloped psychic abilities that come within my work. When I’m with clients some of the things I come up with – well, I’m absolutely amazed. I never hear or see anything, but I sense that my mother is around me, because I feel a shiver, like someone’s walking over my grave. I always knew from when I was quite young that I had a purpose in life, although I wasn’t sure what it was. My life’s expectations have been realised with the Kinesiology and I’ve learned an awful lot through practicing it. I’m not very intellectual, but that doesn’t worry me, because I’ve gained a lot of knowledge that other people have never dreamt of having… never realised it’s there.

My main priority has always been the family and to have the love of my family would make my life complete. That and a nice male partner – someone with whom I could have a good rapport and… who has a bit of money to spend on me! (Laughs joyously).