I went down to see Redhead (my Mum) yesterday morning. I had a headache which had been stubbornly hanging on for a few days and I was not feeling that chipper. It was about 8 am when I arrived and Redhead was sitting on her throne also known as the Magic Chair as I staggered down her walkway with a thudding head and eyes that did not seem to enjoy the bright summer sunshine of Queensland.
I HATE not being well.
Redhead got off her regal chair and deigned to rise to come to the door to greet me.Two nervous manx cats scarpered out the door because a " stranger" had arrived. Hell, I have only been coming for over 6 months since they arrived. But, no, I am still a " stranger. "
Which brings me to Sailors and Shoeboxes full of memories.
I told Mum that I felt a bit poorly. My head ached and I felt a bit wobbly on my pins. ( ie couldn't walk " proper " ). She nodded, knowingly and said that she was feeling a bit wiggly on her pins and we sat down and the conversation turned to my late Dad, as it often does.
Now, you must understand that Redhead is the eternally gorgeous redheaded wife of a sailor man from the Isle of Man who came out, after the conclusion of World War II to New Zealand. He was billeted with a family in rural New Zealand and they just happened to know a group of young ladies - who had been invited to delight those young fellows.
Dad wooed my Mum , they fell in love and he decided to stay in New Zealand and make a life in the Antipodes.
The rest, as they say, is history. Three children later ( my two older brothers and young Shaydee ) were the grateful recipients of their love match.
Well, in our crippled and ( my ) headachy state, we grabbed boxes of photographs and started to spend a few hours looking through the memories that dated from the early years of my Dad ( when he was born in the mid 1920's ) and my Mum as a big sister and little mother to the neighbourhood kids.
We moved on to images of my childhood and my brothers' childhoods.
We looked at snapshots from when Mum and Dad moved to Australia back in the 1980's.
Some photographs of him as a 3 month old baby, on a rug of some sort - bear skin? Who knows?
When my Dad was passing, he spoke about scrumping apples. Stealing a few apples from a tree and running home with his bounty. I can still see him there, in his hospital bed, smiling and gazing off into his past and seeing that young naughty lad stealing some fruit ... he was smiling and laughing as he recollected those early childhood memories.
It seemed strange to me, on reflection, that his passing memories were not about his life on the beach in Queensland, or about his years in New Zealand... but about his life as a child.
My Dad returned to his early childhood, his roots, his fundamental beginning.
Then we looked into one box. A box with all of Dad's Naval records from the War and all the ships he served on. Little keepsakes from his service in His Majesty's Royal Navy. His change to the New Zealand Navy.
It was HIS shoebox. A Shoebox full of his life in the Navy.
It struck me how sad it was that my late Dad was a sailor in a shoebox. And then I thought " No! " Dad didn't reside in that shoebox.
He still resides everywhere in the home that they cherished and loved all these decades. He resides in our hearts and our memories and the music when I hear him sing.
We looked at other images from when he and Redhead went sailing and when they first moved to Australia and we laughed and tried to work out who the people in the photographs were.
We were astounded at the images he took in Hiroshima when he went with the occupying forces - the photos fractured by radiation. We looked at the little keep sakes he had from Japanese girls who decared him " a very handsome man. "
All sailors are the same and Mum put a stop to that nonsense.
Redhead felt that it was silly to keep those momentos all these years, yet, she dutifully gathered them up and put them in his shoebox when he left us.
The medals that his father received when he was at war.
Within this shoebox was a life of a sailor. It was not my father's life. It was the life of a young man who. at that time, did not know that I would be his daughter or that Mum would be his wife.
It was a life of expectation, excitement and anticipation.
Little did he know that it would he would be lead to New Zealand and a rebirth in Australia.
His shoebox was all about where he came from.
Who he became was a different story.
A twist of fate - a day in a country home in the back blocks of New Zealand changed my father's life.
Until then, he was just another sailor from the UK. When he met Mum, he became one of us.
As I put the shoebox away, back in the cupboard, I really paused for a moment.
I looked at that box and thought to myself : this is just the index. But boy oh boy, there are volumes to be read. I am just so pleased to be a character in his book.
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