[BetterRed]

kladyz, Blas - I figured out at a fairly young age that for my parents I was persona-non-grata. But I must stress they gave me a good education and neither ever laid a finger on me - in anger or love. From the age of sixteen I scarcely saw them.

Soon after my mother died (late 1980s) I tried to track down the whereabouts of a large silver elephant my maternal grandparents had on their sideboard. As a kid I loved that elephant and my grandmother had 'promised it to me'. One of the people I visited was my mother's late brother's ex-wife - Nancy, who was then in her nineties. Through the years she and my mother had maintained contact. She had no idea what happened to the elephant, but she did tell me why my parents had shunned me, more or less from birth.

Apparently I was their second child, the first, a daughter, was still-born. I was born a year or so later. Mine was a difficult birth and resulted in my mother having a hysterectomy, consequently she couldn't have the daughter they both desperately hoped I'd be. This was 1940s London. My father had survived the Dunkirk evacuation -- just. A few months later their house had been bombed in the blitz, then in the month before I was born a V1 missile hit their 'new' house.

Did I forgive my parents? I never blamed them for anything so there was nothing to forgive. But I learnt the lesson, don't assume you know the full circumstances of a situation, I regret not having had the opportunity to say: "I understand." to my parents.

I never did find the elephant, if I had, I was hoping I could buy it. I still covet it; polishing it is the only childhood memory I truly cherish. Nancy remembered me loving it as a toddler, but she suspected it was sold when my grandmother moved into her son's house in her dying days. It was clear Nancy didn't have much time for his wife, her other sister-in-law.

I count myself lucky to have been spared the trials and travails of my parents' respective families - what little I know of both is quite alien.

BR