I feel so lucky to have had such an open, liberal up-bringing. I think it’s why the three generation Kili challenge is a possibility – we were always made to believe anything was possible, and that a different country was a new and exciting thing to discover.
Ma and Pa were both pretty surprised when I declared at 16 that I was leaving school and leaving home, and I knew that they weren’t terribly keen, but they never made me feel like that would define me. In fact I remember them laughing (possibly through gritted teeth in retrospect!) when I told them that an influential figure – who I won’t bother to name – had said, “Miss Miller, if you leave school now you’ll be a failure for the rest of your life”. And they always told me my bedroom was available to come back to whenever I liked, which I have continued to do for between a night and 3 months for the last 26 years.
Whoever I’ve turned up with, and for however long, I’ve never felt anything other than totally welcome.
Their home is a very welcoming place; when I was small we always had a lodger in “the back bedroom”. I can see now that this must have been a way of subsidising their income to enable us to have holidays and brilliant birthday parties etc, but at the time it felt like a way of ensuring our home was always more exotic than our friends’! Over the years we had male and female lodgers from all over the world, of different races, religions and sexualities, and all were welcome in our home. Amongst the others there was an American girl who made amazing cheesecake; a man called Pete who always used the mug with the orange and yellow flowers for his tea; and Katsohiko Fukushima who could somehow source blood oranges the size of grapefruits in 1980s Canterbury, who prayed at an altar in his room that Gwen and I thought was a “Sindy wardrobe” – the Sindy factory was in Canterbury so we were aficionados!
When Katsohiko left to go back to his family in Japan after a year living with us, he had noticed that I liked Sindy dolls (I hope he hadn’t realised that we felt her clothes ought to be hung in his alter!), and he gave me a beautiful doll that I always remembered as Kate Greenaway-themed; she came in a box saying so. I had called her Nell, and my cousin Louise (whom I have always been very close to – but more of that another time) and I had spent many happy hours over the years playing “hospital”, where Nell was the matron managing all the care of various pandas, bears, golliwogs and more. She was a capable, inspirational woman doll and Lou and I loved her.
Gwen recently told Ma that her daughter Onnie – the only girl in five grandchildren – loves hard, old-fashioned dolls, rather than modern ones. Ma immediately thought of the doll Katsohiko had given me, and dug her out from the back of a cupboard full of old school books and hideous 1980s jewelry. Apparently she came out without her hat, and with rather musty clothes, but Ma washed her up, made a new shawl and headscarf, and yesterday sent the following email to Gwen with me CCed.
This whole episode has had me looking for my well-loved doll on the internet. I Googled “Kate Greenaway dolls” and up popped the follwing pic. Look! – it turns out I didn’t name her Nell at all!!! #CrushedMemories
Off you go to Australia Nell – I’m glad you’ve been rediscovered – I hope you find a new, exciting life with Onnie; you’ve got a whole new country to discover!