Transcription
Hi there, and thanks for joining me for a couple with Chris. Today, I was asked to tell you something about my childhood, which was a little different from most Americans. Not all, but some.
Well, it goes back to World War II. My mom, but my dad, who came with a letter of introduction because if you called my mother a war bride, she would have a tirade on your head. That was a bad thing back in World War II to be a war bride. So anyway, my father came with a letter of introduction from, uh, a family relative. The families were connected somehow by friendship, next-door neighbors, or something.
So, Dad showed up. My mother was a model. She was beautiful. She was, um, she was in Kodak ads for Kodak, uh, film, and she was the Kiwi shoe polish girl. And Dad couldn't believe it. They went down in the tube, which is the London subway, and there were huge billboards of my mother using, uh, white shoe polish on her calf's leather shoes. She was very, very beautiful, and she's tiny. She was only 5'2", and she's quite beautiful. Many of you who are my Facebook family have seen pictures I've put up of her. And she's very outgoing and personable and takes command of a room. Uh, but she could be a bit of a diva. Well, maybe a lot of a diva, especially when you're her daughter and you look like I do. I look like my dad, which was very unfortunate. She made sure I knew that. So did my dad. He said, "You know, unfortunately, you take after me, not your mother. So, make sure you do something with your mind because you're not going to make it with your face." So, I took that to heart.
Anyway, I, uh, they got married during the war and, uh, bombs were falling. The house next door, I think, blew up, and the American soldiers were all under, you know, they were in the shelters, and they were, they used to have these steel tables you could get underneath so that the house wouldn't fall on you. And all the English people by then were, were just, you know, it's just something that happens every day. And they never bothered to even go to the shelters back then or under the table or anything. So they're partying away, and the American soldiers that were invited were all under the tables and out in the backyard in the shelter, and it was quite chaotic from what I understand. And anyway, so they were married and they came over on separate ships. Uh, Dad came back with his, uh, whatever you call that group of soldiers that stay together. Uh, and Mom came a little while later, and I think two years after that, her parents came because my mom was an only child. So they wanted to be near her. Oh, my grandfather, he loved this country. He thought this was the greatest country in the whole world. First time he had ever owned a house and not had to rent one. First time he had ever owned his own car. Had a good job at US Steel. Uh, Nana worked for the South Shore Railroad and, uh, loved what she did. She is so funny because, but the problem was for me, I came along in 1950, and in 1954, my mom and dad had saved up enough money to, uh, build a house. So they built a house in Marville, which was very rural in those days. Um, had one grocery store, I remember, and a gas station, a Texaco, and a drugstore.
Well, Dad was extremely ambitious. He was going places, and he knew it, and he needed money to get there. So, he took a second. He worked at the post office as a clerk. Started there after the war, and he chose the post office because of the security. He said, "I'll always have a job if I stay with them, with the government." And he did. And then he also took a job at the Marville drugstore. So he got to know everybody in town. My dad was super personable.
Dad's dad, when he was quite young, was a handsome young lad, and he, um, ended up, um, getting a terrible case of acne when he hit puberty. And, uh, I remember him telling me that he woke up and looked in the mirror, and he wept. He said, "I'm ugly. I'm ugly." And that was where he first got the idea, "If I can't be handsome, I'm going to have to make it on personality and my mind." And he became an excellent student. And, um, and boy, did he develop a charming personality. He charmed my mother, the model, right out of her socks. And, you know, Mom, being really beautiful, would probably never go for a guy like my dad. But boy, he charmed her, and he decided he wanted her, and he got her. And, uh, to the day they died, they adored each other. Fought like cat and dog. Oh, there were always fights and always screaming in our house. But boy, they worshiped each other. That was just their. Mike used to call it, they love loudly.
So anyway, when I was four, we started building a house in Marville and, um, it wasn't on any kind of Indian land or it was a thing ground. It was not a burial ground or anything like that, but it was, it was nice. It was this nice small house, and, um, I was playing down in the basement. I was four, four and a half years old, and my life was pretty good. And I went down there and I turned around, and I saw a person standing there, and he looked. If you've ever been out on a boat and you see oil on water, or you know the gasoline leaking out of the engine on water, you know that iridescent kind of thing where you can see through it. But there he was, and he looked like that, and I could see through him, and he growled kind of at me like that and scared me to the point where I stood there shrieking. I wet my pants. Big puddle. I was standing in a big puddle on the floor, screaming at the top of my lungs, and both my parents came running down, and they picked me up, and I, they said, "Why, what's wrong? What's wrong?" I told them, "There's a man right there. There was a man." And that was my first ghost, and I was afraid to go in the basement ever afterwards. I never went down there alone, ever. And, uh, over the years, it was proven, even to my dad, who was a non-believer, there's something in that house because it got him several times. He never saw it, but he would see orbs floating around at night, every night. He would close the curtains and chase around trying to figure out where these lights were coming from. And he finally gave up. He said, "I just, I can't find a source for these these big white orbs that are." Of course, they weren't called orbs then. They were just white lights that floated around the room. Big, kind of softball size, and he finally gave up on that.
So anyway, my big problem was I ended up with sort of a not knowing exactly who I was because although my dad was 100% Yank, my mom and Nana and Granddad were all British. And Mom and Nana were not only British, they were Jordy British, which is the northeast. They were from, um, near, um, Newcastle, but further north, uh, in South Shields, which is pretty close to Scotland. So, a lot of the Scottish terminology kind of bled into the English and kind of got mixed in there. And so, I grew up speaking not with an accent, but with a dialect where the words were actually changed. So instead of saying "don't," they would say "div" or "de," and, uh, "go home" would be "gam," and there were all of them had with you. Oh, "get out of here." "How are you with you?" And, um, there it was all, you know, totally completely different languages. A left hand would be a, a cuddie, uh, a cuddie whiff, a cuddie whiffter, I think that's what they called a left-handed person was a cuddie whiffter. And, you know, there was a lot of, uh, "way men" kind of that kind of thing. "Way I." And so anyway, I grew up, and they were the ones that were that taught me to talk because my dad was busy working at the drugstore and the post office and gaining his little nest egg that he wanted to build on time for tea. So, uh, there I was, and I was quite happy speaking this dialect. I didn't know. I knew Dad didn't, but Dad wasn't around that much. So that's how we talked.
And then I turned six, and they sent me to a rural school. It's called Ainsworth Elementary. And this was right in the middle of a farming community, not far from Hibbert. And I stuck out like a sore thumb. In the first place, my real name that I did change was Gillian with a G. And I was called Lillian. I was called Gillian. I was called Gilligan, and nobody could seem to get. So I went by Jill, but nobody could understand that I could, if I spelled it G-I-L, they called me Gil. So I switched it to J-I-L-L. And, uh, but, you know, in school, teachers call you whatever they want to call you back then. So I got made fun of. I got teased. A lot. Um, for some reason, everybody knew this little, this little ditty of a song back then called "Mad Dogs and Englishmen Go Out in the Midday Sun." And, uh, I had that sung to me a few times. I was extremely shy. Oh, my mother, we didn't use the word shy. My mother used to say, "Our Jillian is reticent." So, I was reticent, and it didn't serve me well as a six-year-old. I became the odd one. I was always the odd one, and I, I really never made any close friends. Um, I hardly, I don't know really what happened to most of those people. Um, I still have one friend on Facebook who was a classmate back then, and he was the only one that was really kind to me, and he never teased me, and I thought that was very kind of him, and to this day, I, I remember that and I'm grateful for that. Um, but that was definitely a problem. I, I realized real quick that I had to learn to speak American, and not just American, but Midwestern American. So I set about doing that, and I learned it.
But when I came home, everything changed. In school, I was an American. I, I was determined to be an American. And I, I was so hurt by what happened by, by public school that I became very angry with my mother. Never with my grandmother. Nana was, was my saving grace. She was, she was an angel to me. She, any good qualities I have today were instilled in me by Nana. She's the best, uh, very pragmatic person. Um, her, her bywords were, "Get on with it." You know, when bad things happen, you don't complain, you just get on with it. This woman had been through two World Wars. She was born during the Boer War in 1900, and then had been through World War I where she met her husband, my Granddad, uh, and during an air raid, and she had then had my mother and went through World War II. So, um, things were bad in England in those. They, they were still rationing long after the war. And so, they were absolutely thrilled with being in America where they could buy any food they wanted, and, and jobs were easily come by. So, they came in, I think, '48. So, um, I think my parents were married in '44 or '46. I think it's '46, but I don't know.
But anyway, so the problem was that I, I was, I had a lot of anger. I was afraid in the house. I was afraid in the school. My whole life was based on fear. I was afraid of everything. I was afraid of people. I was afraid of teachers. I was afraid of students. I was afraid of whatever it was that I could sense was in the house. And I could sense when it came into the room. And I could sense that it was a low energy, and it was not friendly. So I, I had an anger problem. I had an anger issue as a, as a small child, and it was only based on fear. I see that now as an adult. Mike worked with me for years to finally peel down the layers of the onion to say, you know, you just operated your whole life on fear. You were always afraid of not fitting in, or afraid of the unseen. And, um, the problem I had was as soon as I came home, I had to be culturally British again. Out there, I had to learn to be an American. Inside the house, I had to be, or the h, as we would say in the house, I had to be a Brit in every way. And, uh, I mean, I learned "God Save the Queen" long before I ever learned "My Country, 'Tis of Thee" or the national anthem for the Americans. So, uh, it set about sort of a dual identity. I wouldn't say personality, but I would say a dual identity that I had to remember where I was, who I was talking to at all times, and try to figure out how to fit in with them.
Until this day, uh, the only one that appreciated me speaking totally in Jordy was Mike. Um, if I went Jordy, he just loved it, and he learned the words, and he, he learned the dialect. Of course, Mike was, could speak seven languages. I mean, so Jordy was pretty easy for him to pick up on. Um, and then after a while, it got to the point where I would use words, and then I would say, "Wait a minute, is that an American word or is that a Jordy word?" And I wouldn't know. I'd have to ask Mike, "Have you heard that this word used?" He'd say, "No, that's a new one." So sometimes I go when I, when I've had a drink, I go Jordius. I don't drink anymore, and I never drink very much. But, uh, I'll, if I'm totally relaxed and I'm with someone that I am comfortable with, I'll often slide into Jordy. And if I'm not as at ease, then I slip into my solid Yank. And I think what it's done for me is being bicultural. Uh, it's made me more open to, uh, other cultures, but it's also been a bit personally confusing to never know quite exactly who I am. So, and I guess I'm just a blend. I'm a mutt, but I'm me, and I'm satisfied with me. Um, things that used to, uh, used to freeze me in many ways, uh, don't bother me anymore. I would never have made a YouTube video years ago. Um, Mike worked so hard to get me to speak in, in public comfortably. I couldn't do it. But then after he crossed over, after he transitioned, I think a lot of him stayed with me. And we'll talk about that in another video about merging and continuing marriage after your, uh, your partner has transitioned into consciousness, because Mike and I still are very much married, and I can, of course, all my life growing up, I could hear dead people. I could, I knew what was. I was a bit on the psych. I sound like Daphne from Frasier. I'm a little bit psychic. Well, yeah, a little bit. I'm not the best medium in the world, and I would never charge for it. My mother said, "Whatever you do, our family has been psychic for generations, and we've had an ability to use energy in a way that most people haven't learned how. But if you ever take money for it, you'll lose that." And she called it a gift. I don't think it's a gift. I think it's something everybody has. But, um, Mike having lived in Europe, in Italy, for seven years, he didn't really want an American wife. He wanted someone who was more, um, multicultural in thought, or more European in thought, or, um, someone that he found interesting, and he found that in me. I always say I snuck under the fence because I was born here, but, uh, he totally enjoyed having my perspective, which was far different. He adored my parents, absolutely, and they adored him. Not at first. When they found out I was seeing a priest, a Roman priest, they were absolutely positive I was going to hell, and there was no way around it, and they would never see me again. And of course, Mike's parents felt the same way. Um, but we sold it on and lasted 46 years until he crossed. His body left, but he's still here, and I know it as well as I know my original first name.
So, uh, that's pretty much how I grew up and, and with a lot of insecurities that I have eventually fought those dragons, killed those demons, and I'm sitting here talking to you right now over a cup of tea. I hope you've got a cup of tea or a cup of coffee or something. And I do enjoy chatting with you. Truly, I do. Uh, people tell me all the time, "You ought to write a book about this." Well, I'm still working on Mike's book, which I have channeled and have written and edited. Oh, I cannot tell you how many times I've edited it, and I'm doing it again. I just finished editing it, and then I realized that wasn't exactly. It became too short. I took too much out. It started out at 114,000 words, which is barely acceptable for literary fiction, but 90,000 would be better. So, I took out all these words, and then the word count came in at 62,000, which is way too short. So, now, as of today, I'm going to go back and edit it again, do a total rewrite on it. I can't. I've lost count at how many times I've done that. It's just been amazing to me that one person could rewrite the same book that many times. But I have, because it's important, because it was important to Mike. And if it was important to Mike, it's important to me. And he had a message. And that message is going to get out into the world if it's the last thing I do. And if I don't get it out there, or my kids will get it out there. So that's what's keeping me occupied these days. And I have these little breaks once a week where I just talk to you and catch up and hope that you will, uh, make comments here in YouTube. Um, and I hope that you like and I hope you subscribe because it makes me feel like, well, somebody's listening to me because I don't have anybody else to talk to. I'm here all on my own. I am here 24/7, 365. I'm very, very almost never have company. Occasionally, uh, FedEx stops by, and they don't chat.
So, anyway, this is for today. That's how my childhood went. And, uh, I will see you next week. Please again, like, subscribe, share. Just keep it going here so I have somebody to talk to, and I'd rather talk to you than anyone else. So, thank you. Thank you for being here. Till next week. Bye-bye.