*Other readers*

I do not care about your judgements or maybe I will, but still here goes.

WARNING POSSIBLE EXPLICIT LANGUAGE BELOW!

ONE LAST WARNING, THIS IS NOT FOR THE FAINT HEARTED!

To my dear self, well, one of you.

Pam (our therapist) has asked me to try and write you a letter, or what it turns out, and it will likely be a series of letters.

Letters to tell you from future us, and explain that some of the things that happened to you as a child are NOT normal.

It may feel normal to us, but to society, it is not in some cases the law it was not.

So, David, that’s what you were called; I don’t get called David anymore, and I’ll be honest, I miss it. It was my name for the first 19 years of our lives.

I don’t know where to start this letter, so I will start at the first pain I have, the first pain I assume we have, although maybe I am writing to a David, that was not there at the time and hasn’t experienced it.

So here goes little me.. wait, “mini-me,” it’s more Hollywood.

 

Dear David,

This is you, your 38-year-old self; where to begin? When you were a pup 13 and a half-ish months old, your identical twin John started walking. You started walking around 2 weeks later.

Before that, we were both menaces, crawling around a house faster than your grandmother (God rest her) could follow, quicker than our parents could notice, into the draws, into the flour.

I’m told we were once found with flour several meters around us, and we were in the middle laughing our arses off while throwing it at each other.

John used to jump over our cot banister and then let us out, and then the trouble would ensue. We were terrors.

When we were first born, as we were identical, Dad used to play tricks on the midwives. They would feed our Brother John as he was the oldest (not by much, I might add). Still, when they left to prepare our bottle, Dad would switch the tags on our beds and hands, and it took the nurses a few days to realize that our dear big brother was getting fed twice. They thought it was strange that we where always hungry and not gaining weight.

Dad was asked in the future not to be in the room anymore when these things happened.

Dad was around my age actually (38) when we were born, and our Mum had just turned 18 or 19, I know, not fantastic. But never the less were here now.

On November the 4^th, 1984, our other half, half of our belonging, departed this world, our big Brother John drowned.  I don’t know much about it as no one has ever told me, nor will they.

But I know that he fell into a nappy bucket chasing a toy, I believe.

This is something that has hurt me for as long as I remember. Nothing filled that hole for me until I had children of my own. My daughter (ours, I guess) is the Apple of my eye, and then came him, the replica of our Brother John, my son. (I wanted to name him John, but your wife [yes your wife] wouldn’t let me as her ex’s name was John)

This pain has never gone away, 30 plus years later, and I still feel something, someone is missing. I only feel remotely whole when I am in New Zealand sitting or lying on John’s grave.

My wife, my children, have mended the bulk of the gaping wound that once was, but like any door lock, any jigsaw puzzle, one little piece Is missing.

As you can imagine, this destroyed our parents, and I don’t blame them for that. They both just lost a child, and no parent should outlive their children. In Love, In Peace, or In War, a parent shouldn’t suffer like that.

For some, that is why alcohol was invented. Mum and Dad became alcoholics. Not that I can comment. The only way I could write this was by having a few myself, even worse by myself!.

Several years later, you had a little Brother Josh, that was cool! Mum and Dad still partied with their friends, and we got to have sleepovers at their houses, it was fun, but we did learn from one of the uncles drinking with them that “Children should be seen! not heard!” it was best if we stayed inside to play, or out of the way so we did.

I think we had some fun. I remember going to the petrol station to get a chocolate Cadbury egg, which was amazing. I think I got 3!! And we even got fish and chips for dinner. What was that new phantasmal thing, fish and chips! Wow!

 

Then…….

We had a sister too!! Finally, Mum and Dad seemed to find some happiness. Lisa was one of the last babies ever to be born in Feilding maternity hospital. She was brought home to Josh and I; to Mum and Dad’s second last home together 22 Colins Crescent.

I only remember a few things from that house, I remember writing the alphabet all down the hallway and getting an absolute flogging for it.

I remember Ross used to live next door and he was my best friend ever!!

I remember he got a brand new bike for his birthday, and we snapped it in half doing jumps of homemade ramps on the same day.

I remember the massive Vege patch Dad had made out the back.

I remember when a truck came over and delivered bunk beds for Josh and I, and the whole neighborhood played in the cardboard boxes on the front lawn rather than the cool new beds.

I remember my first kiss. A girl called Heather, in a bush outside her house.

I remember when the police came one night because Mum and Dad had a big fight, Dad had to run away because Mum had a knife and tried to stab him or did stab him, but then Mum ran away too, so the police came and looked after us until Aunty Helen came over.

Hahaha I remember the policeman wanted to make a bottle for Lisa, and he heated it up and was trying to test it, and as you did in the 80s/90s you just stuck it in your mouth, then he made a coffee with the same milk and said to his colleague “Milks a bit off, might need some more for the baby,” and I told him it was only today’s milk, it was mums “boobie” milk. The coffee spray went everywhere!

But worse of all, I remember Damian, of Collins’ Crescent. I’ll come back to that, young David, your are not ready. Or maybe I’m not ready to type it.

Anyway, we moved to a new house, as a family, Me. Josh, Lisa, Mum & Dad, the neighbor on one side, was a lovely older Baptist couple, really nice people. Across the road was my new best friend, Nathan Frost.

Haha,; I remember at the new house Mum asked me to go next door and see if I could borrow some butter from the Baptist couple, and of course they obliged. Mum went shopping some days later, she brought a pound of butter for them and asked me to take it over. But as they were not home and as a nine-year-old not knowing better. I left it on their front doorstep (it was a warm day). What a mess that made, but they didn’t care—they were such beautifully nice people.

They used to take me to church on Sundays. I would go over on a Sunday morning, I’d join them in the car, and one of them would pray before we left the driveway.

We would go to church where people would sing, read, pray, and a man at the front would talk loudly at us and then sing again. Us kids went to Sunday school, and it was so much fun.

No one cared who I was, where I was from, or that my clothes were not fancy like other people as long as I participated, and I did!

I remember Dad had chickens in the shed and a rooster. The bloody rooster would chase us! And if he caught you, you knew about it until the day Dad saw it himself, and the rooster was kicked across the whole backyard.

And “purely” by coincidence, we had a roast chicken dinner, and the rooster wasn’t around anymore. We had fun in this house, our last full family home.  Guy Fawkes night, a big apple tree to climb, and horses across the road that we could feed the apples too it was a fun house.

But then Lisa got sick, the doctors came and put a special machine on her cot, and taught us all what to do if the alarm went off; we had to grab Lisa from the cot, put her on the floor and press her chest every 2 seconds while someone else called 111 ( NZ version of 000) and yell for Mum and Dad.

The scary part was every time a motorbike went past, Lisa’s alarm would go off, and everyone ran for her cot.

Josh and I shared a room. It was really fancy as it was really big, we even had a color TV in it. I don’t remember where Mum and Dad’s room or even Lisa’s room was, and maybe they shared I don’t know.

Mum and Dad seemed happy back then. They had parties and had friends over, I was the beer boy, I sat on the keg of beer and would pour jugs of beer for people, they would give me 50 cents or a coin, I was making a fortune, $15-$20 a party.

 

I do know I had my first (that I remember) birthday party in that house. I invited EVERYONE from my class, especially a girl. I think her name was Shannon; I thought she was the prettiest girl ever!! She was much taller than me, and from the whole party, I only remembered two gifts. Aunty Sharon bought me my first skateboard, and Shannon gave me a voucher for the bookshop.

I’m not sure if it was before or after that birthday, but Dad, Lisa, and Josh moved out, they moved to Dad’s new house.

Mum asked me to be at the courthouse by a certain time a few days later, but I was off skateboarding, I was supposed to tell the children’s services (it was a custody hearing) people I who I wanted to live with Mum or Dad but I forgot.

I got home to my Mum crying and saying she lost us kids. I didn’t understand because I was right there,

I wasn’t lost. She went to her bed (which I now remember was the next room over from mine) with lots of her pills and Grandads pills too, and she wanted me to hop in bed and cuddle while she went to sleep.

She told me to tell Lisa and Josh she loved them and Dad that she would always love him.

The 11-year-old boy that we were made me get up and run. We ran to Nathan’s house, but no one was home, no one was home next door either, we ran two blocks away to (I think his name was Jason) Jason’s house and I called aunty Elaine, it is Granddads phone number the number I have never forgotten 3235825, and I told Aunty Elane what Mum said and what she did.

I don’t remember what happened after that (maybe I will, and if I do, I’ll update this), but I remember Dad taking me to visit Mum in a special hospital. She wasn’t allowed to leave, but we could go inside and see her. It was strange, but when Mum came home she was quiet, she was kind.

I lived with Dad after that. We lived in a two-story duplex across the road from Uncle Gordan, Aunty Rosie, Gordy, and Tamati. Aunty Rosie is our Mum’s sister.

I was close to school, I could walk to North Street school in less than 5 minutes. We had a cat called Brandy and a dog that Dad had taught to only shit in a hole that he had dug in the corner of the yard.

Dad had a car that he hand-painted red with some shitty paint, but it was his pride. We started going to Palmerston North on Fridays and Sundays to a Tongan church.

I had no idea what they were talking about as we barely knew we were Tongan, let alone learned the language.  To be honest I am not even sure if I knew what a Tongan was.

 

One amazing memory I have from that house was going on a camping trip with an organization called Barnardos. We all went. I was just old enough to be put in with the big kids. Oh my God, I had cool kids to hang with. They laughed at me as I only had gumboots and shorts. They said I couldn’t do the hike wearing them because it would hurt too much, but FUCK YOU, I did, and I did it quicker than all of them. Imagine their faces, an 11-year-old kid kicking their arses in an agility-based long-distance hike.

A few months later, Christmas happened, my last Christmas in NZ with my Dad, but wow, it’s one of the Christmas’s I remember,

I came down the stairs of that duplex that year like any other day we didn’t really do Christmas, but a tree had appeared overnight, not just a Christmas tree, but Santa had remembered us too!

There were presents lots of them, for me, for Josh for Lisa we all had presents, the tree was covered in decorations and lights, and Dad cooked a roast lunch with Yorkshire puddings.  BEST FUCKING CHRISTMAS EVER!!!

Years later I found out that it had a lot to do with Barnardo’s, they supported Dad, and I am truly grateful for that. Without the generosity and support, I don’t know where any one of us would be today.

Not long after that, Dad made a decision that would change our lives forever.

He was moving to Australia. But without me, just Josh and Lisa were going to Australia. He didn’t want mother to “lose another twin.”

22:21 – 26/11/2021 – to be continued. soon.

Edited and Updated Slightly 3/12/2021 18:17