In answering people’s questions before I set off on my wandering retreat in my Pelimobile my possible where about at Christmas came up- Initially I flippantly replied,
“I will be fine – although I have not been ‘alone’ for Christmas since I was a teenage mother to be in a home for unmarried mothers back in 1970”
This statement was met by an embarrassed silence and I realized that most people did not know about my past even though I had come to terms with it a long time ago.
There is still an old-fashioned stigma attached to having been an unmarried mother in some minds though I guess.
I well remember some of the nursing staff in the 1970s at the Royal Women’s Hospital who were all about ‘teaching a lesson’ to fallen women by making us endure labor alone, with only an intercom for company and intermittent check ins for up to 36 hours before taking action to help out.
However, I did realize with a horrible jolt that it is still alive and well in some you would not expect to judge a few months ago.
During the wedding of the lad I gave up for adoption, the aged catholic priest celebrant asked how I knew the groom.
I replied, “I am his birth mother – God Bless the kind St Joey’s nuns running the Home for Unmarried Mothers in Carlton!”
He said nothing which spoke volumes.
I was seated at the same table as him for the wedding-dinner, but he cut me dead.
It was like I no longer existed misogyny at its best!
An unforgettable Christmas Eve had played out in that Home for Unmarried Mothers in Gratton Street Carlton Xmas Eve 1970.
Thirty or so highly emotional, desperately homesick,fearful, single mothers to be, along with a few nuns sitting in the beautiful dim, tiny chapel there taking part in Midnight Mass.
We were just beginning to sing Silent Night, accompanied by Sister Winfred on her classical guitar, when there was a horrific hammering and shrieking at the front door.
We stopped singing, fearfully looking around at each other.
Feisty Sister Winifred put down her classical guitar and stormed to the door.
There she let in a disheveled, drunk, howling, homeless woman.
Putting an arm around her shoulder, Sister brought her in, gently seated her and took up her guitar again.
Then the most pure, melodious, goose bumping music ever, broke the silence for several bars.
From the homeless woman came a pure, sweet, tremulous, Irish voice leading the way for us to join her in singing Silent Night.
We all poured our homesickness into our singing, with as much emotion and feeling as that mingling of German and Allied voices singing Adeste Fideles on the Western Front during World War 1.
Without anything being said – we all ‘got’ how lucky and blessed we were.
Our previously hated ‘Chore” of being on the daily roster, to pass through the window in the lane, a hearty meal to the homeless took on a whole new meaning.
It became a daily lesson in humility and kindness.
Perhaps if that priest at the wedding had been saying mass that night, he may have learned a life lesson too.
However, Sister Winfred probably protected us from folk like him and choose her Chaplains wisely.
The St Joseph Sisters were well taught and led by Mother Mary MacKillop.
Skip the advert and have a listen- to Silent Night
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nEH7_2c644Q
Check out the story of the unofficial Christmas Treaty here:
https://time.com/3643889/christmas-truce-1914/