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| 1951 Family Photo; Mum with Stuart, Dad with Ruth |
Vining Centre, Akure, March 10th.'73
I had a letter from Stuart this week - and also your letter Ma saying how upset you are at their sharing the flat in Offord Road. I can understand how you feel about it all - but I don't think that you should torture yourselves with the idea that you have failed somehow. You have faithfully brought up all of us - and done a good job of it. Whatever choices the children make we still all have the basic stability of loving caring parents - and that counts for so much these days. Maybe living here in Nigeria and seeing some of the incredible muddles that there are in family life - the number of men who live far from their wives and children - the 'girlfriends' of married men - the promiscuity among students - even in schools. All manner of things which make people become hard and cynical and uncaring. So it seems to me that a loving, caring loyal relationship between a fellow and one girl friend has the seeds of good in it, and may work out happily in the end. You said that you liked Jutka and that she was good for Stuart. It is good that they came together for Christmas at Malvern. Stuart is not hiding some nasty hussy and keeping you in the dark.
Don't think that I don't understand your distress about the flat arrangement. I do... but yet at the same time I think we should pray that GOD will help us all to see his positive will for the future of the relationship. GOD still loves Stuart, even in the new set up... and this Jutka too. Hang on - and I think that you will see some rays of light...
Thank GOD that Ruth is happily engaged.
57 Sunnybrae Road, Takapuna, 18th March 1973
Thank you for your letter and the news of Stuart and Jutka. I have taken a few days to ponder over what you have written and think how best I could convey to you my feelings on the matter. What follows is written with love and with understanding of how hurt you feel by Stuart's attitude and behaviour - but may be rather cold comfort for all that.
First, you have to accept that Stuart is an adult and his sexual morality is his own responsibility now. He has known Jutka some time and this is not a relationship he will have entered into lightly or without a good deal of soul searching. The fact that his choices in behaviour are not the choices you would have made does not mean that in some way you have failed as parents - the real achievement surely is to bring up children who can make their own choices and accept responsibility for their own behaviour, however distasteful some of those choices may be to one's own particular moral sense.
Second, the practical reality of the situation is that there is very little you can do about it and, I believe, very little that you should do about it. Stuart and Jutka need to be allowed to work their personal relationship out in their own way. You must realise that what you may view as something rather sordid, they may well be experiencing as something both beautiful and precious. After all there are many people, both within the church and outside it, who believe that it is the quality of the love between two people that is important, rather than the nature of the legal bond. Certainly the "permissive society" has caught on among many young people but so too, amongst the more intelligent of them, has a far greater sensitiveness in personal relationships.
March 24th.'73
Dear Ma and Daddy,
Thank you for your letters last week. I am glad that you were able to have a long talk with Stuart about his set-up. Why doesn't he marry her?
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| Family 1976. Back Row: John and Pat, Trevor and Ruth, Stuart, Jutka and Stuart. Seated: Elizabeth, Dad, Mum. In Front: Sacha and Lewis. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
[Ruth and Trevor were married on 19th January 1974 and Stuart and Jutka on August 9th 1975. I have a number of comments to make on my personal experience of Mum and Dad's changing attitudes towards romance and marriage and will post them later as a comment on this blog.]
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There are many ironies in my letter on the issue of my brother's living with his girlfriend. My own marriage was not in great shape at that time and in the next few years I would leave home temporarily for a month or two before finally moving out to live with Mary at the end of 1976. Nothing of the problems Pat and I were having appears in my letters home so when it did become time to front up to my changed circumstance I did so with much trepidation as to the likely response from Mum and Dad. We were all brought up to believe that sex before marriage was wrong and that 'living in sin' was to be abhorred. My father had conducted the marriage service for Pat and I back in 1964 and I imagined he would not take kindly to my separation and pending divorce.
ReplyDeleteMy letter home of 29th November 1976 starts:
'Dear Mum and Dad,
This letter will come of something of a shock to you but I have tried to protect you from the knowledge of the failure of my relationship with Pat for so many years now that I am really only too delighted to be done with all the hypocrisy at last.'
The letter goes on to explain that Mary and I had fallen in love and I had decided to live with her, that we had her parents' support and that everything was being done to ease the transition for Stuart, Sacha and Lewis. Letters to Mum and Dad from Mary and from Pat were sent on the same day.
Among the many hundreds of letters I received from home, letters from my Dad were extremely rare. I didn't keep a copy of the one he wrote after learning of my split with Pat. However, my mother did keep copies of the notes he wrote when composing letters to myself and to Pat at that time and I found those notes among the letters of mine that she had kept. They are full of struck out passages and other amendments demonstrating how my father must have agonised over what he would say to us all.
What my father did write amazed me and showed how me completely wrong I was about the rigidity of his religious convictions. Here are some extracts:
'Our dear John and Mary,
Thank you both very much for your most thoughtful and caring letters which arrived on Thursday 3rd and we also had one from Pat the next day.
As you say the arrival of the letters was a great shock and we have felt very sad, but now that it is Sunday and we have had time to weigh it all up, we are happy because we feel you are all doing the right thing under the circumstances...
... looking back over the years we can see many things which show that you John and Pat made a great mistake in ever getting married, because there was never the deep unselfish sacrificial love on both sides, which is necessary for true marriage as a life long partnership.
And that is why we are absolutely thrilled that you two are together. Words cannot express Mary how very very grateful we are for your deep caring and sacrificial love for John, as shown in your letter, a love which has grown under great strain.
We believe this mutual love will continue to grow in depth and understanding through the years.
As a person who has married many people and also seen the wonderful success of some second marriages after the first has broken down, I feel confident that when you two get married after the divorce, this will be John's real marriage and the first was an ignorant mistake...
With fond love and grateful thanks for your deeply caring letters.
Mum and Dad'
Although it was over five years before Mary and I married, my parents acceptance of our living together never became an issue. Indeed when we finally made it to their home in Malvern Link, Worcestershire at the end of 1981, Mum and Dad gave up their bedroom to us, moving into the second bedroom for themselves.