My Mother's Voice
Fiona Curnow, 16 April 2020
Fortunately, the 'silent generation' reached adulthood before labelling the generations became a thing. Born before the end of World War II, the very youngest of them are now in their late seventies. Global depression and conflict profoundly shaped their upbringing, but at least as children they were spared the added burden of a label which implied they lacked voice or agency, or perhaps even relevance. The internet offers various theories as to why as adults this cohort earned the label 'the silents'. Some attribute it to an expectation that children of their era should be seen and not heard. Other theories argue that a constrained, austere childhood during depression and war years produced people inclined to suffer adversity in silence. Some point out that, simply on numbers, they lack the collective voice of the prolific, confident, prosperous baby boomer generation which followed them.
I'm writing this post from alongside my mother's nursing home bed. These days, infirmity has indeed rendered her almost completely silent: speaking is exhausting and her voice is weak. Even before this was the case, my mother - Elspeth - squarely fitted the profile of the silent generation. Loss and hardship permeated her 1930s childhood and, from my earliest memory of her, she's approached her circumstances with a sense of duty, compliance, caution and stoicism. I don't mean to imply long-suffering: her life has had much happiness. But she has navigated the world around her with a get-up-and-get-on-with-it attitude that has seen her through, and survived intact, all that life has thrown at her.
When she moved into aged care a few years ago, I packed up her home and found a travel diary from a six-week New Zealand holiday she took with her best friend Nancy in 1954. It's a multimedia document, from before we invented that term. Pages of her typed travelogue are interspersed with every imaginable souvenir capable of being carried home and glued down on paper: tickets, receipts, maps, menus, luggage tags, bon voyage cards, postcards, photos, serviettes, stamps, brochures, hotel stationery. All carefully curated to record this milestone event in her life - saved for, planned for, anticipated for years. This was her first international travel (indeed she did not go overseas again until she was fifty), her first plane flight, her first adventure away from home and family.
The souvenirs speak of her enthusiasm, but it's her words that really give insight into a young woman I never knew. To start with, I notice how well she writes. Why has this not registered with me before? Pacy narrative, rich description, wry observations and a beautiful cadence give her travelogue energy and flair. In the words I find a woman embracing new opportunities, inquisitive about the world around her, quick to make friends. She recounts episodes of giggly mischief, she laughs off mishaps and negotiates hotel upgrades. She flirts. There's dry humour in her observations of fellow travellers and awestruck description of beautiful places. She expresses her own emotions - names them in words - in a way I didn't always hear from her in later life: excitement, longing, delight, gratitude, celebration, joy. Her voice is loud, sure, energetic.
Hers is an ordinary story; even in the 1950s there was nothing particularly unusual, exotic or intrepid about two young Australian women going on a holiday in New Zealand. Yet what a blessing it is to me now to read her words, and hear her voice break the silence.