The truth about Wonder Woman

[brettc1]

You might have thought Wonder Woman first appeared in 1941. It's an understandable mistake.

The truth is she was born in 1925, and the first house she lived in Rockhampton in Queensland had a tin roof and a dirt floor. She lived with her Father James and her mother Irene Rose, and her sister June and Jean and Younger brother, Jimmy.

Things were very different then. At school you wrote on slates, and the teachers were allow to throw dusters at you and were, according to mum, very good shots. Food was different too - she and and her sisters and brother used to collect the broken biscuit pieces from the factory, and ate a fair bit of bread and dripping. After school she told me here and her brother and sisters would often go out into the bush near their house and fish for crawchies. This involved tying a peice of bread to string and letting it sit in the creek until the crawchies nipped with its pincers and you could yank it out of the water and put it in a bucket for my Nana to cook. Back at the house everyone ate together, and nobody was supposed to talk until the meal was finished. On one occasion where she decided to overlook this rule her father proved he was as good a shot with a loaf of bread as the teachers were with their dusters.

She grew up in the war years. She told me of the American servicemen stationed on Rockie, and Nana doing their washing for them. On one occasion I believe there were more than a dozen of the soldiers over for dinner. She told me there was some dating of the Brown girls by the American visitors, strictly supervised by Nana. She told me "When Mum coughed, that was time to come inside."

She had many talents. She learned to dance in roller skates, and she represented Queensland in interstate tennis competitions. But above all she liked to do things her way, and after the war she made the decision to move down to Brisbane with one of her friends. Despite my granddad's words "You'll be back in a week, Biddy."

Well she wasnt back in a week, or a month or a year. Brisbane became her home for the rest of her life, though she did travel. She worked picking hopps down in Tasmania, and held many other jobs as well. In Brisbane she worked at the Arnotts biscuit factory, and she worked the make up desk at Barry and Roberts. She had her share of interested young gentlemen. She married twice, but neither time led to lasting happiness. She never forget her ties to her family, even visiting my grandfather at his sickbed in her wedding gown when he was struck down with cancer.

I was the product of her second marriage to my dad Bruce. They separated when I was 5, and from then onshe raised me as a single parent, helped by my Auntie Margie and the rest of her family from Rockie who often visited. We kept in touch with dad's family for a time, but eventually it was just me and her and her family. As she would often remind me "Yeah, you're a Brown."

She never owned a house of her own that I lived in, but Arthur Terrace was her home for over 40 years, 39 of those living with her landlady and lasting friend Frieda, who even went to far as to get our neighbour Mr Bruno to add in an extra room downstairs so an eight year old boy didn't have to share a bed with his mother.

There are far too many memories of her to compress into an hour or even several hours. I remember her Sunday dinners, which were actually at lunch because dinner then was called tea - backed potatoes in the fry pan and roast meat. I remember getting fish and chips from up the road for us, and us walking down to Paddington for groceries. She always put me first, and it's only now that I am a father myself that I realise how much she must have sacrificed of her limited income, a pension supplemented by cleaning the local laundromat and making flower arrangements from wire and pantyhose, towards keeping me happy. We weren't rich but we were comfortable. Mum saw to that.

She never lost her independent spirit, and liked to speak her mind, especially to me. She never shirked work. I remember very clearly one time when a snake turned up in the yard, she was out the back attacking it with a garden hoe while shouting for the Persian cat Pixie to come and attack it. Pixie, it should noted, took one look from the steps and decided there was no way he was getting between Mrs Crawford and the soon to be very very dead snake. Another time a man turned up trying to sell something at the front door. When he didn't take the hint that mum wasn't interested she sent him packing with one of her favourite phrases "Get to buggery!"

She was forthright. I am sure my cousin Karen remembers the time I wandered away from her at the shops at red cliff and thought she must have gone back to auntie Junes, so off I went to find her. She, of course, was looking high and low for me worried sick, so when my cousins Karen and Leanne brought me back to find her sitting crying on the seat in front of the store, I only had time to get out "now before you say anything" before the hand landed square on my backside.


Things between her and I weren't always smooth. She was a single woman raising a son and it caused some friction, I know and some awkward moments - the sex talk incident springs to mind. And we could never watch Mother and Son together, because she would laugh and laugh and then turn to me and say "I'm not like that."

No mum you weren't, because you were so much better. You gradually gave me my space. You sent me to uni, and supported me when I was told in 1985 I would never be a teacher. It wasn't until I was 27 that you let me move out, and even then you insisted on still washing my clothes. Because, you told me, if you didn't do it it wouldn't get done properly.

One thing she and I did agree on was my decision to marry my wife Kathy. She loved you her, and her mum and dad and brother. I know two of the happiest moments of her life was the birth of her grandchildren, Xander and Gwen, who I am so happy she got to know. "He looks up to you," she would often say of Xander. "Well, I'm taller," I would say. "That not what I mean," she would reply. I think she was proud we have the relationship I never had with my own father. "Gwen looks like me when I was little," she would tell me, and smile.

I could tell you a hundred stories about her - working in the tuckshop at Ithaca Creek, going to Bingo and often sitting on one number for the jackpot, playing the pokies, having shandy, taking me to Doctor Tates when I was sick and to the movies on the holidays. But I am going to finish with these things she told me that have stuck with me.

Don't wash your hair at night. You'll get a cold.

You want to stick with the teaching. Your on a good thing there.

You don't want to be eating that spicy food.

Drink more water, not that coke that rots your stomach.

If you were any closer to the television you'd be in it.

You don't need every light in the house on.

Turn on the light to read or you'll end up with glasses.

Keep the kids rugged up.

Clean out your car. And for God's sake put the new registration on, the police are pulling people over.

For goodness sakes gave off that beard. It makes you look too old.

Don't be sad when I'm gone.

I'm glad to have known you.

I love you too.

[Gaelforce]

I'm very sorry for you loss, Brett. You mom sounds like she was awesome. I lost my mother this same time last year, and my heart goes out to you and yours.

[Vanguard-01]

Man, Brett. I'm sorry to hear about your mom.

Kind of makes our little spat yesterday seem ridiculously petty by comparison.

So, I'm sorry for your loss, and I hope you'll be okay. Best wishes to you and the family. I'll include you in my prayers tonight.

[FIFTY-TWO (52)]

My condolences.

[Spair]

I am sorry for your loss. My thoughts and prayers are with you and your entire family during these difficult times.

[Sacred Knight]

My condolences, Brett, and best wishes to you and yours moving forward.