1 Scope Gives a number of cases where I upset Barb – unintentionally. It started out with 5 cases but as time went bye I remembered I was not so good.
2 Purpose To help family learn from real experience and some of my shortcomings.
3 Cases The following are only the ones I can partly remember. I know I never tried to
upset her. I loved her too much.
4 Late For Party 1942 A 1000 km hitch-hiking doesn’t always go to plan, and a
supreme effort doesn’t always succeed. See STAN’S TRIPS 1942 Probably, this
plus us being separated by about a kilometer, both getting jobs in early 1943 and our
different war efforts, helped her drifting away a bit from me over the next 3- 4 years. I
wasn’t late for our wedding.
5 Greg’s Birth 1950 See Stan ???? Nuns kicked me out and I slept well while Barb
worked hard in having her first child quicker than we thought.
6 Barb’s Cooking. See Barb-Stan??? In 1951 when asked by Barb’s dad what I thought of Barb’s cooked apples, like an idiot I told the truth and said “No good” They had a strong taste of soap. Barb was not happy and Dad felt an outcast by Barb and her Mum and dad.
7 Near Cutting off Greg’s Finger 1953 See STAN ???
8 Electric stove at Heathmont 1958. I did or said something wrong one morning
before work and Barb half in fun threw water at me from a cup. I shouldn’t have
ducked as the water fused the stove. I started to fix it but ran out of time in order to go
to work. She had bits all over the place and had to get an electrician to fix it which
delayed her planned cooking. He blasted my lack of skill.
9 Repairing washing machine breakdowns 1964 I think this was the machine we
brought from Heathmont. It was an early model and to save $ I used to repair it.
Unfortunately this was too often and again delayed Barb’s planned day. Hence her
frequent “advice” was to get a new machine. She was right but I couldn’t kick my old
habits of fixing things and saving money.
10 Sliding Rock Creek See Warren. Sliding Rock Creek. I slept in a tent while Barb,
Warren and Roger didn’t sleep a bit in the car due to drunk drivers and peeking
aborigines.
11 Camper van through central Paris A lot of tooting occurred because I learnt later
that it was illegal. Many cars appeared to want to crash into us. But I laughed and
said that Parisians were not that mad, and if necessary telling them we were
Australians would help. Barb said she wanted to divorce me. Later she didn’t,
possibly because I sometimes did good things.
12 Clothes on Floor Barb chastised me about this a few times and now I feel guilty
about my inaction. I had got into this habit, had many things on my mind and had no
conscious bad intent, but was too slow to learn and fix it – especially in her last 2
years with the colostomy.
13 Wedding Rings See BARB -STAN Wedding Rings
14 Painting Barb knew I could sketch and was keen on art, and wanted me to paint.
Don Reay my mate and Margaret McStravick next door were painting and this may
have influenced her. She bought me some paints but I only used them a little once or
twice. I must have disappointed her as I had a demanding, but interesting and
nationally important work to finish.
Lessons
.1 Need to think ahead about your wife, partner or the next person who could be
affected by your actions or inactions.
.2 How to best respond applies to both parties. Barb and my responses in 8 and 13
above did not give the best result.
.3 Barb was terrific as she rarely whinged and must have had difficulty with 4 males.
In many serious personal cases she should have let us know, except in her last
case, her eye plea for help from me was too late.
.4 The relationship between male and female is very complex, fantastic, difficult,
subject to human error, and so requires good communication by both and mutual
love for best outcomes.
.5 Getting the right balance between family and job is also difficult and I regret I don’t
think I got it right.