July 7, 2022

My siblings: Christopher and Roxanne

My sister Jacqueline is deceased so I say below a little about the early days of my two siblings who are still alive and kicking. I have previously made a few notes about my experiences of them as adults.

My mother had my brother Christopher and my sister Roxanne rather late in life (unplanned pregnancies, I am almost sure) so I remember something of their infancies.

Chris was born in 1955 and Roxanne in 1958. So Chris is 12 years younger than me and Roxanne 15 years younger. Mum must have been 25 when she had me, 37 when she had Chris and 40 when she had Roxanne.

Chris had a problem of sugar intolerance as a baby which nearly killed him (it gave him diarrhoea) but an old nurse (A Mrs Whittington) who lived over the road in Campbell St. told my mother to feed him junket tablets for it. That worked and he has had no similar problems since to my knowledge.

My mother used sometimes to call Chris "my little cookie", which my father soon transmuted into "cookbook" and my father often addressed Chris as "cookbook". I also now occasionally embarrass Chris by calling him that.

I remember that all the other kids in the street used to come and play with Chris. He was the popular one in the family. I used to sit opposite him at the tea table and would tend to look at him with interest and affection while dining. He did not like that at all and every now and again he would complain, "Mum, John's looking at me!" I would then desist.

He was a great go-kart freak as a kid and when he got a bit older this translated into a love of motorbikes. As I like motorbikes too, it was something for us to talk about at times in later life.

Because they are so much younger than I am, I remember the childhoods of both Christopher and Roxanne quite well. My most amusing memory of Roxanne is of her at about age 3 waving her little arm at our father (Frank) and telling him off over something. He of course was just listening and smiling at her. I also remember that if she was ever going anywhere and Frank was in the way he would always step aside for her. He just doted on her of course.

Another memory along similar lines is of my mother trying to get the 3 or 4 year old Roxanne to do  various things -- to which Roxanne would reply loudly: "but I don't wanna". That generally seemed to be taken as a fairly decisive objection.

Roxanne was the good-looking one in the family. There is one photo of her in the sidebar and I have other photos of her as a little mite with blonde hair and blue eyes that look very lovely indeed: Very much like her daughter Katie.

I think that she and I share the same hyped-up type of nervous system -- which may explain why in her early adult life she commonly had three jobs at once. Apart from her love of work (no doubt inherited from our father) she was quite a hippie for a while in that she liked informality and hippie style dress. When all her children were grown up, my mother used to say that she had four totally different children: An intellectual (me), a bikie (Christopher), a hippie (Roxanne) and a Lesbian (my sister Jacqueline).

Christopher and his wife Kym now have two children of their own: Maddie (Madeline) and "Cricket" (James). Roxanne and her husband Stefan have three daughters, Katie and the twins. The twins are named Emmeline and Kelly. The first is no doubt named after Ms. Pankhurst and the latter after the maiden name of my mother's mother: Both names would then appear to reflect my mother's influence.



A rare family photo


The photo below is (left to right) of my niece Katie, my brother Christopher and my sister Roxanne. My sister Jacqueline was also in the original photo but she was terminally ill with the family illness (breast cancer) and not looking good at all so I think I am being respectful in cropping her out of the photo below. Katie is the daughter of Roxanne.



Taken 2008



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