We Dont Need Another Hero – the Captain Australia Story (Chapter Two)

Chapter Two: from Baby to Boy

Chapter one: http://www.captainaustralia.net/we-dont-need-another-hero-the-captain-australia-story-chapter-one/

I often ponder the unique mix of elements that makes me who I am.

When I look at myself impartially, there is a peculiar checklist of talents and abilities, and as I tell you my life story you will see that the circumstances bringing them together certainly don’t flow like a normal life.  So there must be some deliberate plan, some purpose, right ?

Consider for a moment, the powers at my disposal: my intellect for example.  My IQ was tested under laboratory conditions in the psych department of Macquarie University when I was 15 years old, and it was determined to sit at 148, which I understand is considered to be the ‘genius’ level.

So, I’m a genius.  What else do I have going for me ?  Look at my phenomenal fighting abilities from a lifetime commitment to martial arts, and laundry-list of practical skills from my military training.  You could drop me in the middle of a forest somewhere and I have no doubt that I would survive and thrive.  I am probably one of the most capable hand-to-hand fighters in Australia today.

Consider then, my emotional profile – my innate sense of right & wrong, of goodness.  I am patient, durable, watchful, protective, disciplined.  I am naturally self-sacrificing, in a world where we are taught to ‘look out for number one’.  I feel a total and unquestionable drive to protect people weaker than me, to try and solve problems, to help people.

As I tell you more of my story, you’ll understand how all these qualities emerged in me, but the main point is simple: these things cannot have come together by accident.  Consider for a moment, the tree that blossoms the flower, and the bird that alights on the branch to feed from the pollen, then travels a distance to excrete the seeds, which grow another tree.  There is structure and order at work here, and I see clearly now that there is a grand purpose behind everything.

So, I apply that at a personal level, recognising that we are all of us, agents of Atrophy and Entropy, or of Growth and Order, and there is intricate design all around us, although we don’t often understand it.  So what I’m leading to is that I was created for a very specific purpose.

“The true meaning of life is to plant trees under whose shade you do not expect to sit” – Nelsen Henderson.

Those words resonate powerfully with me, and they pretty much sum up the ethos of someone who stands for Growth and Order.  I believe that to be my purpose, to heal the wounded, fix the broken, inspire the hopeless.  I think that we have broken the social balance between Atrophy and Growth, and are now in a state of slow, steady decline – and it is my purpose, my Quest, to stop it.

I have a destiny to fulfil.  I don’t know if it will end in sweet victory or bitter defeat, but I know I must be your hero.  Will you love me for it ?  Will you kill me for it ?

-o0o–o0o–o0o-

In order to truly understand my purpose, you need to understand who I am.  And in order to understand who I am, I think you need to understand who I was.

I could start my story with the day I put on costume & cowl, the day Captain Australia was born, but then you would only see one dimension, and I want you to understand the whole mix of elements that makes me who I am today.  It is my hope that in understanding me, you will sympathise with me, and in sympathising you will be changed by my views.  I want to change you with this book, when you put it down I want you to somehow feel compelled to share my Quest.

That ripple effect of goodness is my true hope for humanity.  That a candle can turn into a fire and that a fire can spread: but instead of being destructive, it becomes a powerful engine for change.

So, I begin my story with my mother.

Telling a story is like following a piece of string.  I start to tell you about me, then necessarily must take a step back and talk about my mother – but how can I talk about her without briefly explaining her parents ?

My mother was born to French and English immigrants to Australia.  Her father was a big burly Frenchman, naturally loud and charming, who had come over fleeing the horrors of World War Two.  Her mother was a stern, silent woman who had settled here with her family from England, and was living a non-descript life in suburban Sydney.

From my childhood, I remember my grandfather as a loving and kind man (for the most part), but in fact he was a horrible and violent drunkard, irrevocably scarred from surviving the horrors of war.  Although civilian, he had been impacted by the Nazi occupation of France in World War 2, and to survive had been forced to become an informant.  He was not scarred physically (except for a small tattoo that the Nazis put on his arm), but his spirit was deeply, and irrevocably wounded.

My grandmother was a quiet, long-suffering woman.  She had a deep pool of strength, but marrying a man who felt an almost weekly compulsion to get drunk and beat the shit out of her slowly eroded her spirit until she was a transparent shadow of what she could be.  Apathy, fear, and a bereft-ness of hope had turned her into a shell of a person by the time my mother was born.

I wonder how it was for her, my mother, seeing that violence as she grew up, and by bearing witness, her innocence slowly melting away, hope wilting and dying with each blow from his thuggish fists.  Watching her mother being beaten by someone she respected and loved (and feared) must have been awful for her.  I imagine even now she thinks back to some of those moments, wishing that she intervened somehow.

When we get to my teenage years, I’ll tell you what I did when my own mother was threatened with violence, but I certainly couldn’t stand by and watch it.  I feel a deep pool of sorrow and sympathy when I cast my mind back and imagine how it would have been for her growing up in that environment.  Who do we blame for the tragedy of our lives ?  If we look back far enough, what do we find ?  If we see a cycle of abuse, how do we break it ?  One important thing that my experiences have taught me, is that you can’t change the past: but you must learn from it.  By all means, look backward and understand your history, but never allow it to prevent you from moving forward.

Anyway, she was “daddy’s little girl”, and I believe when she began to mature, that he tried to rape her in one of his surly, violent, drunken fits of destructiveness.  I’m just reconstructing based on clues & hints that came to me later, to this day I can’t say with certainty whether it happened or not, or whether he succeeded.  When you see how my mothers’ life evolved subsequently, I think you’ll agree with me that the answer is probably yes.

When she was fifteen, my mother began experimenting with drugs, culminating in her addiction to heroin.

It was the late 60s and early 70s, and Australia had been deeply influenced by the ‘hippie free love’ revolution swarming across the United States.  My mother was a part of that torrid time, and she got caught by the needle before she even knew what was happening.

Next: pregnancy.

Already somewhat outcast to her conservative family, or rather hostage to the conservative values of the time, she and my father were pressed into marriage.  You have to understand that this was an era when women were not allowed into public bars – husbands would be seen to bring a beer out to their wives, who were waiting in the car.  Teen pregnancy was seen as shameful, and pregnancy out of wedlock .. unthinkable.

I was born when she was sixteen years old.  I doubt the midwife knew she was holding a future hero in her hands .. or perhaps she did feel the power of destiny tingling her fingertips ?

That year would have been terrifying for my mother.  Young, still in school, struggling with her addiction, trying to make a stressful and unrealistic teenage marriage work.  I had medical problems from the start, possibly a side effect from the heroin.  I would have anaphylactic reactions, projectile vomiting across the room, and had to have surgery while I was still a baby.  My mother would have to sit with me for hours, singing and distracting me, making sure that I didn’t interfere with my stitches.

Aside from the illness, I was a very advanced child.  I was speaking articulately at the age of 18 months, able to hold a conversation covering not just basic needs, but concepts like love and sharing.  At that point we were living on a ‘hippie commune’ a large farm with assorted animals – I can clearly remember the geese, who absolutely terrified me.  I would waddle across the field and they would charge wildly at me honking loudly, sending me fleeing to the nearest adult.

I was left to my own devices a lot, and by the time I was three years old, I had taught myself to read and count from watching Sesame Street on a battered old black and white TV.  I’m told that at the age of three, I was a deeply irritating child, constantly reading signs and posters or demonstrating my ability to count.  I particularly enjoyed “the Count who loves to Count” from TV and can clearly remember one occasion on the way to a drive-in where I had been counting all day and had reached the mammoth total of 250,000 and was viciously told to “shut up you little freak!”.

(In fairness, I was probably disrupting the plan where I was told to huddle under a blanket at my mothers’ feet, hiding so they didn’t have to pay the “family” entry fee – we were going to see ‘The Exorcist’ .. great movie, maybe not so great for a 3 year old.  I imagine it does cramp your style if you’re trying to smuggle a child into the movies and while bluffing your way past the entrance there is a constant muffled sing-song voice from a mysterious bundle at your feet, chiming “two hundred and fifty thousand, three hundred and ONE.  Two hundred and fifty thousand, three hundred and TWO”).

Around then (perhaps conceived at the drive-in??), my first brother was born (lets call him Craig), and shortly after that, my father left us.  I don’t really have much to offer on him, he was absent throughout my life, and not sorely missed.  My only clear memory of him is a day where we went wading at a public pool in Sydney somewhere, one of the high points of my life as a toddler.  I didn’t see him again until I was about twenty or so years old.  He’ll be largely absent from my story, because he was largely absent from my life.

The interesting thing is, that even absence has influence.  I didn’t pine for my missing father, I simply grew up relying on my own opinions and judgements – perhaps without that crucial developmental balance, I would not be the man I am today.

I believe that adversity is the crucible of heroes, so perhaps you owe my father a word of thanks – without him abandoning us at such a young age, I may never have developed into the hero Captain Australia.

As to my brother, Craig, the way I managed my childhood relationship with him has been one of the regrets of my life.  As I tell you my story, you will understand that I was too busy dealing with my own problems to see that he needed my help and guidance.  We were close together in years, and he was competitive toward me so I just made the assumption that he was okay (in fact his constant competitiveness was actually his way of seeking my attention, although I didn’t understand this at the time).  I’ll tell you more on that as we continue with my story.

When I was starting pre-school, my mother went to prison for possession of a controlled substance.

There were a couple of points in my childhood when this happened, and I remember them as plateaus of happiness and stability in my young life.  We were ferried off to live with my grandparents, and I can only guess that the presence of young children was enough to keep my grandfathers’ great rage in check – because there was only one occasion that I can remember when he beat my grandmother while we were living there.  (She saw it coming and sent us to stay with a neighbour, so I didn’t witness it directly).

Aside from the violence, they were long periods of stability – same school, making friends, calm, semi-rural backdrop for boyish explorations and fun.  There were a few misadventures – I can clearly remember one time when my brother and I were walking with grandpa, and Craig (about 3 years old at the time) was using a pitchfork as a walking stick, and he drove the pronged end down through his left foot, driving it right through into the ground below.  The blood !  The screaming !  I can still remember the panic and fear I felt that day.

Courage isn’t absence of fear, it’s moving forward despite your fear.  I was able to help grandpa slide the harsh metal prongs from his foot and run alongside as we dashed to the medical centre, where he got a number of stitches.

Even as a little boy, aged no more than 6, was I brave ?  Yes, I think that I was.

My grandparents were loving and attentive to us, perhaps in compensation for the disharmony between them.  My brother and I forced them into a rapprochement or at least a temporary truce, allowing them to create a peaceful environment.  It was a good balance for them – Craig being so little and still extremely dependant, me being at that age where you watch and learn from everything.  They showed great care toward us.  My grandfather would chase us around in a jolly way, joking and playing.  I can vividly remember evenings laying in a hammock on the verandah listening to him play French music on his piano accordion and singing in that beautiful language with his deep, hypnotising voice – never quite understanding why he was weeping.  My memories of my grandparents are melancholy, a mixture of light and shadow.

After my mother was released from prison, she reclaimed us and we packed bags and moved to Adelaide (beginning a long cycle of restless migration, never settling for more than a year or so).  Whether debts, bad relationships or legal problems, my mother kept us on the move throughout my early childhood, which I believe began to foster in me a sense of independence and durability: destiny already at work, you could ask ?

When I was six or seven years old, she met a man who became my “step father” although they technically never married (unless common law counts), and my second brother (lets call him John) came into the world a year or two later.  I loved him from the first, he was one of the lights of my young life.  Although I was less than ten years old, I would often give him a bottle, or change his nappy, or watch over him when nobody else was around.  As I’ve grown older, I think that the level of care and concern that I felt for John was extraordinary, as I was such a young child myself.  I believe that it is built into my DNA to be a guardian, a protector, and that was already showing itself before I was even 10 years old.

You see, I think this is where I first began to assume a real responsibility in the family unit.  Craig was too close to me in age and experience, so our relationship was more competitive, but John was tiny, vulnerable, and I was old enough to protect him and look out for him.  This trend continued into my teenage years.

From the age of ten I started to understand that we were poor.

I don’t know if my mother or stepfather were gainfully employed at the time, but I do remember worrying about money from a very early age.  My nature, even then, was to analyse a problem – understand it, and put together a strategy to solve it.  So you would often find me wandering the streets of Adelaide, a pre-teen boy seeking out alternative sources of income.  In Adelaide they had a great scheme where you could return empty bottles and recover a deposit, so I would spend many afternoons after school scouting around for empties to make some extra cash for the family.  I also got my very first job selling papers from a street-corner, and a weekend where I couldn’t find a neighbours’ lawn to mow was pretty rare.

If I had to paraphrase my early boyhood and how it affected me developmentally, I would probably suggest that it gave me a strong sense of independence.  I was often alone, we were shuffled around a lot, with little time to react and form enduring friendships.  I began to learn how to solve my own problems, and although my mother was trying to keep our lives together as best she could, I was exposed to rough neighbourhoods and dangerous people: I began to learn watchfulness.  I began to see real black and white examples of right and wrong.  I think, even then, that I had a protective instinct and a moral sensibility.

I grew up in hardship, and I knew I was different to the other kids.  For much of my childhood, I was somewhat bitter about that.  I often felt lonely and isolated, always the new guy, always the outsider.  The fact that I was significantly smarter than the children I would meet as we travelled would only serve to further distance me from them socially.  The funny thing about hardship though: once you come out the other side, you are so much better for it, so much stronger and more capable.

Next Chapter: the teenage years