X2's Family - The misfortune and hardship of a parent

While I was intent on getting married and knowing her better, X2’s focus was on important things, such as the employee bonus at the company she worked at. She said she wanted to strengthen her ties with her family too. X2 didn’t like what I had learnt of her sister, but she seemed to trust me with details of the relationship with her parents. When we first started talking, she told me about her childhood and how her family struggled to make ends meet. I felt for her then, but that would change.

For most people, hardships are a misfortune. You are left with no choice but to feel bad for them. They are born into a situation with no escape, no choice but to fight and struggle their way through. That wasn’t the case with X2’s family. The situation felt like it was brought upon, something they fell into, consciously into. Theirs was a result of some really terrible choices

X2’s parents both worked in the airline industry. They met when they were young and decided to marry. X2’s mother, an air stewardess worked for a local airline while her father worked in the catering side of things. It was evident from my visits to their home that they were a very religious couple. There were prayers before every meal, before every trip, before anything significant.

X2 was the first child but she was ignored, she confessed. Her mother flew on work, doing erratic hours, random schedules where she wouldn’t return for days, sometimes weeks. It was all part of the job. Her father was the parent left to take care of the child. Instead, they had a maid to spend time with X2. When she grew older, her grandfather would be her parent.

X2 mentioned incidents with the maid. One that stuck with me was when she dipped X2’s hand into hot water meant for bathing. It was a way to instill fear to get the child to be obedient. This was strange to me, and I don’t think X2’s parents ever knew or bothered. The next child, a boy arrived a few years later.

X2’s parents were staunch Roman Catholics, who took the no-contraception rule seriously. That wouldn’t be a problem in most workplaces, but not the airlines. A clear rule stated that all ‘flying’ employees would need to leave, if they had more than two children. A mother with three children couldn’t possibly care for her large family.

X2’s parents had a third child soon after, almost certainly because of their religious views and choice of no-contraception. She would god’s blessing to their family. The court would get involved soon after.

X2’s mother was sacked from the job. She was the primary earning member of the family leading up to this point. Her husband had long left his stable catering job at the airport, now trying his inexperienced hands at being an entrepreneur. To do this, X2’s mother took multiple loans, first for the flat they lived in, then for the shop next door.

Now jobless, no funds in sight, things were in disarray. X2’s father’s first attempt at a business was an ice-cream shop. The shop was located literally 50 metres from their apartment. It failed. With no customers in sight, he tried running a cold storage business, which failed just as quickly.

When X2’s mother lost her job, her husband did what came naturally to him as a good Roman Catholic Christian. He sued the airline with the support of local Christian groups, crying foul. He claimed that the airline was against Christian values. They dragged the airline to court.

With the mess they’d gotten themselves into, and the fear of loans going unpaid, X2’s mother’s dormant schizophrenia showed its ugly head. She went into a stage of complete derangement. She would run out of the house, shouting and screaming. The strong dose of drugs were all that could help. The drugs numbed her down to a point of calm, a very physically and mentally-limiting calm.

When I heard of this from X2, I looked up the case online and I found it in some newspaper’s archives. The case eventually ended with the airline offering X2’s mother a ground job, of arranging papers like a clerk till she retired sometime in mid-2015. She would get paid the usual wage, but with a compensation from the case. When the newspapers spoke to X2’s father about the out-of-court settlement, he said, he’d rather not reply because the airline won’t like it. No one knows how much the airline paid X2’s father but we can only guess it was a lot. When I told X2 about the article, she was shocked. Her father hadn’t mentioned any of this to her siblings.

One must only imagine it to understand the true complexity of their situation. A young mother with an underlying illness, worked away from home and children, doing her best to secure her family’s future. She paid for the house, the shop, allowing her husband to leave his full-time job to take care of the children.

In contrast, an abled and healthy young man consciously left his full-time job, to run a shop 50 metres from home, while his suffering and drugged wife, woke up early every morning, took the train to work. She did this for more than 18 years.

X2’s father’s routine was more comfortable - wake up to breakfast made by his wife before she left for work. He’d sit in the shop from 8:30am to 1pm, nap from 2 to 5, before returning to work till 9. By work, I mean he employed 2 boys to do the hair cutting while he kept the accounts.

That was his success story.