A IS FOR ABANDONED

My mother had a sad childhood. In 1933, when she was eight, her father left. My grandmother took work as a governess, a live-in position that meant that while she took care of another family's children, she could not take care of her own daughter. Grandma sent Mom to live with family in England, but Mom ended up being passed from one aunt and uncle to another and never felt welcomed or as if she belonged.

In 1937, when Mom was 12, my grandmother made a trip to England to see her. It was then that Grandma gave Mom the news that she was to enter a boarding school for orphans and fatherless children in Liverpool, England. Far from home, already feeling abandoned by her father, then her mother, then her mother's English relatives, this seemed to Mom like the ultimate abandonment. 

So begins a period in my mother's life that has become the inspiration for my next novel. In each of my A to Z posts, I'll be sharing some aspect of her experience or some tidbits from the book, which is currently a work in process. 

Here is a picture of Mom that would have been taken sometime after she entered boarding school. She would have been 12 or 13 here. I know, because she is sporting the signature haircut that all the girls had to wear. I don't know where the picture was taken or whose dog that is!