Fourteen and Sleepless

Another significant thing happened when I was 14.  After my aunt left my father began talking to me like an adult.  One of the first, and certainly the most powerful, conversations we had was about guardianship of my siblings.  My father had a considerable shock when he told his sister that he had named her guardian in the even that anything happened to him and Mom.  My aunt said that while she could take Jeanette and I she was not prepared to take on all 6 of us.  My father was extremely upset since he would have taken on any of her children (however, she happened only to have one son so maybe she felt it was not a very even situation).  Consequently he was seriously distressed because we didn’t have any family in Canada nor did he feel he had any friends who would be able to take on 6 Danish kids.  Whatever his rationale he sat me down and impressed upon me the need for me to “keep the family together”.  He told me about Faster Jonna not being able to take us, and that it was now my duty to ensure that I kept my siblings together with me.  He had revised the will and I was to be the guardian once I turned 18. 

What he didn’t tell me, but what I surmised through TV and reading, was that I was now to walk in terror of SOCIAL SERVICES.  I cannot tell you how many nights I lay awake trying to devise a way to hide the fact that my parents were dead and I somehow I had to find money to feed us, pay the mortgage, get us all in school (and who would take care of the baby?  Jeanette would have to drop out of school because I had to go to university to become a doctor).  I literally fretted my way through at least 2 years of sleepless nights before I finally started to calm down and realize that my parents were perfectly healthy!  I kid you not, nor do I exaggerate (well, maybe a little) about not sleeping. 

I really don’t know what got into my Dad to lay that one on me, except that he thought I was mature enough to handle it.  I can tell you – it aged me!  I was probably the most responsible teenager on the planet.  And my sister Charlotte should thank me on bended knee that I was such a strong minded sister in my determination not to let her out of my keeping come hell or high water!  May it never come to that!