Bonzer Words!: Blowing Bubbles
...Whenever we heard our mother singing, 'I'm Forever Blowing Bubbles' we knew there was trouble...
Shirley Henwood tells of dreams which never came true.
Shirley writes for Bonzer! magazine. Please visit www.bonzer.org.au
Whenever we heard our mother singing, 'I'm Forever Blowing Bubbles' we knew there was trouble.
Looking back, I don't think she had any idea that she sang this song at any particular time. She knew, or half knew, bits of numerous popular songs, picked up during her youth—wartime, dances, and pictures. Pictures, in particular, had given her a repertoire of this kind of song, or snatches of songs. Being deaf, she didn't always hear words correctly, but sang them regardless. She could often be heard singing around the house, songs like 'Tooralooralooral…' or 'I, Yi, Yi, Yi, Yi, I Like You Very Much'. Songs my sister and I learned by association, not because we were the slightest bit interested.
Having been forced to learn the piano, she also played the songs, badly, which wasn't her fault, because of deafness. Her favourites were Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers. I like to believe that perhaps my mother and father had some good times, going to the pictures or dances, before their marriage went sour. But I don't know, perhaps she went with friends.
She only ever sang the first part of 'I'm Forever Blowing Bubbles,' either because she didn't know the rest, or perhaps subconsciously she realised that the message had got through, as we rushed around trying to placate her, or work out what the trouble was. If it was one of us, my sister and I would crawl around her, grovelling, to find out what had made her mad, and make amends to assuage her anger and get back into her good books, but if it was my father, we cringed and waited for the fireworks.
My mother wouldn't have known what a metaphor was, but I can see how fitting this song was for her. She had dreamed dreams, of boyfriends, romance, love, being carried off on a white charger into the sunset, marriage and living happily every after. Instead she got a loveless marriage, a sickly child, a husband who was never home. A life of dreams unfulfilled, unhappy endings, love dying, feelings of rejection, loss of hope.
She was forever blowing bubbles, but they all burst.
© Shirley Henwood
