Bonzer Words!: My Marrtiage Proposal
...When we came to New Zealand, I was fourteen. I was always falling in love with somebody. Or I imagined I was. My life existed mostly in my dreams and daydreams, which was a failing of mine, or so I was always told. Most of these dreams were unrealistic I can see now, but at the time I suppose they kept me sane in a strange country where I didn't fit in, and wanted to go home...
Shirley Henwood tells how she took one look - and fell in live.
Shirley writes for Bonzer! magazine. Please visit www.bonzer.org.au
I suppose most girls who grew up in the times when I was a teenager had the dream of a handsome man sweeping her off her feet, and riding off with her into the sunset, preferably on a white horse. The magazines I read and the movies I saw all seemed to focus on love and romance.
The idea of a career seemed to be limited—not only by one's academic abilities, but by the wealth and influence of one's parents. Nursing, teaching or office work were options usually mentioned. But most girls looked forward to marriage and children. I don't think I knew what a university was when I was at primary school or secondary school, when I lived in Australia. Each day was an ordeal to get through, until I could go home. Not having good health would have had a lot to do with this situation, as I missed a lot of schooling, mainly during the cold winter months.
When we came to New Zealand, I was fourteen. I was always falling in love with somebody. Or I imagined I was. My life existed mostly in my dreams and daydreams, which was a failing of mine, or so I was always told. Most of these dreams were unrealistic I can see now, but at the time I suppose they kept me sane in a strange country where I didn't fit in, and wanted to go home.
I didn't meet my future husband until I was 21. He looked about 17, but I found out later that he was 32. I was working down in the warehouse in the office of Korma Mills, where my father had come to in Auckland to manage the woollen finishing room. My sister and I were both working there, and my mother did out-work. Almost a family concern, you could say.
Tom worked as a warehouseman, where he hadn't been that long. He had come from a menswear retail shop, but found standing around most of the day boring. He was helping in the sock department, not far from where I was sitting at a desk by the grey filing cabinets. He was so good looking, with the bluest of eyes. I took one look, and that was it for me. I then had to try and find out if he was married. I asked one of the others. Of course they found it necessary to inform him, and made him embarrassed and frightened him off. I was always at the mercy of any practical jokes, or leg pulling they could get away with, being completely 'green'.
Tom was always nice to me and with his beautiful smile, good looks and kind nature, a lot of the girls who worked there were smitten with him. But I found that his smile was a smile of embarrassment. He would never dare to ask a girl out, he was too shy. So, in the end I asked him whether he'd like to take me to the pictures. He pretended I was joking, but after persevering, he finally agreed, and we went out and enjoyed ourselves.
His mother and my mother were alike in their possessiveness, and we had a lot of obstacles in our path. But whenever we were apart we wanted to be together, and although he didn't like the phone, he would ring me, and we would go out, and then park down the road from my place, so my mother could see us from the window and go to bed. His mother would wait until she heard the key in the front door, and call out, 'Is that you, Tom?' As if he might be the 'Midnight Strangler'. She would then proceed to ask what sort of girl I was to keep him out for so long, and goodness knows what people would think. Although what people she didn't specify.
Despite all our problems, Tom finally proposed to me in the car on the Tamaki Drive, along Auckland's waterfront. I remember crying and crying until I frightened him.
After we bought an engagement ring, some of the girls who worked in one of the departments, asked me how I'd 'got' him. Apparently some of them had spoken to him, but I don't think he would have been aware that they were interested in him.
Despite all the difficulties we have faced, we have now been married for forty-three years. We have two daughters, one son, and seven grandchildren. So although I wasn't taken off on a white charger, on our honeymoon on Norfolk Island, we hired a white horse and cart to take us for a ride.
© 2006 Shirley Henwood
