Becky’s Wild Days: Gooseberry Raids and Saintly Bites

Becky was the third of seven siblings, spirited, vivacious and always getting into scrapes. How else would a teenager be she didn’t quite know! That was way back in the early 70s. A regular tomboy, Becky could match her older brother, Bernard, with as much fervour and skill as he did at jumping walls and dodging the ball when playing Seven Tiles. Needless to say, there never was a dull moment in her life! Even the routine thrashing (well, back then parents fervently believed that if they spared the rod they would spoil the child) she received from her darling mother was filled with drama, with Becky hollering to her stone-deaf grandfather to save her from the ‘monster mother’! What ‘wonder-full’ days those were when her visibly exasperated mother’s, “you can annoy a Saint, child,” simply added to Becky’s amusement. Fun and frolic, love and kindness, imagination and intellect intersected inextricably in this wild child of nature!

With ‘Naughty’ being her middle name, nothing prevented Becky from hiding in the branches of her favourite gooseberry tree, gobbling the toffees she stole from the box in the dining room! Another one of Becky’s pass times was wolfing down large spoonfuls of milk powder meant for the baby, until she got caught red-handed! Becky’s mother always took a siesta in the afternoons, those power naps that helped her through the rest of the day when the children returned from school – the tired little troopers – who had to be given their tea and baths. But this was on a Sunday afternoon. No sooner did mother go to bed for her precious forty winks and her other siblings playing quietly in the living room, than Becky tiptoed to the dining room, armed with a tablespoon, to attack the milk powder tin. You know how tin covers are, don’t you? They can wake up the dead as it were! But Becky, equipped with the ingenuity of a software engineer, prized the lid open with the least sound, and shoveled in as much of the powder as her mouth could hold, when she heard her mother voice, loud and clear, “Becky, is that you again at the milk powder tin!” It wasn’t a question as you can see. When it came to This daughter, her mother only employed rhetoric! Little wonder then that a good spanking became an integral part of Becky’s growing years!

Of the myriad memorable memories, the one that has gone down the annals of family history was the day Becky almost made her younger brother, Gerard, a Saint, on the lines of St. Francis Xavier (you may have heard of the Portuguese lady, Dona Isabel Carom, who bit off one of the Saint’s toes to keep as a personal relic).  Well, here goes…Becky and her siblings were playing on the cot, having fun; and like it is with most children, in the twinkling of an eye, playing together can turn into a boxing match. To this day neither Gerard nor Becky or the others know what prompted the cot battle between the two.

The cheerful camaraderie changed in a flash, with Becky and Gerard flaying hands and legs in an embittered battle. In the heat of the moment, an incensed Becky caught her brother’s foot and bit his big toe; notice I said ‘bit’ and not ‘bit off’! Gerard’s agonized cry brought Mother, the ever-ready peace-keeping force, into the fray, and shortly thereafter; peace prevailed. A good half a century later, this incident is still a sure-fire hit at every family gathering, leaving everyone in splits! 

Every child sure has a plethora of tales to tell the world, those that are both naughty and nice (in Becky’s case, more naughty than nice) that have definitely added sugar and spice to their life then as it does even now.