Life stories: 1975

 The end of a cycle  [Previous ¦ Next]

I earned my baccalauréat with much difficulty, but forged lifelong friendships with three boys and a girl (one boy would die of cancer later, and the girl was to be lost and found again on the internet after 25 years). They were surrogate family, who helped negotiate my challenging teens. I was confused around homeland, got caught up in French student demonstrations and basically learned to dislike France. Civil law didn't sit well with me (one is deemed guilty until proven innocent, unlike common law I knew in Australia), neither did the French manifesto liberté, égalité, fraternité (I thought freedom encouraged initiative and inevitably lead to inequality, while equality maintained by government rules curtailed freedom, and the brotherhood of man did not look good in my world travels and turbulent family history): For example one always had to carry positive identification, and I was once hauled off to the police station during a demonstration in 1968; I was an innocent bystander who left his papers at home, at age 11 when politics and papers are not one's greatest concern!

My parents were also on a down cycle after paradise down under in Australia: Dad's career shunted aside, Mum's weak health, and siblings kicking up all manner of unresolved issues as young ones will do. Closer proximity to Hungary helped little, as we dared not return until well after our naturalisation, just before my Dad's Dad went into the night after a life at dusk. I would later learn that depression is the silent killer, is passed down-generation, and quietly oppresses close ones unawares. It would remain undiagnosed for half my parents' life. I seriously considered escaping this to become a priest, but then again I was wracked by self- inconsistencies, which were to haunt Catholicism in the new millennium. I took a keen interest in both early Christian and early Medieval history, as I saw there the seeds of modern events.