First Love - Marilyn's Baby

Marilyn’s longed to run away from home to follow her dreams of love, happiness and joy. She could not wait to break free and move to a southern city where she can live life.

Through a chance infatuation and her first love, Marilyn’s life is changed forever. One thoughtless decision, one care free action, one hesitant move, giddy in her first meeting she is hopelessly lost to his adorations and completely overwhelmed by his bravado.

Two years after leaving school at sixteen and working as an office temp she met Andrew.

“Are you going to the dance tonight?” she asked Andrew as she looked assertively into his fresh, baby face.” Certainly am. There’s nothing else to do here. I’m really bored. It would be great if I could take you,” replied a hesitant Andrew, who had never gone out with a girl before. He thought Marilyn was very forward in her question but was very excited at the surprise request. In his life and world, girls were precious like diamonds.

“You look really smart,” he gasped, as Marilyn got of the bus in a tight dress that showed her beautiful body off. The red polka dot dress plunged at the front and the dark stockings in her high heels made him reel with strong feelings.

She reached out for his shaking hand and led him to the dance hall, “Are you going to pay?”
After dancing and laughing the night away they caught the last bus home.

From that moment onwards they spent as much time as they could in each other’s company.

At night Andrew, like Romeo would serenade outside Marilyn’s bedroom. He leaves as the cockerel starts to crow in the mornings.

Sometimes, Andrew smuggles Marilyn into his room. Furtively, he takes a long circular route so as not to be seen. Here they spend weekends locked away not seeing daylight from Friday to Monday.

One Saturday morning at nine o’clock there is a knock on the door. “Shhhhhhhh!” He whispers, then points for her to hide in the broom cupboard. Marilyn clambers in whilst Andrew quickly hides her clothes under the bed covers.

“Good morning, sorry to disturb you, we’re doing an inventory check. Yes, let’s see, yes. That seems to be all present and correct,” chirped the clerk as he quickly looks over the room.

Andrew opens the broom cupboard door to a squealing Marilyn who bursts out into uncontrollable laughing as she throws her arms around him

Her passions, yearnings and desires were frustrated through the death of her baby’s father. Marilyn’s and her baby, like millions around the world would now have to over come their personal grief, hurt and adversities.

“Oh my God, no! No it can’t be,” and cried for a week after hearing the news. She was in deep mourning for a year before she slowly came to terms.

Marilyn’s baby thrives with the help of grandparents whose influence nurtures the child.

Emerging from this tragic and stormy start to the twenty first century, Marilyn’s baby, Joshua grows up driven to succeed. This drive comes from the mother’s and family’s love. There values and believes are based upon self-help, creativity, enterprise, independence and freedom.

Eddy Jackson
The eScribe Journal• CareersMentor • Educational Resources
0780 9233 688
www.eddyjackson.co.uk

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Marilyn has a lucky escape

In the darkest moments of the night, Marilyn has flashbacks and nightmares of the terrorist bombings and the chattering machines guns spraying out of the car’s windows. Sirens, explosions and carnage haunt her night times.

“The bombers are coming. It sounds as if they are bombing the railway station,” she shivered with fear as she called to the family.

“Watch how you go?” George puffed as he guided Rachel through the darkness towards the street ally way to get way from the detonating bombs. The banshee sirens blazed urgency as the terrorist bomber’s car accelerated away from the deadly blaze of the police’s rifles and their weaving searchlights.

“Look there’s a bus on fire spiraling down out of control on the Broadway,” Rachel pointed until a large orange fireball filled night sky, followed by a massive explosion. Another bomb has struck.

In 2007 when she was thirteen years old and recovering from a heart operation at the Great Ormond Street Children’s Hospital, Marilyn had to be evacuated from the ward during the bombings.

The matron ordered the nurses, “Quickly, quickly, take the children as far as you can on their beds and then in teams carry them into the emergency evacuation area,” as a cluster of grenades exploded into the wards.

“It’s no use crying and braking down here,” barked the matron to the seventeen-year-old auxiliary nurse trying to push Marilyn as the explosions caused the ceiling plaster to disintegrate and cut out the lights.

“Don’t leave me here alone. I’m cold. It’s dark here. Are the walls going to crash on us?” she sobbed as two nurses lifted her out of the rubble.

“Be brave now, stop crying, you’re safe now. They’ve gone. It’s over. We’re taking you down to safety,” said the petit, blond nurse.

On return home, the family still had to be vigilant. As the never ending Asiatic war dragged on, a new terror brought fear. Missiles whining there way to London often fell short of their programmed target or was intercepted by heroic RAF pilots. Marilyn shouts brought the whole lane out to observe a heroic RAF fighter pilot tip a terrorist missile away from its target, “Look up over there towards Colchester, over the doctor’s surgery …… There! Where the search lights cross, there is a RAF Typhoon flying along side a rogue missle and trying to tip it of course with its wings.”

“That’s going to make it crash to the ground. Watch where it goes! Watch! Watch! Look its caught in the searchlight! You can see a glow from the back of the missile.” George pointed to the missile screeching towards the River Colne.

With a thumping thud, a brilliant white light and the sound of overhead thunder, the silver Russian missile exploded in the Essex countryside to the huge cheers of the villages. Everybody starred at each other and shivered with fear.

Before another wave of guided missiles droned towards them. They scuttled into their home to safety.

Educational resources supporting PHSE Health Education

Before this event disappears forever, before our acknowledgment, appreciation and understanding of this history, our past and heritage is gone, this story aims to negate this negligence. It aims is to help us gain an insight into our personal lives. Each of us has a personal history with connections to an incredible family past. These snapshots and storyboards can haunt individuals. Their legacy may greatly influence the course of our lives. And so, this is the story of Marilyn’s baby.

Marilyn was a bright, young, vivacious girl. She was tall, anorexic looking with long black hair and the whitest of skins. As she walked she would sing, dance and pirouette. There was always a smile on her innocent face and she greeted everyone with warmth,

“Hello, you’re look great today, what’s the news? Have you heard how they are getting on? You only hear politicians and news reporters talking about world events and the implications for the country. What about our boys? How are they doing? Why don’t they tell us?” as she briskly plaited her hair.

Her father George replied,” Because they are more interested in preserving their self-effacing images, voicing their personal opinions and cultivating their vested interests. They are about manipulating, influencing and maintaining, power. What chance have we got on the fringes of society? We are the little people with nothing. Andrew and the boys are their pawns and cannon fodder to keep them in power and get their evil way. The military, the police and the judiciary are the forces to deliver power to the politicians. Everything is about them maintaining a vice like grip to maintain the status quo. Who do the politicians answer to? What do they get out of it? They seem to do very well out of it. We are at the end of the queue. The jingoism of The Daily Mail and the press blinds people. You aren’t listening Marilyn. Why ask a question and then waltz away in your own little world.”

Marilyn longed to be independent, free to think and be able to live a life she thought she wanted. She glided away in her romantic daydream of another world. This was a generation thought difference from her father’s perception. Marilyn’s emotions, perceptions and thinking were at her stage of development, in black and white. These were at a stage, perhaps similar to an egotistical infant child, where every thing centered on the ‘me’. Marilyn, as a young adult, thought she knew about everything, yet she was only in the early stages of her adult emotional and intellectual development. She had a lot to learn. With hindsight and maturity things would have turned out very differently.

As a teenager living in a rural community Marilyn dreamt of moving to the city. The only things in her life that were meaningful were the latest lyrics and sounds from the rock bands. She skipped and danced along the country lanes humming their catchy tunes.

George, her gentle and kind father, gently encouraged her desire to break away from the stifling humdrum. Not much older than his beautiful daughter, he worked in Canada where he blasted rock in the Rocky Mountains for an American mining company. Whilst in Vancouver, Europe was plunged into another twentieth century murderous bloodbath in Sarajevo. During the Balkans war he enlisted into the Canadian army engineers. After being injured in the skirmishing in Kosovo George got demobbed back to his birthplace at Manningtree, Essex. George then brought and developed the family smallholding.

George married and met Ruth whilst serving in the Methodist Chapel in the village. Ruth was always scolding, cajoling everyone for not going to the chapel or completing their domestic jobs.

She did not work. Her duty and role was to run the home and do the domestic routines. To help save money, it involved of planting vegetables and picking fruit.

Each week chickens from the yard were presented for the family’s Sunday dinner. Ruth was an expert at ringing their necks, plucking them and then preparing them for lunch. Other times she was curing hams, making jam, drawing water from the garden well with the hand pump, stocking the large, cool walk in larder with fresh provisions, doing the hand washing, sweeping the lino floors and preparing all the meals.

There were no large stores, just a small grocery store and a butcher on the main road. Every morning, bread and groceries would be delivered by a huge, twenty stone man riding a black bike with a large wicker basket full of fresh bread. You smell the warm bread coming along the lane followed by the squeal of bike breaks as the fat grocery man slowed down. After half an hour of gossip, of he went. I think this is why large super stores developed.

Breakfast would consist of a hunk of ham, bread, butter and marmalade. For lunch there were platters of fresh salad, cold meats and strong cheddars. Evening meals, where the meat was served first, followed by the vegetables. Desserts would be jam steam puddings or bread puddings. Everyone would sit around the table and exchange the day’s news. At six, the large TV would be turned on for the news.

Eddy Jackson

The eScribe Journal• CareersMentor • Educational Resources

0780 9233 688

www.eddyjackson.co.uk

Poll questions about Marilyn's Baby

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Marilyn's Baby - The end and beginning

Educational resources for Health Education and PHSE

Andrew’s Carter’s last experiences saw flashes of him being in Marilyn arms when a terrifying light dazzled him as the padre tried to administer the last rites to him. As the blood and life drained from him, it seemed as if he was flying down a tunnel surrounded by the intense light whilst being carried rapidly upwards. The symphonies of Beethoven’s Alleluia Chorus and Zordak the Priest soothed his ears. His soul was lifted higher and higher upwards heaven. He felt lighter and experienced a great relief in suddenly leaving the pain and misery he had suffered on earth behind. In this amazing transformation he experienced a great sensation of ecstasy and joy. In this new life, Andrew met the spirits and souls of his lost comrades and family. They were happy, rejoicing in heaven. Cherubs and angels sung in harmony. The warmth and light moved him. Here he was happy and would met Marilyn and the son he had never seen.

Eddy Jackson
The eScribe Journal • CareersMentor • Educational Resources
0780 9233 688
www.eddyjackson.co.uk

Marilyn's Baby learning resource PHSE RE Health Education

This is a story of love and lost love in a turbulent, changing world. It is about chance, destiny and life. The settings and the context may change, but the themes are still happening around us today. This could be you.

On the east coast of England, next to the cruel North Sea, the great winter storm unleashed its mighty forces. Monstrous waves helped by the powerful equinox tides assaulted the churning shores. On the pitching merchant coasters trying to shelter in the estuary, anxious skippers watched the barometer make a rapid descent as the centre of the depression approached. In the creeks, barges drag their moorings on the spring tide, beaching high on the foaming tide line. Flowing silently, the surge of water bursts the bank to flood the flat coastal plain. Freezing gales force winds from Baltic blasted blizzards at beleaguered communities.

At the centre of this raging storm, in a small rural hamlet, along a country lane is a bungalow where a young women cries out in a howling scream as the baby breeches at birth.

“No, no, noooooooo! Ooohhhhhhhhh! Aaaaarghhhhhhh. Help! Help me, please! The pain is unbearable. It’s………it’s terrible. Ahhhhhhh. It’s not fair. What’s happening?”

She pants as she collapses through eternal exhaustion. Marilyn screws up her face as tears of fear run down her flushed, sweaty cheeks. Her long black hair sticks to her sweat soaked skin. The sprightly young firm body contorts violently and her head is flung constantly from side to side in reaction to her powerful, thirty-second contractions.

“Ma Ma, hold me tight. Don’t let me go,” as she hoarsely grunts in a whisper as she clasps her mother’s hand.

Breathless, the girl clings to the sheets in agony whilst the baby fights for breath as the mid-wife clears its small pink mouth.

“Nearly there now, one more push, one more big push and it will be over,” as she skillfully guided the new born infant.

As a mature foetus, my changing biochemical’s helped to start my mother’s labour. The oxytocin foetal hormones synchronised and interacted with her inflamed placenta molecules to initiate the vigourous labour process. This caused powerful rhythmic uterine contractions to force me out into the world as you know it. These started the previous evening with intervals of about twenty five minutes and caused pain in the lower part of the back. During this slow first stage, she was aware and in control of herself but as the evening turned to night the intensity and frequency increased.

Marilyn constantly turned, twisted and contorted through the dilatation. After twelve hours the muscular uterus compressed the bag of water surrounding me forcing me down the uterus and opened the cervix even further.

Suddenly, as the cervix became fully dilated, the waters broke causing even greater contractions in my heaving mother. With a fearsome cry at ten o’clock in the morning, part of my head was thrust into the warm heat of bedroom. As I emerged, my mother was in her greatest pain. The mid-wife wiped me and placed me on a nipple whilst the last contractors bore out the placenta.

“Wow! Here is a beautiful, big boy for you. Look at him. Magnificent! You should be proud. He is huge ……… about ten pounds six ounces! I’ll wash and clean him down before you try and feed him to stop his crying down. He’s born hungry and is going to wear you out, he’s a fine brute,” as the mid-wife passed the squirming Joshua to Marilyn.

“Oh let me hold him ……… ummmmmh he’s so warm! Look at him,” as the baby puckered its lips.

As I was gently hugged and fed, my grandmother mopped the brow of my mother Marilyn. She helped wash her and then ensured she was well wrapped up, warm and secure with the newborn baby. This was a time of great love, affection, gentle kindness and support by the family. But someone was missing.

As Marilyn hugged me against her breasts to feed, her mother pulls the bed covers over us and then turns to put more coal onto the roaring fire. The mid-wife, smiles as she watches the newborn child moves its head searching, suckling for mother’s warm milk.

“I think Marilyn’s baby is going to have the temperament of this stormy weather. It’s part of his Aries birth sign. He’s a lively bright and kicking, nine-pound boy.”

Ten thousand miles east, in a distant Asian country, high on the Afganistan mountaintop, his young father is thrown violently backwards as bullets tears through his right arm and neck. Splintered bones and blood explode out of the khaki uniform, as the baby is born. Around the young dying infantry soldier lay the dead and wounded from three days of ferocious battles by the glorious Rifle Regiment. During his lover’s labour, the platoon sergeant was fighting in unison to avoid a violent death and being overrun by the ferocious Taliban soldiers invading from Pakistan. They would never meet again. Now there are only memories of their passionate young love and the legacy of Marilyn’s baby.

Eddy Jackson
eScribe • CareersMentor • Web2 Education
0780 9233 688
www.eddyjackson.co.uk