When the Children Came Home by Julie Summers

Author:Julie Summers [Summers, Julie]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Simon & Schuster UK

By now the gulf between the children and their mother had grown to such an extent that the children realised it was not going to be easy to readjust to life back home. Another problem for Louise was that her memories of England faded as her life in America took new and exciting turns. It was a subject of much greater importance for the parents, both natural and foster, and it took up their correspondence for much of 1944. The value of this correspondence, and Louise Milbourn’s account of her life in America, lies not only in its unusual detail, but also in the glimpse it offers us of what must have occupied the minds of thousands of parents whose children were abroad for years.

Already in 1942 Aunt Nancy was wondering in her letters whether it would be better, for the sake of the children and for family unity, if they were to return. It was not to be. She then began to hatch the idea of getting Joan Lawson out to America to spend time with the children before she took them back to Britain ‘to grow into their background here so their Americanisms would not jolt you too much’.107 She added, in that same letter, that their return to Britain would be a great loss ‘for they feel like our children now and we would miss them fearfully’.108

By 1943 the plan to get Joan Lawson out to America was gaining momentum. As it did, so did the anxiety on both sides of the Atlantic: ‘I think you will be pleased with both girls when you get them back, but don’t expect little children or treat them as such. I have grieved all along that you should miss the transition years for it is so hard to realise it has happened unless you have lived it with them.’109

The following year Blanche wrote: ‘On August 29th Lou and I will have been in Moorestown FOUR years. Do you THINK we will EVER get HOME?’

Eight months later, on 3rd June, just five days before the end of the war in Europe, Louise was called to the phone. It was a call from Montreal. Her mother had come to fetch them.

The voice I heard was in this very precise English of which I had no memory at all. Was this my mother? My emotions were all mixed up. I disappeared upstairs to be on my own and have a quiet weep. I was excited and very apprehensive at the prospect of meeting my mother. I had lived all my time in America knowing where I really belonged was in England with my parents. After all, I had written and received letters all during this time which kept this fact alive in my mind. However, I was very happy where I was, I loved the Wood family as if they were my own, I had no recognition of this foreign English voice from the woman who was my mother, and she was going to arrive tomorrow, oh dear.

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