"Who Says I Can't"

I have just finished reading this memoir by Catherine
DeVrye an ex Canadian now an citizen of Australia.

To say that I was angry is an understatement.

She wrote that she was 'abandoned' as a baby when in
reality her birth mother like thousands of other
single mothers of the time gave her up for adoption.
Perhaps this was just hype to sell the book but it
is repeated in the main text.

I too was adopted, a year before her (1949), but
unlike her mother, my mother was forced to give me up
by a goverment authority. As she was a paraplegic in
a state run hospital.

DeVrye lamented the fact that her father died when she
was 21 and the following year she lost her mother.

At least she had a mother! Even if like many mother
daughters of all eras they fought! My adopted mother
died when I was 12!

She had no brother or sisters, well BOO HOO neither did
I! As my mother gave birth to still born boy twins in
1956. There were no more children after this. Although
I had never seen my brothers I often think of what they
would have been like as the years passed. I even believed
that given a choice my father would have preferred me to
have died and the boys to have lived!

Imagine growing up thinking that. Believing that your
father didn't love you that much. Especially after my
mother died and within 8 months marrying a woman that
made Hansel and Gretal's stepmother and Sleeping Beauty's
stepmother look like saints.


The only mother I had ever know. The woman who loved
and adored me was gone replaced by someone who in that
first year informed me that "You were never part of the
bargain."

DeVrye wrote that the grandfather she adored died when
she was a teenager. The only grandfather I had was in
Ireland and althoguh he wrote wonderful letters to me,
we never met, as he died before I ever got to Ireland.
This was because when I was 16 my dad wanted us all to
go to Ireland to meet his family but my stepmother said
that if he took me then she would not go and when he
came home he would find her gone. So they went alone.
My grandfather died seven years later. Three years after
I qualified as a primary school teacher earning the amount
of $49 a week.

My maternal grandmother died in November 1963 less than
18 months after her daughter. She was the only grandmother
I had as my dad's mother had died many years before I was
even born.

My dad was virtual dead to me the moment he remarried as
my step mother never gave us one moment alone together.

After I moved to Victoria he would write me letters. This
he did when his wife attended her weekly two hour craft
sessions. She knew he wrote but was annoyed if he did
it when she was there as that was her time! He often
included money in his letters and he would say each time
not to mention the money in my return letter but to say a
specific phase and then he would know that I had received
it safely. Each time the phase was different it was like
being spy!

So don't tell me Catherine DeVrye's life was that unusual!

Why she is famous is not because of all the things she has
done
Golfing at ST. Andrews
Playing gridiron at the home ground of the Dallas Cowboys
Walking the Great wall of China (which by the way is one
of the thing I would like to do!)
Walking in Colorado's Grand Cayon
Elephant rides in the jungles of Thailand
Scaling Aztec ruins in Mexico
Riding over the Andes on a push bike
Climbing Mount Kilimanjaro, many rich people do things like
this! no it is because she has done them working for Sports and
Recreation Australia and working for IBM. She broke the so
called glass ceiling and that is why she is famous!

She admits that she often was in the right place at the
right time and it is true. She was blessed with luck.
Yet she bemoans that there is no man in her life and that
she has no children.

She married the wrong man and though they were married
for 8 years there was never any children as she realised
early on that as a couple they had serious problems and
she felt that children might not help.

She never remarried but that was because she was making a
choice, her career came first and that she has made a
success of.

She says that others have told her she is a role model and
I was appalled at that. She is so old hat! A role model in
the 70's perhaps but not for now. She sends the message
that to be a successful carrer woman you have to coose.
Either a husband and family or a career.

Woman should be learning that they, like an successful
business man, should be allowed to have it all.