Where the Rainbow Fell Down

By Lynette Robinson

Set in mid-century New Zealand, Robinson takes the reader on a spellbinding journey back to post-war New Zealand and beyond. She then brings us forward as she shares her nation’s triumphs and tragedies – alongside her own personal ones.

Robinson was tormented by the four deadly fears she inherited from her mother – God, the Devil, her Father and the Catholic Church. Although a feisty child with a dazzling measure of determination, this did not save her from coercion into marriage to an older man when she was a teenager. Years of marital unhappiness follow.

The second half of the memoir tells the story of the Catholic priest Robinson fell in love with. Easily coerced into the priesthood at a young age, the expectation to put catholic dogma ahead of human needs is an ongoing struggle for Father Brian. He then meets Robinson and his love for her sets him on a collision course with the church.

Where the Rainbow Fell Down is a powerful memoir that will have you both laughing and crying. With a refreshing absence of the self-pity genre, it is a riveting and inspiring read.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Lynette Robinson
• Release date: Dec 21, 2013
• ISBN: 9780473233778

Lynette Robinson

Lynette Robinson currently resides with her husband in Hamilton, New Zealand, where she practises as an Inter-personal and Stress Management Consultant.‘Where the Rainbow Fell Down’ is her first book - although she has written numerous resources for clients and other professionals.She is currently working on a second book.

Book preview

Where the Rainbow

Fell Down

Lynette Robinson

A New Zealand Memoir

Published by the B.J. & L.M. Coker Family Trust – 2013

Email address: [e-mail]

© 2013 Lynette Robinson

Smashwords Edition

The right of Lynette Robinson to be identified as the author of this book in terms of section 96 of the Copyright Act is hereby asserted.

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PO Box 10002, Rotorua

Designed by – L.M. Coker

Cover photo – Sarah Brook

Cover graphics – CG Design

Some names have been changed throughout Where the Rainbow Fell Down in order to protect the privacy of certain individuals.

Website: www.wheretherainbowfelldown.co.nz

Table of Contents

Acknowledgements

Introduction

Part 1

Part 2

Part 3

Part 4

Part 5

Part 6

It’s not what happens to you but

how you react to it that matters.

- Epictetus (55 - 135 AD)

Acknowledgements

This is a work of non-fiction. I would like to thank my husband and my children for their love and support and for insisting I tell this story; Jan Hedge for encouraging me to complete it, Lynne Peterson for her literary advice and encouragement and Lisa Gottschling for being my muse and my chief assistant.

I would also like to thank Florence Cornwall for her editorial expertise, her patience and her respect for my sensitivities, and Elizabeth Ardley for the countless creative and practical ways she has supported and guided me towards publication. And thank you to the family I belong to, past and present. You matter.

Family photo – Tom and Laurel, Lynette and Billy

Introduction

It has always fascinated me how memories of disturbing events get so graphically etched into our psyche and disturb us long after an event is over. Yet it is not events that cause our disturbance but rather our own unique way of interpreting events, and if these interpretations remain unchanged, we end up suffering unnecessarily for the rest of our life.

Carrying their past into their relationship with them caused my beautiful, insecure mother and my handsome, narcissistic father to expect the other to fill the empty gaps inside them. Sadly, my parents were both so damaged by their upbringing that neither knew what a healthy relationship looked like and in their ignorance each expected the other to fulfil all their unmet needs. This meant my mother wanted to be parented and my father wanted to be in control. If someone had informed them their needing a relationship so badly meant they were in fact not ready for one, they might have stopped to think… but then I would not have been born and I am glad to be alive (not that I would have known any difference anyway).

L.R.

If you can't get rid of the skeleton in your closet,

you'd best teach it to dance.

- George Bernard Shaw (1856-1950)

Part 1

I was born 16 months after my brother Billy, four years after the end of World War II. Mum was refused permission by her priest to practise birth control and when she discovered she was pregnant with me, poverty and desperation made her seek the services of an abortionist (for a second time). But I refused to die. A ‘successful’ abortion was performed between Billy and me, after which Daddy discovered her lying in a pool of blood on their bed and rushed to get the nurse from next door. She took one look at Mum and ordered my father to call an ambulance; but abortions were illegal back then and he hesitated. She screamed at him, Just do it or your wife will die.

Even as my mother fought for her life, the medical staff tried to force her to identify the abortionist, and when they finally realised they were not going to get any information the doctor angrily told Mum she was reckless and irresponsible for covering up for a butcher. She didn’t tell them in case she needed the ‘butcher’ again. When she got out of hospital, Mum went to confession and received absolution for the abortion. She then asked for permission to practise birth control. You don’t need to practise birth control, my dear, just practise self-control, her Catholic priest informed her.

My parents met at a dance in Wellington when Mum was 18 and my father 21, and when, after weeks of dating, she would not sacrifice her virginity, Dad proposed out of sexual frustration (as he told her after the wedding). My grandfather refused to give his consent for the marriage because he neither liked nor trusted my father but my nana took the rare position of challenging her husband and said, I won’t let you deny our Laurel even a moment of happiness.

From a young age my mother sought escape from the dysfunction of her family life by immersing herself in the ideologies of Catholicism, drummed into her at the convent school she attended. Little did she know this only served to increase her sense of worthlessness and guilt because her god demanded subservience and obedience – just like her father. So Mum was programmed for servitude and thus putty in the hands of controlling people like my father, Thomas.

My mother was a fragile looking woman with full red lips, classically defined cheekbones and dark doe-like eyes that alternated between looking startled and looking sad. As she walked, her luxurious brown/black hair bounced off her frail shoulders, accentuating how narrow they were. Unfortunately, her nervous mannerisms detracted from her movie star looks and she was often likened to a ‘frightened little rabbit’. My staunch father was her complete opposite. His reaction to his fatherless upbringing was the development of ‘reactive grandiosity’, which means he believed he was special and superior to others, including my jockey-sized grandfather. He would often scornfully sneer at Mum, Your father thinks he’s so big when he’s on the booze, but he’s still just a little man.

But my father, too, was a little man, and his height didn’t change this. He was built like a rugby player with blonde hair and piercing blue eyes and his handsome 6-foot stature towered imposingly above my mother’s diminutive 5-foot-1-inch frame. At all levels – strength, gender and build, my father held the power and he knew it. He also knew how to be charming and cleverly alternated between this and aggression, which left my mother feeling as though she was clinging to the edge of a cliff. Her nervous state meant she was unable to concentrate for long enough to work out a plan to leave him.

Violence was not new to my mother. Her father took to drink soon after he lost both his building business and the family mansion during the Great Depression. In desperation he took the family to the South Island looking for work, and when he couldn’t find any, they returned to Wellington with the little that was left of their money and ended up in a rundown bungalow in Belfast Street, at the back of the Basin Reserve.

We had a wonderful life before Father went bankrupt, my mother would tell me. In the evenings Mother would play the piano and sing soprano while Father sang alto… and I would hurriedly move away because she had repeated the story endlessly of their privileged life style before Grandpop went bankrupt.

Despite 120,000 migrants arriving from the UK between 1919 and 1930 (through assisted immigration), the New Zealand population in 1930 was still under 1.5 million. When the unemployment rate climbed from several thousand (in 1930) to 80,000 three years later, our Government set up a fund for the needy with the money coming from the one-pound-per-year levy from the wages of those lucky enough to remain in employment. Mum’s family became beneficiaries of this fund, much to the chagrin of Grandpop who desperately sought employment, but only managed to get occasional relief work maintaining roads and clearing land. In order to supplement their income Grandpop began making wooden toys to sell; but there were too few buyers and his feelings of failure eventually drowned his pride and he turned to drink as a painkiller. Although Grandpop was a non-practising Catholic, he took great pride in my mother’s Catholic piety and often asked her to pray for his soul, and she did this willingly because she knew he needed all the help he could get.

The house was asleep when Grandpop staggered in after a night on the drink with his mates, but the loud crash and his crazed shrieking petrified his family into wakefulness. When he entered the darkened sitting room, Grandpop instantly noticed the statue of the Blessed Virgin Mary glowing (he said) in the corner of the room. The statue was given to Mum by the parish priest because it was being replaced in church and in his drunken state Grandpop thought it was the ghost of his dead mother Laurel (after whom Mum was named) come back to haunt him for his ‘wicked ways’. My grandfather was so shaken by the experience he immediately swore off alcohol, attended Mass the next morning and began saying the rosary at night… but by midweek he must have decided the spirit in the bottle gave him more comfort than the Holy Spirit and he relapsed.

I was three months old when our family was allocated a state house in the Wellington suburb of Naenae, which was instantly recognisable as a state house area because all the box shaped houses looked the same. The Government in its deficiency of insight decided on a ‘conformity of style’ policy, which meant there was a clear distinction between the private and state-housing sectors. So low income families like ours were not just physically put in a box, we were socially put in one as well. I realised early on in my life we were poor and the reason for this was Daddy’s inability to hold down a steady job. Our only regular source of income came from what Mum earned as a dressmaker and from the one pound a week she received in Family Benefit payments because the Labour Government made Family Benefit payments universal back in 1946.

Being unemployed did not seem to concern my father who strutted about our sparsely furnished house as though he was a prince in his palace, while Mum hunched over her Singer sewing machine making dresses and suits for prosperous ladies who spoke down to her and paid her little. But she was shrewd enough to hide a portion of her pay from my father who treated her earnings as his own personal entitlement.

Billy and me

My brother Billy and I were complete opposites in looks just like our parents. He had Mum’s dark hair and big brown eyes with eyelashes so long and thick that even strangers felt drawn to comment on them. I was blonde-haired and blue-eyed and sadly my eyelashes were invisibly blonde and never drew comment even when I fluttered them as Billy did when people mentioned his. We were also opposite in personality with him being a quiet, thoughtful child with an overdeveloped sense of responsibility, and me being little miss chatterbox who was stringing sentences together by the time I was two and giving anything a go just to see what would happen.

One day I watched in fascination as Billy, now six years old, struggled to break and saw small branches out from under the hedge with our mother’s bread knife.

What are you doing? I asked.

Making a hole so Mummy can hide when Dad’s angry.

Can I help?

No, you are too little.

I sat and watched as a sizeable gap appeared. Billy then climbed out from under the hedge and went over to knock on the kitchen window. When Mum opened it he said proudly, Come and look at the hiding place I’ve made you. Our mother crouched down to look at the hole under the hedge, stood up again and said, Good boy Billy, and I instantly felt jealous because loving words in our house were infrequent.

One afternoon a few days later, my father went into one of his rages after Mum said she didn’t have any money to give him. He took her crockery out of the cupboards and began smashing it on the floor, then looked over at her crouching in the corner with her arms over her head. As he began advancing towards her I stood paralysed, but Billy quickly ran and pushed the chair in front of the kitchen table, scrambled onto it, threw the window open wide and yelled as he jumped back down: Jump, Mummy, jump.

Mum jumped on the chair, leapt from it onto the table and dived out the window. She hid under the hedge while Dad searched for her outside and when he couldn’t find her, he stormed off to his mother’s looking for sympathy. Big Nana (Mum’s mother was Wee Nana) always welcomed her son, believing he was being driven to distraction by a wife who did not understand him.

When Billy was at school, I missed having him to play with and so to amuse myself I would sit next to Mum in the sitting room and watch her sew. It mesmerised me how her nimble fingers fed the fabric through the foot of her Singer sewing machine while she worked the treadle with her foot. That was where I was sitting the day Dad strutted past dramatically patting his back pocket and said, You wasted your time trying to hide money from me, woman, before walking out the front door sniggering vindictively. I watched Mum’s olive complexion turn pale as she jumped up and charged down the hallway to her bedroom. Tearing open the lid of the dark-stained glory box standing behind the door, she frantically groped inside searching for the money she hid at the bottom in a used brown envelope. Suddenly my father loomed menacingly in the bedroom doorway and I looked from him to my mother, not knowing where to put myself. He lunged at her, grabbed the envelope out of her hand and pushed Mummy’s top half into the glory box and pressed the lid down on her. Don’t ever think you can outsmart me, Bitch, he snarled and I noticed how strange his eyes looked. I watched, as though in slow motion, sprays of spit shoot out of his mouth, with a foamy blob landing just below his bottom lip. He used his top teeth to scrape it back into his mouth.

The sound of my mother’s muffled screams brought me out of my trance and I screamed frantically, Don’t hurt my Mummy, don’t hurt my Mummy, and leapt at Dad, flaying at him with my fists. But he was an impenetrable wall against which I made no impact, so I began kicking and biting him like a feral animal. Suddenly my father stiffened, turned his head sideways and looked down at me. He then dragged my mother out of the glory box and tossed her limp body aside and she slid to the floor like an empty coat. After picking me up, Dad strode down the hallway seemingly oblivious to my kicking and screaming. When we got to the front door, he put me down and stepped outside while I stood dazed in the doorway because until that moment I really believed he was going to carry me away and kill me.

When my father was halfway down the path, he turned to look back at me, saying in a surprisingly affectionate voice, You’re a chip off the old block, Scallywag. I stood staring at his back as he sauntered down the street whistling, and fixated on a strand of his hair bobbing rhythmically up and down as he bounced happily along with Mum’s money firmly tucked in his back pocket.

I joined Mum in the kitchen where she was drying dishes and stood next to her touching her hand. Leave me, she said in a hoarse whisper and pulled her hand away; so I wandered out and sat on the front step and thought about what we might be having for lunch.

After World War II broke out in 1939 and New Zealand troops were deployed overseas, there was a serious manpower shortage in New Zealand, which meant Grandpop was now able to get regular work. This also meant there was regular money for booze; but although he drank most nights, he still managed to drag himself to work each day. Because Grandpop was either recovering from a hangover or working on the next one, my mother learnt to stay out of his way and she filled her mind with dreams of meeting her ‘handsome prince’ one day.

At the same time, my father was dreaming of achieving greatness and wealth. He never knew his father and his mother wouldn’t talk about him, but he did gather his father was not the same father as his older brother’s and sister’s. Throughout the Depression Big Nana did all she could to keep her three children from going hungry while Henry (nicknamed Robbie), her eldest son, begged odd jobs in order to contribute financially to the family.

My father adored his big brother who comforted him when he was scared of the dark and taught him his times tables. When Robbie discovered Daddy was being bullied at school, he decided to have words with the bullies and following this he set up a social rugby match for the kids in the neighbourhood and invited the bullies to play; and after that the bullying stopped.

Conditions improved for the family when the war broke out because Robbie enlisted in the Army and began sending home a regular pay cheque, and for the first time in his life Daddy got a new pair of shoes. He almost got a new pair of shoes earlier in the Depression only Big Nana was caught shoplifting them. The sentencing magistrate was reported in the Evening Post as saying, During the last week there have been two or three similar cases. They are getting too common, and he sentenced her to seven days in prison.

One sun-drenched December morning in 1941, Big Nana was mixing flat-bread dough at the kitchen bench when there was a knock on the front door. Using her apron to quickly wipe the flour from her hands, she opened the door and was handed a black-edged telegram. Chalk-faced and shaking, it was several minutes before she could bring herself to tear it open and when she did, a guttural groan escaped from her throat and she slumped heavily to the floor. Twenty-two year old Robbie was wounded in action in the Western Desert and had since died from his wounds. And there would be no grave for his mother to put flowers on because he was buried in a War Cemetery in Libya.

After my uncle’s death my heartbroken grandmother spent her days sitting in an old brown armchair, staring blankly into the fireplace; so my teenage father took it upon himself to provide for her and his sister. This initially involved stealing food but progressed to stealing anything he could lay his hands on and selling it to get money for the essentials. My father never got over his brother’s death, which probably contributed to his staunchness and lack of conscience. And in the absence of a conscience (or remorse) he took any opportunity he could to exploit, control and use other people and there was no one to stop him.

I was playing with Mum’s jar of colourful buttons on the floor of the hall when Dad’s voice called out my name.

What, Daddy? I called back as I straightened a line of blue buttons.

Come here, Scallywag, I want to talk to you.

I jumped up and ran into the kitchen where he and my mother were seated at opposite ends of the table and both looked at me in the way parents do when they have been talking about you.

Go and get the newspaper and bring it to me, there’s a good girl, my father instructed.

After skipping out to the letterbox and fetching the paper, I skipped back to the kitchen and immediately knew something was wrong, and my smile slid to the floor. Both of my parents were now holding out their hands and each demanded over the top of the other, that I give them the newspaper. Riveted to the floor, I scrutinised their faces, trying to figure who was the right person to give the newspaper to.

Mum demanded, Give it to me right now.

No, give it to me, Dad said, and my mother threatened, Give it to me or you’ll be going to bed early.

My father then spread a saccharine sweet smile on to his face and with an equally sugary voice gushed, If you give it to me, Scallywag, I will take you down to the shop and buy you a lolly.

Now I might have only been four years old but I knew the difference between genuine endearment and manipulation, and I was frightened because my parents were now arguing between them about which one of them I loved the most; and apparently receiving the newspaper would be proof of this. Dad’s voice grew louder and Mum’s shriller until finally I rushed forward and thrust the newspaper into my father’s hand because he was the scariest. Looking over at my mother, he sneered and said triumphantly, See. She loves me more than she loves you.

Later, when Dad went outside, Mum stood over me as I sat quietly on the edge of my bed. How dare you be disloyal to me? It’s me who looks after you, so you should love me the most. Knowing I was responsible for upsetting her, I whispered, Sorry Mummy. She turned and left without another word said and I felt myself falling even though I was sitting completely still.

Love; now there’s an interesting one. I don’t remember feeling love for either of my parents. Fear of my father, yes. Protective of my mother… sure. But love? Well, this would have required having love modelled to me and I don’t remember physical affection or hearing loving words. Nor do I remember being read to or played with. And anyway, I worried far too much about bad things happening to be in touch with higher emotions like love. Things like the Devil and going to Hell. My mother constantly told me I should love God and hate the Devil and this confused me because I actually feared God. It was He who spied on me, waiting for me to slip up so He could shunt me off to Hell where I would be burnt. God also punished people while they were still on earth if they were bad.

Once I was taken to hospital to get stitches, and as we waited, my mother said, This would not have happened if you hadn’t defied me.

Why not? I asked.

God doesn’t let bad things happen to children who are good.

I knew my mother feared God too because each Sunday morning she grudgingly biked to church with Billy in the seat behind her while saying, I can’t miss Mass or it will be a mortal sin. In the sin stakes, mortal sins were the ones to avoid. It went like this: if you died with a mortal sin on your soul you were forever damned to the fires of Hell. But if you died with a venial sin on your soul you only got sent to Purgatory. It was meant to have flames like Hell but you eventually got out of there, and more quickly if people on earth prayed for you, but by then I figured you would have been burned pretty badly.

So missing Mass on Sunday rated along with murder, rape and masturbation, but fortunately all these sins were forgiven if you confessed to a priest who was an ‘instrument of God’ with the power to give you absolution. This absolution was granted whilst kneeling in a little cubical called the confessional and where the penitent (sinner) was separated from the priest by a wall with a small grill inserted in it. The penitent would then confess their sins through the grill and at the end of this recital they received absolution from the priest.

As my awareness of religious matters grew, so too did the questions in my mind, and one day I asked my mother, What would happen if I said I hated God and I loved the Devil?

Her eyes widened in shock as she gasped, How can you even think of saying such a terrible thing, Lynette? She then cautioned me that if those words ever passed my lips again, not only would God strike me down dead but I would go straight to Hell. And this immediately created another question in my mind… how come God was meaner than Father Christmas?Or was my mother just trying to scare me? Eventually my inquisitiveness overcame my apprehension and I knew I needed to test God.

I loved to pop the fat pink and white fuchsia buds drooping heavily from the bushes next to our back steps because it helped me to collect my thoughts, especially when I knew I was going to be in trouble for something. So, it’s hardly surprising I made my decision to test God while popping fuchsia buds. I stood next to the back step squeezing the plump buds between my thumb and forefinger while I felt the warmth of the sun on my back and registered with delight the popping sound they made when the air was squashed out of them. And at the same time I was willing myself to say out loud, I hate God and I love the Devil with the full awareness that saying these words might be my last act on this earth. The recklessness of the act kept beckoning until finally I mustered all of my inner strength, took a big breath, and shouted, I HATE GOD AND I LOVE THE DEVIL.

Nothing happened. There was no bolt of lightning out of the blue. Not even a glimmering light in the sky… I know because I watched the sky intently. And after this I tested all the threats my mother made on God’s behalf and happily survived the lot.

My challenging of the Catholic God began in 1953, which was a year of significant events in New Zealand’s history; events which brought to my awareness that there was a much bigger world than the one I lived in at Seddon Street, Naenae. First, there was the fairy-tale coronation of Princess Elizabeth, complete with gowns and crowns and horse-drawn carriages. I was so captivated by the approaching coronation that my mother made me a crown out of cardboard and gave me one of her pretty frocks to dress up in so I could pretend to be a fairy-tale princess. However, on the eve of the coronation, Edmund Hillary conquered Mount Everest, and because he was one of ours, the thrill for New Zealanders actually eclipsed the excitement surrounding the coronation.

The conquest of Everest injected huge pride into the heart of post-war New Zealand and even began to change the way New Zealand men perceived themselves. This began after John Hunt wrote about the conquest: Everyone was pouring out of tents, there were shouts of exclamation and joy. The next moment I was with them: handshakes – even I blush to say hugs – for the triumphant pair. This open admission of man hugging challenged the emotional reserve of New Zealand men who were raised in a strong tradition of English reserve. It was also reported Hillary said after the conquest, We knocked the bastard off. Although there was some outrage over the use of such profanity by a man of Hillary’s stature, the more liberal minded felt it refreshingly demonstrated his humanity.

My parents talked continually about the Everest conquest and for a short time our home felt transformed because there was a bigger focus in it than our family dysfunction. Strangely though, there was little mention of Sherpa Tenzing Norgay, Hillary’s co-conqueror, and I did not learn of him until much later, and when I did, I felt dismayed about him being kept invisible for so long.

Not long after her coronation, Queen Elizabeth and her husband Prince Philip planned a visit to New Zealand, the first tour of New Zealand by a reigning monarch. Wherever I went I felt the ripples of excitement, and Mum promised Billy and me she would take us to see them.

I skipped along the footpath between my mother and Billy as we headed for a vantage point from which we could watch Queen Elizabeth and Prince Philip drive past. Both sides of the road were deep with lines of excited people grasping little paper flags, so it was a struggle to find a clear space, but eventually we succeeded in finding one at a bend in the road. Billy and I wriggled our way through the adults so we could be at the front with the other children who were excitedly waiting to catch a glimpse of the queen.

HERE SHE COMES. HERE SHE COMES, a man’s voice shouted, and as others picked up the call the crowd surged forward waving their little paper flags excitedly in the air. Then some bigger kids pushed in front of me and blocked my view, so I squirmed and wriggled through them determined to see the wondrous sight of a queen dressed in a sparkling gown with a jewelled crown on her head and a sceptre in her hand. My heart sank when the open-top car advanced towards me and all I could see was a plain-suited woman wearing a hat and waving in a way that did not seem particularly friendly. At that point I gave up fighting for my place and let the other children push in front of me. A little girl about my age who had also given up turned to me and said, She doesn’t even look like a queen, does she?

No, I agreed.

As we walked back home, my mother was clearly annoyed by my disappointment and said, After all the effort I made to take you to see the queen and you are not even grateful.

Towards the end of the year I was sitting on the front step when I noticed in the distance a beautiful coloured archway in the sky.

Mummy, Mummy, there’s a rainbow, I called out excitedly.

The only rainbows I’d even seen were in picture books, and when my mother came and stood beside me she said gently, So it is Lynette. Isn’t it beautiful?

Yes. And is there a pot of gold at the end of it?

I think so, Lynette, she said.

Can we go and find it?

Not today, I’m too busy and you would get lost if you went on your own, and she turned and went inside.

One day I’m going to find the gold, I called.

That’s nice, Lynette, she said from the kitchen.

The Christmas of 1953 is etched in my memory because on its eve the night train carrying passengers between Wellington and Auckland plummeted into the river at Tangiwai killing 151 people and injuring many more. This propelled the country into a state of shock. Most of the people my parents knew were connected to someone in the Tangiwai Disaster, and it was said this was the bleakest Christmas Day in post-war New Zealand. However, for me, as a mercenary soon to be five-year-old, the

Reviews for Where the Rainbow Fell Down

[Kate Robinson · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

In one of the best-known lines of literature, the first line in Chapter 1 of Anna Karenina, Leo Tolstoy wrote, "Happy families are all alike; every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way."

This is the case in Lynette Robinson's memoir, Where the Rainbow Fell Down. There are scores of recent memoirs written by the survivors of dysfunctional families on the literary market, and this one is no less interesting despite the common theme. While the trials, tribulations, and successes of this author are similar to other survivors of dysfunctional families and religious dogma, her problems are also unique to her parentage, culture, and her ability to cope and to overcome the obstacles of her upbringing.

From her present vantage point as a guidance counselor, Robinson articulately describes her family history, told in counterpoint to the development of mid-twentieth century New Zealand. Raised in a Catholic home, young Lynette learned to fear God nearly as much as fearing sin due to her father's alcoholism, her mother's manipulative behavior, and her community's interpretation of Christianity. She was often subjected to arguments between Mummy and Daddy about who loved her the most, used as a pawn to prop up their sagging egos rather than lavished with unconditional love. It is from these meager roots that Lynette learns to sacrifice herself rather than to explore her innate potential.

She writes: "My challenging of the Catholic God began in 1953, which was a year of significant events in New Zealand's history, events which brought to my awareness that there was a much bigger world than the one I lived in at Seddon Street, Naenae. First, there was the coronation of Princess Elizabeth, complete with gowns and crowns and horse-drawn carriages . . . on the eve of the coronation, Edmund Hillary conquered Mount Everest, and because he was one of ours, the thrill for New Zealanders actually eclipsed the excitement surrounding the coronation."

While her nation experiences steady growth with various successes and setbacks, extrovert Lynette finds herself at odds with her introvert brother, feeling starved for real attention from her afflicted parents. She dreams, as so many young girls around the world do, of growing up and falling in love with a handsome man. But as with life everywhere, reality intrudes when her parents are divorced and her new stepfather prefers she not exist. He makes it abundantly clear that his loyalty is to her mother, who is too affected by self-preservation after the loss of two babies to concern herself with her eldest daughter's life.

Lynette leaves home at the tender age of fourteen. Her feelings of being unloved and unwanted are magnified even though she does a credible job of raising herself and creating an independent life. She seems more a victim of the times than of herself when she accepts a marriage at age eighteen with an older man she doesn't love, a situation not uncommon for the early Baby Boom generation on the cusp of the women's liberation movement, given double messages from their elders and institutions about their roles in life. I'm just a few years younger than Lynette and I found many parallels between her narrative and my own life.

The good news is that after years of marital abuse and unhappiness, Lynette must finally confront the rebellious nature that has been, in reality, her weathervane, her steadfast guide on the path to self-love and a wholesome life. She eventually acts upon her true feelings, leaves her unhappy marriage, and finds love - with a young Catholic priest, a handsome man who is everything she once hoped for. Together they must struggle with, once again, the best and worst aspects of the Catholic faith and the society that it engenders.

Lynette Robinson writes in much the same way as she has lived her life, with high-spirited and relentless determination. Her recollection of settings and conversations is amazingly detailed, and her imagination, both in her childhood and as an adult, is unfettered and soaring. I turned pages with enthusiasm, always looking forward to experiencing what happened next in her life, even when the prose sometimes felt a bit wordy or crowded, so intent is she upon relaying a full account of her memories. An independent book, the volume is weighty and beautiful but the non-serif font can be annoying at times, yet just a minor distraction from the compelling narrative.

Overall, Where the Rainbow Fell Down is a satisfying read, a true-life adventure worth honoring and remembering. Lynette Robinson certainly gives credibility to the old adage that it isn't so important what happens in life, it's how one reacts to it that really matters.

Disclaimer: Though we share a surname, I'm not related, as far as I know, to Lynette or Brian Robinson.

Kate Robinson - Starstone Lit Services, Los Angeles