In the spring of 1956, I came into the world quietly, unaware of the storm of hardship that awaited my family. My mother, exhausted from labor yet holding onto a flicker of hope, wrapped me in a thin blanket she had carefully mended weeks before. She had already been caring for my brother, only ten months old, and now with me in her arms, she was responsible for two tiny lives that depended on her. My father was away at work, as he always was, trying to earn enough to keep us fed. He had not even known that I had arrived yet.

But joy was short-lived. The landlady of the small, rented room we called home appeared, her sharp face and cold eyes darkening the doorway. She took one glance at me, then at my mother, and delivered her decree: “No girls in this house.” The words were heavy, absurd, and cruel. My mother stood frozen, not knowing whether to laugh at the absurdity or cry at the injustice. The landlady would not budge. There was no negotiation, no compassion—only the icy certainty that we had to go.

With trembling hands, my mother laid me gently in a large pram beside my brother. She packed what little she could carry—some baby clothes, a tin of milk powder, and a bundle of diapers—and closed the door on what had been, for a short time, our home. She pushed the pram into the cold street, her eyes fixed ahead, determined not to let her tears fall. Behind her, she left not only a roof but also the fragile illusion of stability.

Her destination was my grandmother’s house. It was several streets away, but in that moment, it felt like another country. She pushed the heavy pram forward, each turn of the wheel rattling against the uneven pavement. Strangers glanced at her, some with pity, others with indifference. A few whispered behind her back. A young woman with two infants, wandering the street without a husband—she must have looked like an image of struggle itself.

Every step was an act of defiance. My mother knew she had no choice. She had to keep moving. For us.

Meanwhile, my father was still at work. He swung his hammer in a noisy workshop, unaware that his world was shifting. He imagined coming home to his wife and son, perhaps even dreaming of holding his newborn child for the first time. But by the time his shift ended and he returned to the cramped little room we had once called home, it was empty. The pram was gone. The crib was gone. The laughter, the cries—gone. He stood in silence, his chest tightening, panic rising with every passing second. Where had his family gone? What had happened?

Hours later, he found us at my grandmother’s house. Relief washed over him when he saw me swaddled safely, my brother gurgling beside me, and my mother sitting wearily by the fire. But the pain of that day never truly left him. He often spoke of it in later years: the shock of returning to nothing, the helplessness of not knowing where we had gone. It was as though, for a brief, terrible moment, he had lost his family entirely.

For my mother, that day was only the beginning of a lifetime of quiet battles. The 1950s were not kind to women like her—young, vulnerable, and carrying the burden of children in a world that offered little support. Discrimination lurked everywhere, hidden in rules, in whispered judgments, in the cold gaze of strangers. To the landlady, my mother was not a tenant but a problem. To society, she was a woman who should endure silently, who had no right to protest.

But my mother refused to be crushed. She moved forward, step by step, with us always in her arms or by her side. My grandmother’s home became a sanctuary, a place where she could breathe, at least for a while. My nan welcomed us without hesitation, her small house already crowded but always open. She offered my mother a bed, a hot meal, and the assurance that she was not alone.

It was in that small house, surrounded by the smell of bread baking and the sound of the old radio humming in the corner, that I spent my earliest days. My mother rocked me to sleep with lullabies, her voice soft yet carrying the weight of all she had endured. My brother babbled beside me in the pram, his little hands reaching out to touch my face as if to remind me that we were in this together.

Years later, when I was old enough to understand, my mother told me the story of that day. She spoke not with bitterness but with quiet strength.

“You were only a few hours old,” she said, her eyes distant. “And already the world tried to push you away. But I wasn’t going to let that happen. Not to you. Not to your brother.”

Her words stayed with me. They shaped the way I saw her—not as a woman crushed by hardship, but as a fighter who carried two children in a pram through the streets because she refused to give up. Every sacrifice she made, every hardship she endured, was rooted in love.

The older I grew, the more I realized how much courage it took for her to do what she did. In 1956, women had few rights and even fewer choices. But my mother had made one: she chose survival, resilience, and dignity. She chose to protect us, even when it meant walking away from shelter into uncertainty. She chose to keep moving forward, even when her body was weak from childbirth and her heart heavy with fear.

That day in 1956 became a story told and retold in our family—a reminder of where we had come from, and of the strength we inherited from my mother. My father, too, carried the memory of that day with him. Though he had been powerless in the moment, he later became our anchor, working tirelessly to rebuild what had been broken. Together, my parents showed me that family is not defined by the walls around you, but by the determination to hold onto each other when the world says you cannot.

Looking back now, I see that the landlady’s cruel decree was not just an act of prejudice. It was a test. A test of my mother’s resilience, of my family’s ability to endure. And though it forced us into hardship, it also revealed the unshakable bond between us.

I was too young to remember the day I was carried away in a pram alongside my brother. But through my mother’s stories and my father’s silence, I have come to feel it deeply—as though the weight of those wheels against the cobblestones, the fear in my mother’s heart, and the shock on my father’s face were etched into my very being.

That day, my life began not only with birth but with a journey. A journey of survival, love, and resilience. A journey that showed me, even in my first hours, that though the world can be cruel, the strength of a mother’s love can carry you through anything.