Short Story

Fear of Flying in Planes

My Story

I’ve always been afraid of things. Psychologists in this country use cognitive behaviour techniques (CBT) on people like me. This involves teaching you how to change thoughts, to over-ride fearful feelings and alter behaviour. It’s a re-education process.

What led me to this particular psychologist was an extreme fear of flying. My new boyfriend at the time was an international traveller. It was part of his work, as a “sommelier”, and he wanted me to visit all these amazing places with him.

CBT

My therapist said: ‘Why are you afraid of going in a plane? What is it that scares you about it?’

‘The plane might crash,’ I said. He told me the statistics, and how it was much safer than walking the streets or driving in a car. ‘These jets don’t just fall out of the sky, you know.’

I gave him my Don’t be ridiculous look and said: ‘But what if it did?’ My teeth began to chatter at the thought of the plane tumbling down through the ether.

‘Well, you’d die quickly, I suppose,’ he said, and gave a shrug. ‘But it’s as rare as winning the lottery or hitting the jackpot on the pokies.’

‘I can’t stand the thought of the terrible fear, just as the plane begins its descent, and I know …’. I couldn’t finish the sentence, I was hyperventilating.

‘I have spoken to crash survivors,’ he said, and paused for great effect, ‘who say that a deep calm came over them, when they thought that they were going to die.’

‘Well, I don’t like the idea of knowing I’m about to die,’ I said. ‘It’s my greatest fear.’

‘Would you like to get over your fear?’ he asked. ‘If I could help you?’

‘Yes, yes,’ I cried, my eyes shining. ‘My boyfriend wants me to travel with him around the world. It’s the chance of a lifetime.’

What’s the worst thing…?

Therapists down under here where I live, love this little CBT game. It involves them asking fear victims about worst case scenarios:

‘What’s the worst thing that could happen if you took a short trip in an aeroplane?’ he asked. ‘Apart from crashing, that is?’

‘I might hyperventilate

‘What’s the worst thing that could happen if you did all of those things, one after the other or all together?’ he asked.

‘I might feel sick.’

‘Is that a big problem?’

‘No.’

‘What else?’

‘People might laugh at me.’

‘And what would be the consequence of that?’

‘I’d feel bad,’ I said.

‘Is that all?’

‘And sick.’

‘Anything else?’

‘Just death.’

To Leap or not to Leap

After many sessions like this, my therapist invited me to accompany him on a short plane trip. It was part of the package deal that I was paying for.

By the fifth trip with this kindly mentor, I’d learnt how to go up into the skies in a plane without hyperventilating, without vomiting or having a panic attack. I was proud of myself. Overjoyed. I’d be globe-trotting soon, for sure.

But then…

My boyfriend asked me, one fine weekend, to go skydiving with him. I couldn’t believe he’d want me to do this. Had I teamed up with a sadist? Was this his idea of a bad joke?

As we zoomed up into the ether in the small plane, I imagined I’d soon be toppling off the edge of the world and into the void. Matt was calm. He held me close from behind, as we edged towards the open door of the aircraft. My teeth were chattering, it wasn’t from the cold. I closed my eyes. That helped. The last thing I wanted to see was the void below the open hatch, like a giant mouth sneering up at me.

Matt was hugging me into his body. ‘Our parachute will open up,’ he said calmly into my ear. ‘I will keep you safe.’ I was closing my eyes tightly to block out the view of the gaping emptiness about to swallow me up. It’s do or die, I thought. Either way was bad.

‘Just peer over the edge before taking the leap’ he said, ‘and if it’s all clear, jump, and we’ll go together.’

I did what he said. I opened my eyes wide. My heart went up into my mouth and I couldn’t even scream. But I did it, and we soared together. He was the carapace of a large flying tortoise, I the soft underbelly.

My fear suddenly left me, as we sailed down through the sky, my boyfriend on top of me and the parachute opening above us both like a smiling promise.

I jumped because, after all, not leaping seemed to be a much bigger risk, at least to my love life.

Editor’s Note: This is a fictional piece of writing, partly tongue-in-cheek. If you have a real problem with Flight Phobia you might need to try a different approach than the one suggested above.

Captain Bunn founded SOAR to develop effective methods for dealing with flight anxiety.

Therapists who have found this phobia difficult to treat will find here everything they need to give their clients success.

Anxious flyers who have “tried everything” to no avail can look forward to joining the nearly 10,000 graduates of the SOAR program who now have the whole world open to them as they fly anxiety free wherever they want. See his book on Amazon:

July 19, 2022 13 comments

Short Story Writing

Carl and Emma Jung

A story of eternal love

Dearest, I was telling our grandson, Andreas, just the other day, how he possesses the feeling function more strongly than I. He had just espied, while on our walk, a darling dead chaffinch on the ground, and was kneeling over its poor lifeless body.

The words, Nothing truly dies that escaped my mouth, seemed to come from another’s voice, perhaps that of the dead bird itself.

When we returned home, you were there waiting for us with your old man’s rheumy eyes, teary from nostalgic reveries, no doubt. I thought How wonderful this togetherness, this Liebe, after all this time.

You often told the story of seeing me on the stairs at Olberg, my second family house, when I was a mere teenager. My words, as I turned towards you, struck you as prophetic, and you knew at that moment that I would be your wife.

But it wasn’t always a bed of roses, as you well know, my dear one. During the early years, I rarely spoke to anyone, apart from my sister and my dear mama, about the state of my marriage. But in more mature years, it sometimes helped, if not myself, at least my analysands, if I talked openly about my own marital sufferings.

My comments, usually triggered by passionate exchanges, always arrived at the same point: There were three occasions when I tried to divorce my husband.

Sometimes the remarks had a ricochet effect, being passed on one time with delight to that great founder himself, Herr Professor Freud. He used to call me “the solver of riddles”.

I was cognizant of the split looming on the horizon between you two; well before either of you were willing to acknowledge it.

Oh, how I would come to miss our intimacies, his fatherly attentions, my transferences. Our exchange of letters, if you care once more to read them, says it all. My sense of solitude was complete after the final break. We regretted it, all three, and mourned in our own unique ways. So geht das Destin.

Those words I spoke concerning my marriage, were often followed by a shocked silence.

Nothing much matters now, in any case. As you yourself never fail to suggest, we might even say that I won out in the end, by clutching onto the string, like Ariadne in the labyrinth, finding my way to this haven of peace.

Divorce was never an option. Was it, therefore, by a dark Fate that I was placed in such a cruel predicament by the one I loved? The intervention of what you called your ‘second personality’ deemed it so. Whenever I mentioned the possibility of a separation, your reaction was to fall ill or have a near-death accident.

I always gave in and administered therapeutic assistance until you recovered. How could I do otherwise? I loved you, you loved me, and there were five more of us before very long.

Having grown up in the Haus zum Rosengarten, in a mansion with a rose garden, on the banks of the Rhine River in Schaffhausen, my childhood, unlike yours, had been idyllic. I was ever cognizant of this fact and never lorded it over you. In 1903, after the grand spectacle of our wedding, you took me to a small flat in the Burgholzli Lunatic Asylum, where catatonic schizophrenics and hysteric patients wandered freely in the grounds. I was never bored, you made me laugh and learn. It was the early years of psychoanalysis. I found it fascinating.

The first three years of our marriage were idyllic. The births of our first two daughters, Agathe and Gretli, only added to the bliss.

Signs of angst arose during the days, nay weeks, leading up to that prophetic meeting between you and dearest Sigmund.

Waves of dread stirred within my breast then, a knowingness that I might have to leave you soon.

I had been growling about the time you spent on your work. Why did you need so many patients when I was supporting you with my inheritance? Actually, it was one particular patient, the Russian Spielrein, whose attachment to you would come to worry me most; as it turned out, Herr Freud, too, calling it ‘transference’. Yes, I acknowledge I was jealous; of the attentions women poured on you, and annoyed at your endless flirtations. Shocked, too, at my own dark emotions, about which I had been ignorant up until that time.

My outpourings of jealous rage frightened me, as well as you; but you were able to absent yourself, faithful always to your beloved body of work.

It is 1911 and I am seated, in my active imagination, among all the luminaries, male and female. I feel blessed indeed, especially being here with you, my dearest Carl, as part of The Weimar Congress. I feel you leaning towards me, your breath on my hair, as if protecting me from reservations about my own self worth.

Later on you tell me: ‘You have proven yourself as successful a psychoanalyst as I myself, and you will be known by future generations, to have been part of the establishment of this new field of psychoanalysis.’

‘It is all due to your efforts, my dear man,’ I reply, ‘by initiating me into this field of study and practice from the beginning of our relationship. For this I will be eternally grateful.’

Nor do I feel less worthy than any of the other women, neither those youthful ones to my right, the prudish looking Antonia Woolf, nor the more mature women, seated here alongside me. Herr Professor Freud, that elegant man, has spoken kindly of my accomplishments. For this photo shoot, he takes center stage, standing tall with the aid of a stool, and rightly so: A giant among men, on whose shoulders future generations of great men will stand.

And then I wake up and you are no longer here. Or is it I who have died and this is all a dream?

Many will ask how I could go on living with a man who left me with the full responsibility for rearing the family, while he spent time with another woman, invited her into the household. I will tell them of my small victories, like the one during your earliest transgressions with the Russian Spielrein, whom I have long ago forgiven. She was, after all, just one of the many female psychiatrists and analysands who threw themselves unwittingly, perhaps, at my husband. After the fourth child, Marianne, I’d had enough. That is when I at last gained the upper hand in our disputes over my rights as a wife, and you heard my pleas. I was ready to leave, you begged me to stay. You promptly fell into bed with a dreadful migraine and a high temperature that left you shaking and out of control.

Like a dutiful wife, I then cared for you and nursed you back to health. Do you still remember all of this, my dearest one?

You were, yes, I avow it, handsome and charismatic, with your Teutonic good looks and vibrant personality. You are that, still, for me. How could I not forgive them all, seeing that I could not stop myself from succumbing to your charms.

Mind you, it was not love at first sight on my part. On catching a first glimpse of you on the staircase of our house in Olberg. ‘I am Emma Rauschenberg,’ I said, in reply to your timorous query, and then the maid came and ushered you into the salon where Mama awaited you.

And so it was that I, the seventeen-year-old daughter of a wealthy industrialist, in 1899 fell in love with a penniless Irrenarzt, doctor of the insane. It was the talk of the town at the time: an attractive young woman engaged to this lowly man without finances, and lacking professional or social status. In the beginning, I saw only your arrogant side, your bulldozer personality and peasant-like manners. I rebuffed your first endeavors, which only made you more persuasive in your courtship of me.

The more I became acquainted with the gargantuan man that you were, and your equally giant personality, the more I delighted in your attentions and was enthralled by your vast intelligence. Mama, it would seem, had found me an harmonious match. I was soon betrothed. You shared your learning freely with me, satisfying that side of me that aspired to greater knowledge, denied me by my gender and by convention.

If Father had had his way, I would now be the wife of that truly conventional man he had chosen for me, son of his business colleague. My future pathway would have been laid out before me, one of bourgeoisie and of boredom. How fortunate was I to have been chosen, instead, by an unconventional suitor, who cared not for rigid rules of behaviour and comportment, and who encouraged me to learn and to better myself. How I adored that in you. I was only seventeen, and you, several years my senior. Was it Fate that had deemed it so? I was besotted and surrendered to my destiny.

It wasn’t long before you, Carl, good-looking and famous, and a virgin like myself when we married, fell under the spell of female admiration. It took me years to realize that your personality masked a dark interior, fostered by an isolated childhood and sexual abuse you’d suffered as a boy. It would take me even longer to appreciate your personal depths and transformations, yea, that some would say were merely psychotic manifestations.

My sister, urged on by her husband, took it upon herself to rebuke me: ‘How can you allow yourself,’ she said, ‘to be dishonoured in this way by your husband?’ I was always mute, with nothing to say, in my defense. This was typical of my introverted sensation type. You always said that “still waters run deep” in reference to my personality. Pressed further by Marguerite, who charged me with bringing shame upon my family, I became more and more reserved and unwilling to associate with anyone outside the family.

Around the time of the birth of our first child, Agathe, I asked you to consider a move. You stood there glowering, peasant feet planted firmly apart on the ground: ‘No, no and no,’ you shouted, ‘my work at the Bulgholzli must take precedence.’

I was only just beginning to see this hidden side of you.

Papa died and I gave birth to Gretli. It was now my turn to shout and scream.

‘I want out of this marriage, I will not live here with a growing family. You keep me pregnant like a peasant woman, and you like it thus.’

‘Darling,’ you said, stunned into obeissance by my unlikely tirade, ‘just give me a little time, and we shall move. I’ll build a castle fit for a queen, you will see.’

We talked about our impending visit to meet the illustrious Freud in Vienna, and how I would be feted and welcomed into this new field of psychoanalysis by one and all.

Remember, dear one, you and I, seated on plush velvet underneath chandeliers, as we waited for your Herr Professor Freud, in the bar of the Grand Hotel near the famous Ringstrasse. You two had organized everything, so that nothing would interfere with this coming-together of two great minds, both intent on furthering the new science of psychoanalysis. We may have looked, to the outsider, like any young couple in love. Yes, we may have seemed happy together. Oh, how appearances can be mistaken!

You, my dear husband, had insisted on bringing along your assistant, Ludwig, from the Burgholzli Asylum, to act as chaperone and to guide me around the city. How I’d growled about that, too…. but I could not blame the impressive man I’d married, for taking control of every aspect of the event, so well equipped were to pursue your ambitions in the exciting field opening up before you.

As we walked along cobbled stones towards the apartment, you towering over your shorter yet dapper Dear Sigmund Freud, you talked loudly as you were wont to do.

We joined his family of nine around the luncheon table. You dominated, once again, while the family listened with interest and admiration, Sigmund, sucking on his pipe. You, only interested in discussing psychoanalysis, was unaware of your lack of etiquette in not bringing the children and women into the conversation.

I left with my chaperone soon after the meal. Museums, especially the natural history one, beckoned me. How I would have loved to share these trips to the opera and to the theater, or even to relax in the opulence of the Grand Hotel, with my beloved consort by my side.

That first night, you did not return to the hotel until late in the morning, having talked non-stop for thirteen hours straight with your newfound colleague in his rooms.

It was well known among the cohort that the unconscious was the key to everything, and the key to the unconscious was the dream.

But when Doktor Freud talked about ideas on sexual abuse being the cause of neuroses in later life, you, Carl, begged to differ. Working closely with the insane, you had discovered for yourself that sexuality and abuse were not the only variances at play in mental illness.

Despite this, you realized soon enough, that he, the wiser and older man, saw in you his legitimate heir. And you pulled back. For a time…

It was around the birth of our last child in 1914, that Toni Woolf inserted herself into our lives. If it was humiliating for me, this ménage à trois was hardly fulfilling for her. You claimed it was foretold by a luminous dream of a white dove that turned into a golden-haired girl who put her arms around your neck. You set off with Toni for a “vacation” in Ravenna shortly after Helene’s birth. Of course, I was unhappy when you invited her into the household; I excluded her from all meal times with the family. Yet she became your “other wife”, and “the other woman”, in relation to me, your legal wife.

Yes, I tolerated it; I could no longer risk another pregnancy; like all mistresses, she tried to persuade you to divorce me; but nothing could come between us in the end.

Her sudden death after the relationship had waned, left the two of us in total shock, and as close as ever a couple could be thereafter.

I see her now as your beacon of light during those dangerous voyages along the River Styx. Yes, she served as a source of insight for you, while delving into the underworld. And I nurtured our brood of five, relieved that childbirth years were behind me now. Was this a great sacrifice on my part, or an example of what you call

Why did I not succeed in divorcing you? one well may ask. I begged God and prayed for delivery from my shame.

Yet you enabled me, it must be remembered, to eventually grow and become an analyst in my own right. It was quite something for the time.

None of it matters now that I am old. I have fulfilled the journey that I began with you, my husband, by my side. I have said this many times to you, my dearest love: We have arrived at this companionable state together. Love changed us both, as you never fail to point out, and Ours was a different kind of love.

Although our children refused to do so, I forgave the other who tried to come between us. Toni Woolf and I became friends in the end. It was I who attended her funeral, yourself being poorly at the time. She provided something that I could not offer you, n’est-ce pas? We can talk freely, and without rancor, about these subjects now. That is one of the benefits of growing old, my darling companion. The need for lust, for giving birth, for travel, even for your beloved active imagination, all is dead and gone, leaving only peace and serenity in its wake.

Still, last words are a thing of note, and those final ones from your dear mouth have brought me great pleasure, as they did so at the time of their being spoken.

Now I hear you tell Andreas to ask me not to visit him again. He’s having nightmares. I say to the child, I must return no more, though I shall mourn the times we spend together on our walks. I am, as my Lord has said, without a body, and you are of flesh and blood.

Nor can you join us, dear my Lord. You have unfinished work to do, but we are dead. How blessed I am to have paved the way for you.

I sense that I am talking directly to you, my darling Carl. Or are these words the ramblings to herself of an old woman, the one that I had become? I felt then that my time was nigh, yet I am young again. Ignore my words if they unsettle you, my dearest love.

Last words are indeed to be remembered, and I am eternally grateful for the ones you spake that day.

You said she’d been your perfume but that I was your Queen.

When you are ready, good my liege, you shall find your way home.

I await you here, meine Liebe, my dearest love. I am but a step away behind the veil.

February 10, 2022 0 comment

Short Story Writing

At the Swimming Pool

A Short Story

Jeanie is one of these inch worm types. One toe in; one toe back. The cold has always been alien. From birth, really. Even today, with the water temperature around twenty degrees. Babies are gurgling in mothers’ and fathers’ arms in the pool, for God’s sake.

Cassius with the lean and hungry look is descending the stairs. Italian background, perhaps? You can’t help but notice him. He’s wearing long black tights. Nothing else. She sees the bulge as he mounts the cement block. Has he come from the yoga centre up the top? The Breathing Space? That would explain the tights.

A shallow dive from his perch on high. Shallow depth at this end, mind. Heart-stopping … gasp…! The thin man’s head emerges intact, midway down the pool. No problem. She breathes out, a sigh of relief.

Breaking the ice is the problem for Jeanie. Rubbing water on her legs, her arms. It doesn’t help much. She flinches. Retreats, as a small child jumps in, splashing her.

Immersing the neck and the head is the worst. Actual pain. What a waste, if you’ve just washed and primped your hair. Still, it’s over once your hair is wet.

She knows … knows it all…. Enlightenment, even, doesn’t help.

Cassius is doing laps. Such style. Such graceful ease, the arms arced at the elbows, breathing in and out on either side.

She’s immersed now in delicious liquid. The whole body baptised. Is the water getting warmer? Or has her body adjusted to the cold? There are warm spots in the water. Do adults urinate in the pool? Babies and children, perhaps? She thinks of the French word for swimming pool: “piscine”.

Jeanie notices people. The matriarch with the white cotton hat. Standing in the water up to her neck. Watching. Greek background? German, perhaps? The middle-aged man with white hairs on his shoulders, like a bear. A new baby makes swimming motions, safe in its father’s grasp. Little arms and legs moving back and forth like a turtle. The French family, doing perfect Australian crawl.

Cassius is heading for the block again. Another shallow dive. Effortless. She breathes through it this time, knowing now that he knows how to avoid smashing his head on the rocky bottom. Crimson blood rising to the surface.

The white-hatted woman stares at him. Frozen. He meets her gaze. She points to the signage at the steps of the pool. Dozens of small icons. Jeanie follows the direction of the sharp finger. Hard to see from here. A dog with a slash across it? A diver with a red cross through it? Is there one for urinating? She thinks not.

‘Diving is not allowed in here,’ the woman scolds, ‘it says so on the sign.’

‘I know how to do it,’ he says, ‘without hurting myself. From years and years of practice.’

He’d chosen a space when it was clear of bodies too. No children in the way.

‘It is to protect others,’ she says. ‘Children … from getting hurt.’

Jeanie can see both sides, now. She’s seen teenagers jumping and skylarking from the high cliffs at the Surf Club side of the rock pool here. No one’s ever said anything to them. Not even the lifesavers.

As she treads water, half-wading, towards the end of the pool, she meets his gaze. Dark eyes. Intelligent. Brooding?

‘It’s just a case of fear,’ she murmurs, ‘about people hitting their heads…’

‘I don’t care,’ he says, ‘about other peoples’ fear.’ She flinches inwardly, desiring to know more. Perhaps he’s read that recent book she’s seen somewhere: The Subtle Art of Not giving a F*ck”. Four-and-a-half stars on Amazon. She might download the kindle version. Much cheaper, really.

‘I’ve recovered twice from brain damage,’ he lets slip out, ‘anyway.’

She wants to ask questions, find out more about him, but he’s off, probably sorry that the words have escaped his secret mouth. Smoothly tanned, his hair a little longer than the norm, but neat.

She watches as he springs out of the pool at the deep end. Lithe. Self possessed.

On the rocks that lead down to the water’s edge, Cassius sits in a lotus position, facing out to sea. The Pacific Ocean, not always, though, she thinks. Sometimes even antagonistic.

But today it is tranquil. Calm as its namesake.

In profile, like a sphinx, Cassius is lost in meditation. Upright, lean and spare, solar plexus taut, his body merged into head and bust. Toes sticking out at the end of legs that have disappeared.

What is going on inside of him? Inside his belly? Inside his brain? His mind?

She has read about the kundalini, a dormant energy inside all of us. When she googled it, she found the word ‘dharma’, ancient Buddhist teachings, and the expression:

‘The figure of a coiled serpent—a serpent goddess not of gross but subtle substance’.

Lovely words that have stuck in her mind. Words of poetry. Not to be confused with reality, of course.

Looking at the sphinx man, she imagines the snake uncoiling secretly within, tries to see the movement on the outside of the belly. Nothing. Not a move. Not a flicker. The surface hard and still.

Other words come to her now, slipping like small blue sea creatures out of the slumbering unconscious of her mind. Something about the thousand-petalled lotus at the crown of the head. Waves of light and energy coming from the lowest point in the body, to the seventh at the top.

‘And with each awakening, the psyche of the person will be transformed.’

She moves away to the other end of the pool. To the shallows. When she looks back to the rocks at the deep end of the pool, the sphinx-like man has gone.

~~~

The next day is Friday. There is nothing in the flat to eat. She hasn’t eaten breakfast, so by lunch time, Jeanie is ravenous. She dresses to go to lunch and then have a swim in the pool. She walks to the end of the beachfront and orders a late lunch at the restaurant on the esplanade above the pool. Expensive, but it can’t be helped. She will take half back for her flatmate.

She’d planned to go for a swim straight after lunch. But something leads her to look at the program for the Yoga classes in The Breathing Space, nextdoor to the restaurant.

The world is the great gymnasium, where we come to make ourselves strong, Swami Vivekenanda it reads out the front.

She walks into the yoga room. A lovely warmth engulfs her body. She finds a spot in the corner at the back of the class, places her beach towel on the floor. The sun is streaming in through glass windows. She takes off the tee shirt she’s worn over her swimsuit. She sits cross-legged, her palms facing up on her thighs.

Straight-backed and peaceful, she thinks of the sphinx-man at the pool.

The meditation teacher is a plump, motherly type in soft cotton harem pantaloons and a flowing jacket. Belly fat oozes over her waist. She exudes love, her voice soft and maternal.

It isn’t necessary to close your eyes, the matriarch is saying. Better to remain open, so as not to fall asleep. She feels spirit arise from deep in her belly.

A lit candle glows in front of Jeanie. There’s a strip of paper at her feet with a wisdom mantra on it: OM A RAPA TSA NA DHIH: ‘May the wisdom mind find you’ or something like that.

Her heart swells within her breast. She closes her eyes. She notes the video at her forehead, flickering on and off in tune with the woman’s voice. The colours are those of the rainbow, pink, green, orange, that flood the shapes in her head.

The serpent goddess of subtle substance slides into her mind.

The lulling voice of the teacher is telling them they can lie down now.

Ah, great! Horizontal.

She is talking about love now. About sending loving rays out towards friends, acquaintances, nemeses. Transmitting love direct from the heart.

Would the objects of her love receive the message? It doesn’t matter.

Will the sphinx-like man be the object of her transmitted love? Why not? If she saw him again, would she recognise him from the brief encounter at the pool? It matters not. The love is all that matters.

Perhaps it was he who had brought her here. She never would have thought of coming, otherwise.

Was he real, or was he an illusion, like so much about life and love?

One foot in front of the other; no need to hurry; try to live in the present time, brings her back to the swimming pool and to her inch-worm approach to life. And to the Sphynx-like mystery man who seemed to ratify her way.

This story was first published on Denise Baer’s blog: (http://baerbookspress.com/), along with other song theme-based stories.

November 5, 2019 0 comment

Short Story Writing

A Fairy Story

Jade was a much longed-for baby. I had waited five years into my marriage before I conceived. I secretly wanted a girl and it was as if a God had heard my silent wish and she’d come to me in my late thirties, drawn by an invisible pull. The experience of being pregnant, of giving birth, and of holding her in my arms eclipsed everything that had gone before.

November 1979: Felt the first flutterings yesterday, like a tiny sea-horse gently weaving its way deep inside my belly. I am seventeen and a half weeks. I was very tired last night, having made a big effort, washing and ironing all the baby clothes. I was exhausted and lay on the bed and felt the baby move for the first time. Felt strangely high and marvelled at the feelings. It has been fluttering ever since, getting ever more strenuous.

May 1980: Jade looks like a wise teddy bear with puffed eyes and a round face. We call her ‘Our Cuddly Bear’. I have dressed her in hospital nighties because they are so comfortable; Mum was horrified and told me to put something nice on her for visitors to see. She latched onto my nipple quickly and I realised she had a strong grip on life.

She is so relaxed and so dark: an unlikely child for two fair parents. I can’t believe she is really mine. I sing ‘Don’t Break My Heart in Two’, just as I did when she was inside me. I love staring through the bars of the bassinet next to my bed, but mostly I pick her up and bring her into bed with me.

◊◊◊

While pregnant, I had read The Continuum Concept by Jean Liedloff, who had lived with the Iraquoi Indians in South America, and noticed that the children there were happy and free of neurosis. I had decided to follow a ‘total access’ policy of child rearing. Jade and I thrived on it. I called her ‘Jadie Bear’ because she was warm and brown and cuddly and we merged our bodies in symbiosis.

“Why doesn’t she ever cry?” Mum asked when she visited from the country, “It’s not normal.” I loved breast-feeding, and wanted to extend it as long as possible. Until two years of age. I was proud of her Rose Red looks, her dark hair and blue eyes that might turn brown. “She’s a good looker” the doctor on duty had said that first morning. I knew that I had given birth to the most beautiful baby on earth.

◊◊◊

Fast forward 26th April, 2003: She is lying on the cold floor of the bathroom, stinking of stale alcohol and bad breath. The words ‘fuck you’ spat forth at me with such venom that I shudder in every cell of my body; only a few hours before she had been telling me how much she loved me and that she could not go on without me. The hair dryer is already attached to the bath in readiness. I know I should hug her, press her cold flesh to mine, but I feel sick; her smell sickens me. I am afraid of her superhuman strength. I hate the look of her: the way she is writhing out of control, screeching insults and swearing. Hyena-like… not my daughter. There is broken glass everywhere—she has been trying to kill herself with knives and with glass shards. My job is to prevent her, but I feel broken too; one part of me wants to tell her to get fucked; the real part loves her to death and only wants to save her from herself.

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May 1999. Jade sits perched on the new navy lounge, painting her toenails pink. The acrid smell of fumes invades the loungeroom and my senses, and I wish silently that she could move out.
“Careful it doesn’t get onto the fabric,” I say, treading on eggshells.

Jade moans, but continues to do it.

“Could you do it in your room?” She moans again: “Look, I’ve nearly finished.” I want to scream at her to get out, but I hold it in.

I dare not push her… I tread lightly now, afraid of the terrible tantrums that had come on fifteen years too late. I blame myself for not being strict enough with her. For spoiling her.

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I think, as I look at my olive-skinned daughter, that she should have been born in the tropics, not to an Anglo couple in a temperate lakeside town. One day in calmer times, Jade and I had found this run-down, post war fibro-and-timber cottage that sits on a hill and looks out over a tree-filled basin. Eucalypts, mediterranean pines and bangalow palms, co-exist beneath a vaulted sky across which planes and birds fly as if projected on a screen.

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The day of Mum’s death, 19^th May 2003, passed by quickly, being overshadowed by her granddaughter’s hospitalization, the funeral taking place on Jade’s 23rd birthday.

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Today Jade is an ‘eight’. She slipped a little mid afternoon, but went up again at night. What a relief! The medication is at last starting to take effect. I have only recently begun asking her to give a mood score out of ten, and she was able to respond promptly and easily. The first day she was a ‘four’. Then it rose for short periods to ‘five’, then ‘six’ and yesterday things really started to look up, when it went up to a ‘seven’. And she has been an ‘eight’ nearly all day today!

On Monday we went through a catharsis. We were all feeling a little depressed. It seemed like Matthew and I were being pulled down into the vortex with her. Her mood had fluctuated during the day, as if trying to find a level. It was very frustrating. I didn’t know what she wanted or what she would propose next, and I found myself wanting to argue with her and becoming negative. Then suddenly it was as if a heavy stone was lifted and her spirits rose.

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I long for the day when I will be able to write the following words in my journal:

She has awoken like Sleeping Beauty from a long deep sleep and opened her eyes on a new world.

Postscript: As Carl Jung wrote: “You can’t have both wholeness and goodness.”

October 3, 2012 4 comments