On examination, her blood pressure (which apparently has always been excellent) is found to be dangerously high. The doctor is concerned for her heart and advises we go straight to hospital where everything can be checked with greater efficiency. The ambulance is called and Susannah waits on a bed in a side room for the arrival of the paramedics. It is always a shock when, out of the blue, the program of the day is blasted away and one finds oneself in a different space altogether. Who would have imagined a few hours earlier that I would be standing in that neutral little room looking at my daughter lying on a bed with a possibly serious heart problem? I feel like I am in a capsule outside of time, with the pause button having been pressed on normal life.
Fear tries to get the better of me, with thoughts of Susannah dying – that awful feeling in your chest: simultaneously a gripping and a melting, sort of like you are a stone beginning to dissolve.
I try to appear calm for Susannah’s sake and I take appropriate practical actions: I ring Oskar and tell him the situation: he is, of course, worried, and I reassure him I will ring back as soon as I know something. I then ring Susan and ask her to pray and to ask my prayer partner, Ilona, to pray too.
Then we wait.
Susannah
I am taken to a treatment room to wait for the ambulance. I all but collapse on the bed: I am exhausted and feel strangely other, outside myself, and desperately want to sleep. But I can see that the doctor looks worried, and that worries me. He tells me that he is concerned about my soaring blood pressure. I tell him that I don’t get high blood pressure. ‘You do now,’ he tells me. He thinks that I might be having some kind of heart attack.
Heart attack? Is this going to be it? No! I am not ready, I still have things I want to do, things Oskar and I want to do, and the kids need me a little bit longer at least, I certainly can’t leave them yet. And I don’t want to die here on this bed. My mind lurches now and I am scared and none of this is good for my blood pressure, which continues to soar. I look across at Robin, who also looks worried, and I am struck by the potential symmetry of the situation.
‘Robin?’ I say.
‘Yes, darling?’ she says as she comes over and takes my hand.
‘I’m a little scared.’
She doesn’t say anything.
‘Do you think it’s going to be that you are with me at both my beginning and end?’
‘Don’t say that,’ she says and squeezes my hand. ‘It’s not going to happen.’
I am less convinced.
Robin
The paramedics arrive and hook Susannah up to various monitors. Her blood pressure is still high but they bring a note of optimism by saying she does not present like a typical heart-attack patient, of which, sadly, they see many. However, it is still an anxious and somewhat surreal ride in the ambulance with her to the nearest hospital.
When we arrive at the emergency department, the back doors of the ambulance are opened and I alight. At that moment a call comes through on Susannah’s mobile, which she answers. I can’t help but see the comic irony in Susannah raising herself from her stretcher and, still trailing monitor leads to her heart, announcing that we have secured a publisher for Heartlines. This is news we have been hoping for and that normally would have been received with excitement and the immediate instigation of a festival of celebration. As it is, I barely register the happy fact – it is so not a priority in the present circumstances. How often things turn out differently than what we imagine.
Once inside the hospital, Susannah is wheeled into a cubicle and I deal with the red tape at the reception desk.
‘So, you are her mum?’ the girl asks.
‘Yes,’ I reply, savouring the fact of it, as a newly married couple might secretly savour the novelty of the labels ‘husband’ and ‘wife’. Again, when the doctor sits in the cubicle with us and talks of family and childhood history, naturally assuming I have raised Susannah, it is as if, for that short time, I can actually be that mother. I enjoy the fantasy.
Susannah
I have wires stuck on everywhere, I have had my blood taken and a chest X-ray done and now I lie here, with Robin sitting next to me while the nurse asks me questions. Then she asks whether there is a family history of heart conditions. I am about to say what I have said for fifty years – that I don’t know – when I realise that I do now, I can.
‘Robin, is there?’
‘No,’ she replies.
I am not sure what makes me happier: that there is no family history of heart conditions or that I can finally answer those medical questions.
All tests for anything serious come back negative, but the doctors recommend that I stay close to the hospital that night. I call Oskar to reassure him and tell him I will stay at Robin’s. He, of course, wants to come and see me but I suggest it’s crazy to drive all the way across town in peak hour traffic to see a completely well, if now exhausted, wife. He reluctantly agrees.
Robin
That evening I can enjoy a mother’s reward: the amazing feeling of relief that the child is all right.
Probably one of the most defining characteristics of a mother is that she goes through inevitable times of anxiety over her children, because they are the ones she can’t afford to lose. As someone has said, having children is like having your heart walking around outside your body. A mother is always vulnerable through her children. This experience with Susannah has bonded me to her in a new way and I realise that I do indeed now have another person on whose happiness my own happiness depends.
Susannah is tucked up in my special old-person’s massage bed with a hot-water bottle and herbal tea. I sleep in the bunk bed and revel in the fact that we are both safe and sound.
Return to Gwinganna
Susannah
It is, obviously, a huge relief not to be having a heart attack but the leaping blood pressure was clearly my body trying to tell me something. Throughout all the stresses and distresses of the past years I have never had a problem with blood pressure and yet here I am flipping it up to dangerous levels because I had an argument with Robin over the cryptic crossword!
But of course it wasn’t just the stupid argument over the crossword – although it was sad that our once impenetrable refuge had now also fallen – it was everything, good and bad, just stacking up on top of me, and now my body, both heart and head in collusion, is saying enough already, give us a chance. Just as I think I have done all the hard work of opening up – acknowledging the pain of my abandonment to Robin and coming clean with Dad – my body is closing. I have to do something.
So, I decide to take myself back to Gwinganna, the wellness retreat that seemed to have started all this.
Friends and family, unsettled by my ‘heart attack’, think the retreat is an excellent idea, but everyone, without exception, has one caveat – under no circumstances am I to take ‘The Journey’ again.
‘You’re not going to do The Journey, are you?’
‘I don’t think that Journey thing is a good idea, do you?’
‘I have thought about doing it,’ I say. ‘Perhaps it will help?’
No, they all assure me, it will not. One friend even goes so far as to say that she could not cope with my doing The Journey and makes me promise that I won’t do it. ‘If you think you’re about to sign up for it, call me. Immediately. I’m serious, Susannah. I really, really think The Journey is a bad idea for everyone.’
I agree and I promise, not without some guilt at the belated realisation that I have also put my friends through a lot this year.
I arrive at the retreat, at the top of a mountain, on a beautiful sunny afternoon. I check in and then see a consultant to book my treatments. As I talk to the consultant, my husband’s and friends’ pleas ring in my ears and I decide to stay superficial: a facial, a massage, I’m thinking.
The consultant booking my treatments clearly thinks I can do better.
‘What do you want to learn about yourself here?’
‘Absolut
ely nothing,’ I almost yell, or maybe plead. ‘Absolutely nothing more. I’m still recovering from last time!’
The consultant, realising she may be in the presence of a nutter, just smiles. ‘Okay,’ she says. ‘Well, that facial will be just lovely.’
But then, as the week rolls relaxingly on, I decide to take one leap-of-faith treatment, something I wouldn’t normally do. And one particular treatment seems to be calling me – Body Release. Why not? I think as I book myself in.
Waiting for the treatment therapist the next day, I expect an earth-mother type, possibly with the odd crystal adorning her, but, instead, a young, very fit-looking man wearing no crystals comes towards me.
‘Right, mate, let’s get you sorted.’
He explains that the idea is that my body is tested for areas of weakness, organ health, circulation and toxic build-up, assessed by a series of subtle chiropractic-like movements.
All is going well. I am, it seems, just like the emergency-room doctor confirmed, a perfect specimen of health.
‘You’re solid, mate,’ he keeps repeating. ‘Real solid.’ He even wonders out aloud why I chose this treatment.
But then he gets to my brain.
He does one test.
‘Ah,’ he says. ‘Let’s check that again.’
He does it again.
‘What’s going on, mate?’ he exclaims.
‘What do you mean?’ I ask, slightly alarmed. After all, no tests were done on my brain in the hospital.
‘Well,’ he explains, ‘the one side of your brain, you know, your thinking part, has been working really hard. And it’s really strong, solid, it’s really good at processing stuff, but …’
‘Yes?’
‘Your other side, your feeling side, it’s all over the shop, mate, it can’t keep up with all that stuff. You’ve got to give it time. You’re trying to fix too much. You’ve got emotional indigestion.’
There it is. He has nailed it. Emotional indigestion is exactly what I have.
‘Yes!’ I exclaim nearly leaping off the table. ‘I do! Can you fix that?’
‘Yep, sure. I’m on it.’
And with that he put his hands at the back of my head and gently clicks it forward.
‘Okay,’ he said, lifting my arm up again. ‘Push up when I push down.’
I obey and push firmly up against his hand.
‘There you go, mate, all solid, sorted, you’re good to go.’
‘That’s it?’
‘Yep, you’re solid, mate,’ he repeats. ‘We just needed to get that heart up to speed. Take it easy now.’
And so I walk out of the treatment room a little bemused: I don’t know why I have been doing all this thinking over the past year when I could have just had this bloke click my head!
A bit later, a group of us are walking into the bush when we see a dove lying on the ground. It has flown into the glass windows of the gym and has been stunned, or worse. As we approach, the poor thing becomes distressed. We wonder what we should do. Try to help it or, more grimly but perhaps necessarily, euthanase it? Our guide has a thought: we could just leave it, see what happens. We decide to go with that and walk on. Minutes later someone calls out from back at the gym: ‘Look, it’s flying off!’ And so it is.
I feel I am being told something: slow down, you don’t need to dive in and fix everything. Sometimes just wait and see what happens.
The clicking perhaps, my little bird message and the time away do allow me to slow right down, to detox and digest the mental year that was the year I met my other mother. Long walks in beautiful bush, no caffeine, no alcohol, no sugar, calming, nurturing massages, crazy dancing, drumming to excellently daggy 1980s music, the odd bit of hollering in the rainforest and time to do nothing allows me to, finally, thankfully, fall into a softer, more spacious place.
One of the final seminars of the week is ‘From Limbic to Prefrontal – From Reaction to Response’ on how we need to get less limbic (our more primal reactive) and more pre-frontal (our more considered responsive), and everything I have read, meditated on, thought and felt comes into one neat little ball in my lap.
My lovely but mad limbic inner child had gone mental from the moment I began contact with Robin – the speaker talks of a ‘limbic hijack’ – and that reconnection had opened all the lost and repressed files of my birth experience and thrown them out of the filing cabinet of my mind, scattering them all over the floor.
So I cried out for maternal affection; I sulked and I danced as I tried to please both mother and all my other biological family because I wanted them to love me. And I tried to protect my life family from any pain, terrified that they would reject me, because I needed them to love me too.
I rushed and I raced, desperately trying to fix and fit in, all the while hurling my limbic files in a messy whirl. Then, like a cute but exhausted puppy, I crashed, falling down, depleted, among all the files.
But, the speaker continues, you can pick up those files and step out of your limbic reaction. You can choose not to follow it, you can choose where to focus your attention.
So, where do I want to focus mine? I ponder this all the next day and, finally, I write just six words.
Gratitude
Laughter
Openness
Vulnerability
Joy
Love
That love thing again, it anchors everything. And with love, more is more: more family, more people to love, more people to love you – it takes from no one, only adds. So, no more talk of ‘biologicals’ for me. No more ‘life’ family and ‘blood’ family. Just family. It’s time to let go of the limbic, the worrying, the dancing to please. Finally, I am combobulated!
And then, on my last day, lying on a massage bed with the masseuse repeating, ‘Let go, you don’t have to hold this,’ I finally do let go – I let go of a whole lifetime of held anger and hurt about what happened and, somewhat embarrassingly, I burst into tears.
‘There you go,’ the masseuse says softly.
I am ready to go home. I have finally got my head and heart together. But there is one more thing I need to do, one more thing to let go of.
XI
HOMECOMING
‘Home is where one starts from.’ T.S. Eliot
Robin
Elsewhere
Little honey-haired girl with the questioning eyes:
‘Where did I come from? From beyond the skies?’
‘You came from me, a part of me, but cut loose straightaway
before we could see – each other.’
Strangely adrift, though taken in; wanted and loved but not by your kin.
Wondering, puzzled: ‘Where did I come from? Why here, not there?
Because I’m not from here – but elsewhere.’
Set out now to find that place: that other harbour that reflects your face.
To see, to know, to join at last – to tether your soul, to make it fast.
‘Then out I can sail again, secure but free,
no longer “elsewhere”, but Here and Now – Me’.
Letting go
Susannah
Back home, I place a photo of Robin as a toddler on my desk – it’s there to remind me that she too has her own little limbic inner child banging on her adult door and because, contrary to most of my behaviour over the past year, I am an adult too and I need to bear that in mind. I need to see Robin as a person, not just my birth mother, who, at various times, has done my heart and head in.
And I need to move me, us, on from what happened in 1965 and 1989.
And so, I read Robin’s book again but this time I’m looking for her, not me. I’m trying to understand her in her own right and life, not the role she has played in mine. It makes for quite a different read.
I see poor little Wobin Uber, the unsure schoolgirl who, like me, can’t say r and who is humiliated in class, declared a crow rather than a nightingale (who does that to a child?) for her less than tuneful singing. I see a beauti
ful young woman who perhaps doesn’t quite believe her own intelligence and strength – and who, maybe, looks to other people for validation. And I see a woman who loses a lot, who cops a lot of pain and many challenges – but who keeps standing.
I look at that photo on my desk – the toddler, cute podgy legs yet to walk off all their baby fat, standing on a chair in that paddock as if to say, ‘Oi! I’m over here and I’ve got stuff to say. See me, I’m ace.’
And I do, and she is.
And then I Google forgiveness rituals. Because I’ve got stuff to say too.
I walk to the beach with Emma and we collect some stones, and then I sit down and write one final letter to Robin. This letter is easy to write and I feel lighter and lighter as I write. I print it out, roll it up and tie a green (green being the colour of forgiveness, so says Google) string around it, the same type of green string that Robin tied around my wrist as my slightly flawed tether before I left for overseas. I then head off down the street, where I buy a large bunch of white roses, a large mixed bunch of roses and three small scented candles.
I pack everything up in a little bag and put it in the hall, ready.
Holding dear
Susannah
There is a framed photo of Mum that sits on the side table in our living room. It is one of the last photos of her before she became really sick, and it is beautiful. Taken on her last Christmas she is sitting on a bench in the park outside Mum and Dad’s house watching all her children and grandchildren play a game of cricket. She is laughing, her eyes shining, and she is happy as she keeps watch over her clan. Edvard took the photo and we each – Dad, Duncan, Sophie and me – have one in our living room. It keeps her close; it keeps her on watch over us.
Before I go to bed I take the bunch of beautiful white roses and split them over three vases. I take one vase and put it on the bedside table in the guest room for Robin and I put another on the table where we will have our Mother’s Day dinner. The last vase of roses I put next to the photo of Mum. I sit on the sofa and, in my head, I thank her for everything she gave me and for the love that healed me and that now makes it possible for me to forgive Robin and accept her also as my mother. An angry wounded heart finds it hard, maybe impossible, to forgive: a heart softened with love is more able to stay open and let people in. Mum and Dad made my heart soft again.
Heartlines Page 22
