Dancing with the Octopus

by Debora Harding

  I learned about Congress, the Constitution, the difference between the state and federal systems, and how even though the Equal Rights Amendment had been approved by Congress, it would never pass because it would never be approved at the state level. She was passionate about the inequities of our economic system and the enduring legacy of slavery, how Roosevelt and Johnson passed public policy to help these inequalities, and though we liked to think everyone in the States had equal economic opportunity, it was a myth. “This city is so segregated you wouldn’t even know black people live in Omaha,” Mom pointed out.

  “What about Clarence?” I asked. Dad and Clarence worked together at Valmont selling light poles. Clarence saved Dad’s life when Dad was attacked by a nest of wasps and went into anaphylactic shock at Clarence’s house during one of his barbecues.

  “Clarence isn’t really black,” she said. I had no idea what she was talking about. “He has a college education and lives in a white neighborhood. You’re going to have classmates next year who don’t have the privileges you do.”

  She was referring to the policy of school busing, which was about to begin in Omaha. The U.S. Supreme Court had just ruled that Omaha public schools had “governing proof of unconstitutional desegregation.” Though the entire South had instituted the changes required in the landmark ruling of Brown

  v. Board of Education in 1954, Omaha had staved off changes by arguing it wasn’t practicing racial discrimination in its apportionment of resources. As a seventh grader in 1976, I was part of the first group of students who would take the bus to a school other than the one in my home district. In my case, instead of attending Norris Junior High, I would catch the bus to Lewis and Clark, which in effect only swapped one white neighborhood school for another.

  But I had no negative feelings toward the policy. It was the kind of social justice we spoke about at church, the kind Jesus himself would advocate. I was still checking in with him daily. And after watching Roots, the television series based on Alex Haley’s bestselling book, with the rest of the nation, I gained an emotional and historical understanding that explained the real reasons for what we were doing—busing was an attempt to correct inequities that existed between school districts, one of the long-standing effects of the economic plunder of those enslaved, and this, in my heart anyway, seemed a positive thing to happen.

  As part of my continuing education, Mom also gave me a copy of Watership Down, a book about a colony of rabbits who are oppressed by brutal laws. The story just about crushed me. When I asked her why she had given me a scary book, she said my Pollyanna view of people was dangerous. When I asked her what Pollyanna meant, she said the world was full of bad people and just because I didn’t want to believe it, didn’t make it untrue. I told her we might have differences in our views about the good in people. Then she laughed like I had just proved how naive I was.

  I have a clipping of an Omaha World Herald article featuring a photo of my mother with my three sisters and me sitting together. The article addressed the growing phenomenon of women returning to school after having children, and featured my mother as a role model for the second-generation wave of feminists.

  “I’ve proved, girls, it’s never too late to make your dreams come true,” she said, speaking to us as the journalist took notes. “You can become anything you want to be.”

  During one of our late-night study sessions she asked me what I wanted to be when I grew up. I said a doctor. She inquired further. What type of doctor? A brain surgeon, I responded proudly, thinking that sounded very grand. She said, “No, you have to be more ambitious.” At this point it had become clear we were playing a game of “I am thinking of something that starts with the letter . . .” but she wasn’t giving me a chance to ask for any clues. So I just started making wild guesses.

  “The first lady astronaut!” I said, thinking that sounded ambitious.

  “Nope,” she said, her ice cubes clinking against her glass as she sipped more Scotch and took a drag on her cigarette.

  “A lawyer!” I said, confident I had nailed it that time.

  “Getting warm,” she said, encouragingly.

  “A congresswoman!” I couldn’t wait for this game to be over.

  “Higher,” she said, her voice raising the stakes.

  “The first lady president of the United States?”

  “Bingo,” she cried. “What do you want to be?”

  “The first lady president of the United States!” I repeated.

  “I knew you were my daughter,” she said, her eyes reddening with sentimentality. When she was drinking, she’d always reassure me our relationship was special. It’s when she wasn’t drinking that she was dangerous. One more slurp of the Scotch and she added, “Just make sure you don’t get pregnant.”

  In Which I Further Deteriorate

  London, 1993—Not long after seeing the young neurologist, I underwent blood tests, an MRI, and an EEG. And as he suggested, the tests came back negative for anomalies. Instead of that making me feel better, however, I felt worse. If this problem was in my mind, then didn’t that mean I was unconsciously making some grab at attention? That the episodes were serving some kind of positive emotional purpose? The logic of it felt ludicrous, not to mention toxic.

  I couldn’t help but recognize that these fits of paralysis had similarities to the lucid dream state of night terrors. Instead of being trapped in a dream—terrified and awake, yet clinically asleep—the situation was reversed. I appeared to be unconscious, asleep, even though I was awake and fully aware of my surroundings.

  I resolved that I would find a more helpful explanation for the seizures, other than they were originating from some unsettled internal conflict. After all, there was so much about the brain that neurologists had yet to understand. I’d become my own scientist, just as I had when studying my dreams. I would observe and note the episodes. I began to keep track of when and how often the seizures would occur. I documented the warning signals—for example, the changes in sensory perception. I became better at relaxing when I sensed one coming, refused to let a five-minute bout of paralysis cripple me longer than was necessary, stopped fighting my helplessness when I collapsed, and this reduced the spasms. I pushed through the extreme fatigue that would follow, not letting a seizure destroy my entire day, though sometimes I’d have no choice but to sleep for hours afterward. In summary, I took a pragmatic approach. If I couldn’t stop them, I could at least become better at managing them.

  And then there was the positive inventory. This wasn’t a brain tumor or grand mal seizures. I was self-employed, so I didn’t have to worry about losing a job. I remained physically fit and healthy. I carried huge anxieties that living in a foreign country would leave me feeling dependent, but Thomas, who had no interest in playing the role of savior, supported me in a way that kept the relationship balanced.

  We were leading a rich social life in London, and six months later we moved to Oxford. I taught English literature at a tutorial college for a while before we joined forces at the radical nonprofit production company he and a few other activists started, called Undercurrents. As a result, our home was often filled with overnight guests. East Oxford dinner parties became a regular way of life. It was now 1996, we were three years into our marriage, and the honeymoon phase wasn’t waning.

  But neither were the seizures. In fact, they were increasing. I tried to block the anger I felt toward my body. I continued to bicycle, continued to teach aerobic classes. In fact, I added training for the London Marathon to the list just to prove I wouldn’t be defeated.

  But the same stubborn pride that kept me going was also going to keep me searching for answers that weren’t solving the problem. The seizures were getting closer in frequency, as often as twice a week. I tried homeopathy, cranial osteopathy, herbal medicine. I even took a job at Neal’s Yard Remedies so I could learn more. But it wasn’t good for business when customers saw me selling remedies to treat their ailments and suddenly there I was, dropp
ing seemingly unconscious on the floor. Okay, that only happened once, but it was enough.

  I was becoming so desperate for an emotional break I enrolled in courses at an anxiety clinic. I journaled to see if I could find any repeating pattern—and managed to connect a good deal of the triggers to overexertion and lack of sleep. But it was like using a feather duster to stamp out a swarm of wasps. Mostly, it was completely ineffective. My short-term memory and speech were affected at this point. I’d accidentally reverse syllables and come out with entertaining spoonerisms I wasn’t trying to construct. For example, I once described someone as emancipated instead of emaciated, used the word amnesia instead of anathema, confused chimera with chiminea, mentioned in passing I was reading depression on literature; and even once embarrassed myself by proclaiming I’d hit my head on the nail.

  And then the depression set in. But I had always treated depression philosophically, a problem of the soul, not of the body. The two episodes I had in Washington introduced me to varied strategies. The first bout hit when I was twenty-two. I tried psychoanalysis with earnest beginner students (it was the best I could afford), but it only seemed to make the depression worse. I then turned to bibliotherapy—reading philosophers and literature on the soul—and supplemented my new awareness with pastoral counseling that helped steer me to working with the homeless, people with problems much bigger than my own, a wonderful distractive technique. That in turn led me to sign up for Bike-Aid, the cross-country charity bike ride where I finally found the black cloud lift and fell in love.

  Four years after the onset of my first severe bout of melancholy, at the age of twenty-seven, I found myself battling it again and sought out the help of the Jungian therapist Sheldon Kopp, who had written the popular book If You Meet the Buddha on the Road, Kill Him!

  Shelly, as he preferred to be called, raised the question of long-term romantic relationships. I told him I enjoyed plenty of romantic relationships. He asked if any had been serious. I shared there had been a wide range of both length and depth, but my heart had never quite recovered from a summer romance that turned into a long-distance love affair, before the obstacles of life tore us apart. Sheldon suggested that I might have fears of intimacy. I told him no, it was simple. There was only one man I’d ever love, and that was Thomas.

  Sheldon attempted to clarify my situation. “I thought you said the relationship ended three years ago?” I clarified that no, my heart had been broken three years ago, but recently Thomas had asked me, in rather desperate romantic fashion, if I would marry him. Sheldon asked me what I feared in getting married. I said, with all seriousness, me. And that answer guided questions for the next three months. Somehow Shelly managed to convince me I was not uniquely unsuitable for marriage, and I gathered the courage needed to take the leap. It was the best money I’d ever spent.

  Since saying yes to Thomas I had grown and overcome my fears of being in a relationship. I had made the right decision. Having arrived at the age of thirty-two I was truly deeply happy. So why now was my unconscious unleashing this challenge, punishing me for it? That’s what it felt like in my lowest moment. My pride was beat to a pulp. I could barely form a sentence properly.

  I finally revisited the idea of trying an anti-seizure medication, recommended three years before by Thomas’s uncle. I was scared of how it might change me. Weight gain was one of the side effects, drowsiness another. Thomas pointed out that these were minor concerns if it would stop the seizures. Still, I couldn’t view having to take medication as anything but defeat over my spirit.

  Exhausted at the drag I felt I had become, I went to my local GP and asked for help. We discussed medication. She and I agreed that even though there had been no scientific tests confirming the cause of my collapses, the effect of the medication would serve as a baseline test of its own. She reassured me against my fear that I was taking the pills instead of facing my problems. On the contrary, she said, trying the medication was smart management.

  Before beginning the course of indefinite emotional dampening, I carefully researched the drug and its long-term side effects. I read that in addition to being prescribed for epileptics, it was also recommended as a mood stabilizer for those experiencing psychotic disorders. I wondered if that meant I was now somehow in the same class as Mom.

  Within three weeks of starting the medication, the seizures stopped. Just like that. The question of whether they were psychosomatic became simply irrelevant.

  In Which Charles Graduates to Being a Violent Criminal

  Omaha, 1977—Some people get addicted to drugs or alcohol, some to food, some to self-help, but Charles was obsessed with cars—the driving of the cars—and it was going to get him in trouble.

  Okay, it wasn’t just about the driving, because his parents gave him access to the family car. They even gave him an allowance for gas money. But Charles liked the power and rush that came with driving other people’s vehicles. It was like stepping into someone else’s skin for a short while; he could be incognito. In any case, he didn’t steal—he borrowed. And only from those who invited it by leaving a motor running. They knew they were taking the risk, and he was just fulfilling the contract for them.

  It also made him instantly popular. No one seemed to ask where he got a car if he asked them to cruise. One night, when he was out by himself, he noticed that he had a police car on his tail, which made him nervous enough that he pulled into the Target store at 350 North Saddle Creek Road. He watched with relief when the police car drove past, but it was clear he was going to have to ditch the car. That’s when he saw a woman exiting the store.

  He watched as she took her keys out, then made his move. As soon as she started the engine, he opened her car door, pointed a .22 rifle at her head, and commanded that she get out. Not in an overly aggressive manner. The woman started pleading and crying that she had kids, began frantically pulling the contents of her wallet out, telling him to take it, begging him not to hurt her. Again, he told her to just get out of the damn car.

  So finally—she got out, and he got in, and that was the end of their relationship. Except it wasn’t. She went straight to the police station and identified him from a photo they had of him from a previous arrest.

  He could have saved himself a lot of hassle if he had only worn one of those balaclavas.

  In Which Mom and Dad Invite Me on a Road Trip

  Omaha, 1977—Mom and Dad announced they were going to Laurens, Iowa, for the weekend. They were leaving on a Friday morning, which happened to be the last day of my seventh-grade school year.

  I tried to hide my excitement as my mind starting going rampant with juvenile ideas and plans, but Mom read my thoughts. “I don’t know where you are staying yet,” she said, “but it’s not going to be at home.” She told me she was putting Genie in charge of Gayle and Jenifer, and she wouldn’t have me undermining Genie’s authority.

  And then she added further insult by calling the parent of a friend of mine at school and arranging a sleepover for the two of us. Our families attended the same church. I suppose Mom thought that that meant less risk of juvenile activity. She couldn’t have been further from the truth. There was little difference in partying behavior between my friends at church and my friends at school. And I happened to know that my friend Susan benefited from parental burnout, trailblazed by her two older siblings. Short of committing a legal crime, she had no rules at home to break. But the real excitement for me—Susan was practiced in arranging clandestine meetings with boys.

  I’d made it through the first year of junior high without partaking in any of the rebellious activities, mainly because I was scared to death of getting caught. My place on the varsity track team also kept me straight. But I was often teased about being a prude by my girlfriends—I had never been kissed. I was eager to rectify that.

  Susan and I wasted no time in making plans. We coordinated a meetup with a group of friends at Peony Park, the amusement playground with a huge public pool and imported sand that c
reated a beach. There would be boys, particularly Greg Osborn, whom I had been exchanging notes with for over a month. And Susan’s sister would get us the beer.

  The morning my parents were meant to leave, I was putting my carefully selected freshly laundered clothes in the dryer when I heard Dad call to me from upstairs. There was nothing in his tone to suggest I was in trouble, but my heart thumped with guilt and fear that our plans had been foiled.

  When I arrived at the top of the stairs, he asked me if I had made any plans that I would need to cancel if I went to Laurens with them.

  I confidently said no, but also let him know there was no way I wanted to go to Laurens.

  “Well, we’ve decided we’d like your company.”

  “I’d rather die,” I told him.

  “Well, that’s rather melodramatic.”

  “Well, I mean it.”

  “Well, I mean it too. I am not giving you a choice. You’re coming with us.”

  I took a few steps up the stairs and turned around, putting my hand on the bannister. “No, I am not.” I had never said anything like this to my father before. A two-year-old couldn’t have done better.

  His face dropped with hurt, and then anger. “You are going to come with us even if I have to carry you over my shoulder into the car.”

  “I have to call Susan and tell her I won’t be coming.”

  “Your mother talked to Susan’s mother. You don’t have to worry about that.”

  The journey to Laurens took three hours. We drove west across the Missouri River to Council Bluffs, then slowly began making our way through a landscape that was as flat and as lifeless as the map I was looking at. The atmosphere in the car was odd. My parents didn’t talk about why I was there and my sisters weren’t. We just carried on like they actually wanted my company, so I relaxed into it and started enjoying myself.