Connections

I loved England as a new bride, but it was a big adjustment. Although I had moved many times in my life, I'd always had my family core around me. This time I was alone in a new culture, in a new marriage with someone I didn’t know a lot about. Ours had been a long distance courtship, with lots of letters but not a lot of actual time together. There were a million little things to learn about each other.

Then there were the contrasts in culture — my American background of big stores, big appliances, big central heating bills, against England’s tradition of small shops, miniature washing machines, no dryers and “a wee fire in the sitting room.” In addition, my husband was from New Zealand, not England, making him a sort of cultural double whammy.

We lived in the country, and I had no car, so my weekdays were spent rattling around the house or going for long walks along narrow lanes and open fields. There were many times in that first year when I felt very alone—except for my mother.

I found, to my surprise, that the miles didn’t diminish our psychic connection. (Which was lucky, because she was always a terrible correspondent.) If I needed her, if things looked grey and depressing, the phone would ring. If she needed me, if there were troubles brewing on the home front, I would call her. Of course, sometimes I cheated. I would want to have a chat, but not pay for it; so I’d concentrate hard on her calling me—and she always did.

“What’s going on?” she’d ask. ”You’ve been on my mind all morning, so what is it?”

“Nothing. I just wanted to use your dime.”

“You little witch.” (I think it was “witch.”)

Sometimes the messages were hard to decipher. I’d feel unhappy for no apparent reason, dragging around in the dumps — or worse, biting R’s head off, with no biological cycle to justify my behavior. It might take a day or two for me to realize that these weren’t my own emotions. When I did, and called or wrote Mother (I was a good correspondent!), I’d find out what was going on during that time period. Usually, it was coming from her or one of my brothers.

Just before my first wedding anniversary, Mother developed severe physical symptoms, and ended up being scheduled for exploratory surgery. Fares to the States were cheap through the RAF, so I flew home in time to be with her in the hospital. (It later turned out that she was "picking up" her husband’s physical condition, according to her; she herself was fine and the surgery—which found nothing—was considered unnecessary. Or at least, that's the family mythology. Frankly, I am a bit skeptical of superimposing such severe symptoms on herself, but I'm also at a loss as to how to explain it. My mom was a hyperchondriac in some ways, but surgery seems extreme. Was it a deeply neurotic, unconscious, need to gather her family around her, even from across the sea? To remind them that all attention needed to be on her? Or a way to punish her husband for their tempestuous, vindictive, relationship? Or was she really so sensitive she would manifest the illness of another as her own?)

What's undeniable is that we're all connected to our loved ones. The closer the relationship, the easier it is for us to sense that connection. "I knew that was you calling!" is a pretty common occurrence. "You've been on my mind." "I had a feeling there was trouble." "I had to call you, are you ok?" Most of us have had some or all of these experiences.

As I sat in the hospital waiting room, a friend taught me how to use the Tarot cards. My affinity for the cards has remained with me through the years, even though I rarely use them anymore; I find them a wonderful trigger for meditation, self-reflection, sensing patterns. Back then, I read only for myself or close family and friends, for I never overcame the fear of being wrong or my resistance to being a psychic problem-solver. The cards gave me certain material points to steer by; I enlarged and expanded on these via my own intuition. I have always been more adept at psychological insight, ruminating on how and why people behave as they do. As a result, I've frequently been called upon by friends for non-psychic advice (though, of course, I can never divorce my intuition from what I tell people). But I have no formal training. It's just a part of how I'm wired and, given that Mother was also a counselor, in her way, perhaps it's an inherited trait.

*       *       *

In England, I experienced an apparition.

My husband had gone to Poole for a two-day training course, leaving in the early morning darkness of winter. I was sound asleep, still snuggled in the covers of our farmhouse bed. All at once, I knew there was someone in the room. I felt my consciousness being pulled to the surface, like a diver coming out of deep waters. My heart pounded. My hands sweated. There, in the far corner of the dark room, was an old man. I had a distinct impression of an aged, crooked body, a white beard, a woolen tam on his head, a Scottish feel to his clothes. He wasn’t solid, like a real person. He also wasn’t ethereal, like a cinematic ghost. He was that combination of spirit and psychic impression that gives you remarkable details about a person without really seeing them.

I didn’t know what he wanted, but the implication of trouble was clear. I looked over at the clock: it was 7:15 a.m. Half an hour later, R. rang. He had been in a car accident. The treacherous fog of southern England had tricked his eyes into thinking he was following a car, when the car was actually parked with its tail lights on. He had swerved to avoid hitting it, gone through a hedgrow, and flipped over. Fortunately, he wasn’t seriously hurt; the worst injury was to his head, when he tried to get the hood of the car to stay open and it banged him one. A farmer pulled the car out of the field and he was going to a garage to get it repaired. 

When I asked him what time the accident happened, he told me 7:15—the exact time that I had looked at the clock after being "warned" by my apparition. Who the Scottish gentlemen was, I’ll never know. But my ancestors on my mother’s side were Campbells. Could one of them been looking out for us? Or did he come from my husband's family tree? I only know I didn't make him up, he was there.

I have my theories, and they're unprovable, and they've evolved over the years. We're connected. All of us. We are an ecosystem in an ecosystem. Everything is energy, molecules rubbing up and overlapping. We live in a planet that has a massive and diverse ecosystem. We can grasp that, mostly. We're part of that system, so why is it hard to suppose that we're all connected as well? To animals, to insects, to trees, to every organic thing on our world. We feel these connections strongest with our loved ones, our friends. But I believe they exist with every being. And so, when we corrupt and destroy those Others by violence, pollution, indifference, war...we are ravaging our own larger Being.

Someday, I hope we'll all understand this. But it appears to still be one helluva long ways off.