I once stood at the top of our stairway, ready to descend, when our female Siamese cat scurried past me. She was in a hurry, but what floored me was the very clear message I got from her as she ran. It was:
"I've stolen the chicken from the kitchen counter and I'm going under your bed to eat it."
I was stunned for two reasons: one, Chibi Chan was a small cat and it would be an enormous feat for her to drag a whole fryer up the stairs and under my bed; two, I'd never gotten a telepathic message from a cat before.
I knew my mother had left two chickens on the kitchen counter, in a pan, to defrost for dinner. I followed Chibi to my room, looked under the bed, and there was the raw chicken (still mostly in its plastic bag, thank god!). Chibi growled at me as I dragged the carcass away.
"If you didn't want me to know, you shouldn't have told me," was my response.
There wasn't any logical reason why I'd suspect Chibi of chicken stealing. We left chickens to thaw on the counter all the time, and the cats had never bothered them. They weren't even counter jumpers like some opportunistic cats I've known. So, even though I knew the chickens were out, there was no reason for me to link that fact to Chibi's crime. She told me herself, loud and clear.
I consider myself a pretty good judge of animal behavior, at least in the species I typically encounter. I've had cats and dogs my entire life, and the usual fish, guinea pigs, turtles that kids go through. As a child, I searched out bird nests in the spring and watched them grow into adults; I've owned a parrot and raised canaries. When I was 11, I saved up my allowance for raw peanuts to feed the local squirrels (who ate from my hands), and I'm still putting out food to help wildlife get by in Wisconsin's frigid winters.
In my experience, messages from animals are usually more ephemeral and emotional; they're coupled with body language that makes them easier to decipher. "Love you." "I'm hungry." "I'm afraid and may bite." "Come play with me, I'm bored." "That feels good, do it some more." Chibi's message was an anomaly I've never experienced again. I don't know why.
That was a pretty unusual house we were living in when it happened. It was also the height of my exploration into the paranormal with my mother, living in Virginia Beach, surrounded by a cadre of New Age friends and within striking distance of Edgar Cayce's A.R.E. (Association for Research and Enlightenment, which continues today). Were these factors? Was it because I was sensitized to the paranormal, living with the hairs on my neck half-raised most of the time, listening and watching and wondering?
Animal spirits showed up in my mother's readings all the time. She'd describe a cat sitting on someone's lap or a favorite mule or a happy dog. Were these truly the spirits of the animals she perceived—or where they translations of memories from the human she was counseling? She'd see our own pets after they died, greeting other pets, running through meadows, playing. (FYI, none of us had ever read The Rainbow Bridge, that anonymously-written viral poem about happy pets living in an animal heaven, waiting to be reunited with their owners.)
The Bible tells us that we have dominion over the earth and all its creatures. We've taken that as license to destroy anything that stands in the way of our material desires. For centuries, Mankind's mainstream attitude toward animals has been that we are superior to them even after death. That we are the only beings with an afterlife of any kind.
Since I loved animals, I was distressed by this attitude and eventually discarded it as heresy. When I was young, it was because I believed animals had as much right to heaven, or whatever afterlife there was, as we did. When I grew older, it was because I believe that life and death are biological processes shared by every creature on this planet. We die, they die. We'd love to believe that we deserve a place to go afterwards, but if we do, so do they.
"Experts" tell us that the difference is our self-awareness of Mortality. We know we're going to die and animals don't. I wonder if you took a child and raised it without ever mentioning that she was mortal and bound to die, if she never saw roadkill or squashed a bug, if she lived a life isolated from death...would she have any more consciousness of Mortality than a dog? Or is it really an innate knowing woven into our brains? How do we know for sure that animals don't perceive their own mortality? Because they live in the Now? Because they can't write poetry about it? Animals in the wild encounter death all the time. Maybe they just shrug their shoulders, say they can't do anything about the inevitable, and get on with living. Maybe they're the smart ones and we humans need to stop struggling against the inevitable.
In another post, I mention the way I sometimes feel an animal leap onto my bed at night. I search the bed or flick on the light but there's no one there (I have cats, so I expect it to be one of them). My explanation is that it's Baldrick or Ollie, my two best-loved cats, who have passed on. But who knows?
I've sensed people around me after their deaths. I've done the same for my pets. My mom saw animals in her readings and was convinced they "go on." I hope they do, I really hope they do. And not just pets but every creature. They deserve the best possible afterlife, given the shitty lives we've imposed on many of them. Except maybe mosquitoes and fleas and ticks, though I can at least make a case for mosquitoes as a food source for birds and bats. Fleas and ticks, however....
An afterlife where animals exist, where all life exists...what would that look like? Some people believe we will all be these energies, maybe all the same energy, melding like drops of water into the greater Ocean of Being. All one. Some people believe we continue to learn and grow and evolve even as spirits until we reach Perfection, before joining into One. For some, that includes reincarnation back to the physical plane (Earth or elsewhere) to "get it right."
I do know that I've had a pet or two in my time that was so incredibly similar to an earlier pet, I would have sworn it was the same one reincarnated! Something beyond species familiarity.
Well, who knows what's to come? Not me. But there better be animals there.
Monday, January 27, 2014
Monday, December 9, 2013
Can I Come Back...Again?
In the 70s, when I lived in Northern Ireland, my mother was doing reincarnation readings as well as her usual counselings. When it comes to reincarnation, I mostly consider it something that would be a nice perk if it existed, for a whole bunch of reasons—but I don't accept it as a given. Just like an afterlife. Which begs the question, if reincarnation doesn't exist, where the hell does all that info come from? Why does a child in India remember her last life, including how to get to her village, the people she knew and loved, and how she died? How can a new Dali Lama be chosen, if he's the reincarnation of the last one, if that process doesn't exist? And how can anyone claim to tell you who you've been before?
I knew my mother wasn't making these stories up, at least not consciously. So where did she get her information from?
I do not know. But I admit it was sometimes fascinating.
When I asked Mother what she thought was going on behind the Irish troubles, she surprised me. She said people were being reborn, back and forth, from Catholic to Protestant, Irish to English, until each individual soul had learned its lesson, had enough, and dropped out of the cycle to go elsewhere. It certainly fit my perception that an endless loop was being perpetuated by blind prejudice and personal revenge: an eye for an eye, a daughter for a son, on and on. (Not that Northern Ireland ever had a corner on that type of cyclical violence; you can find it everywhere that perpetual, senseless war continues.)
Back then, I thought reincarnation explained a lot of things, like how I knew my way around a place I’d never seen before, why I had sudden attractions or repulsions toward people I’d just met, why I had affinities for certain environments. My mother had some very interesting cases: like the time she told her client that he'd been caught and convicted as a thief in an Eastern life, where the penalty was amputation of a hand or arm—only to have him hold up that same arm, withered and useless in this life. Or the woman who Mother said was thrown into a sacrificial well in an Aztec city, and who, in this life, was terrified of showers.
But I've also noticed that reincarnated lives always seem to include priestesses from Atlantis and shahs from India, but damn few truck drivers from Cleveland or dairy farmers or bank tellers. Someone once told my mother that she was Mary Queen of Scots. She was delighted, of course; her maternal ancestors came from Scotland, and Mary was a figure she could really identify with: proud, tragic, clever, with a jeweled ruff round her ill-fated neck. I read a couple books on Mary, and I found her erratic, stubborn, foolish, and a sucker for picking the wrong members of the opposite sex; so I have to say, you could make a case for my mother being her incarnation, if persistent character traits count for much.
Personally, I think Mary would have made a terrible ruler. And anyway, I bet the number of women told they were once Mary Queen of Scots (or convinced of it) would be staggering.
I knew a man whose mother was told by Edgar Cayce that he was the reincarnation of Thomas Jefferson; she named her baby after the prez and that man grew up impaired by the belief and knowledge—and a bit of a slacker, figuring his glory days gave him a ticket to goofing off this time around. I've been told I was from Atlantis, a soldier in the Roman army, a Chinese prisoner, an Egyptian ruler...I forget what all. My mother told me that my ex-husband and I were in the Roman army together, and one of us converted to Christianity and the other didn't, and that this event was the reason for our philosophical conflicts in this life. After my dad died, I had a dream where I talked to him and told him about a former life that he and I shared as family members in Virginia. I gave him the name and address of the farm we lived on in the 1800s.
When I was a youngster, one of Mother’s favorite love stories was a novella written in 1935 by Mildred Cram, called Forever, which starts: “Colin and Julie met before they were born.” I adored that book. This man and woman meet in heaven's waiting room, fall in love, and are called back to Earth to lead very separate lives. Then they end up in the same place, same time, and die in different ways and are reunited as souls again. This story has apparently been kicking around Hollywood in development hell ever since Tyrone Power took a shine to it. Yet it's never been made. People still talk about it.
Reincarnation as a method of exacting karma has enormous appeal. Everyone gets theirs, even if we don't see it happen in the Now. Evil will be punished. Good rewarded. The American version of reincarnation is a bit more appealing than the original Buddhist version and the whole coming back as a lower form of life, like a bug. I never bought into that, but isn't that typical of any ideological belief system? We change what we don't like and make it into what we want. It evolves. It splinters.
Just don't drink the koolaid and start thinking it's "the One answer." Belief doesn't make it correct. It just makes it real, as in our realities are shaped and manifested by our beliefs. That's certainly true.
I knew my mother wasn't making these stories up, at least not consciously. So where did she get her information from?
I do not know. But I admit it was sometimes fascinating.
When I asked Mother what she thought was going on behind the Irish troubles, she surprised me. She said people were being reborn, back and forth, from Catholic to Protestant, Irish to English, until each individual soul had learned its lesson, had enough, and dropped out of the cycle to go elsewhere. It certainly fit my perception that an endless loop was being perpetuated by blind prejudice and personal revenge: an eye for an eye, a daughter for a son, on and on. (Not that Northern Ireland ever had a corner on that type of cyclical violence; you can find it everywhere that perpetual, senseless war continues.)
Back then, I thought reincarnation explained a lot of things, like how I knew my way around a place I’d never seen before, why I had sudden attractions or repulsions toward people I’d just met, why I had affinities for certain environments. My mother had some very interesting cases: like the time she told her client that he'd been caught and convicted as a thief in an Eastern life, where the penalty was amputation of a hand or arm—only to have him hold up that same arm, withered and useless in this life. Or the woman who Mother said was thrown into a sacrificial well in an Aztec city, and who, in this life, was terrified of showers.
But I've also noticed that reincarnated lives always seem to include priestesses from Atlantis and shahs from India, but damn few truck drivers from Cleveland or dairy farmers or bank tellers. Someone once told my mother that she was Mary Queen of Scots. She was delighted, of course; her maternal ancestors came from Scotland, and Mary was a figure she could really identify with: proud, tragic, clever, with a jeweled ruff round her ill-fated neck. I read a couple books on Mary, and I found her erratic, stubborn, foolish, and a sucker for picking the wrong members of the opposite sex; so I have to say, you could make a case for my mother being her incarnation, if persistent character traits count for much.
Personally, I think Mary would have made a terrible ruler. And anyway, I bet the number of women told they were once Mary Queen of Scots (or convinced of it) would be staggering.
I knew a man whose mother was told by Edgar Cayce that he was the reincarnation of Thomas Jefferson; she named her baby after the prez and that man grew up impaired by the belief and knowledge—and a bit of a slacker, figuring his glory days gave him a ticket to goofing off this time around. I've been told I was from Atlantis, a soldier in the Roman army, a Chinese prisoner, an Egyptian ruler...I forget what all. My mother told me that my ex-husband and I were in the Roman army together, and one of us converted to Christianity and the other didn't, and that this event was the reason for our philosophical conflicts in this life. After my dad died, I had a dream where I talked to him and told him about a former life that he and I shared as family members in Virginia. I gave him the name and address of the farm we lived on in the 1800s.
When I was a youngster, one of Mother’s favorite love stories was a novella written in 1935 by Mildred Cram, called Forever, which starts: “Colin and Julie met before they were born.” I adored that book. This man and woman meet in heaven's waiting room, fall in love, and are called back to Earth to lead very separate lives. Then they end up in the same place, same time, and die in different ways and are reunited as souls again. This story has apparently been kicking around Hollywood in development hell ever since Tyrone Power took a shine to it. Yet it's never been made. People still talk about it.
Reincarnation as a method of exacting karma has enormous appeal. Everyone gets theirs, even if we don't see it happen in the Now. Evil will be punished. Good rewarded. The American version of reincarnation is a bit more appealing than the original Buddhist version and the whole coming back as a lower form of life, like a bug. I never bought into that, but isn't that typical of any ideological belief system? We change what we don't like and make it into what we want. It evolves. It splinters.
Just don't drink the koolaid and start thinking it's "the One answer." Belief doesn't make it correct. It just makes it real, as in our realities are shaped and manifested by our beliefs. That's certainly true.
Thursday, November 14, 2013
Seance on a Hot Afternoon
When I was a teenager, Mom and I went to a lot of psychics. Partly because we were learning about this new and fascinating subculture, and partly because we were just like everyone else: we wanted to know what was going to happen in the future. (Hopefully, something good.)
We explored a whole arena of methodologies that "psychics" use: clairvoyance, trance, materialization, apportation, to name a few—and the accoutréments that went with them, like crystal balls, cards, trumpets, candles, crystals, tables, Ouija boards, etc.
There is a town in Florida called Cassadaga that was (at the time, I don't know about now) like the food court of psychics: palmists, card readers, astrologers, trance mediums—what are you hungry for? There was one woman who could supposedly apport things and who'd find strange objects—like a garter belt—wrapped around the insides of a lamp shade or discover her purse in a different room from the one she’d set it down in. (But this made me wonder just who was doing the apportation, her or someone else, because it seemed like she was "importing" rather than "apporting". Surely apporting is to send something somewhere else, away from you? So was it her talent taking things from somewhere else? Or was it someone else's talent, sending stuff her way?)
Mom visited Cassadaga more than I did; I had school and a social life completely detached from her journeys, and she had other friends willing to go with her.
But I was with her for this particular seance on a hot Florida afternoon. It took place in the same church where Mom and I met the Rev. Joe and his wife, Lil. Not in the church itself, but in a back room that we approached from the parking lot behind the church. We streamed in with a group of excited people, glad to pass from glare and humidity into a cool, dim room. Chairs were set up in a circle. The walls were draped with dark fabric. Bustling around was the minister, a stout young man with pale skin and blond hair. He was assisted by a slender, equally young man with dark hair. We were about to experience a materialization.
For those of you who don't know, a materialization is when spirits are supposed to gather and take form. They draw on the energies of the people in the room and manifest themselves. They may make objects move or speak through trumpets—long, simple metal horns, which our hosts had placed around the room in case they were needed.
Mom and I sat down, smiling or nodding at people sitting near us. I was excited but also nervous. Would I see ghosts? Who would they be? Would it be terrifying to hear them speak? When the Rev. Joe went into trance, his voice altered but it was still all contained within Joe. I could take that. But this...
We sang a hymn. We said a prayer. We closed our eyes and tried to breathe slowly. The room was very dark. The minister went into a trance.
"I feel the spirits around us..."
Typically, when you attended a service at this spiritualist church, the minister would stand up and call out messages or names to people in the audience. "Greta, is there a Greta here?" or "I have a message from Tommy, he wants to say he's sorry about the car accident. Does anyone recognize him?" Depending on who the minister of the day was, the message might be more or less specific. I often thought the messages were very broad—"He says to tell you he loves you and he's happy"—but sometimes they were clearly accurate, specific, and emotional. That's the thing about the world of psychics: I've experienced enough "real" information, stuff that someone couldn't possibly know, to keep believing in the possibilities. And I was living with proof of the paranormal: my own mother.
As our materialization session continued, I started to feel a drawing sensation in my nose, as if something was being gently pulled out of it. My fingertips and ears felt a lesser sensation.
"Ectoplasm..." whispered the minister. "The spirits are trying to manifest..."
Ectoplasm is supposedly a pale, ethereal substance that is drawn from trance mediums (and their guests) to help spirits materialize in the physical world, or to help them move objects around. It's been debunked by scientists and skeptics, and I have no comment about its authenticity; I only know what I felt, and it was weird!
A horn started to rise into the air. It moved around the circle and through it a voice spoke to someone. I couldn't hear what it said. I blinked my eyes, straining to make out what was happening in the darkness. Shapes roiled, like the wigglers left when you close your eyelids. The horn seemed faintly phosphorescent as it hung in the air. Now a lighter shape began to form in the middle of the circle. It stood in front of someone and the minister told us through his trance what the spirit was saying. People murmured. Another horn rose.
I'm looking back over many years, so some of the details are no longer clear in my memory. But I do remember being frustrated by the darkness. And I did get my turn! A spirit appeared in front of me. The minister said it was my grandfather (who had been dead some years at this point). He told me that my grandfather loved me and missed me and was happy and at peace. Then he asked me to hold out my hand, because he said my grandfather had a gift for me. Something small and light fell into my palm. I kept straining to see through the wavering darkness, to recognize something of my grandfather in the apparition before me. After all, if he was going to appear, wouldn't he take on the physical appearance I was familiar with? Was there not enough energy in the room to manifest completely? Did it need to be so very dark for him to appear?
Other people heard other messages and spirits wavered before them. My mother didn't get a message and I felt her unhappiness.
But when we at last emerged into the stifling afternoon sunshine, blinded and dazed, I looked down at the "gift" my grandfather's spirit had dropped into my hand; it was a small sapphire-blue gem. A variety of emotions washed over me as we climbed into our oven of a car and turned on the air: surprise, awe, confusion...then skepticism and disappointment.
"I didn't get a thing, not a thing! Not even a message," Mother said. "And sapphire is my birthstone. If someone was going to get a sapphire, it should have been me!"
For a moment we contemplated the possibility that grandfather had mistakenly given me something he meant for my mother. Then common sense got the better of me.
"You're better off getting nothing," I said flatly, "than getting a fake."
For nothing had really happened to convince me of my grandfather's appearance. I couldn't tell what he looked like, he hadn't said anything specific to our lives or our relationship, and there was absolutely no significance in giving me a small blue glass jewel.
"I don't know what happened in there, but it wasn't real. It wasn't right. I don't believe it," I said.
It was nothing like movie seances. And, after a little personal experience with "seeing" spirits, I can say it was nothing like them, either.
A few months later, there was an article in the newspaper; the minister and his companion were rousted from the church for being frauds. They found boxes full of those glass gems, the "gifts" of the spirit world; and black draping, some painted with a faint phosphorescent web, that the minister's assistant wore while pretending to be a spirit or holding up the horns.
Even though I had been skeptical, this deepened my disappointment. I took the sapphire from my dresser drawer and threw it in the trash.
We explored a whole arena of methodologies that "psychics" use: clairvoyance, trance, materialization, apportation, to name a few—and the accoutréments that went with them, like crystal balls, cards, trumpets, candles, crystals, tables, Ouija boards, etc.
There is a town in Florida called Cassadaga that was (at the time, I don't know about now) like the food court of psychics: palmists, card readers, astrologers, trance mediums—what are you hungry for? There was one woman who could supposedly apport things and who'd find strange objects—like a garter belt—wrapped around the insides of a lamp shade or discover her purse in a different room from the one she’d set it down in. (But this made me wonder just who was doing the apportation, her or someone else, because it seemed like she was "importing" rather than "apporting". Surely apporting is to send something somewhere else, away from you? So was it her talent taking things from somewhere else? Or was it someone else's talent, sending stuff her way?)
Mom visited Cassadaga more than I did; I had school and a social life completely detached from her journeys, and she had other friends willing to go with her.
But I was with her for this particular seance on a hot Florida afternoon. It took place in the same church where Mom and I met the Rev. Joe and his wife, Lil. Not in the church itself, but in a back room that we approached from the parking lot behind the church. We streamed in with a group of excited people, glad to pass from glare and humidity into a cool, dim room. Chairs were set up in a circle. The walls were draped with dark fabric. Bustling around was the minister, a stout young man with pale skin and blond hair. He was assisted by a slender, equally young man with dark hair. We were about to experience a materialization.
For those of you who don't know, a materialization is when spirits are supposed to gather and take form. They draw on the energies of the people in the room and manifest themselves. They may make objects move or speak through trumpets—long, simple metal horns, which our hosts had placed around the room in case they were needed.
Mom and I sat down, smiling or nodding at people sitting near us. I was excited but also nervous. Would I see ghosts? Who would they be? Would it be terrifying to hear them speak? When the Rev. Joe went into trance, his voice altered but it was still all contained within Joe. I could take that. But this...
We sang a hymn. We said a prayer. We closed our eyes and tried to breathe slowly. The room was very dark. The minister went into a trance.
"I feel the spirits around us..."
Typically, when you attended a service at this spiritualist church, the minister would stand up and call out messages or names to people in the audience. "Greta, is there a Greta here?" or "I have a message from Tommy, he wants to say he's sorry about the car accident. Does anyone recognize him?" Depending on who the minister of the day was, the message might be more or less specific. I often thought the messages were very broad—"He says to tell you he loves you and he's happy"—but sometimes they were clearly accurate, specific, and emotional. That's the thing about the world of psychics: I've experienced enough "real" information, stuff that someone couldn't possibly know, to keep believing in the possibilities. And I was living with proof of the paranormal: my own mother.
As our materialization session continued, I started to feel a drawing sensation in my nose, as if something was being gently pulled out of it. My fingertips and ears felt a lesser sensation.
"Ectoplasm..." whispered the minister. "The spirits are trying to manifest..."
Ectoplasm is supposedly a pale, ethereal substance that is drawn from trance mediums (and their guests) to help spirits materialize in the physical world, or to help them move objects around. It's been debunked by scientists and skeptics, and I have no comment about its authenticity; I only know what I felt, and it was weird!
A horn started to rise into the air. It moved around the circle and through it a voice spoke to someone. I couldn't hear what it said. I blinked my eyes, straining to make out what was happening in the darkness. Shapes roiled, like the wigglers left when you close your eyelids. The horn seemed faintly phosphorescent as it hung in the air. Now a lighter shape began to form in the middle of the circle. It stood in front of someone and the minister told us through his trance what the spirit was saying. People murmured. Another horn rose.
I'm looking back over many years, so some of the details are no longer clear in my memory. But I do remember being frustrated by the darkness. And I did get my turn! A spirit appeared in front of me. The minister said it was my grandfather (who had been dead some years at this point). He told me that my grandfather loved me and missed me and was happy and at peace. Then he asked me to hold out my hand, because he said my grandfather had a gift for me. Something small and light fell into my palm. I kept straining to see through the wavering darkness, to recognize something of my grandfather in the apparition before me. After all, if he was going to appear, wouldn't he take on the physical appearance I was familiar with? Was there not enough energy in the room to manifest completely? Did it need to be so very dark for him to appear?
Other people heard other messages and spirits wavered before them. My mother didn't get a message and I felt her unhappiness.
But when we at last emerged into the stifling afternoon sunshine, blinded and dazed, I looked down at the "gift" my grandfather's spirit had dropped into my hand; it was a small sapphire-blue gem. A variety of emotions washed over me as we climbed into our oven of a car and turned on the air: surprise, awe, confusion...then skepticism and disappointment.
"I didn't get a thing, not a thing! Not even a message," Mother said. "And sapphire is my birthstone. If someone was going to get a sapphire, it should have been me!"
For a moment we contemplated the possibility that grandfather had mistakenly given me something he meant for my mother. Then common sense got the better of me.
"You're better off getting nothing," I said flatly, "than getting a fake."
For nothing had really happened to convince me of my grandfather's appearance. I couldn't tell what he looked like, he hadn't said anything specific to our lives or our relationship, and there was absolutely no significance in giving me a small blue glass jewel.
"I don't know what happened in there, but it wasn't real. It wasn't right. I don't believe it," I said.
It was nothing like movie seances. And, after a little personal experience with "seeing" spirits, I can say it was nothing like them, either.
A few months later, there was an article in the newspaper; the minister and his companion were rousted from the church for being frauds. They found boxes full of those glass gems, the "gifts" of the spirit world; and black draping, some painted with a faint phosphorescent web, that the minister's assistant wore while pretending to be a spirit or holding up the horns.
Even though I had been skeptical, this deepened my disappointment. I took the sapphire from my dresser drawer and threw it in the trash.
Wednesday, November 6, 2013
Reliving Belfast
When I'd been married a year, my RN husband was transferred to Belfast, Northern Ireland, to test-fly repaired military aircraft. It was the 1970s. The Irish "Troubles" were in full swing. My expectation of a life amid the charm of English towns was instantly destroyed. I remember sitting on R's lap while he told me about the transfer, and crying. I was 21 years old and terrified.
We took the car up to Stranraer, Scotland, and an overnight ferry across the Irish Sea to Belfast. It was January, grey and rainy. My first view of the city was grim. Barricades and barbed wire were everywhere. Stacks of sandbags hid police stations from view. Youthful soldiers in camouflage stood on corners, collars turned up against the cold wind, smoking and shifting their weight under shouldered rifles. Equally youthful civilians lobbed rocks and hurled abuse. Tanks and armored trucks called “pigs” patrolled the streets. Military maps came with colored sections, to help troops understand where they were and what areas to avoid: green for Catholic neighborhoods, orange for Protestant.
I expect most people know, but Northern Ireland had been a part of Great Britain (like it or not) for centuries, and therefore its "loyalist" population was largely Protestant. The rest of Ireland is its own Republic and historically Catholic. The strife was between the factions that wanted free rule and those that wanted to remain loyal to the Crown. Religion entered into it as a symbol of that freedom/repression and lines were drawn along that schism—but a person's religious beliefs clearly had little to do with their actions. Retaliation, personal revenge for the deaths of relatives and loved ones, and a general terrorism fomented by the political underbelly and just plain mad buggers, kept fueling the fire.
Before we arrived, bombings were generally carried out against political or civic targets. This changed in the year we lived there (more on that in a minute) although cars, even with children or animals in them, were not allowed in the downtown Belfast shopping area because they’d been known to blow up, regardless of their occupants. All pedestrians entering downtown shops were frisked, their purses and carry bags searched.
Our assigned home was just a few blocks from Stormont, the seat of government, but well out of the city itself. Its architecture was a series of white geometric shapes that dribbled down a steep back garden, with large windows trimmed in bright orange and yellow, and cork floors. It was ultra-modern, with none of the warmth and charm of our English farmhouse in Somerset—or even of most suburban Irish homes in Belfast. It was a bizarre exception, and I hated it. The whole aura of the building was discordant, out of place; there was nothing in its cold angles that offered me solace or refuge, and I would need both of those things desperately in the coming months. Fortunately, it did have a nice garden, and beautiful roses in the warm months; that was some compensation. And it was a nice neighborhood in the burbs.
There was only a handful of RN personnel in Belfast, most of them men; so there were no squadron parties, no young wives to ask around for tea, no elegant Ladies’ Nights at the officers’ Wardroom. Instead, my husband grew his hair and beard and snuck into the station gate in civilian clothes. What little social life we had—such as lunch at the Captain’s house—was punctuated by the distant sound of bombs going off, and the growl of armored cars.
“My, that was a big one,” was the typical remark from our hostess. “More sherry, dear?”
Sherry, hell. I learned to drink neat malt whiskey in Belfast.
So, what does this have to do with being psychic?
Well, a crucial skill for intuitive people to learn is how to dampen down their paranormal perceptions. No one wants to sense the feelings of others 24 hours a day! My mother learned to deliberately shut herself down when she wasn’t working. Most people didn't understand this; they assumed they were in constant danger of her “reading” them, even in social situations. (Well, there was the time she blurted out information about a friend’s secret, illegitimate son at a party, but that was after a few drinks and very early in her career.) But my mom typically wasn't "tuning in" to people or events unless she was doing a counseling. She wasn't in your head and she didn't want to be. Like a doctor at a party, she was frequently asked to "diagnose" on the fly by some boorish guest, and they would be disappointed when she told them to make an appointment and pay for her time.
I was not as skilled at closing myself off. In fact, being an artist and a writer, I was accustomed to living life with my senses as open and extended as I could get them, to suck in every nuance. I loved getting in touch with nature that way, for example. Or understanding the emotional landscapes of others. So it was hard learning to retreat instead, to not allow impressions to seep in unsolicited. In Belfast, aside from my own fear, I always seemed to feel the torment of those around me, the unrest and fear and violence; and it shadowed my life, pressed down, chilled me. It also added a dimension to my new marriage that increased the struggle between us.
The bombing of the Abercorn restaurant, shortly after we arrived, marked an escalation in the violence. It wasn’t a military target or political retaliation. It was wholesale slaughter, without discrimination toward women and children. It shocked even the populace of Belfast. Some of the victims ended up small, unidentifiable shards in a plastic bag.
The evening of that explosion, I experienced an apparition. Two women, one younger, one older, came to me while I was in bed. They were in great grief; the younger one was pregnant. They seemed to beg me for help, as if they were trapped in an earthly limbo after so violent a death. I was overwhelmed with sorrow, and said a prayer, offering them what comfort and love I could, asking for their release. They gradually faded.
That event affected me so deeply that the next morning I wrote a song about it. I learned to play guitar when I was 13 and had been playing and writing music ever since—but only for myself or for the odd appearance here or there. I was in a folk trio back in high school, singing at protests and in hospitals to recovering vets from the Viet Nam war. Later, on the beach with friends, and at my one and only beauty competition (Rodeo Queen and I'm not talking about it!). :^) I was in a rock and roll band for about 5 minutes once—well, ok, for a summer. All very amateur.
Music proved to be my safety outlet in Belfast. All the horror, all the violence, and all the stress I was under was channeled through my guitar and piano, and came out as music. I wrote poetry and song lyrics furiously: a young British soldier placed in an untenable position, the scathing rebuke of a Catholic to her nun teacher, the endless cycle in a family of death and retribution. One song, “Mad Dog,” won the a national US lyric competition a few years later. It used the metaphor of a rabid dog wandering the streets of Belfast and randomly biting people, infecting them with rage.
I played in a few local clubs, daring potentially hostile audiences to share an American’s perception of their war. I even got an agent and we talked about cutting an album—but things fell apart when my husband was transferred back to England. Who knows what could have happened? It feels like an alternate life in a parallel universe. One I didn't live.
Needless to say, Mother was on the phone to me a lot during that time. Even from so far away, she could sense the terrible texture of Belfast and its impact on my emotions.
When R and I managed to get away to England for a few days, we discovered the enormous stress we were under in Belfast simply by its absence. It was like a weight being lifted off, and a joy just to cross a street in London without fear. (Something you can't always say these days in London.) But when we returned, we found our house had been burglarized, belongings scattered, drawers overturned, jewelry stolen. Our records were tossed out of their sleeves and thrown around the room in senseless vandalism. Books were flung to the floor. Furniture was upside down. A small hole in one window looked like a bullet hole, but turned out to be from a rock. The police said the intruders were most likely looking for weapons, but the meanness of their actions said something more about their characters.
Here was the big irony of living in Northern Ireland, even in those days: if you went beyond the borders of Belfast, you discovered a different world. A land of deep green fields, stone cottages, streams and forests. A place where the nature of the Irish people was as gentle and garrulous as ever; faces were unpinched, tongues were loosened. Wonderful restaurants, welcoming hotels, stunning landscapes. A stop at a pub for lunch and a beer always included a generous dollop of curiosity, humor, and friendliness from the publican and his customers. Many decried the violence as stupid and senseless, and this, I believe, is always the way; most people want to be left in peace to live their lives, love and raise their families, appreciate the beauty of being alive. To use a LOTR metaphor, it was Hobbiton; and the city of Belfast was Mordor. And I have never seen anything to surpass the natural beauty of County Antrim’s northern coast, with its narrow roads winding around Torr’s Head, Dunluce Castle and the Giant’s Causeway.
After nearly a year, something happened to bring our Belfast adventure to a sudden close.
One afternoon, I received a call from a strange man. He said R was lying on his living room floor after having parachuted off the man’s roof. Apparently, R and his pilot had experienced technical problems in a repaired aircraft, back-up systems had failed, their fuel had been jettisoned, and they'd been force to eject over Belfast. They'd had to make the grim choice of finding the best spot for the jet to crash—a school yard or an office building's parking lot—and steering toward it before banging out. They picked the office building and, fortunately, no one was killed. It crashed into the side of the building, which had been reinforced with a steel beam. (See photo.) We heard that the steel beam was not part of the original building plan, which would be pretty ironic.
One memorable story from the event is of the man in that office building, who was talking on the phone and looking out the window just as this megaton monster dropped from the sky and headed his direction. He told his caller, with complete aplomb, that he “had to ring off” and dove under his desk. Another was the man who found the pilot lying on the sidewalk (with a broken elbow) and asked if he was alright. "I think so," said the disoriented pilot. "Right you are!" said the man, and kept walking!
There were rumors of an IRA—or British troop—invasion from people sighting the plane and parachutes. One man died of a heart attack. But all in all, it could have been so much worse.
However, my husband was seriously injured. He was taken to the Royal Victoria hospital downtown, where he was diagnosed with two compressed vertebrae and a damaged knee. He'd probably compressed the vertebrae when ejecting, and he'd injured himself further when he pushed off a roof while parachuting down; the parachute had folded and he'd dropped instead of floated from two stories up.
He had to remain absolutely flat on his back, then in a brace, for a very long time; it was the end of his flying career, because they couldn't risk him ejecting again and doing further damage to his spine. This led to his eventual decision to leave the service. Fly boys are young, courageous, and keen on their jobs. Clipping those metal wings was the end of what R loved.
My trips to and from the hospital were harrowing: one evening, a small bomb went off in front of a Catholic school across the street. It killed a prominent public figure who was collecting his children after class.
My mother was on the next plane when she heard of Richard’s mishap. It was a difficult trip—she had to clear customs in Dublin, and no one would help her with her bags, because they might contain a bomb. Considering that luggage was NOT on wheels in those days and that my mother's suitcases were heavy leather and numerous, this was almost impossible to manage. In addition, she had thoughtfully packed a supply of Mexican food for her displaced daughter, in the form of canned tortillas, chiles and sauces. When she finally made Belfast, she swore her arms were two feet longer from the extra weight. Her usual buoyancy was daunted even further as we headed for the house, for the RN Captain’s staff driver decided to give her a full tour of the city on the way, including the Crumlin Road area—a nexus for violence between factions.
I'm going to be a bit mean about my mother right now. I tried to dissuade her from coming to Belfast, but she'd hear none of it. When she arrived, her interest in my recovering husband quickly waned. After all, it was a risky trip to drive to the hospital, and it was boring for her to stay there and keep him company.
"I've come all this way, I want to see some of the country while I'm here," was her attitude. So while ostensibly she was there to support me in R's recovery, in reality she was on holiday and wanted to be entertained. It was not the best of visits. My husband got the short end of the stick, as they say—but then, there was no love lost between him and my mother, ever. I know now that he recognized an opponent when he saw one and had every right to be wary or even hostile. But it also wasn't very strategic of him, given my attachment to her. The two of them wore me out sometimes!
So I took my mother on a series of jaunts away from the area. One moment in particular still stands out in my memory: the two of us standing on coastal cliffs, watching a flock of white Tundra swans skimming above the autumn sea as they arrived from far-off Siberia. It was like something out of a ballet or a fairy tale, so many of the beautiful birds, so white and aloft.
Mother and I dined out quite a bit as well, while poor R was laid up. One of her favorites was the Culloden Hotel (now called an "Estate & Spa") a former bishop’s palace, decorated in dark woods, plush carpets and stained glass. After enjoying its elegant service and excellent food, Mother struck up a conversation with our waitress, who confided that she’d visited New York.
“Well,” said my mother, “That must have been a nice change for you. How did you like it?”
“Och, sure, you know,” replied the girl, “I hardly went out of my room the whole time, I was that scared about being mugged or raped on the street. New York’s a very dangerous place!”
This was said completely without irony, while serving tables to the distant echo of heavy artillery. Because you can learn to accept almost anything as familiar, even war.
I survived my mother's visit, and my husband was discharged by the doctors, and we moved to Helston, Cornwall, a town at the tip of England where the wind blew continually, where we acquired the border collie that would save my life, and where my son was born. Belfast came to feel like a dream, but like most dreams, it was not all bad or good but a mix of light and shadow. Once away from it, all we had were the media reports on television—and we knew from personal experience that Northern Ireland was so much more than that. We were on the outside looking in again.
When the Good Friday Agreement was signed in 1998, I could hardly believe that such a thing was accomplished. It took some years, but from all appearances, a peace has been struck between the peoples of Northern and the Republic of Ireland, and I would love to go back. I have been to the Republic several times to visit family and enjoy it tremendously. I just haven't made it north.
We took the car up to Stranraer, Scotland, and an overnight ferry across the Irish Sea to Belfast. It was January, grey and rainy. My first view of the city was grim. Barricades and barbed wire were everywhere. Stacks of sandbags hid police stations from view. Youthful soldiers in camouflage stood on corners, collars turned up against the cold wind, smoking and shifting their weight under shouldered rifles. Equally youthful civilians lobbed rocks and hurled abuse. Tanks and armored trucks called “pigs” patrolled the streets. Military maps came with colored sections, to help troops understand where they were and what areas to avoid: green for Catholic neighborhoods, orange for Protestant.
I expect most people know, but Northern Ireland had been a part of Great Britain (like it or not) for centuries, and therefore its "loyalist" population was largely Protestant. The rest of Ireland is its own Republic and historically Catholic. The strife was between the factions that wanted free rule and those that wanted to remain loyal to the Crown. Religion entered into it as a symbol of that freedom/repression and lines were drawn along that schism—but a person's religious beliefs clearly had little to do with their actions. Retaliation, personal revenge for the deaths of relatives and loved ones, and a general terrorism fomented by the political underbelly and just plain mad buggers, kept fueling the fire.
Before we arrived, bombings were generally carried out against political or civic targets. This changed in the year we lived there (more on that in a minute) although cars, even with children or animals in them, were not allowed in the downtown Belfast shopping area because they’d been known to blow up, regardless of their occupants. All pedestrians entering downtown shops were frisked, their purses and carry bags searched.
Our assigned home was just a few blocks from Stormont, the seat of government, but well out of the city itself. Its architecture was a series of white geometric shapes that dribbled down a steep back garden, with large windows trimmed in bright orange and yellow, and cork floors. It was ultra-modern, with none of the warmth and charm of our English farmhouse in Somerset—or even of most suburban Irish homes in Belfast. It was a bizarre exception, and I hated it. The whole aura of the building was discordant, out of place; there was nothing in its cold angles that offered me solace or refuge, and I would need both of those things desperately in the coming months. Fortunately, it did have a nice garden, and beautiful roses in the warm months; that was some compensation. And it was a nice neighborhood in the burbs.
There was only a handful of RN personnel in Belfast, most of them men; so there were no squadron parties, no young wives to ask around for tea, no elegant Ladies’ Nights at the officers’ Wardroom. Instead, my husband grew his hair and beard and snuck into the station gate in civilian clothes. What little social life we had—such as lunch at the Captain’s house—was punctuated by the distant sound of bombs going off, and the growl of armored cars.
“My, that was a big one,” was the typical remark from our hostess. “More sherry, dear?”
Sherry, hell. I learned to drink neat malt whiskey in Belfast.
So, what does this have to do with being psychic?
Well, a crucial skill for intuitive people to learn is how to dampen down their paranormal perceptions. No one wants to sense the feelings of others 24 hours a day! My mother learned to deliberately shut herself down when she wasn’t working. Most people didn't understand this; they assumed they were in constant danger of her “reading” them, even in social situations. (Well, there was the time she blurted out information about a friend’s secret, illegitimate son at a party, but that was after a few drinks and very early in her career.) But my mom typically wasn't "tuning in" to people or events unless she was doing a counseling. She wasn't in your head and she didn't want to be. Like a doctor at a party, she was frequently asked to "diagnose" on the fly by some boorish guest, and they would be disappointed when she told them to make an appointment and pay for her time.
I was not as skilled at closing myself off. In fact, being an artist and a writer, I was accustomed to living life with my senses as open and extended as I could get them, to suck in every nuance. I loved getting in touch with nature that way, for example. Or understanding the emotional landscapes of others. So it was hard learning to retreat instead, to not allow impressions to seep in unsolicited. In Belfast, aside from my own fear, I always seemed to feel the torment of those around me, the unrest and fear and violence; and it shadowed my life, pressed down, chilled me. It also added a dimension to my new marriage that increased the struggle between us.
The bombing of the Abercorn restaurant, shortly after we arrived, marked an escalation in the violence. It wasn’t a military target or political retaliation. It was wholesale slaughter, without discrimination toward women and children. It shocked even the populace of Belfast. Some of the victims ended up small, unidentifiable shards in a plastic bag.
The evening of that explosion, I experienced an apparition. Two women, one younger, one older, came to me while I was in bed. They were in great grief; the younger one was pregnant. They seemed to beg me for help, as if they were trapped in an earthly limbo after so violent a death. I was overwhelmed with sorrow, and said a prayer, offering them what comfort and love I could, asking for their release. They gradually faded.
That event affected me so deeply that the next morning I wrote a song about it. I learned to play guitar when I was 13 and had been playing and writing music ever since—but only for myself or for the odd appearance here or there. I was in a folk trio back in high school, singing at protests and in hospitals to recovering vets from the Viet Nam war. Later, on the beach with friends, and at my one and only beauty competition (Rodeo Queen and I'm not talking about it!). :^) I was in a rock and roll band for about 5 minutes once—well, ok, for a summer. All very amateur.
Music proved to be my safety outlet in Belfast. All the horror, all the violence, and all the stress I was under was channeled through my guitar and piano, and came out as music. I wrote poetry and song lyrics furiously: a young British soldier placed in an untenable position, the scathing rebuke of a Catholic to her nun teacher, the endless cycle in a family of death and retribution. One song, “Mad Dog,” won the a national US lyric competition a few years later. It used the metaphor of a rabid dog wandering the streets of Belfast and randomly biting people, infecting them with rage.
I played in a few local clubs, daring potentially hostile audiences to share an American’s perception of their war. I even got an agent and we talked about cutting an album—but things fell apart when my husband was transferred back to England. Who knows what could have happened? It feels like an alternate life in a parallel universe. One I didn't live.
Needless to say, Mother was on the phone to me a lot during that time. Even from so far away, she could sense the terrible texture of Belfast and its impact on my emotions.
When R and I managed to get away to England for a few days, we discovered the enormous stress we were under in Belfast simply by its absence. It was like a weight being lifted off, and a joy just to cross a street in London without fear. (Something you can't always say these days in London.) But when we returned, we found our house had been burglarized, belongings scattered, drawers overturned, jewelry stolen. Our records were tossed out of their sleeves and thrown around the room in senseless vandalism. Books were flung to the floor. Furniture was upside down. A small hole in one window looked like a bullet hole, but turned out to be from a rock. The police said the intruders were most likely looking for weapons, but the meanness of their actions said something more about their characters.
Here was the big irony of living in Northern Ireland, even in those days: if you went beyond the borders of Belfast, you discovered a different world. A land of deep green fields, stone cottages, streams and forests. A place where the nature of the Irish people was as gentle and garrulous as ever; faces were unpinched, tongues were loosened. Wonderful restaurants, welcoming hotels, stunning landscapes. A stop at a pub for lunch and a beer always included a generous dollop of curiosity, humor, and friendliness from the publican and his customers. Many decried the violence as stupid and senseless, and this, I believe, is always the way; most people want to be left in peace to live their lives, love and raise their families, appreciate the beauty of being alive. To use a LOTR metaphor, it was Hobbiton; and the city of Belfast was Mordor. And I have never seen anything to surpass the natural beauty of County Antrim’s northern coast, with its narrow roads winding around Torr’s Head, Dunluce Castle and the Giant’s Causeway.
After nearly a year, something happened to bring our Belfast adventure to a sudden close.
One afternoon, I received a call from a strange man. He said R was lying on his living room floor after having parachuted off the man’s roof. Apparently, R and his pilot had experienced technical problems in a repaired aircraft, back-up systems had failed, their fuel had been jettisoned, and they'd been force to eject over Belfast. They'd had to make the grim choice of finding the best spot for the jet to crash—a school yard or an office building's parking lot—and steering toward it before banging out. They picked the office building and, fortunately, no one was killed. It crashed into the side of the building, which had been reinforced with a steel beam. (See photo.) We heard that the steel beam was not part of the original building plan, which would be pretty ironic.
One memorable story from the event is of the man in that office building, who was talking on the phone and looking out the window just as this megaton monster dropped from the sky and headed his direction. He told his caller, with complete aplomb, that he “had to ring off” and dove under his desk. Another was the man who found the pilot lying on the sidewalk (with a broken elbow) and asked if he was alright. "I think so," said the disoriented pilot. "Right you are!" said the man, and kept walking!
There were rumors of an IRA—or British troop—invasion from people sighting the plane and parachutes. One man died of a heart attack. But all in all, it could have been so much worse.
However, my husband was seriously injured. He was taken to the Royal Victoria hospital downtown, where he was diagnosed with two compressed vertebrae and a damaged knee. He'd probably compressed the vertebrae when ejecting, and he'd injured himself further when he pushed off a roof while parachuting down; the parachute had folded and he'd dropped instead of floated from two stories up.
He had to remain absolutely flat on his back, then in a brace, for a very long time; it was the end of his flying career, because they couldn't risk him ejecting again and doing further damage to his spine. This led to his eventual decision to leave the service. Fly boys are young, courageous, and keen on their jobs. Clipping those metal wings was the end of what R loved.
My trips to and from the hospital were harrowing: one evening, a small bomb went off in front of a Catholic school across the street. It killed a prominent public figure who was collecting his children after class.
My mother was on the next plane when she heard of Richard’s mishap. It was a difficult trip—she had to clear customs in Dublin, and no one would help her with her bags, because they might contain a bomb. Considering that luggage was NOT on wheels in those days and that my mother's suitcases were heavy leather and numerous, this was almost impossible to manage. In addition, she had thoughtfully packed a supply of Mexican food for her displaced daughter, in the form of canned tortillas, chiles and sauces. When she finally made Belfast, she swore her arms were two feet longer from the extra weight. Her usual buoyancy was daunted even further as we headed for the house, for the RN Captain’s staff driver decided to give her a full tour of the city on the way, including the Crumlin Road area—a nexus for violence between factions.
I'm going to be a bit mean about my mother right now. I tried to dissuade her from coming to Belfast, but she'd hear none of it. When she arrived, her interest in my recovering husband quickly waned. After all, it was a risky trip to drive to the hospital, and it was boring for her to stay there and keep him company.
"I've come all this way, I want to see some of the country while I'm here," was her attitude. So while ostensibly she was there to support me in R's recovery, in reality she was on holiday and wanted to be entertained. It was not the best of visits. My husband got the short end of the stick, as they say—but then, there was no love lost between him and my mother, ever. I know now that he recognized an opponent when he saw one and had every right to be wary or even hostile. But it also wasn't very strategic of him, given my attachment to her. The two of them wore me out sometimes!
So I took my mother on a series of jaunts away from the area. One moment in particular still stands out in my memory: the two of us standing on coastal cliffs, watching a flock of white Tundra swans skimming above the autumn sea as they arrived from far-off Siberia. It was like something out of a ballet or a fairy tale, so many of the beautiful birds, so white and aloft.
Mother and I dined out quite a bit as well, while poor R was laid up. One of her favorites was the Culloden Hotel (now called an "Estate & Spa") a former bishop’s palace, decorated in dark woods, plush carpets and stained glass. After enjoying its elegant service and excellent food, Mother struck up a conversation with our waitress, who confided that she’d visited New York.
“Well,” said my mother, “That must have been a nice change for you. How did you like it?”
“Och, sure, you know,” replied the girl, “I hardly went out of my room the whole time, I was that scared about being mugged or raped on the street. New York’s a very dangerous place!”
This was said completely without irony, while serving tables to the distant echo of heavy artillery. Because you can learn to accept almost anything as familiar, even war.
I survived my mother's visit, and my husband was discharged by the doctors, and we moved to Helston, Cornwall, a town at the tip of England where the wind blew continually, where we acquired the border collie that would save my life, and where my son was born. Belfast came to feel like a dream, but like most dreams, it was not all bad or good but a mix of light and shadow. Once away from it, all we had were the media reports on television—and we knew from personal experience that Northern Ireland was so much more than that. We were on the outside looking in again.
When the Good Friday Agreement was signed in 1998, I could hardly believe that such a thing was accomplished. It took some years, but from all appearances, a peace has been struck between the peoples of Northern and the Republic of Ireland, and I would love to go back. I have been to the Republic several times to visit family and enjoy it tremendously. I just haven't made it north.
Thursday, October 24, 2013
Didn't See It Coming
In this sloppy, complex, crowded world, people get away with murder all the time. Perfect (and less than perfect) crimes go unpunished every day. The police do the best they can, and so did my mother. She tried her hardest when assisting a police investigation because there was always the chance that something would shake loose as a result of her impressions. Sometimes it did, which led to her being a sort of subculture celebrity. She appeared on Merv Griffin's show back in the day, on Arsenio Hall, on Psychic Detectives, on Japanese television, and in various newspapers and local news shows.
She never stuck her nose into a police case unless she was asked. She often did them for free. The one time she was accused of publicity-seeking (more in another blog), she was deeply hurt and offended and for good reason. She might share her psychic feelings with me while watching the news, but she never called up and volunteered. She didn't need to. The families of victims were quick to find her and she had a network of police detectives that believed in her, though sometimes their bosses were harder to convince. Ironically, despite the many personal and professional confirmations of her ability, and our close connection, she didn't see a really bad thing coming in my life; something that still can make me shudder and see darkness. October 1984 was a time of celebration for me. I had been a contributing writer/editor on an elaborate dessert cookbook, and this night the author was giving an elegant launch party in her beautiful Palo Alto home. The food was (of course) delicious, the evening was mild, the people were congratulatory and I hummed with a sense of accomplishment. I needed that feeling just then. I had recently separated from my second husband and moved into a cheap apartment on the border of East Palo Alto. The dwelling itself wasn’t too bad, although I couldn’t get over seeing cockroaches lined up around the cat’s dish like kids waiting around a swimming hole. The last tenant had not been fastidious, and the building was old. I had done my best to decorate it, and its interior was cozy and pleasant. The problem was the neighborhood.
In that particular part of the San Francisco Bay area, upper-class mansions (like the one I was partying in) stood only a stone’s throw across a dry creek bed from a pocket of low-income dwellings. The worst 'hoods were on the east side of Hwy 101; I was (barely) on the west side. Although most of the people in my building were students or young professionals, many of the complexes surrounding us were inhabited by individuals whose idea of a good time was screaming and breaking bottles over each other’s heads at 3:00 in the morning. In the three months since I’d moved there, I had called the police several times in an effort to prevent what sounded just like a murder. (Also known as "a domestic disturbance", a term that didn't do these hair-raising howls justice!
After the book launch party, I went back to the apartment with my friends Kristee and Richard. (Kristee had done the illustrations for the cookbook.) Mother was there, visiting from Maryland, where she’d recently moved after marrying her fourth husband. We talked for a while, then I took my border collie, Dulcie, for a short walk and left Mom to visit with my friends.
Rounding a corner after Dulcie had completed her duties, I had a clear feeling to turn around and go back. The feeling was like running into an invisible membrane that resisted my forward progress. But full of wine and compliments as I was after the party, I ignored that resistance and decided to go a little further. I wasn’t afraid, I told myself. It was a pleasant evening, and only 8:00. People laughed in the distance; someone jogged by; a bicyclist passed.
The worst moment of any life is when it suddenly flips from good to bad and you realize you're in trouble. A minute ago, everything was fine. Now, you are going to be terribly hurt or die. In my case, I went from innocent dog-walker to a victim of violence. For a second, I felt stupid and vulnerable — how could I let this happen? After that, it was just a struggle for survival.
The slender young black man who approached and threatened me was well-dressed and neatly groomed. He told me that he had a knife, though I never saw it. He asked me to be quiet, and given my ignorance of his weapon’s location, I agreed. I put my hands up, palms forward, in what I hoped was a placating motion and told him it was cool. His eyes never stopped moving in his head; his left hand never let go of a small brown paper bag. From these indications, I figured he was on drugs. Right across the street was a row of small houses; right behind me was a street light. Right next to me was a silent but curious dog, but he was undaunted by any of these. He turned me to face the steep banks of the dry creek bed, and demanded that I follow him down.
And that's where he made his mistake.
I do not do "down" well. I'm afraid of steep slopes, I can’t do gymnastics, I would never attempt skiing, and I hesitate at down escalators. I can climb upwards like a mountain goat, but once the angle of the land beneath me reaches a certain acuteness, I break into a sweat and become immobile. I need the hand of someone I trust to help me traverse the terrain.
So at that moment, I was willing to die rather than descend that creek bed. (Looking at it in the daylight later, it was obvious that I would have died either way, it was that steep.)
My body became a lead weight; I fell to my knees. Impatient, the man pulled on the bulky fisherman’s sweater I'd changed into after the party. I shrugged my shoulders, lowered my neck, and let the sweater slide over my head. In a fraction of a second, we were far enough apart that I was out of range from his knife.
“Fetch him off, Dulcie,” I said.
My border collie was 10 years old at the time, and only 35 lbs., but she was the quickest, smartest dog I have ever known. I'd bought her in Cornwall when my first husband and I lived there, and both her parents were working dogs on neighboring farms.
Her bewildered brain had just been waiting for my orders to clarify this confusing situation. When I gave her the command, she launched herself at my attacker; he startled and moved away; I filled my lungs (and I’ve got real good ones) and screamed loud enough to wake the whole neighborhood. Then I scrambled to my feet and headed in the opposite direction, calling Dulcie as I ran; she was down the street, still leaping and snarling at the guy and I was afraid he’d turn his knife on her, but he never stopped running. Dulcie turned and joined me and we fled home.
The whole incident, from beginning to end, probably took about five minutes. It seemed like hours. People talk about time stretching in certain instances, and this was one of them. Perhaps because you are so present, moment to moment.
I didn’t feel any pain but as I ran I noticed that the last two fingers on my left hand wouldn’t bend when I told them to. There was a slash across the top part of my palm. When I'd held up my hands to placate my attacker, he'd sliced me.
Later, Mother told me she'd felt uneasy all day. She’d called Maryland, but everything there was okay. I seemed to be fine, what with the book party and everything. My brothers were fine. Since she couldn’t place the problem, she let it go. Our day had been filled with shopping, visiting friends, and spending time in my new apartment before the book launch. She wasn’t crazy about the neighborhood and said so, but (and she’s regretted this since) she never sat and tracked down just what was bugging her. If she had, I might not have gone out on that walk by myself.
As it was, even I had felt uneasy about wearing my jewelry that night, and had taken it all off when I changed my clothes. But I didn’t put it together. And neither did she.
Naturally, it was a great shock when I threw open the front door and stood there, blood splattered all over my white sweater and tennis shoes from the cut in my hand. Fifteen minutes later I was in the emergency room of Stanford Hospital.
I won’t go into the details of hospital procedure, the delay, the pain, the lack of medication until a doctor and a policeman could get through with me. Stanford was wonderful, and—over the next eighteen months—I endured three hand surgeries trying to restore functionality to the tendons that drugged-up son of a bitch severed that night. They were 85% successful. I can’t play piano well with my left hand, and the fingers will never be completely straight, but they do just about everything else well enough. Even now, small pills tend to drop out of my fisted left hand, but oh well. Thank god for the miracle of microsurgery! I was also incredibly fortunate to qualify for a fund created for victims of violent crime, a fund that was later dropped from the state budget. Without it, I would have been poor for a very long time.
After I was admitted that night, Mother went into action immediately. She tore a new one on the cynical interviewing detective who tried to insinuate that I'd provoked the attack (possibly by dressing in that alluring fisherman’s sweater and blue jeans?). She called up her contacts in local law enforcement and rang a police artist she'd worked with on many cases. She started pouring out her intuitions about my attacker before I was asleep in my hospital room. Her information, as it always is in these cases, was detailed and specific. She told them what this guy was like, what part of the neighborhood he lived in, what sort of life he led.
“There’s a garage where he lives. It has an engine taken apart in it, with oil standing in containers and oily rags on the floor. The building is three-story, it’s cinder block, it’s on the left side of road beginning with an “L.” He has a girlfriend who he fights with a lot of the time. She doesn’t like what he’s into. He’s done this sort of thing before. If you don’t catch him, he will again.”
After my surgery the next day, I went to stay with Kristee and Richard at their house. The police artist came over and made a sketch; unlike most police composite drawings, his portrait was frighteningly lifelike. Despite this, when I looked at albums of mug shots later on, I couldn’t pick out my attacker; as a result, the police didn’t do a line-up. Maybe if they had, I would have been more certain, because I struggled to connect the living person I had experienced with a set of frozen, inexpressive polaroids. On the other hand, maybe he wasn't in them!
Mother had to return to Maryland eventually, but she continued to work on the case. But they never caught the man.
The reality is, the police have more than they can ever handle. They are busy picking up the guys they know are guilty, the ones who are identified or caught red-handed. Even if my mother’s information matched a known bad guy, unless they could find proof of the man’s crime—even if I could identify him—it would be a hard, long, legal haul. And more often than you'd like to think, the result was they had to let the guy go.
One of Mom's detective friends told me that, from a certain standpoint, it was probably better for my peace of mind to go on with my life and try to heal and be spared the ordeal. Luckily, he said, I wasn’t raped or murdered. I had a bad hand, but it was being fixed. I’d lived in a bad neighborhood, but I’d since moved. Better not to face the guy in a criminal court, relive the details ad nauseum, and end up knowing that he knew who I was and vice versa. If that happened, I might live in fear the rest of my life.
This pragmatism enraged my mother, because she wanted revenge for her injured child. I would feel the same if it was my child. I felt like a failure when I couldn't identify him, but the detective's advice consoled me.
I also told him I felt stupid for being caught out, and so inadequate...to be so passive and quiet in the face of potential death instead of fighting hard. It's not how I expected myself to react. He pushed my opinion aside and said, "You did exactly the right things. How do I know? Because you're here. You survived. So don't second-guess yourself anymore." That was immensely comforting. I'll always be grateful to him for his perspective.
As it was, I had enough to deal with in the years to come: like flinching when any man walked toward me, being afraid on nature trails, reliving the incident at unexpected moments, finding raised voices unendurable, being nervous that I would experience that horrible "turning on a dime" situation again, where life went from good to bad. Sometimes, even a sunny day went black for me.
I never blamed my mother for anything connected to my event, of course—but I did ponder how bizarre it was to have a psychic as a mom who didn't foresee the worst thing I ever experienced. Perhaps it's a natural blind spot re: the ones we love. Who wants to see trouble for them? Or maybe we have no choice about certain nexus events in our time stream, to be real sci-fi about it. Maybe there was a cosmic reason, though I'm not a big believer in those. What I do know is what I felt: that membrane of resistance. Something was trying to warn me; from that moment on, I've tried to sense that warning and pay attention to it. Fortunately, it has been very rare.
I moved to Washington, DC a couple of years after the attack. I couldn't bear driving past the neighborhood where it happened, even on the freeway. In one sense, this may not have been the wisest decision because the African-American population in DC is vastly more than it is in California. Every day I was confronted with dark-skinned men on my way to work, some of them with chips on their shoulders. I was pushed on a sidewalk by a man who uttered "bitch" under his breath. Groped on the Metro by a well-dressed professional while I was dozing in my seat. For someone already jumpy about men—and yes, let's be honest, especially black men—this was not conducive to my recovery. But in all other aspects, the move was a very good thing and I look back on those years with happiness.
My own trauma was relatively minor and mercifully brief, compared to the horrific attacks that other women endured. I spoke with some of them. Their endurance and struggle to find peace in the aftermath deeply inspired me. If they could savor life again, what excuse did I have not to?
If there was one moment of recovery I can point to, it happened back in California as I walked a trail on Stanford land. I'd climbed a hill and was among gnarled old live oak trees. I've always loved trees, they are as essential to my happiness as air. So I wrapped my arms around this massive old oak and leaned my cheek against its rough bark. I felt the sap of life running beneath its surface, feeding all the branches and leaves, digging deep into the soil with its roots. It seemed to flow onto me as well, filling me with a calm energy, a shared life force. The message I received was one of permanence, of endurance, of life before and after this one incident in my history. Of oneness between living entities on this earth. And it lifted my spirits. I saw light instead of darkness.
I held onto that moment whenever the shadows started creeping in, and it really helped.
She never stuck her nose into a police case unless she was asked. She often did them for free. The one time she was accused of publicity-seeking (more in another blog), she was deeply hurt and offended and for good reason. She might share her psychic feelings with me while watching the news, but she never called up and volunteered. She didn't need to. The families of victims were quick to find her and she had a network of police detectives that believed in her, though sometimes their bosses were harder to convince. Ironically, despite the many personal and professional confirmations of her ability, and our close connection, she didn't see a really bad thing coming in my life; something that still can make me shudder and see darkness. October 1984 was a time of celebration for me. I had been a contributing writer/editor on an elaborate dessert cookbook, and this night the author was giving an elegant launch party in her beautiful Palo Alto home. The food was (of course) delicious, the evening was mild, the people were congratulatory and I hummed with a sense of accomplishment. I needed that feeling just then. I had recently separated from my second husband and moved into a cheap apartment on the border of East Palo Alto. The dwelling itself wasn’t too bad, although I couldn’t get over seeing cockroaches lined up around the cat’s dish like kids waiting around a swimming hole. The last tenant had not been fastidious, and the building was old. I had done my best to decorate it, and its interior was cozy and pleasant. The problem was the neighborhood.
In that particular part of the San Francisco Bay area, upper-class mansions (like the one I was partying in) stood only a stone’s throw across a dry creek bed from a pocket of low-income dwellings. The worst 'hoods were on the east side of Hwy 101; I was (barely) on the west side. Although most of the people in my building were students or young professionals, many of the complexes surrounding us were inhabited by individuals whose idea of a good time was screaming and breaking bottles over each other’s heads at 3:00 in the morning. In the three months since I’d moved there, I had called the police several times in an effort to prevent what sounded just like a murder. (Also known as "a domestic disturbance", a term that didn't do these hair-raising howls justice!
After the book launch party, I went back to the apartment with my friends Kristee and Richard. (Kristee had done the illustrations for the cookbook.) Mother was there, visiting from Maryland, where she’d recently moved after marrying her fourth husband. We talked for a while, then I took my border collie, Dulcie, for a short walk and left Mom to visit with my friends.
Rounding a corner after Dulcie had completed her duties, I had a clear feeling to turn around and go back. The feeling was like running into an invisible membrane that resisted my forward progress. But full of wine and compliments as I was after the party, I ignored that resistance and decided to go a little further. I wasn’t afraid, I told myself. It was a pleasant evening, and only 8:00. People laughed in the distance; someone jogged by; a bicyclist passed.
The worst moment of any life is when it suddenly flips from good to bad and you realize you're in trouble. A minute ago, everything was fine. Now, you are going to be terribly hurt or die. In my case, I went from innocent dog-walker to a victim of violence. For a second, I felt stupid and vulnerable — how could I let this happen? After that, it was just a struggle for survival.
The slender young black man who approached and threatened me was well-dressed and neatly groomed. He told me that he had a knife, though I never saw it. He asked me to be quiet, and given my ignorance of his weapon’s location, I agreed. I put my hands up, palms forward, in what I hoped was a placating motion and told him it was cool. His eyes never stopped moving in his head; his left hand never let go of a small brown paper bag. From these indications, I figured he was on drugs. Right across the street was a row of small houses; right behind me was a street light. Right next to me was a silent but curious dog, but he was undaunted by any of these. He turned me to face the steep banks of the dry creek bed, and demanded that I follow him down.
And that's where he made his mistake.
I do not do "down" well. I'm afraid of steep slopes, I can’t do gymnastics, I would never attempt skiing, and I hesitate at down escalators. I can climb upwards like a mountain goat, but once the angle of the land beneath me reaches a certain acuteness, I break into a sweat and become immobile. I need the hand of someone I trust to help me traverse the terrain.
So at that moment, I was willing to die rather than descend that creek bed. (Looking at it in the daylight later, it was obvious that I would have died either way, it was that steep.)
My body became a lead weight; I fell to my knees. Impatient, the man pulled on the bulky fisherman’s sweater I'd changed into after the party. I shrugged my shoulders, lowered my neck, and let the sweater slide over my head. In a fraction of a second, we were far enough apart that I was out of range from his knife.
“Fetch him off, Dulcie,” I said.
My border collie was 10 years old at the time, and only 35 lbs., but she was the quickest, smartest dog I have ever known. I'd bought her in Cornwall when my first husband and I lived there, and both her parents were working dogs on neighboring farms.
Her bewildered brain had just been waiting for my orders to clarify this confusing situation. When I gave her the command, she launched herself at my attacker; he startled and moved away; I filled my lungs (and I’ve got real good ones) and screamed loud enough to wake the whole neighborhood. Then I scrambled to my feet and headed in the opposite direction, calling Dulcie as I ran; she was down the street, still leaping and snarling at the guy and I was afraid he’d turn his knife on her, but he never stopped running. Dulcie turned and joined me and we fled home.
The whole incident, from beginning to end, probably took about five minutes. It seemed like hours. People talk about time stretching in certain instances, and this was one of them. Perhaps because you are so present, moment to moment.
I didn’t feel any pain but as I ran I noticed that the last two fingers on my left hand wouldn’t bend when I told them to. There was a slash across the top part of my palm. When I'd held up my hands to placate my attacker, he'd sliced me.
Later, Mother told me she'd felt uneasy all day. She’d called Maryland, but everything there was okay. I seemed to be fine, what with the book party and everything. My brothers were fine. Since she couldn’t place the problem, she let it go. Our day had been filled with shopping, visiting friends, and spending time in my new apartment before the book launch. She wasn’t crazy about the neighborhood and said so, but (and she’s regretted this since) she never sat and tracked down just what was bugging her. If she had, I might not have gone out on that walk by myself.
As it was, even I had felt uneasy about wearing my jewelry that night, and had taken it all off when I changed my clothes. But I didn’t put it together. And neither did she.
Naturally, it was a great shock when I threw open the front door and stood there, blood splattered all over my white sweater and tennis shoes from the cut in my hand. Fifteen minutes later I was in the emergency room of Stanford Hospital.
I won’t go into the details of hospital procedure, the delay, the pain, the lack of medication until a doctor and a policeman could get through with me. Stanford was wonderful, and—over the next eighteen months—I endured three hand surgeries trying to restore functionality to the tendons that drugged-up son of a bitch severed that night. They were 85% successful. I can’t play piano well with my left hand, and the fingers will never be completely straight, but they do just about everything else well enough. Even now, small pills tend to drop out of my fisted left hand, but oh well. Thank god for the miracle of microsurgery! I was also incredibly fortunate to qualify for a fund created for victims of violent crime, a fund that was later dropped from the state budget. Without it, I would have been poor for a very long time.
After I was admitted that night, Mother went into action immediately. She tore a new one on the cynical interviewing detective who tried to insinuate that I'd provoked the attack (possibly by dressing in that alluring fisherman’s sweater and blue jeans?). She called up her contacts in local law enforcement and rang a police artist she'd worked with on many cases. She started pouring out her intuitions about my attacker before I was asleep in my hospital room. Her information, as it always is in these cases, was detailed and specific. She told them what this guy was like, what part of the neighborhood he lived in, what sort of life he led.
“There’s a garage where he lives. It has an engine taken apart in it, with oil standing in containers and oily rags on the floor. The building is three-story, it’s cinder block, it’s on the left side of road beginning with an “L.” He has a girlfriend who he fights with a lot of the time. She doesn’t like what he’s into. He’s done this sort of thing before. If you don’t catch him, he will again.”
After my surgery the next day, I went to stay with Kristee and Richard at their house. The police artist came over and made a sketch; unlike most police composite drawings, his portrait was frighteningly lifelike. Despite this, when I looked at albums of mug shots later on, I couldn’t pick out my attacker; as a result, the police didn’t do a line-up. Maybe if they had, I would have been more certain, because I struggled to connect the living person I had experienced with a set of frozen, inexpressive polaroids. On the other hand, maybe he wasn't in them!
Mother had to return to Maryland eventually, but she continued to work on the case. But they never caught the man.
The reality is, the police have more than they can ever handle. They are busy picking up the guys they know are guilty, the ones who are identified or caught red-handed. Even if my mother’s information matched a known bad guy, unless they could find proof of the man’s crime—even if I could identify him—it would be a hard, long, legal haul. And more often than you'd like to think, the result was they had to let the guy go.
One of Mom's detective friends told me that, from a certain standpoint, it was probably better for my peace of mind to go on with my life and try to heal and be spared the ordeal. Luckily, he said, I wasn’t raped or murdered. I had a bad hand, but it was being fixed. I’d lived in a bad neighborhood, but I’d since moved. Better not to face the guy in a criminal court, relive the details ad nauseum, and end up knowing that he knew who I was and vice versa. If that happened, I might live in fear the rest of my life.
This pragmatism enraged my mother, because she wanted revenge for her injured child. I would feel the same if it was my child. I felt like a failure when I couldn't identify him, but the detective's advice consoled me.
I also told him I felt stupid for being caught out, and so inadequate...to be so passive and quiet in the face of potential death instead of fighting hard. It's not how I expected myself to react. He pushed my opinion aside and said, "You did exactly the right things. How do I know? Because you're here. You survived. So don't second-guess yourself anymore." That was immensely comforting. I'll always be grateful to him for his perspective.
As it was, I had enough to deal with in the years to come: like flinching when any man walked toward me, being afraid on nature trails, reliving the incident at unexpected moments, finding raised voices unendurable, being nervous that I would experience that horrible "turning on a dime" situation again, where life went from good to bad. Sometimes, even a sunny day went black for me.
I never blamed my mother for anything connected to my event, of course—but I did ponder how bizarre it was to have a psychic as a mom who didn't foresee the worst thing I ever experienced. Perhaps it's a natural blind spot re: the ones we love. Who wants to see trouble for them? Or maybe we have no choice about certain nexus events in our time stream, to be real sci-fi about it. Maybe there was a cosmic reason, though I'm not a big believer in those. What I do know is what I felt: that membrane of resistance. Something was trying to warn me; from that moment on, I've tried to sense that warning and pay attention to it. Fortunately, it has been very rare.
I moved to Washington, DC a couple of years after the attack. I couldn't bear driving past the neighborhood where it happened, even on the freeway. In one sense, this may not have been the wisest decision because the African-American population in DC is vastly more than it is in California. Every day I was confronted with dark-skinned men on my way to work, some of them with chips on their shoulders. I was pushed on a sidewalk by a man who uttered "bitch" under his breath. Groped on the Metro by a well-dressed professional while I was dozing in my seat. For someone already jumpy about men—and yes, let's be honest, especially black men—this was not conducive to my recovery. But in all other aspects, the move was a very good thing and I look back on those years with happiness.
My own trauma was relatively minor and mercifully brief, compared to the horrific attacks that other women endured. I spoke with some of them. Their endurance and struggle to find peace in the aftermath deeply inspired me. If they could savor life again, what excuse did I have not to?
If there was one moment of recovery I can point to, it happened back in California as I walked a trail on Stanford land. I'd climbed a hill and was among gnarled old live oak trees. I've always loved trees, they are as essential to my happiness as air. So I wrapped my arms around this massive old oak and leaned my cheek against its rough bark. I felt the sap of life running beneath its surface, feeding all the branches and leaves, digging deep into the soil with its roots. It seemed to flow onto me as well, filling me with a calm energy, a shared life force. The message I received was one of permanence, of endurance, of life before and after this one incident in my history. Of oneness between living entities on this earth. And it lifted my spirits. I saw light instead of darkness.
I held onto that moment whenever the shadows started creeping in, and it really helped.
Thursday, October 3, 2013
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.
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.
* * *
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.
Mortality and TMI
Sometimes, you should just keep things to yourself. I think this is an enormous responsibility for people who are psychics and deal with clients. Death, failure, sickness, loss...life holds these for every one of us. Just because you see it doesn't mean you have to tell it, unless there is a really valid reason, a helpful reason, for giving your client that information.
I think my mom was, in general, very perceptive about these areas. She was sensitive in how she approached them, thoughtful in when she applied them. But not always.
Her marriage to my stepfather went sour early on. Our relationship to him as teenagers went from cordial to combative, more because we were used as pawns and forced to take our mother's side in everything than from us confronting him. They fought a lot and bickered constantly. Maybe he did start it by being jealous and suspicious (well, he married someone that he couldn't control—a factor that strongly attracted him before marriage, but infuriated him afterwards); maybe he was the first to break the sanctity and have an affair (more on that in a minute). But instead of being adults and seeking help and trying to work things out, they just went nuclear and—boom!—it was like living in a Nevada atom bomb test facility.
One of my mother's very first psychic experiences happened when my stepfather was at sea. They'd been married about 2 1/2 years, and she was missing him. But as she looked at his photo, she heard the word, "Maria." Loud and clear. It intrigued her, but it also enraged her. She was sure her husband was cheating on her. So the next time she wrote, she added, "Give my regards to Maria." Just that. Wow.
I can't recall what, if anything, he said in his letter back to her. But when he returned, he denied everything. Told mom she was crazy and all this psychic stuff was bullshit and corrupting. She almost bought it...until she found a photograph of him standing next to a lovely young woman, a priest, and some older people. Until he took her aside in the base chapel and confessed to her that he'd caught an STD. Then he had to own up that Maria was real, her brother a priest, and the photo her family members—who'd all enjoyed his company while he was in port.
Nothing was the same after that, of course. Lots of opportunities for Who's Afraid of Virginia Wolff drinking and backbiting.
Okay, but here's where the TMI stuff starts to come in. A psychic told my mom that her husband was going to die in a car crash. He was sporting a lovely little Austin Healey in those days, and drove like an Earhardt. The atmosphere at home was corrosive, and all of us walked around on eggshells a lot of the time. When we heard that sports car's engine purring as it entered the garage, our butts clenched shut. We kids scattered like rabbits. Mom sharpened her nails for the evening bout.
After this prediction, mom (and I'm ashamed to say, myself) started hoping we wouldn't hear that engine anymore. Every evening for a while, we waited for him NOT to come home. For him to crash and burn somewhere. For him to die. And every time we DID hear the Healey in the drive, our hearts sank. This went on for some time.
And it was so ghoulish, so morally wrong. To hope for someone's death. Even though it's understandable that people in abusive situations might do so. We didn't hope for our mom's death, just his. Because then it would all stop. But what a stupid way to stop it.
I understand why we took that stance, mother and me. We were both passive-aggressive, feeling helpless and somewhat hopeless in the face of a volatile situation; we couldn't see any way out. My mother's method was always to look for another man to bail her from one situation to the next. She was incredibly capable of some things—she'd had her own local news column, radio show, modeling and charm school (yeah, it was the South, they still had charm schools in the 60s); she organized fashion shows, charity balls, her own kids, her own home. But when it came to men and marriage, she absolutely wanted to be Rescued, princess-like, and sheltered and pampered. For ever after. She never thought of stepping out on her own two feet.
And guess what? At that point in my life, neither did I. I was deep into the Sleeping Beauty/Rapunzel psychology, and I felt—in the face of my mother, her marriage, and my ability to earn a living—weak, helpless, unskilled, miserable, and deeply desperate. For someone with half a college education and no trained skills, there was only one goal: get married and have kids. Artistic talent wasn't going to cut it. It's what my mother expected, it's what I expected. The sooner, the better.
But still...that psychic, whoever she/he was, had a lot of nerve to make that prediction and share it with my mother. It just innervated her further.
I think my mom was, in general, very perceptive about these areas. She was sensitive in how she approached them, thoughtful in when she applied them. But not always.
Her marriage to my stepfather went sour early on. Our relationship to him as teenagers went from cordial to combative, more because we were used as pawns and forced to take our mother's side in everything than from us confronting him. They fought a lot and bickered constantly. Maybe he did start it by being jealous and suspicious (well, he married someone that he couldn't control—a factor that strongly attracted him before marriage, but infuriated him afterwards); maybe he was the first to break the sanctity and have an affair (more on that in a minute). But instead of being adults and seeking help and trying to work things out, they just went nuclear and—boom!—it was like living in a Nevada atom bomb test facility.
One of my mother's very first psychic experiences happened when my stepfather was at sea. They'd been married about 2 1/2 years, and she was missing him. But as she looked at his photo, she heard the word, "Maria." Loud and clear. It intrigued her, but it also enraged her. She was sure her husband was cheating on her. So the next time she wrote, she added, "Give my regards to Maria." Just that. Wow.
I can't recall what, if anything, he said in his letter back to her. But when he returned, he denied everything. Told mom she was crazy and all this psychic stuff was bullshit and corrupting. She almost bought it...until she found a photograph of him standing next to a lovely young woman, a priest, and some older people. Until he took her aside in the base chapel and confessed to her that he'd caught an STD. Then he had to own up that Maria was real, her brother a priest, and the photo her family members—who'd all enjoyed his company while he was in port.
Nothing was the same after that, of course. Lots of opportunities for Who's Afraid of Virginia Wolff drinking and backbiting.
Okay, but here's where the TMI stuff starts to come in. A psychic told my mom that her husband was going to die in a car crash. He was sporting a lovely little Austin Healey in those days, and drove like an Earhardt. The atmosphere at home was corrosive, and all of us walked around on eggshells a lot of the time. When we heard that sports car's engine purring as it entered the garage, our butts clenched shut. We kids scattered like rabbits. Mom sharpened her nails for the evening bout.
After this prediction, mom (and I'm ashamed to say, myself) started hoping we wouldn't hear that engine anymore. Every evening for a while, we waited for him NOT to come home. For him to crash and burn somewhere. For him to die. And every time we DID hear the Healey in the drive, our hearts sank. This went on for some time.
And it was so ghoulish, so morally wrong. To hope for someone's death. Even though it's understandable that people in abusive situations might do so. We didn't hope for our mom's death, just his. Because then it would all stop. But what a stupid way to stop it.
I understand why we took that stance, mother and me. We were both passive-aggressive, feeling helpless and somewhat hopeless in the face of a volatile situation; we couldn't see any way out. My mother's method was always to look for another man to bail her from one situation to the next. She was incredibly capable of some things—she'd had her own local news column, radio show, modeling and charm school (yeah, it was the South, they still had charm schools in the 60s); she organized fashion shows, charity balls, her own kids, her own home. But when it came to men and marriage, she absolutely wanted to be Rescued, princess-like, and sheltered and pampered. For ever after. She never thought of stepping out on her own two feet.
And guess what? At that point in my life, neither did I. I was deep into the Sleeping Beauty/Rapunzel psychology, and I felt—in the face of my mother, her marriage, and my ability to earn a living—weak, helpless, unskilled, miserable, and deeply desperate. For someone with half a college education and no trained skills, there was only one goal: get married and have kids. Artistic talent wasn't going to cut it. It's what my mother expected, it's what I expected. The sooner, the better.
But still...that psychic, whoever she/he was, had a lot of nerve to make that prediction and share it with my mother. It just innervated her further.
###
Ironically, my mother did something similar to me years later. My first marriage had ended and I was in love with—well, let's call him Mark. I'd met him through my mother and we'd started dating hot on the heels of my crumbling marriage. Still on the SB/R track, I was leaping into another relationship so I didn't have to be out in the cold world of the un-Rescued for more than 5 minutes. After Mark and I had been together for a year, we decided to get married. I was crazy about him, he had some lovely qualities: charm, intelligence, and the ability to listen and converse about feelings and emotions that was rare in a guy. We could talk for hours. We could sort out why I felt the way I did and what to do about it. We read books together, loved art cinema, sci-fi and fantasy, animals...He was 10 years older than me, fiercely independent, and a real mentor. He also fancied himself a bit of a bad boy, a hint of danger, and I was stuck on him big time.
My mother, always quick to smell a threat, went off him pretty quickly. Maybe being a bit of a flim-flam charmer herself, she knew one when she saw one. In addition, she saw someone who was teaching me to be OK with telling her "no" when she made selfish, unreasonable, demands. Or tried to drag me into her dramatic chaos. So, by the time we announced our wedding plans, maybe she just couldn't keep it to herself.
I went to her for a career reading. I was doing temp secretarial work all over Silicon Valley, and I wanted to know if I was going to settle into something more permanent. Money was tight in my new relationship, and I was hoping for better. Instead, my mother told me, in no uncertain terms, that my new marriage was going to be a bust. She said Mark (who, when I met him, was in a lucrative job but soon quit it to become an entrepreneur) would never succeed. That I would never have the kind of home I dreamed of, surrounded by plush furnishings and antique pieces, or a comfortable lifestyle. Not with him. That I would be scrabbling for money, that he would prove not to be my Prince, and that the marriage would not last.
Stupidly, I went home and told Mark what she said. I demanded that he help prove her wrong. And it changed our relationship. Over the next four years, I watched every move he made. I was often his critic instead of his supporter. When I saw him waver and lose interest in a project, I harangued him about commitment. When he moved on to something else, I bullied him about not taking a power position. When the bills piled up, I nagged him about responsibility.
I was afraid, so afraid of losing the dream I had about our life together. And I wanted Mom to be wrong.
But underneath the yummy romantic aspects of our relationship, and the warm, comforting mentorship, Mark and I wanted two really different things out of life. He wanted to be free, a high-flyer, someone who struck it lucky, made it big, and then parlayed that into something else. He wanted to start it, get it running, then sell it and retire with tons of cash. He was, at heart, a gambler. But like all addicts, it was always the "next one" that would help him strike it rich. It wasn't about buckling down and working hard to make "this one" succeed and endure.
And emotionally, he was no Rescuing Prince; he was Peter Pan—immature, irresponsible, careless, in the moment. And I was, at my core, desperate for security, stability, shelter. Like Wendy, I was sometimes shocked at how he could forget about me or anything that he'd promised. After five years, I realized I was already standing on my own two feet, doing everything that needed doing, without his help. He had mentored me well, I had drawn strength from it, and I believed I could do it myself. With a lot less stress! I hated the nagging bitch I had become, pushing him. We went to counseling, but the conclusion was inevitable. We were done.
So, in the end, my mother's prediction came true. But it was still terribly wrong of her to tell me. It influenced me, it hampered me; maybe the outcome would have been the same, but would the journey?
I've only had one other example of this kind of TMI predicting: while I was married to Mark, his brother dragged a self-professed psychic to our house one evening. She had the brass to tell me that I would die in my 50's of drowning in a sailing accident. Just like that! I was floored and more than a little shocked at this information. I admit that I looked at sailing—which I've done maybe a handful of times in my whole life—with less appetite than before. And the thought of drowning, for someone who grew up around the beach, makes me shudder even now.
As it turns out, she was full of shit. But just like my mom, she had no damn business telling me such a thing. Why? Because we all have to walk our paths in this world. Death, failure, sickness, loss...they are with us, they are certain to be a part of our lives. Whether we know about them in advance or not, we have to make the journey, with enough burdens on our backs. We can't live each day steeped in our mortality and we can't make a marriage knowing it's doomed. We have to push those fears away and find the joy in our days. We need hopes and dreams right down to the last second.
Some people might say that only God knows the moment of our death. Well, the good news about God is that he keeps his mouth shut. Psychics should take a lesson from that.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)