LEY LINES
When I unpacked, at the bottom of my luggage I found a box of incense and a cut out picture of Mother Meera and placed them next to some candles in our living room. I’d burn some incense and meditate on Mother Meera’s parting words, ‘I suggest that you wholeheartedly and joyfully do your duty.’
I started to spend hours parked outside the Elizabethan semi-detached house that was once my early childhood home. In the evenings I’d sit in the field, where neighbours used to find me. I’d pray, meditate, close my eyes, and try to remember the smells, the music, the horse-drawn vegetable carts, and the fish vendors. I’d visit where we spread my father’s ashes near Rhodes Memorial and peer through the cathedral window of wind-sculptured pines down to where I used to walk Ellen. But I also felt inexplicably drawn to the hospital where I’d first met Gareth. A friend suggested it could possibly be a ley line – a geographical alignment between historical structures and prominent landmarks which some esoteric traditions believe demarcate areas of earth energies where healing flows. I wasn’t too sure about that; all I knew was I found myself drawn to, and positioned myself along, a line that ran from Rhodes Memorial straight through to the Red Cross Children’s Hospital.
So, with Pugsley by my side and Max bounding about the thicker brush on the Common, I’d position myself on this imaginary line and turn towards the mountain to greet my father. I’d breathe in the ground below and try to be present with wildflowers, and then turn towards the hospital. This weird ritual seemed to create an amplified sense of my father and an assurance that I needed to be there. But it could also have been the magic of walking the dogs among the Common’s rather unique collection of wildflowers.
Moritz Benedikt, an Austrian physician of the late 1800s, believed the cause of hysteria to reside in a painful secret, and his studies determined that the majority involved sexual activity. He believed confessing secrets could cure most patients. The Roman Catholics have confessionals, and in the Twelve Steps we’re told secrets keep us sick. Then in Step Five, we’re asked to admit to God, to ourselves, and to another human being, the exact nature of our wrongs. Hysteria or not, secret or not, this strange one-hundred-and-twenty day trust us journey, which had started on the evening of Ellen’s sixteenth birthday, seemed to be preparing me for something.
I’d kept in close contact with Kathy throughout the process and I had done my best to describe what I couldn’t understand. They weren’t voices in my head, but rather overwhelming compulsions I slowly and tentatively grew to trust. Finally, in the middle of the night, I was taken back to the Common where I once again positioned myself on this supposed, mystical ley line. I’d already experienced four transcendental experiences – for want of a better expression. The first was when Jeremy was still a toddler when in the blink of an eye, I was given a glimpse of the universe. The second and third happened more recently on my final evening with Mother Meera. And shortly after that the fourth, which took place on the Bergeralm ski slopes when the entire building suddenly became transparent.
Now, alone in the early hours of the morning as I aligned with my father and the Red Cross Children’s Hospital, I was instantly transported back in time. Snapshots upon snapshots of history spliced across time and I could see my mum in labour and the premature birth of my younger brother who we’d named Shane after his burial. Then I witnessed Shane being transferred to the children’s hospital and placed in the same room where I’d met Gareth. I saw myself transported back in time to the afternoon when I had inexplicably returned to Gareth after dropping Valeria off. As if time was an illusion, the two periods were spliced together. In what must have been a forty-five-year time difference, I found myself sitting next to Gareth with my head on his hospital bed as my mother entered the room to attend to Shane. Gareth had been hospitalized with a severe case of croup and as I listened for his breath, I watched my mother hold a pillow over Shane’s face till she was sure that he was no longer breathing.
I’d never been able to comprehend why I’d been drawn to Gareth’s bedside, but this wasn’t an answer I thought I could live with. Back on the Common, I discovered that I was no longer alone. What could previously only be described as an overwhelming compulsion somehow guiding me had changed, and a figure stepped out of the early morning shadows. My father was with me, holding the hands of two incredibly beautiful olive-skinned children who he’d brought with him. Although I’d never actually met either of them or even seen a photo, I knew exactly who they were. I’d survived being prematurely born, but neither my younger brother Shane nor my sister Jennifer had survived for more than a few weeks.
MUM
I spun like a windblown side-walk sign, thinking I must be the most awful son any parent would regret having. For a couple of years in therapy, I thought that my father may have sexually assaulted me. So how was I supposed to react to this new version of my mother that had been revealed to me? For years, Kathy had unsuccessfully tried to get me to talk about my mother, but I simply couldn’t. In my head, I was my mother’s support, the one who’d always listened to her story and who held the brave little girl that she’d once been.
By talking about my father in therapy, I’d come to trust that I’d made a terrible mistake. Perhaps hoping I’d reach a similar conclusion I became willing to talk to Kathy about everything I could remember about my mother. But it felt like I was intentionally framing my mother as a villain: how she had comfortably admitted to discarding me with the trash because she’d been told that I wasn’t likely to live; how she’d dragged my sister and me to the bathroom to watch her drown our kittens in a bucket after they had damaged her couch; how she screamed at me while I tried to tell her I’d been raped before she launched into her story about how lucky we were compared to her childhood; how she’d asked me to stand in my bath so that her friend Dorothy could take a look at my privates while Mum said, ‘Now, who would want to do anything with that little thing?’
In therapy, it felt like I was intentionally framing my mother by regurgitating the very worst that I could remember about my childhood with her. But it wasn’t just my childhood – I was starting to wonder if there was something more sinister behind her telling us about Valeria’s lunchtime affair and her belief that Jeremy was not my son. And I couldn’t help but question if there was something more to her mumblings: ‘I don’t take care of the sick, I’m wicked’ and ‘I want to die.’ Strangely, none of this had ever bothered me before.
POSTPARTUM DEPRESSION
Shortly after Samuel’s birth while trying to understand Aida’s rejection of her son, I looked into the causes of postpartum depression. I found an informative paper written on the subject which helped me understand the delivery, the lack of sleep, and the need to be perfect, combined with feeling overwhelmed by changes in work and home routines brought by a newborn can easily lead to depression and a loss of interest in the baby. With
Samuel’s birth, I believed that as soon as we settled into our new routine and if our business continued to do well, Aida would soon enough recover and bond with her son. Sadly, sixteen years later, she still seemed to show very little interest in Samuel other than when her family were around, or more recently with the start of her new relationship with Grant. I’d completely ignored the part which said it can lead to the mother having thoughts of hurting herself or the baby. At the time, I don’t think I considered the possibility that postpartum depression could be deadly to the baby or mum.
I contacted the hospital’s archives to see if they’d kept any records of my brother’s stay. Perhaps I just didn’t want to know, but I decided that it would be a fruitless exercise because forensic testing can rarely distinguish between misfortune or murder. And just how would they possibly make that determination, fifty years after the incident and from mummified remains?
FINAL CLUE
Vernon popped in for a cup of coffee almost every day. He was essentially retired and I kind of suspect that he was a bit bored. Our friendship had evolved into a form of mutual sponsorship. It couldn’t have been more than two weeks, or possibly three, after I was given the last clue when we decided to take a drive to Constantia Village – a leafy village with cobbled paving set between vineyards in what is considered to be one of the most prestigious suburbs in South Africa. We opted for an espresso bar on the outer perimeter that embraced European coffee culture. While he savoured a classic Portuguese tart sprinkled with cinnamon, I told him about the Adult Child meeting I’d recently started attending. Vernon’s recovery story is inspirational – after more than twenty years of partying and using, this former athlete wandered into the rooms of Narcotics Anonymous weighing less than fifty kilos. And as he liked to share, ‘I was living in my ex-wife’s basement, and I didn’t even own the teeth in my mouth.’
In a nutshell, he quite quickly re-established himself as a leading real estate agent. He remarried, and they had a delightful young son. He’d wisely invested in a portfolio of properties and while he still did the odd sale, eight years after he’d walked into his first meeting of Narcotic’s Anonymous, he was essentially retired. Through working the program, he’d remarkably let go of most of the rejection he’d experienced as a child. As he saw it, he was left with his grandparents because he wasn’t white enough to be included when his father and brothers immigrated to North America and was too dark to be publicly acknowledged by his mother.
We both grew up in Woodstock and we attended the same high school, but we’d always been pretty much the opposite of each other. While using public transport with classmates I’d experienced a tiny bit of the abusive attitude from ticket collectors, but I looked decidedly European so there was no way for me to possibly understand what Vernon had been through or what it must have taken for him to let go of his resentments. At school, he was the popular partying athlete, and I was the nerdy head prefect and leader of the Christian Union. He’d spent most of his adult life pushing every conceivable boundary and I’d always felt too conservative to even be in business. I’d spent most of my adult life raising children and he regretted not being there for the children he’d had in his previous marriage. But the tables had turned. While I was struggling to navigate my way around South Africa’s new affirmative action laws, Vernon decidedly knew how to make the most of the new system. He’d gotten involved with an evangelical pastor and they were running a leadership program for high school kids together, whereas I seemed to have unwittingly stumbled into the realm of the esoteric. With his new family Vernon had turned into a wonderfully engaged father and husband, and he was busy making amends to the children from his previous marriage, while I felt like I was losing my mind and letting my children down in the process. It’s a beautiful thing, how polar opposites often connect through Twelve Step fellowships. Having trust in Vernon, in addition to Kathy, was an immeasurable help.
We settled our bill as the subject changed to our fathers. I relayed my mother’s recollection of his father’s heyday and that she still calls him Cape Town’s Omar Sharif. ‘He taught me how to fight.’ Vernon said. In the parking lot, as he checked to see if he could reverse, he added ‘He was a 5th dan martial arts instructor and no one messed with him.’ Flexing his grip on the steering wheel, he finished his thought with ‘Everyone knew those hands could crush you.’
I’d been given a final clue as to who might have harmed me as a young child. I hadn’t thought about it again since that night on the Common. At that moment, there was just too much else going on for me to absorb everything that I’d been shown, so I hadn’t been looking and I might have even forgotten it if Vernon hadn’t mentioned his father’s hands. I’m not sure if clue is the appropriate word, but I was left with an overwhelming sense of incredibly powerful hands, a mechanic’s hands, and the sound of the fifteenth letter in the English alphabet, the letter O. Vernon’s father’s name Theo, and it hit me between my eyes. But to the best of my knowledge, he’d always worked in the clothing industry. So, when Vernon took a breath, I asked ‘Wasn’t your father in clothing?’
‘Yeah, yes he was. He opened his own clothing production company in Canada.’ he replied.
‘And before getting into clothing, did he do anything else?’
‘He started as a mechanic. I think he did his apprenticeship with Leyland at their Blackheath plant. After, he worked for Opel in the centre of town.’
I like to see myself as a fairly logical individual that’s been schooled to analyse complex financial structures. Besides focusing on a client’s needs, I believed my ability to understand and interpret a client’s financial statements had given me a competitive advantage in the world of design. However, this recent esoteric journey I’d been on had completely overwhelmed my sense of logic and my conservative belt-and-braces approach to life. I loved Vernon like a brother, and I couldn’t begin to imagine my mother having an affair. Only now I couldn’t help wondering if we were related, all be it through my brother and my sister.
MUM
I visited my mum regularly, at least once a week. Despite being disappointed she hadn’t told me about Valeria’s affair, I still believed we shared an incredibly open relationship, one in which we could tell each other absolutely anything. But today would be something else. I needed to ask her about Jennifer and Shane and about what really happened to them. On my way over I thought about our contract, much of which was grounded in Mum’s words ‘My whole life I’ve been scared. Of what, God only knows. If I show affection, I’ll get hurt, so I don’t. How do you change that? You can’t.’ I’d brought along a digital recording device. I thought I’d lost my mind and I desperately needed Kathy’s professional opinion.
Mum made a cup of tea and we caught up on each other’s news. It started normal, but then I produced the device I’d specifically bought to record our conversation. I asked if I could record us speaking so my therapist could understand my mum’s world and the nature of our relationship. She reminded me ‘Those people put all kinds of shit in your head.’ I once again apologised for accusing Dad, and after I explained I wanted to avoid repeating the same mistake, mum agreed.
We went over her the horror of her childhood and her abusive father; how afraid they’d all been and how none of them had finished school. Then she added two bits I hadn’t heard before; how her father had also terrorised her mother’s family and even they were afraid of him, and how she’d nearly lost an eye when she was only four years old. She had to do the shopping because her mother wasn’t allowed to leave the house. It happened one day while running to the shop. She said, ‘I don’t know how that bicycle didn’t see me but I nearly lost my eye for a bunch of carrots.’ She spoke about the delicious roast lamb her mother would prepare, only to have it thrown on the floor and how they’d end up eating oats if they were lucky.
I interjected ‘Mum, but you have looked after everybody?’ I went on to ask, ‘Was it your mother who taught you to be kind and was she kind to you?’
She answered, ‘My mother just did what she had to do. No one was there for us. No one ever kissed us. My mother shook my hand for my birthday. Daniel, you can show affection, we can’t. I tried to make my mother’s life better, but nothing ever did. So, I expect the same in my life.’
‘Dad loved you.’ I said after she’d finished.
She responded, ‘He taught me to cook. I had no idea. He’d show me something once, then he’d leave me to get on with it and he’d never do it again.’
The subject switched to, ‘Prostate cancer is a bugger. From the time he was diagnosed, six months later he was gone. He never used to moan, he sat there in pain and said nothing. The eighteenth was always his favourite day because you and Abigail were both born on the eighteenth. It was the eighteenth when you helped me. We upped his medicine and he said, “Where are they, they said they were fetching me?” The next day, on the nineteenth at 2 am, he was dead.’
Our conversation became a little more charged when I asked about Jennifer and Shane.
‘Jennifer was stillborn,’ she replied, ‘and Shane lived for a couple of days. He couldn’t breathe, there was something wrong with his lungs, they kept hitting him on the chest to make him breathe, I thought it was quite cruel. No good thinking about it, it’s gone.’ She added, ‘I was happy you and Abigail survived. Both of you were premature. You were tiny. You weighed 3 pounds and 4 ounces. Very small.’
‘Your father couldn’t really afford his children, Daniel.’ Pam continued. ‘He earned three-hundred Rand a month at the best of times. He had no confidence whatsoever. He had wonderful handwriting and wrote beautifully, but he didn’t understand basic arithmetic. When I came home with you, we didn’t have a cent. He’d spent it all. From that day on, I handled his money and gave him an allowance. His pocket money. Otherwise, we would have had nothing.’
I tried to reassure her that I meant no harm, but I questioned whether I was manipulating my mother when I told her what I honestly believed.
‘I’m not here to point a finger at anyone. With your father and your childhood, as far as I’m concerned you did exceptionally well. You married Dad and kept us together. You looked after brothers and sisters and you were there for Abigail and me, and all of your grandchildren. You’re always checking in on your extended family, and even though they have grown children of their own, you’re the one picking everyone up for their hair or doctor appointments.’
Mum muttered under her breath, ‘Their children have jobs or they’re not living in this country.’
Thinking I was never going to do this again, I pressed on. ‘I just don’t get why I’m losing my mind. Why I’ve started to see things that I really don’t want to see. It’s very confusing. Like when I thought that Dad had hurt me. I made a mistake about it being Dad, but I’m still convinced that something did happen to me when I was very young – around my fourth birthday. I think all my crazy is somehow connected. I’m taking care of the children, which I believe I got from you, but what I don’t understand is why I married two women who seem quite comfortable letting me get the job of raising the children, and why I’m still attracted to the most damaged person in the room. You understandably don’t like therapy because of what happened to your brothers. Don’t get me wrong, I love taking care of the children and I often think I probably need them more than they need me. But I honestly don’t want to spend the rest of my life alone, and that’s why I’m in therapy.’
Mum straightened up, looked at me with her smoky green eyes and said, ‘I wasn’t a good mother, Daniel. You’re the one who cares and shows affection, and I can’t. My father made us that way.’
I interrupted, ‘You might not be able to show it, but you do care Mum.’
‘No, I don’t,’ she insisted. ‘All I wanted to do was sleep. You weren’t supposed to live, you were too small and should have stayed in the hospital. But they had a virus and said you’d have a better chance at home. I didn’t feed you or take care of you, and I couldn’t listen to your crying. I just wanted to sleep, so I put you outside, hoping someone would take you away. Neighbours would try to wake me up, the old couple from across the street took you and covered you from head to toe in a red potion and put you back through the window.’ Looking away she concluded softly, ‘I wasn’t a good mother, Daniel.’
I should have ended our conversation, but I still had a few more questions. I asked her about what she’d said to Dorothy in the bathroom, which she vehemently denied saying, ‘That never happened.’
‘Yes, but I was eight at the time and that was the week that Juno’s brother got hold of me. You told me not to think about it. I’m not judging you. For most of my life, what you said to do actually worked. I might be in denial here, but I honestly believe that I haven’t thought about it until now when these other memories started surfacing.
Everything about that time is still absolutely clear to me.’ Having started this, I couldn’t seem to stop myself, ‘Something happened when I was much younger. Someone hurt me when I was about four years old, and it wasn’t Dad.’
Then I had to ask, ‘Did we have any visitors, someone we were friends with that used to come around?’
‘We had our monthly poker night, but your father and I hardly saw anyone, and you know that, Daniel.’
Finally, I asked, ‘What about my friend Vernon’s father, Theo?’
This really angered Mum, and she suddenly denied ever knowing him until I reminded her that it wasn’t that long ago that she’d called him Cape Town’s sexy Omar Sharif.
‘I’ll get the Bible and swear on it. You’re dreaming, or your psychologist is putting shit in your head, Daniel. They do that you know. I never got visitors.’
I switched the recorder off. We’d both had enough.
JEREMY FINDS LOVE
It wasn’t easy letting go of Jeremy and watching him leave for Australia. He hadn’t dealt with his abandonment issues nor Granny Pam’s Christmas day revelation. I’m not sure if anyone ever truly deals with these types of issues. However, I could only hope that with time and support he’d find a way to reach some form of acceptance. I knew that Jeremy would confront his mother, but when he finally did I wasn’t sure if it helped. She admitted she didn’t know if I was his father and that it could have been Andre. Then she added that she wasn’t attracted to Andre and hadn’t willingly slept with him because she found him rather repulsive. Finally, when pressured by Jeremy, she claimed to have been raped. I was pissed off: not because she hadn’t told me, but because I couldn’t understand why she had to say his father could have been a rapist, and because she hadn’t considered what her accusation might mean to Jeremy.
Thankfully, with today’s technology, it’s so much easier to stay in touch. However, Jeremy’s social media updates were somewhat disturbing. They were difficult to understand, and they were depressingly dark to read. At times I wasn’t sure if I should encourage him to come home, or if I should get on a plane to go check on him. Then with the next call, he’d scan his rural setting to show me where he was living, and thankfully he’d appear to be absolutely fine. While he continued to struggle with the effects of his mother leaving he had forgiven her, and in a way he was grateful that her move had made it possible for him to go to Australia.
I remained open to taking a paternity test, but he never raised the subject again. However, what neither of us could understand after she’d told him the truth in our kitchen was why she continued to paint me as a monster who’d supposedly caused her to abandon her children in South Africa. Then one evening after Jeremy had repeatedly asked his mother to stop, it all blew up in front of her husband – who up until that moment had been blissfully unaware of the affair and the question of who Jeremy’s biological father might be.
After Ellen was taken I’d often close my eyes to remember our Eskimo kisses and her unforgettable giggle, and trust that she could feel me holding her. With Gareth, I’d focus on teaching him to water-ski or the times we spent sliding between rock pools. With Jeremy, I’d remember his playful interactions with Samuel, and now I wished and prayed I could repeat what had automatically happened between Samuel and me, but I simply wasn’t able to. I found myself googling the areas Jeremy had shown me and the Queensland beaches where he’d go for walks. I imagined he could feel me with him as he grappled with his decision to leave. I knew how disappointed he felt that he hadn’t been able to develop the relationship he had hoped for with his mother and that he somehow blamed himself. At the end of my marriage to Aida, I thought he’d harm himself. I knew how vulnerable he was before leaving South Africa, and I was terrified he might want to harm himself again. I thanked God when he finally escaped the darkness and decided to join the Aussie backpacking trail.
The Australian backpacking trail offers opportunities to see the country while working and earning at the same time. With the country’s generous minimum hourly wage, it’s even possible to save while having fun, seeing the country, and making new friends. Jeremy, who often slept all day, was now going to bed early and getting up before dawn for physically demanding harvest work in dusty locations. On a watermelon farm, he befriended a
captivating backpacker from Korea. Tae wasn’t his type and nothing like any of the girls he’d dated before. She was lovely, accepted his quirks, and turned out to be exactly what Jeremy needed. With delightful enthusiasm she photographed everywhere they went, where they worked, what they did for fun, and every meal they ate. Slowly, she drew Jeremy out of the past and into the present, enjoying every moment of their adventure together. I was able to fly them home so Samuel and I could get to meet Tae. She’d get to see Cape Town where Jeremy had grown up, visit the hot springs, travel the Garden route, visit an African safari park, and get to know many of Jeremy’s childhood friends.
Two years later, Samuel and I were winging our way to South Korea to attend a traditional Korean wedding. I’d hoped we could schedule our layover in Istanbul because I’d long wanted to see some of the early architecture, such as the Hagia Sophia, and it would have been great to catch a performance of whirling Sufi dancers. But the cheapest option took us via the stifling heat of Doha, where we caught our connecting flight to South Korea. Tae is from Suwon, which is known for its fortress from the 1700s with its commanding stone wall and four pagoda arched gates. What started as a small settlement has become a major industrial and cultural centre, and home to Samsung Electronics and several leading South Korean universities.
I should have done a bit more homework. Thankfully Jeremy and Tae, despite their busy schedule, soon enough had us fitted with hanboks. Ceremonial hanboks were designed for ease of movement. Men wear a jacket and pants combination drawn from the angles of traditional Korean homes. The women wear a slim top and waistcoat, together with a wide skirt designed to give the wearer the appearance of floating. Typically the bride will wear vibrant red and the groom will wear contrasting blue, to depict the yin and yang which complement, connect, and depend on each other. There was a gift of a wooden goose as a symbol of good intentions and commitment to each other. Then it was my role to toss some chestnuts for Jeremy and Tae to catch. The number caught signifies the number of children they’re likely to have.
We needed to get home for Samuel’s year-end exams, so we couldn’t stay long. We were shown the historical fort and wall and a traditional village – and a theme park was included for Samuel’s benefit. We learned that a night out in South Korea invariably ends with a few hours of karaoke. I definitely can’t sing, and I’m not being modest. Still, in one of the private rooms, called noraebangs, I was willing to give it a go. And, with Samuel’s passionate love of tinkering, especially with his extensive collection of Lego, I totally over-spent on master grade Gundam figures with featured internal skeletons and articulating fingers. On the plane home I couldn’t have been happier for Jeremy and Tae. With my marital history and that of his mother, I truly believe Jeremy had outperformed both of us in choosing Tae as a life partner.
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