The Best of Times, the Worst of Times

by Penelope Rowe

  That was how I came to be sitting in the make-up chair at the Performing Arts Centre in Melbourne. I was being primped and preened as Wendy Harmer and Libby Gore were also getting their faces done. I was on edge, but excited. What a thrill to be part of such a line-up. I kept trying to visualise what I was about to do. I had my speech on my lap, but I found I knew the words by heart. The words had become my mantra over the past few months. It sounds strange, but each time I went through them in my head and then read them out loud, I felt a part of myself was healing.

  Before the show we all gathered for photos. It was a great distraction to have a few laughs together and compare outfits. I felt chuffed that Sarah O’Hare liked my purple, peasant-style top and jeans. Annebelle van Tongeren, the wardrobe mistress at Channel Ten, had made it specially. I wanted to feel confident on the outside to combat any misgivings I was having inside.

  Pretty soon, it was time to begin the show. The music started, and a voice introduced each of us as we walked on stage. I stepped on to the stage, waving at the audience, thankful that it looked dark out there and I couldn’t see anyone’s face. I sat at the side of the stage, focusing yet again on my breathing, as my body kept shaking. I thought that once I got up to the lectern, I’d grip it with both hands so no one could see how much I was shaking. All these thoughts were running through my head as the MC, Wendy Harmer, had everyone laughing and relaxing. Libby Gore got up, as the first speaker. She had everyone in hysterics as she spoke about body image. I was next. I knew no one was going to laugh at my speech.

  Then I heard Wendy Harmer introducing me. ‘Say hello to Jessica Rowe.’ It was my turn. I strode to the microphone, trying to look confident, again thankful that I couldn’t see faces, and then I began my story.

  Tonight I’m going to talk about mental illness— something that’s extremely close to my heart and an issue that affects a lot of women. Mental illness has an enormous impact on families, particularly children, whose stories often remain forgotten and unheard.

  Mental illness is very isolating. It leaves people feeling powerless and alone. That’s why I’m here tonight, to tell you my story about how mental illness impacted upon my childhood. How it left me feeling helpless and out of control, but how at the same time gave me strength and courage in my own life.

  It’s not a glamorous topic. There’s nothing beautiful about someone suffering a mental illness, and psychiatric hospitals, on the inside, aren’t very inspiring places to be. But one of the most beautiful and inspiring people I know has a mental illness and that person is my mother. Mum sees her illness as just a part of her life. It doesn’t define her life. There’s no cure, but she makes every day count.

  I was away. I found I didn’t really need my notes as I got going. It was my story and I knew it by heart. It was so quiet in the audience as I spoke. I had that sinking feeling that it wasn’t working. As I got nearer the end of my speech I started to panic. I feared I’d opened up too much. Maybe they didn’t get it. As I walked back to my seat, Jackie and Sarah gave me reassuring smiles. Perhaps it wasn’t as bad as I thought.

  The rest of the show passed so quickly, and as I sat on the corner of the stage I was still running through my speech. I was fearful I had made myself too vulnerable. But I also felt a strange sort of relief, as for the first time I had spoken about how Mum’s illness made me feel. And then any misgivings I had quickly disappeared when I walked into the after-party. A photographer came up to me and told me that was his story, too. He knew what I was talking about. Then a number of other people came up to me and shared some of their family’s pain. I knew then that I had done the right thing. But my biggest test was yet to come. What would Mum think? Her opinion was what mattered most to me. She’d be watching the programme on television the following week. How would she take it?

  Penelope: It surprised me to discover that Jessica had been so worried about my reaction to her speech. After all, she had asked my consent ages before.

  ‘Mum, how will you feel if I appear on national television and talk about how your illness has impacted on my life?’

  ‘Go for it,’ I had said. ‘If you speak out, perhaps we can break down some barriers in the community. It can only be helpful.’ And I meant it. My family have lived with my mental illness, bipolar disorder, all their lives and will continue to do so. It has taken its toll but it hasn’t destroyed us. I think it has made us all stronger people. If Jessica could openly explain some of her feelings without shame or embarrassment, then maybe mental health would not be the stigmatising illness that it still is. It could help sufferers and carers alike to know they were not alone.

  I am very proud of all my daughters. I admire their achievements and never hesitate to tell them so. I don’t think parents do this enough. It is so easy for us to criticise our children for their shortcomings and forget to reinforce our love for them by telling them we think they are wonderful. Why? Is it because we’ll be thought of as indulgent, boastful and partisan? I don’t care. I want them to know that I realise how hard they have worked to be the fine adults they are, and I openly offer my tributes.

  I knew Jessica would do a fine job on her speech and I hoped it would be an exciting night for her.Yet I was unprepared for the scale of the production when I turned on the television for What Women Want. The huge Melbourne auditorium was full, and the women who were to participate were all glowing and beautiful in their own ways. Of course, I was concentrating on my daughter. She seemed calm and composed and quite at home. Until I read what she has written here, I had no inkling of the nerves she was hiding so well.

  When she stepped forward to the microphone, I tensed up. She was going to be talking about a serious and heavy topic. How would it come across? Were those in the audience expecting this, or would they be expecting entertainment from a young woman who is often seen as a glamorous news-reader, often photographed in the newspaper, apparently living life as if she doesn’t have a care in the world?

  The welcome-applause stopped. Jessica adjusted her notes on the lectern and looked up. There was silence and she spoke very solemnly. There was a total hush in the auditorium—none of the gales of laughter that had rocked the place with the previous speaker. I was concentrating hard as I listened to her, trying to gauge her feelings as the camera moved in close. Then I saw that she had ditched her notes. She knew exactly what she needed to say and how to say it. She spoke about her experience with dignity and passion, and I felt the tears start up in my eyes—tears of pride but also tears of sadness that she and her sisters had been swept up, willy-nilly, into the chaos that is mental illness. Then I realised something: just her being there was an affirmation that life throws thunderbolts out of the blue and the way we handle them can make or break us.We can grow through adversity and my darling daughter, by standing up that night and speaking with such grace and wisdom, had done precisely that.

  Chapter 2

  There is always one moment in childhood when the door opens and lets the future in.

  —Graham Greene

  Penelope: Recently I was looking at some baby pictures in an old album. The pictures are faded with time—taken, I think, with a Box Brownie. My mother was the family’s first photographer, gradually winding down when a succession of babies left her with far less time to document our development. Because the pictures are old and blurred, I found myself peering at them through a strong magnifying glass. There I sit, a very chubby baby in a playpen. I am looking up, smiling, perhaps my mother is calling out and waving something to get my attention. Toys are strewn on the rug on which I am sitting. Does looking at this produce even a flicker of memory? No.

  Here’s another one. I’ve always loved it for the dramatic story that was—unbeknown to me—unfolding at that very moment. I’m in my mother’s arms, maybe a year old, still chubby, round-faced,wearing a viyella-print dress and a white jumper or cardigan. I’m sure it’s hand-knitted because I can see the stitching on the raglan sleeves. Besides, I know that my mother was a pro
digious knitter, turning out fresh garments as each baby came along. But there were still only two babies at this point, my elder brother by sixteen months and myself. My mother is holding me, my brother is in his grandfather’s arms and they are holding streamers. There is a look of great strain on my mother’s face. I now know that they were farewelling my father who, following the war, was sailing to England to further his medical studies.We would not see him for about three years. I’m not holding a streamer, though— not even looking up like the rest of them. I have a delighted smile on my face and I’m playing with my mother’s pearl necklace. It was such an important event, such a dramatic breakup of our little family, but do I remember it? Not at all. I only know I look blissfully happy.

  Hazy recollections creep in of the next few years— just the three of us, my mother, my brother and myself; being taken to the park we called Rolly Park, beside which the Raoul Wallenberg memorial now stands; rolling down the grassy banks over and over again, innocent and ignorant of evil, while at that very time the brave Swedish diplomat and Righteous Gentile, having rescued many Jews from the Holocaust, was disappearing into Stalin’s gulag.

  I remember sitting on the sunny, tarred roof of our flat, eating banana sandwiches, and I recall having my hair washed and pinned into curls on Saturday mornings. Maybe my notable tendency to be impatient grew out of this time-consuming, boring procedure. I remember an old tramp knocking on the door and asking for food and my mother making him a sandwich and pouring him a glass of milk. I remember carrying this little meal out to him as he sat on the front steps and squatting to watch him eat. ‘Thank the lady,’ he said as he rose and walked away. I have a picture of my brother and myself, snapped by a street photographer in Martin Place, and another of myself as a flower girl, aged about five. As I look at them now, I see what I can only describe as a sunny child. I have no memory of missing my father. I can’t imagine anything disturbed my contentment and tranquillity in those days, but the little brain inside my head must have been developing all its idiosyncrasies even then and gradually they would start to assert themselves.

  So did I already carry the potential for the disease that was to afflict me later on? Was I born with it? Did it develop gradually from the circumstances of my life? Greater minds than mine are grappling with this issue—nature or nurture? What does not seem to be in doubt is that there is a genetic disposition to bipolar disorder; however, in which generation and with which members of the family it will rear its devastatingly ugly head cannot yet be foretold. Perhaps a combination of catalysts is at work—a genetic predisposition, a particular personality and life events. Some people are confused about just how mood swings occur. These swings between elation and depression can just happen, even when life is calm, successful and fulfilling. I only mention this because I want to explain that bipolar disorder is a mixed bag—even now the researchers are trying to pin down how much is endogenous (coming from a wiring problem in the brain) and how much is exogenous (coming on as a reaction to outside events). It can be one or both; in my case, I have sailed through many difficult times in my life and escaped the demon, while other difficult times have brought on an episode.All too often, though, it has just come out of the blue.

  I have not spent too much time agonising over the why of it. I have bipolar disorder—that is the fact of the matter—so I have to get on with my life as best I can. Naturally, I hope that the researchers can come up with more definite answers for those who come after me. I have never been able to find out whether any of my forebears had this illness. If anyone knows—and I’ve asked various members of my birth family—they aren’t telling. It would seem natural, though, to worry that my own daughters might develop this illness. Of course, I have watched closely when there have been hiccups and falterings as they forge their own lives, but we have talked about the illness and come to the conclusion that if it’s going to happen, it’s going to happen—there is no use worrying about what might be. And if it does, at least we will be able to recognise it for what it is and take immediate steps to get the help that is required.

  But back to that small, developing brain. Here is the first clearly defined memory where I remember some anxiety creeping in. I am in the cabin of a passenger liner that has docked, I think, at the finger wharf in Woolloomooloo, and I am meeting a person called Daddy. Dear, oh dear. Daddies haven’t had a good rap in women’s writing. Am I to add my penny’s worth to the mix? If I am to write honestly, I have to. Whether we like it or not, most daddies play a crucially formative role in the lives of their daughters. My father certainly did. If only they knew just how much power they wield and how easily this can be distorted and become a negative thing.

  My father was instrumental in some of the worst periods of my life but he also contributed to the best. He was a man with little or no understanding of depression, considering it as a weakness of character. As virtually a first-generation Australian (he had arrived as a baby), the ethos of education, hard work and advancement was of utmost importance to him. However, being of Irish-Catholic stock, he also held certain deeply ingrained attitudes towards the role of women. It was this ambivalence in him, I think, that was to lead to so many difficulties between us later on. However, without his emphasis on tenacity, hard work and resilience in the face of adversity, I would not be the person I am today—and I must thank him for that. I now remember him with love.

  So here I am being held up to a strange man called Daddy. He tells me that the long, blue box with the pink ribbon is for me and inside it is London Doll. I can open it when I get home. London Doll fills me with amazement and wild joy. She is wondrous in blue satin with a broderie anglaise petticoat. She has soft, flaxen hair and shoes with little buttoned straps and she has a small teddy in one hand. She is the most beautiful doll I have ever seen and I want to keep her with me all the time, but no, she must go on the top shelf of the linen press, out of harm’s way, to be looked at on special occasions but not played with. How can I love such an aloof ice princess? My love is a fickle thing. I instantly transfer it to London Bunny, a grey (white?) rabbit with glass eyes and the softest, woolly fur. Bunny will become my familiar, my security blanket, my talisman, and finally an unrecognisable scrap, carefully hidden from derisory eyes, going off to boarding school with me eight years later.

  I caught the Watson’s Bay tram to junior school with my brother who dismounted at Point Piper. I went to the convent on the hill at Rose Bay. I remember loving those tram journeys. The conductress was the same every morning. She gave me the stubs of her ticket blocks and took me up to sit on the driver’s lap while we clanged our way along. If the tram was crowded, the barmaid from the Watson’s Bay pub held me on her lap. This type of behaviour would be unthinkable nowadays, but I never came to any harm and was always confident about travelling independently.

  I remember the delicious smell of fresh pencil shavings in my pencil case and the frills of wood with their coloured trim after I had sharpened my pencils. I tried to pick up the delicate shavings but they were too fragile and splintered into tiny filaments. I loathed and despised my back satchel. Everyone else had Globite suitcases. This is the first occasion I remember of being humiliated by not being the same as everyone else. It was the first time I felt like an outsider. It was such a tiny, insignificant difference and, after all, most children have a particular need to be like their peers; for me, however, it was to grow into a major and troubling concern that would balloon to demonic proportions.

  There were only four of us in my class, but we were surrounded by all the traditions of the French Sacre Coeur order of nuns. There were feast days and tableaux, curtseys and customs, lantern processions and mercurochrome on grazed knees with a lolly from the lolly jar for good measure. I thought this was splendid since the medicine cabinet at home contained a thermometer and a bottle of aspirin and nothing else. Doctors’ homes were renowned for treating illness in the family with a pat on the head and a word of good cheer. The nuns who taught us treated us litt
le ones kindly. The fierce discipline of the senior school years was yet to come.

  Gradually, over my eighth, ninth and tenth years, I was growing increasingly uneasy at home, becoming watchful, trying to pick up the ever-increasing signs and signals of disapproval from my father which always seemed to pertain to me specifically. From that time on, I never felt carefree again. I found myself growing tense and nervous that I might overlook something and have to be reminded of my duties. My duties, as defined by him, were to help my mother, who was to have four more sons over the next years and was ‘working her fingers to the bone’. To have to be reminded of my duties was to show myself as ‘selfish’, a deplorable sin, at the top of the list in his hierarchy of sins committed by females.

  When I had unknowingly displeased him, I would be issued with a summons, told to present myself to him in his study at a precise time and date a few days hence and meanwhile to examine my conscience. Examining one’s conscience before going to confession was an integral part of Catholicism that was bound to produce guilt—obviously, for children, over nothing at all. (I know we used to make up sins because we didn’t know what to confess.) My father played his own specialised version of this scenario and it left me in a welter of anxiety. I used to beg him to tell me then and there what I had done wrong, but he told me I must wait and think about it first. He said he expected me to have an answer for him rather than for him to have to spell it out. I started to become afraid of him, yet I desperately wanted his approval and love.

  It seemed to me that, day in and day out, it was like knocking on a door, to some place to which I had been invited, but never knowing the reception I would get. Would I be warmly welcomed or would I find, when I had rung the bell, that the door suddenly opened and I was punched on the nose by an invisible fist and the door slammed in my face? Yet at other times the door swung smoothly open and I was welcomed. This was when he was pleased with the smooth running of his household and not distracted by his work. He would clown around, and there would be mayhem at the dinner table as we laughed at his antics. He would tell us silly stories, pretend to throw sound off his glass on to the ceiling with the ping of a fork, make a pair of false teeth with the inside of an orange peel. The trouble for me was that I grew increasingly unsure about how to predict his moods and head trouble off at the pass.