Where did you study kinesiology? I wondered. If it was all a big scam, would they swear the students to secrecy? What if one of the students dropped out and the news leaked that it was a hoax? I had never heard of any rumours of a kinesiology conspiracy. But did that mean it was true? So hard to believe. So hard . . .
She started muttering quietly to herself.
‘Is the sabotage between pages one hundred and two hundred?’ She leafed through a thick textbook on the table. My arm moved up, muscles loose. Did she pull it up?
Concentrate, Ondine! my inner cynic warned me.
‘Pages two hundred and three?’ she asked. My arm was firm.
This was such bullshit.
She continued in this way until she narrowed the sabotage down to a particular page. ‘Two hundred and sixty-one,’ she said, and my firm arm confirmed it. She looked down at the textbook. ‘Your sabotage is “I need to account for everything”.’ Arm firm.
She looked at me. ‘What does that mean to you?’
‘Ummm . . .’ I stumbled, surprised that she was asking something of me rather than my body.
‘Maybe . . . I feel like I need to be responsible for everything so I can’t allow myself to be relaxed,’ I suggested, wondering if I’d said the right thing.
‘Good.’ She seemed satisfied. ‘We can work on that now. Eliminate your sabotage.’
‘Really?’ I asked. Sabotage sounded serious.
‘Let’s see what your body says.’ She took my arm again. Oh boy . . .
She started muttering, ‘Electrical, chemical, emotional, touch, flower essences . . . flower essences?’ My arm was firm.
‘Right, flower essences it is,’ she said to my arm.What the fuck?
‘It seems that your body has chosen bush flower essences to eliminate the sabotage,’ she said with a smile.
How could my body know what bush flower essences were, let alone choose them? She then asked my body which essence it wanted by going through each number of the rows in her wooden box. I hoped my body wouldn’t choose a really expensive one, like beluga caviar at a hundred dollars a pop.
My body chose ‘Alpine Mint Bush’. Never heard of it.
By that time I was smirking to myself, full of cynicism. So I was very surprised to find myself in tears again when she told me that my primary emotion was ‘sorrow’ and that I had a ‘broken heart’. Maybe she had supernatural powers after all. How would she have known such a thing?
‘What are you feeling?’ she asked.
‘Frustration that nothing has changed; three years of pain and it’s not going away,’ I confessed, still hoping she might be the real deal.
She told me to ‘trust my inner wisdom’ and ‘be in my power’ after dosing me with drops of bush flower essences. I got up and wiped my face. I would try.
THIRTY
I went to bed at 8.30 pm, exhausted. Had I come to the end of my navel-gazing journey? Was it time to return to life, to commit to laughter, fun and good times?
Enough with my suffering; I wanted the clouds to part and to feel the sun. But seeing distress as something negative, Nietzsche believed, was as foolish as wanting to abolish bad weather:
If you refuse to let your own suffering lie upon you even for an hour and if you constantly try to prevent and forestall all possible distress way ahead of time; if you experience displeasure as evil, hateful, worthy of annihilation, and as a defect of existence, then it is clear that [you harbour in your heart]. . . the religion of comfortableness. How little you know of human happiness, you comfortable . . . people, for happiness and unhappiness are sisters and even twins that either grow up together or, as in your case, remain small together.
Menachem Mendel Schneerson wouldn’t have had much in common with Nietzsche (given that the latter proclaimed God is dead), but on this, he agreed: Pain and suffering are opportunities to challenge the way we look at life. When things are going well, we tend to take life for granted, but trauma brings us to the edges of life, allowing us to review it from a new, revealing angle.
Yes, I knew that suffering, sadness and tears would be woven into my life from now on. That it had taken this to accept my tears, after a lifetime of avoidance. That I had no choice but to embrace suffering, to try anyway. And no, I was not ready for frivolity. Not yet. First I had to get through Panama. A long journey awaited me.
Carefully I counted out seven drops of bush flower essence under my tongue. ‘Don’t know if I believe it, probably a bunch of bullshit. But I guess it can’t hurt,’ I said to my reflection in the bathroom mirror.
I was eager to get home, to bury my lips in the recesses of my children’s necks. To laugh with Dror about silly things and feel his strong hand in mine again. I packed my small bag, finished my book on the plane, power-walked through the Sydney domestic terminal and caught a taxi home.
Dror and Jasmine pulled up behind me, coincidentally arriving home at the same time. Jasmine beamed when she saw me through the car window as I raced to open it. She jumped out, beautiful in her grey and maroon school uniform. We hugged and kissed, cuddled and tickled. The happiness was intense. I kissed Dror and we laughed at how I had been so down in the dumps while away on a relaxing ‘retreat’.
I pushed the front door open and locked eyes with Dov and Lev sitting in their high chairs. Their blue and red moulded plastic bibs were still clean, ready to catch the inevitable regurgitation of their dinner, the bits their tongues, with low muscle tone and bad coordination, just couldn’t navigate to their back teeth to be chewed and swallowed. Ketem sat close by, poised to vacuum up any crumbs the bibs missed. I ran towards them, wrestling with the lever of their high table and grabbing each one in turn. I hugged so hard that I squeezed the air out of their lungs and the bibs pushed against my breastbone. They sighed, arched their backs and squealed in delight. This was joy.
How strange, I thought. The bliss of returning to my children. I’d been sure that I’d feel blissful when I was finally unencumbered and alone. I’d been confident that as soon as I got away from the guilt, the demands, the responsibility, I would feel liberated. But I had just felt sad and lonely.
I stood in my kitchen making spaghetti for Jasmine and blowing kisses to Dov and Lev as they finished their dinner. As Jasmine ate, sitting on the red breakfast bar, I made her lunch for the next day, carefully cutting off the crusts of her sandwich.
‘Gobble gobble!’ I said, encouraging her to eat while she told me about her sports carnival.
‘How many more forks left?’ she pleaded.
I peered down at her half-eaten bowl of pasta. ‘Eight,’ I said.
‘Four,’ she negotiated.
‘Seven,’ I said, relenting.
‘Five.’ She should be a barrister, I thought. ‘Okay, six,’ she agreed with a sigh, like she was doing me a favour.
‘One, two, three, four, five, six. Look, Mummy, I’ve had six forks of spaghetti,’ she said, and soon she had chocolate frog remnants around her mouth and was racing upstairs to change into her pyjamas and watch TV.
While Lev had his bath I shared my mango, cut into a grid, with Dov. He sucked up the squares of canary yellow greedily. I carried him, smeared with yellow pulp, to the bedroom.
Slowly I took his clothes off, pulling his right sock halfway down so the toe was easy for his fingers to grab. I bent his leg and touched his left hand to signal it to move. He reached to grab his sock, muscles tightening with excitement. Slowly he inched it off, pulling it in the correct direction.
I smiled. ‘One, two, three,’ I counted and, just as we’d practised a hundred times, he released his grasp and watched the sock drop to the floor, beaming with pride. We repeated the process with the left sock.
Time for pants. I laid him, tummy down, over my knees.
I pulled his pants down just past his knees.
‘Kick, kick, KICK!’ I said enthusiastically. I waited. And waited. Patience.
‘Dov, kick!’ His knee jerked and suddenly his feet were kicking ferociously.The pants sl
owly made their way off his legs and, with just a speck of help over the heel, fell onto the floor.
‘Yay!’ I squealed. He helped me take off his top by pulling his arms down through the holes, and then with his nappy by pulling at the sticky tabs with his bent fingers. This was my therapy. Something we did together nearly every evening. Since I’d started he’d improved. I was proud. It wasn’t what Debbie or Prue had written in their goals on the whiteboard; it was my invention; a step, albeit small, that I was encouraging towards independence.
Efrat brought Lev back to me clean and smelling of soap. I swapped Dov for Lev. Lev sat on my lap.Tigger walked through their bedroom door as he did every evening at this time. Lev saw him and squealed with a big open mouth. I wiped the drool from his chin. Tigger came towards us, tongue already out in anticipation. His tail swung contentedly from side to side as he licked Lev’s mouth. Lev squinted, opened his mouth wider, and kicked with delight. When Tigger stopped, turning his back to us, Lev reached out his arm, a grand gesture fraught with gross motor difficulty, to touch Tigger’s ear. This was Tigger’s sign to return to the lick. Lev laughed, ready for Tigger’s tongue. I placated my fears of dog germs with the knowledge that dog saliva is very sanitary, an antiseptic, even! Tigger had never showed anyone, including Jasmine, affection like this. And to do it every night, without prompting: it made my eyes well with tears.
I read Lev The Hungry Caterpillar. I put his pointy finger through the little holes of the book, where the caterpillar had eaten the fruit. Like Dov, if I let his hand go, he had worked out that if he put it back onto mine, I would know to help him stretch his finger out again.
Would his pointy finger improve after Panama? I wondered. Would the stem cells help his brain send the right messages to his hands? Don’t hope too much, I warned myself. I had just read neurosurgeon Dr Charlie Teo’s biography, Life in His Hands. One of his patients, head full of tumour, had said, ‘There is no such thing as false hope, only hope.’ Maybe hope was okay.
I repeated the picture book with Dov as Efrat ordered the chaos in the bathroom. She was about to return to Israel and I knew I would miss her.
‘Mummy?’ Jasmine screamed down the stairs.
‘What?’ I answered.
‘The TV! Can you turn on the TV?’
‘In a sec,’ I said.
‘Muuuuuummmmy!’ she squealed.
‘Hold on,’ I called, trying not to shout and break the calm mood in Dov and Lev’s room.
I laid Dov down on his tummy, pulled up his doona and placed his dummy a little way in front of his head. He would have to work to retrieve it and get tired in the process and ready for sleep.
I ran upstairs, turned on the TV and went into my room to change and unpack before reading Jasmine her story. I dug the bush flower essences out of my suitcase and put them in my bathroom.
How the hell did my body know it wanted this particular bush flower essence when I didn’t even know what it was? I asked myself again. My inner cynic was annoyed.
‘Shhh!’ I said, looking at myself sternly in the mirror. I picked up the small slip of paper and read aloud: ‘To live each day calm and relaxed, trusting the process of life. Trusting the process of life.’ Did I really think I could accomplish this? I hoped so. I had to try.
Twenty-four hours ago I had been alone, on retreat, with nothing to do but relax. There I’d been sad. Here I felt happy. How strange that after all this time I was still getting to know myself, to understand what warmed my heart, know the scars of my childhood and accept the limits of my mind. Panama was calling, but for a brief moment I heard not a ring of fear but the sound of a new adventure.
THIRTY-ONE
The next month was beyond busy. Jasmine was finishing year K at school, and concerts, class picnics and other pint-sized celebrations abounded. Voiceless was gearing up for our annual awards event; I had to give a speech to two hundred and fifty people, including many government and corporate VIPs, and we had a prominent guest speaker flying in from the US. Two new staff members were starting in the office. Everyone needed welcoming and looking after. The organisation Dror had been developing for the past year, THINKK, The Think Tank for Kangaroos, was about to be launched with a media event and evening speeches. Dov and Lev’s birthday party required planning, and Christmas lunches and Chanukah parties loomed.
Mum was receiving an Order of Australia at Government House and we were going to the ceremony. This would add to her already long list of degrees and honours, including her Doctorate of Philosophy (in French Literature), Chavelier dans L’Ordre des Arts et des Lettres (a recognition by the French government of her contribution to the arts) and an honorary doctorate from the University of Sydney. My dad nearly matched her, having received his own honorary doctorate and OA. Emile had co-produced another film but this one had gained an unbelievable amount of attention. The King’s Speech was suddenly up for a raft of Academy Awards, Producers Guild Awards and British Film Awards. He was over the moon. Our family was celebrating his achievement. Dror and I were invited to the red-carpet opening.
Amid all this, our trip to Panama was imminent. I thought constantly about packing until finally I had no choice but to pull out our largest suitcases and begin. What equipment should we take? I perused our stuff: the special-needs double pram that was too wide for doorways; regular double pram, narrow but uncomfortable; two walkers that didn’t look like wheelchairs; heavy bath chair with dirty suction cups; tailor-made wooden tables with cut-out shapes to fit Dov and Lev’s bodies; chair with bolster; chair without bolster, which was less supportive . . .
Perhaps I’d start with Dov and Lev’s clothes. Easy. I grabbed the AFOs that corrected the spasticity of their feet and the made-to-order bodysuits that provided neuro-physiological feedback on muscle positions.Ten shirts each, pants, socks, pyjamas, toothbrushes and toothpaste, a box of nappies, bibs for dribbling, bibs for protecting clothes that went under the plastic bibs for catching falling food. The plastic cups you could squeeze to release water into their mouths. Box of DITPA. A fistful of teaspoons. Their favourite Israeli dummies. Toys. Books. I raided the fridge for chocolate. I hadn’t even started on Jasmine’s things. Tigger hid under the coffee table and Ketem looked at me anxiously—they knew what the bags meant.
I went through the itinerary in my head. On the way to Panama we would stay with Dror’s sister, Ayalla, and her husband, Sharon, in LA. Jasmine could play with her cousins, Corelle, Eliav and Elad. She would stay in LA for the week we went to Panama and go to school with Corelle. I had double-checked that Jasmine didn’t want to come with us. ‘No,’ she’d said, she was too excited about staying with her aunt. She was growing up so fast. The day after we arrived Ayalla would make a Friday-night Shabbat feast. My father would fly in to join us. I hoped Dror’s parents, Anita and Yaakov, would re-embrace Dov and Lev warmly. The boys had grown up so much since they’d last seen them. Would they be disappointed by their lack of progress? Would the shock and grief show on their faces, creating a memory I could never erase?
The day after we arrived in Panama, Dov and Lev were going to have catheters put into their hands. That way they didn’t have to have needles pricked into their sensitive little veins every day. The treatment was meant to be simple and painless. They would have an injection of stem cells every day for four days. It would take five minutes, max. Then we would be free to do what we wanted. I couldn’t think of anything I wanted to do. Pray and pray.
I decided that on the first day of treatment I would wear my T-shirt with a picture of a rabbit coming out of a hat. A symbol of magic, of mystery.
‘Please God,’ I would say, ‘now is the time for a bloody miracle.’
I still wasn’t sure if I should swear in my prayers. I still wasn’t sure who God was, if he or she was indeed listening, or how the whole thing worked. I’d stopped caring so much, discovering a pleasure in the act of praying itself: a deep relief and release.
The plane took off.
‘Is it MS?�
� a woman in a nearby seat asked, looking over at Lev, who had reached out across the divider to touch her wrist. His wrist twisted unnaturally to the left and I stopped myself from correcting it. She stroked his arm. ‘Hi there . . .’ she said to him.
I let the question sit for a moment. We were on the plane, finally making our way to Panama via LA. The anxiety had been building up for a good ten days and I’d been close to catatonic the day before.
‘Good luck!’ said family, friends, therapists, kindergarten staff; even the airport passport control wished us luck when we ticked the ‘other’ box on the customs card and explained why we were travelling. But I didn’t want to hear it. Just wanted to be left alone. But now that we were officially on the road—or rather, in the air—and the future had moved to the present, I could smile again.
I knew what the woman sitting next to me meant; she had confused multiple sclerosis with cerebral palsy. I felt sorry for the awkward mistake and didn’t want to correct her. She looked about seventy-five; a kind, wrinkled face, thick West-Coast American accent, blow-dried highlighted hair, unassuming beige slacks and a white buttoned shirt. She told me she was from Oregon.
How funny, I had never met anyone from Oregon until the previous week, when our new Voiceless CEO had arrived to scope out the job. Dad and I had followed through with our plans to find someone, despite my fears that I was in essence handing over the running of Voiceless to a perfect stranger. Giving up my baby.
I had driven our new CEO around Sydney; she needed to find a house and a school for her son so the family could relocate. She’d told me what a great reputation Voiceless had and how humbled she was to be offered the position. It felt like such an honour that someone would be willing to move across the world to work at Voiceless. I felt proud. Maybe I’d achieved something after all.
And even with all my guilt, I was strangely okay.
Was I ‘trusting the process of life’?
I hadn’t finished those bloody Alpine Mint Bush drops.
The Miracle of Love Page 25