Unconditional Love

by Jocelyn Moorhouse

  I looked at Dad, tears stinging my eyes. ‘He’s my only hope, Dad,’ I said, surprising myself. This was maybe the first time in my life I had ever talked back to my father. ‘Don’t take my only hope away. Don’t do that.’

  Dad stared at me, speechless. Mum grabbed his arm, a warning to say no more. He looked down at the table and said, ‘Of course.’

  During those years we adopted a technique called ‘extincting’ a behaviour. If Lily screamed when I wanted her to have a bath, I was supposed to ignore the screams. The theory was that if you do not react to negative behavior, the behaviour will eventually go away, become ‘extinct’. The night before Mum and Dad were due to fly back to Australia, we had a big family dinner. Lily decided to scream. She wanted to remind us how much she hated sitting at the table. We were trying to extinct this behaviour at the time. I handed earplugs to Mum, Dad, Spike and PJ. I served the food and chatted away in a normal tone, completely ignoring the banshee in her booster seat. I put food on her plate and she flung the plate to the ground. I ignored that and gave her a new one.

  Mum decided to play along and started asking Spike about his day. Spike, barely tolerating his sister’s noise, tried to answer, but gave up, exasperated. Mum, trying to keep things cheerful, started singing a song to Spike. ‘I love you and don’t you forget it, baby!’

  Spike’s face took on an expression that said ‘I am among lunatics’. After a few minutes he pleaded, ‘May I leave the table, Mummy?’

  When I saw his brave, stressed-out face, the insanity of the situation dawned on me. What was I doing making him sit here in this absurd situation?

  ‘Of course, darling,’ I said. I gave everyone permission to leave the table. Mum stayed with me for solidarity.

  Eventually we let go of ‘normal’ and ate with our plates on our laps. We saved our energy for important stuff, like love and acceptance and fun. Who needs normal, anyway?

  It was hard to balance the needs of Spike with the needs of Lily. One day, I was checking on him after he had fallen asleep. There he was in his flannel pyjamas, dinosaurs all over his bed. I noticed his fingernails were too long. No one had trimmed them. I had forgotten. I felt like the worst mother in the world. I vowed to spend more time with him. We decided to create a special time, when Spike would have me all to himself, when there could be absolutely no interruptions. The only rule was no computer games or TV. Spike decided he wanted to make his own James Bond–type movies, but starring his toys as the bad guys. I was camera operator, soundtrack and all the voices of the toys, while Spike was the star. After we had finished filming, we would watch the movie together, laughing at all the silly bits.

  Lily began biting and hitting me. To extinct the behaviour, I tried very hard not to react while she sunk her teeth into my neck or shoulder. When Betty Bostani saw my bruises during a clinic meeting she asked me what was happening. I told her I was doing what she said, acting like nothing was happening when Lily bit me.

  ‘I didn’t mean that, Jocelyn,’ she said, horrified. ‘You have to let her know it is not okay to physically hurt people.’

  The therapists created a program where we made a chart with ten velcro squares. Then we made a set of ten yellow happy faces that we could stick to the velcro squares. For every ten minutes that Lily did not bite or hit one of us, she earned a happy face to go on the chart. After she got ten happy faces (one hundred minutes) she could have a marshmallow. It worked. She stopped hitting and biting me.

  In 2001, the film critic Elvis Mitchell wrote an article for the New York Times asking ‘whatever happened’ to me—I hadn’t made a movie in such a long time, and the movies I had made in America had not been as impressive as Proof. My agent sent me a copy of the article, thinking I would be chuffed. It was actually like a knife to my heart. Sure, it was nice to have a major critic talk about Proof with such affection (in the New York Times, no less). I still felt like I was a movie director, but it had been five years since I had been behind the camera, and I was being referred to in the past tense. Did this mean my career was over? Was it time for me to grieve that loss as well?

  Eventually all the hard work with Lily started to pay off. She learned to speak in simple sentences, to read simple words and books, to write a little bit, and even to use a computer and a mouse. She grew less frustrated as her ability to communicate grew stronger. It was still a struggle for her at times, though. She could communicate simple things, but anything complicated, or hard to describe, eluded her. When Lily is sad or ill, her eyes look like those sad eyes you see in Japanese animations. Big, liquid and heartbreaking.

  I clearly remember a time when Lily was nine or ten. She had been acting aggressively, screaming and hitting, for a couple of months, which had become out of character for her. We had consulted doctors and psychologists about what to do.

  One day I walked into her room and saw the expression in her eyes that sets all my alarms off. She walked towards me, looking at me, and grabbed my hand. She put it to the side of her sad little face. ‘Owie…tooth,’ she said carefully.

  A bolt of lightning went through me. She had clearly communicated a very specific problem to me, but that problem was that she was in pain. ‘Your tooth hurts?’

  ‘Yes. Your tooth hurts,’ she said, in that funny way she had of getting her pronouns mixed up.

  ‘I will help you, darling,’ I said. I rang around, explained and got an emergency appointment with a special needs dentist. The nurse told me that most kids with autism panic in a dentist’s chair and it might be necessary for Lily to be given a heavy sedative. This turned out to be the case. After the procedure, the dentist told me that Lily had five infected teeth, which all had to be extracted. She had probably been in agony for months, he said. I wished I had not let Lily take charge of cleaning her own teeth. I had been so proud of her independent skills. Once again I felt I was the worst mother on earth.

  We took her home, groggy from the anaesthetic. She kept walking around and banging into the walls, disoriented, unless we grabbed her in time.

  Finally the grogginess wore off, and Lily looked at me with those big anime eyes. ‘Put teeth back,’ she said.

  I stared at her, stunned once again by her level of articulation. ‘We can’t put them back,’ I tried to explain. Then I remembered that the dentist had given me Lily’s teeth in a small container. The container was in my pocket.

  ‘I have your teeth,’ I said. ‘Do you want them?’

  ‘Want teeth.’

  I opened the box and gave it to her. They were her teeth, after all. This seemed to satisfy her and she walked away with the little container, fascinated. Now the pain had gone, her aggression disappeared. Had it simply been her way of trying to tell me something that she couldn’t express in words?

  21

  All that we love deeply becomes a part of us.

  HELEN KELLER

  The Italian producer Uberto Pasolini had bought the movie rights to Murray Bail’s novel Eucalyptus, published in 1998. He had funding from Fox Searchlight and, late in 2001, he asked me to adapt the book and direct the movie. I was flattered that Uberto had remembered me and I was excited about writing the adaptation. And then, early in 2002, PJ was offered the job of directing a live-action version of J. M. Barrie’s Peter Pan. Tinker Bell, Captain Hook, pirates and a massive crocodile. Flying children and mermaids. Sword fighting! Spike and I begged PJ to say yes.

  He agreed and threw himself into planning. It was around this time that I discovered I was pregnant. I was happy. A new life. A sibling for Spike and Lily. On 4 February 2002, I wrote in my diary:

  So, I’m pregnant! PJ and I are ecstatic. Naturally I am also full of trepidation because of my age (41). Will bubba be autistic? My biggest worry is if I miscarry.

  12 February:

  I went to see Dr Crane today. The ultrasound showed that baby’s heart is beating nicely, but the yolk sac around the baby is thicker than it should be, which means that I could...possibly will…miscarry within the ne
xt few days… Poor baby. Hang in there please. I don’t want to lose you. Always something sad going on. Meanwhile, I am trying to write the script for Eucalyptus. I want to stay calm. I want the egg yolk sac thing to go back to normal.

  21 February:

  Its heart stopped beating. It’s over. I still feel nauseous and exhausted. Dr Crane says my body still thinks it’s pregnant. I went for a walk and found myself in tears. I am trying to write, trying to take my mind off the sadness and to attempt to meet my insane Feb 28 deadline for Eucalyptus. PJ came with me today. He was very strong and supportive. I’ll always wonder what could have been. I think I am too scared to try again. It’s unusually warm today. It feels like Sydney. I want to go home. It was our fourteenth wedding anniversary yesterday. Still waiting for PJ to write yet another version of the ending to Peter Pan.

  23 February:

  Lying in bed, feeling a bit weird. Yesterday I had the D&C, ‘the sucking out’ procedure…When I woke up PJ told me he was a lot sadder than he thought he would be. He told me I am very brave. The loss of hope is always hard. I don’t know if I want to try again. I am afraid of too much sadness.

  The Peter Pan shoot was epic. The producers wanted to shoot the film in Australia, at the Village Roadshow Studios on the Gold Coast. Rhonda and Heather decided not to come with us this time. Rhonda wanted to start her own family and Heather was pregnant. Our new nanny was Australian. Kylie Handley was a blonde bundle of energy with sparkling blue eyes. She had a fearless, playful personality and got along with Lily and Spike right away. She even learned how to do some of Lily’s ABA therapy. We had brought a fantastic therapist with us from Los Angeles, a brilliant, funny young man, Shaun Cochrane. He and Kylie became good friends and a great team.

  Rhonda and Cori had flown with us to Australia to help us settle in. When it was time to say goodbye, we were all very emotional. Cori told me that Rhonda cried a lot of the way back to the USA. Rhonda went on to adopt a beautiful little girl, who is the love of her life, but she has never forgotten Lily or our other children. We are still in touch and I consider her a dear friend. Kylie was our nanny for a number of years and travelled back to the USA with us. She also remains a good friend of the family. (a lot of flying shots) and dog scenes.

  I worked as a producer on Peter Pan. My office was directly under the Lethal Weapon rollercoaster that operated hundreds of times per day at the Warner Bros. Movie World theme park next door. We used seven of the eight sound stages on the film. Each one had a different set, all dreamed up by the brilliant production designer, Roger Ford. I helped out by directing second unit

  I was worried about how to keep Lily, now six, progressing in her therapy. We agreed to fly supervisors from the Lovaas Institute in Los Angeles to Queensland every three months. They could help us train local therapists and keep a close eye on what Lily was learning. Mum and Dad came to stay with us, as did Kathy’s husband, Geoff. He took time off from his teaching job to become Spike’s home school tutor. Spike was nearly thirteen and being part of Peter Pan was a dream come true for him. He even played a small role as one of the children who whispers ‘I do believe in fairies!’. He asked if he could say something else, but I told him he had to stick to the script.

  Halfway through the shoot, I discovered I was pregnant again. The odds of having another autistic kid were one in twenty. As soon as I knew I was pregnant, I stopped eating any food that had gluten or casein in it, just in case. I refused to take progesterone, just in case. I was now forty-two, so the doctor insisted I have chorionic villus sampling to check for chromosome abnormalities in the foetus. Nothing was detected, and I found out we were going to have another boy. PJ was so thrilled he announced to the crew that Jack (after my Dad) Peter (after Peter Pan) Moorhouse Hogan was on his way. After we finished the shoot, we flew back to Los Angeles.

  Lily was home-schooled, using ABA, until she was ten. She had learned to communicate and answer questions. She had learned to take herself to the toilet and wash her hands afterwards. She had learned to read (Grade 1 level), write her name and do simple drawings. She had learned to type. She had even learned how to play the piano a bit.

  One day I saw her peeking through a small hole in the fence into our neighbours’ backyard.

  ‘What’re you looking at?’ I asked her. She didn’t answer. I peeked through the hole and saw three kids Lily’s age. They were running and jumping through a sprinkler. Lily was smiling. She had no friends her own age. That’s when it hit me: it was time for her to go to school. We had done all that we could for her at home. We had not cured her. She had not ‘caught up’ to her peers. But it didn’t matter any longer. We loved Lily for who she was.

  In Culver City, fifteen minutes away, was the Village Glen School, where the whole student population was on the autistic spectrum, ranging from moderately severe children like Lily to brilliant, high-functioning kids with Asperger’s syndrome. Lily started there in August 2003.

  We were finally saying goodbye to the autism crisis period of our lives. It had been seven intense years, and it had turned our family and our home upside down and inside out. PJ and I felt as if we were letting go of the reins.

  Jack was born on 22 October by planned C-section, which my doctor had insisted on due to US insurance issues. When PJ handed him to me, blissful happiness took over. I couldn’t stop looking at him. He had a lot of dark hair and a dimple in each cheek. My first dimpled baby! I had given birth to an elf. When he was a week old, I was propping him up on my tummy, telling him he was the most beautiful boy in the known universe, when he smiled at me. And kept smiling. We connected, my little man and me.

  I used to wear him in a baby sling everywhere. I was determined that this baby would be constantly held. I would do everything in my power to prevent him becoming autistic. I chose not to get him vaccinated. I stayed on a gluten-free casein-free diet until I weaned him. When I couldn’t hold him, PJ would take over, or his beloved new babysitter Antonia, or Cori. I sang to him all the time. (When he developed language, one of the first phrases he put together was ‘No singing’. Possibly I overdid the songs.) He was so normal, so engaged and attached to us. We weren’t going to let autism anywhere near him.

  In December 2003, the premiere for Peter Pan took place at the Egyptian Theatre in Hollywood. It was a big, glamorous event and we hired a room at the hotel next door, where Antonia sat with two-month-old baby Jack, so I could breastfeed him when he needed me. The next day we attended a party at Jason Isaacs’ place by the beach. Jason had played Captain Hook brilliantly in Peter Pan.

  To entertain his guests, Jason had hired a psychic. We all thought it was silly, but I decided to see what the woman had to say. I had never been to a psychic before and was quite cynical about it all. As far as I was concerned, she knew nothing about me. (I could be wrong—Jason might have told her something.) She read my palm, consulted some Tarot cards, then said: ‘I can see you have four children.’

  ‘No,’ I said.

  ‘Strange, I see four children.’

  ‘Well, I had a miscarriage,’ I said, almost without thinking. That’s how psychics find out clues during a cold read, of course. People volunteer stuff about themselves.

  ‘Hmmm,’ she said, ‘maybe that’s it…No…You’d better be careful if you don’t want a fourth child. I am definitely seeing four children.’

  I laughed. Then she asked me if I had a question for her. I found myself asking, ‘When will I have peace in my heart?’

  She didn’t blink. ‘Seven years,’ she declared.

  In 2010, seven years later, we moved back home to Australia for good. Maybe that was it? It did feel wonderful to go home. Or maybe the psychic said the same thing to everyone.

  22

  Talking about dreams is like talking about movies, since the cinema uses the language of dreams; years can pass in a second and you can hop from one place to another. It’s a language made of image. And in the real cinema, every object and every light means something, as in a
dream.

  FEDERICO FELLINI

  I finished the screen adaptation of Eucalyptus in early 2004. It had taken many drafts before I was happy with it. Murray Bail’s novel is the story of a man, Holland, whose young wife, Beatrice, gives birth to twins. One of the babies dies. Beatrice is so distraught that she dies of a broken heart, leaving Holland to raise his precious daughter, Ellen, on his own. As a memorial to his wife, Holland plants a forest of eucalyptus trees, one of every type—about eight hundred.

  By the time Ellen is eighteen, she has become famous for her beauty. Eager young men keep turning up to court her. To keep the men at bay, Holland devises an impossible competition: whichever man can correctly identify every eucalyptus tree on his property will be allowed to marry Ellen. Horrified, Ellen wanders through the forest, seeking solitude. One day she comes upon a mysterious young man who proceeds to tell her beautiful stories, inspired by the names of all the trees. The stories are sensual, hilarious, poignant and frightening.

  I fell in love with the story, or rather stories, of Eucalyptus. I tried to keep the script faithful to the book, but had to lose some of the stories. The visual possibilities offered by all the different time periods and locations in the novel were tremendously exciting. I imagined how the film could look like a fairytale. One story was set on an ocean liner in the 1920s. Another was set in a fantastical desert where a beast man kept a girl captive in a stone hut. Another was set on the Kokoda Trail. I wanted to make Eucalyptus a jewel box of a film.

  I sent the script off to Uberto and Fox Searchlight with high hopes. But Uberto thought it was too clever, too intellectual. I was very disappointed and told him I would withdraw from the project if he wanted me to. But then we heard from Fox Searchlight: they loved the screenplay and decided to make the film. Uberto was surprised, but adamant that I should stay on as director. He said he would back off and let me do the script my way after all. I felt uneasy, but decided to stay with the project. Uberto had asked Lynda House to come on board as the Australian producer and we were looking forward to making another movie together. The whole family, including Jack’s nanny, Antonia, flew to Sydney.