I’ve Come Home
Today is my mother’s birthday and on her birthday, I usually like to share this story of her first catch as an accidental midwife. I thought of sharing her birth story, as I know she was born at home, in Athlone, as was the case with most Cape Coloured births at the time. I know that when she was born, the house across the road burnt to the ground and that a woman was trapped inside it and died. Birth and death in the same road on the same day. Recently I held a ceremony of healing for myself , a circle of strong women who held me emotionally and spiritually while I let go of old shit and allowed the new to be birthed. And there I read this story to everyone. It is a story about my mother, a story she told me a long time ago. It is the story of when she, after twenty years of living in Switzerland, living a very Swiss and white existence, was led by a friend on an inner guide meditation which hauntingly reminded her of where she had come from. Her roots. A story which very much altered and shaped our lives. As births do. So today, on this day when she would have been 66, I share the story of her rebirth. “Close your eyes, Carol,” Matthias said. Matthias was a tall skeletal gay man. A Buddhist psychologist friend who worked with Carol at the psychiatric hospital in Bern on floor D2. Carol was lying on her back in Matthias’s sitting room. She lay, surrounded by a pile of Indian silk cushions, one under her head. The sun streamed in through the window and onto her, making her feel comfortable and sleepy. Her children were with their father, he was down from London on one of visits. Single parenting was hard, but it was also what she had chosen. She was enjoying this much needed and uninterrupted break. “Relax, just breathe. Let everything go. Forget about everything. Just be…” She felt the air move in and out of her nostrils. She felt her body relax and she felt her breath becoming more regular and prolonged. I could stay like this forever, she thought, her tired body tingling. And with each out breath, she felt the weight of her body sink into the floor. Aaaah… “Now, imagine yourself in a landscape…” She saw herself standing in a grassy meadow. She was high up, high above sea level, with the most marvellous view, rolling hills and snow-capped mountains. Blue skies. Blooming flowers. Bright green, dotted with buttercup yellows and pinks and whites. The air felt warm and she wanted to lie in the grass. She listened; the air was busy with the work of insects. A stereotypical Swiss summer scene. How positively blissful, she thought. She felt herself drift off. “Imagine an animal walking towards you from a distance. It is heading straight for you. Looking very determined.” She found this disconcerting. There was no animal and she felt that the presence of one would be irritating. How dare Matthias bring up something so silly and disconcerting? Then unexpectedly, a great big elephant’s head arose from behind a hill and its body crashed through the tranquil scene she had created in her consciousness. She panicked and wanted to run but her legs wouldn’t move. Where the fuck did that come from? It headed straight for her and yet seemed oblivious of her presence. Oh fuck, oh fuck, oh fuck! Just as she thought she was going to be trampled, it...
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