My Mother My Mirror Page 26

  The throat is the area of communication and creativity. Obviously women can be incredibly creative and communicative, but its interesting to notice subtle differences between the sexes. Very generally speaking, a woman tends to be more profoundly affected by the words that her lover speaks to her, or indeed sings to her, whereas what a man sees with his eyes affects him most deeply. We did an exercise in which Tim sculpted me into his ideal woman shape - which in his case was a sort of Boadicea stance – then leant back and gazed up at me admiringly. He enjoyed looking, I enjoyed being seen.

  Its easy to find instances in which these tendencies have been corrupted and distorted by repression and misunderstanding: when women are exploited for their bodies, when men become unhealthily obsessed with ogling women. But it was good to have it explained that the basic characteristics of man and woman are wholesome, healthy and the way nature intended.

  The ‘third eye’, on the forehead, signifies intuition, an area in which the man will sometimes defer to the woman. Then at the crown of the head the final energy centre of the body is the place where the polarities meet and become one.

  From a broader perspective: a man brings life energy and consciousness, a woman brings love; and each needs the other as a mirror, a reason for being. One without the other has no purpose or identity. When a man is loved by a woman, then he feels the strength to go out into the world and do what he has to do. When a woman is loved by a man, she feels safe and protected. When a man and a woman love each other they can learn how to use the flow of energy between them to bring them closer and closer to an experience of complete, blissful union with the divine.

  Some of the lessons we were given we could take away and practice with each other in our bedroom. I remember an exercise in which we took it in turns to speak from our genitals: to let them tell the story of all they had been through, from first being discovered when we were a child, through precious, intimate experiences and more disturbing ones that had made these vulnerable parts of us shrink away, or perhaps become unwell in some way. So many stories, just from this small part of the body! Its amazing what you can discover when you start to delve into the intricacies of who you are.

  The most profound exercise for me was one in which we were instructed to make love whilst giving a running commentary on our thoughts – whether they be fantasies about another person, doubts in our ability to please our partner, criticism of them, aggressive thoughts or soppy thoughts, or completely irrelevant thoughts about the crankshaft in the car or the menu for next Saturday’s supper! Tim and I had already established a relationship in which we agreed to embrace and explore the truth in every situation, and we knew the other person wasn’t about to jump down our throats if we admitted to strange fantasies or doubts. So it was a wonderful opportunity to discover new things about ourselves in this most intimate way, with the other person as an inspiration for our responses.

  The thing I learned the most was how much I suppressed the positive. I had by now learned to weep and wail about the things that held me back from freedom and joy, but when I found my heart wanting to say “I love you” it was like trying to prime a rusty pump: I felt ridiculously British and inhibited, the words got stuck in my throat... Yet when I did finally let them flow, it felt so good!

  For a couple of years I felt completely, gorgeously met by a partner who had the same sexual appetite that I did. And of course this didn’t happen in isolation: all our deep conversations and the activities we shared added to the rich mix. When we spent a whole day together I would feel the magnetism building up between us, waiting to be gloriously earthed in the night time. I used to ask him anxiously for how long he thought he could keep it up (literally!) and he told me he reckoned he would be fine well into his eighties.

  Having said all that, on the vertical plane (as opposed to horizontally, in bed) I sometimes struggled. I had chosen to be with someone who genuinely loved me and met me in so many ways, but in doing so I had tried to ignore my inbuilt preference for a certain kind of body type, and it kept niggling me that Tim didn’t quite fit. The thing that bothered me most was the way he presented himself to the world: particularly his posture, which to me looked cowering. We talked about it in depth, and I could see that it was my potential to give my power away to other people that made me hate someone so close to me looking as if they were doing the same thing.

  Yet to him it wasn’t the same: the way he stood was his way of feeling safe; he didn’t particularly care how he looked, in fact he had often had too much of the wrong kind of attention in his life and sometimes avoided people on purpose. He had also been surrounded by hostile bullies at school and in the form of his father, so it suited him to creep around under the radar where he wouldn’t be noticed. I pointed out that he was now with me, and I loved him and wanted to be proud of him; and slowly as he trusted me more he did begin to stand up straighter, though after a lifetime in a certain shape there was a physical limit to how much he could change.

  I should mention my friend Sally here (obviously, a different Sally from Tim’s friend) who was an enormous support around this time. She is a premie, knows my sister Lucia very well, is a lovely, warm, spontaneous, generous person, and has had a lot of similar life experiences to me. She even looks a little similar, with her blonde hair and blue eyes. I expressed my doubts about Tim to her and she was adamant that he was sound, kind, intelligent and loving, and there was no way I should let my superficial fussiness rob me of such an exceptionally good man. I was extremely grateful for her encouragement and reassurance.

  Tim and I would exchange massages: he would knead my shoulders with masterful strength, and I would pummel his back, sometimes even stand on the rounded bit to release the tightness. He enjoyed standing straighter, but would slip back into a safe hunch if he felt a bit tired or unloved. Sometimes we would dance in the sitting-room and I would teach him how to be cool and attractive. He tended to weave around me in a playful but slightly feminine way, so I put him in the middle and wove around him instead, trying to convince him that just standing there in his power, perhaps tapping a foot or subtly gyrating, was far more attractive than all that complicated body language that looked to me like pleading for attention. He tried, bless him! - although I sometimes got the impression he was just playing along for my sake, and didn’t really see the point of it all.

  Walking down the street, I would feel slightly embarrassed; in social situations I would sometimes go all awkward and distant and bug him about his posture... How much of this was my personal issue, which I would be able to overcome if I understood it sufficiently? How much could the way I saw him help him to change in a positive way: to stand tall and be more confident? And how much was there simply a difference between us that I must try to accept? I alternated between resenting him and hating myself for the way that I felt. But there was an understanding between us that every situation had the potential to bring us closer if we talked about it for long enough, and it always did in the end, so that for long periods I was happy and in love and didn’t even think about it.

  Surprisingly, after a few years it was me that began to feel less sexual, not because I loved Tim any less but because I was over fifty and my baby-making hormones were ebbing away. Menopause is a shock: nobody warns you about it. But even if they did, it would be almost impossible to believe. When I was young and hungry my passion seemed to come from the very core of me, and I couldn’t imagine it ever fading. But my periods became erratic, then I had some very heavy bleeds, then I bled less and less often; and after a while my body began to lose interest. Although I still felt sensual and loving, my intimate parts could easily become numb. I felt as if I was sitting in a back seat, detached from the whole process, and my body was saying, “What on Earth are you doing, putting that thing in there?” Now I was no longer fertile, nature had no reason to give me all the lovely sensations I had enjoyed for most of my life.

  It made me really sad. We still made love from time to time, but it wasn’t the
same, and often it just felt like too much effort. But Tim was such a sweetheart, and seemed genuinely happy to respond to my needs, holding me close but content to leave it at that. And life was rich and full, so we didn’t have time to sit around moping. Tim had by now moved out of the bungalow and was renting a workshop where he stored all his stuff, spent time mending the car or bits of furniture and generally pottering by himself, and sometimes spent the night; so although he was with me for a lot of time, he wasn’t actually living in my cottage, and there was always somewhere for him to go if we needed a break from each other.

  By the time I met Tim, I was seeing about nine clients a week, either in a little room in Totnes or in my living-room, where there was more scope for shouting and bashing cushions due to our thick walls, double glazing and distance from neighbours. I spent hours inventing provocative leaflets, with headings such as, ‘Are you just pretending to be a grown-up?’ ‘Found God but lost yourself?’ ‘Do you like yourself?’ and ‘Did you have an overbearing mother?’ It was deeply satisfying to help people tackle problems that I knew about from the inside, having so recently struggled through them myself. It was good for my self-esteem to use what I had learned: to experience the wisdom and compassion I had to offer. And it was good for my humility to realize just how similar we all are when it comes down to it: the same fundamental fears, insecurities, needs and dreams. Another little piece was knocked off my family illusion of superiority and separateness from other human beings.

  Tim supported me in my work, as he did in every area of my life, and I hope I did the same for him. We shared all our ups and downs, the joys and doubts, sticky predicaments and scary encounters. He still had an ongoing, difficult friendship with Sally, the girl he had gone to Leela with on that weekend when we got together. He met her a year or so before he met me and had always idolized her, in spite of the unkind way she treated him. After he had seen her he almost always felt confused and upset, and I loved being able to help him sort out his feelings and understand a little more about why she had such a profound affect on him.

  People would remark about what an un-jealous couple we were: I was quite happy for him to have women friends, and he had no problem with me going off dancing or to Leela on my own. If women liked him, it made me smile and love him that little bit more. I knew that it was most unlikely either of us would form a relationship with anyone else as deep as the one we shared.

  I helped him deal with his goofy, discoloured teeth, which he had been thinking about removing but hadn’t yet got round to. After talking to older people in the care home where he worked, he decided that dentures were the best option, since many of his teeth were in very poor condition; so a few at a time he had all the top ones removed, to be replaced by plastic. I nursed him through the tenderness and pain, and on one memorable occasion when we were away for a few days in Cornwall, I chewed up his fish and chips and fed it to him mouth-to-mouth like a baby bird!

  He helped me enormously when I was struggling with teenage Judy, as well as assisting me with my finances and doing practical things such as work on the car and in the garden, whilst I cooked meals and took care of the house. Often we would talk about our childhoods and help each other throw new light on them.

  If ever there was a feeling of disconnection or misunderstanding between us, or if one of us was struggling to deal with our feelings about something, I would take his hand and lead him to the sofa where we would sit one at each end and take it in turns to speak as honestly and sincerely as we could, the other person listening in a non-judging and loving way. I had done this with Peter, and with the occasional friend over the years; it was simple, but remarkably effective. After we had spoken for ten minutes each, and perhaps another ten minutes if necessary, we would invariably feel much more clear and free, and happy to get on with life.

  Sometimes if one of us was feeling particularly stuck and frustrated we would shut the doors, close the curtains and put on a CD that took us through the twelve stages of the AUM, though quite often we cheated, and after a bit of shouting and going crazy we decided we were ready for a nice long cuddle on the rug in front of the fire.

  41

  Greece and Norway

  When we arrived in Torbryan Judy was eight, so before her teens there were six years of relative peace and harmony, with the regular routine of going to and from the school in the next village, then at other times having friends round, eating meals, playing games, drawing or painting and making things, going on walks or cycle rides, visiting people, and reading books together.

  They also had pets: first Tosca, a female tabby cat, then a series of gerbils and mice, including a fat one which ate her thin friend after a week or so when Judy had forgotten to feed them. There followed a beautiful black, velvety rabbit who was a bit of a nuisance in that he wanted to copulate with everything in sight, but was very sweet the way he followed Judy everywhere she went, up to the top garden and back down again. Then Simon was given Skittles, a charming but nervous guinea-pig; and soon after that I took them to the ‘Creepy Crawly Show’ in a nearby town, where Judy became fascinated by snakes, so I got her one for Christmas. Over time she built up quite a collection of reptiles, but happily they all went to live at Sam’s house.

  So there were the predictable arguments about who was supposed to be looking after the animals, and of course in the end it was usually me who ended up doing it; and there was the affection and fun that the creatures brought to us; and in the end the sad but inevitable little funerals.

  Then from the age of about fourteen, Judy launched into an intense period of pushing against authority, finding out who she was as a separate individual and struggling for independence.

  Simon was completely different. He was of course that bit younger when we got there, and boys mature more slowly – but even when he started to turn away from me, there was none of the fire and fury that I got from Judy. I love it that they are two such contrasting characters; I also feel apologetic to Judy for the fact that because of my personality and hers and his, I found Simon easier to be with and was therefore more able to spend time with him doing the things we both enjoyed.

  Having said that, even from quite a young age there was a way in which Judy didn’t want to get on with me and actively pushed me away. And it had a definite edge to it: she was determined to be her own person despite the fact that her father didn’t properly see her, hear her, care for her – in fact gave her hell for his own selfish reasons, which she in no way deserved. And somehow Simon got caught in the cross-fire, so that apart from the fact that he was a rival sibling, he was also a convenient target for her furious resentment.

  Meanwhile Simon ambled along in his usual laid-back way, naturally patient, trying to keep the peace and not let any of the emotional people around him affect him too much. He absorbed himself in drawing and making things, skateboarding and riding his bike. At the age of seven, when we moved to Torbryan, he continually massaged my heart with the innocent things he said and did. I remember wonderful questions such as, “Is there more world, or more not world?” and mysteriously serious statements such as, “If we were nowhere we would be spiralling round and round in a tube.”

  His kindness and empathy were obvious from early on. He hated it when Judy carried Tosca around in a rucksack when she was miaouing to get out, or if I smacked her for jumping up onto the food table. His eyes would tear up easily, which always filled me with remorse. And most of all he was a very cuddly boy: he was happiest when sitting on my lap, or at the very least sitting beside me and leaning on me.

  The first holiday that he and I took together was to Greece, and for me at that time his company was delightful. We always had things to chat about: I loved the way his mind worked, and loved to feed his curiosity. With Simon life always seemed to flow: we would take little risks and have little adventures, but we were in tune with each other, so even if things went wrong we’d laugh about it and discuss what had happened, and somehow in the end it always turned out
OK. Our energy was quite well matched, in that we would tire out at about the same time; and we were generally interested in doing the same things.

  Before we left, Judy handed me a folded piece of paper with instructions for recording what we did every day, and a date at the top, so that she had a full report when we returned. This became a tradition, so that every holiday after that we kept a diary along with our photos and postcards, and it was a valuable way of storing happy memories.

  On our Greek holiday we had a nice shady ground floor hotel room with two beds and a shower, and only a matter of yards outside there was a big, blue pool that Simon played in at every opportunity, so by the time we got home he had gone from swimming one or two strokes to being able to do a whole length. Every morning there was a large buffet breakfast, from which we saved the odd boiled egg and roll for our lunch; then we would set out to explore the territory. The beach just down the lane was OK, but a half hour walk through groves of walnut, nectarine, lemon and olive trees took us to a far nicer one. Sometimes Simon found this walk in the heat a bit much, but we made it several times, and enjoyed the proper sand with sun loungers and ice-cream at the other end.

  Once we went on a boat trip around the islands, discovering even lovelier beaches and pottering through old Greek towns. Another time we joined a coach trip to a place called ‘Meteora’ where there were amazing old monasteries built on the top of huge crags of rock so the monks were truly cut off from the world. By the time we got there they had been made much more accessible, but apparently in their day, both monks and supplies had to be winched up through a window in a large string bag. We marvelled at the dramatic scenery, and I bought a small golden icon of Mary and Jesus.