Escape to Malibu: Part 7

We left New Zealand after our six-month stay with me pregnant again after battling a bout of giardia lamblia infections that went through our communal home & several ring-worm run-ins, not to mention a frightening night of croup.

Baby Joshua kept us up within the bathroom misting his sore little trachea. I'd brought along my own first aid kit which included a 20 day supply of Amoxicillin & a book called "Taking Care of Your Child" which was laid out with flow charts for every conceivable problem from bedwetting to psoriasis, asthma to seborrhea.

That book replaced Dr. Spock's authority for me, & condensed all the nursing books I ever lugged under my tired arms at Simon's. It saved my sanity. Clear & concise it is. Straight & to the point. When to call the doctor, when to apply home remedies. Just my kind of tome. For all you semi-literate videoholics look that up in your Webster's International. The English language is to be used & enjoyed.

Anyway, we left New Zealand for Australia, Bangkok, Thailand, Greece, & Europe before touching ground again at Logan International in time for Joshua's May birthday. Joshua learned to walk on a Boeing 747 over the Atlantic Ocean. He was weaned from breastmilk to cow's milk & juices in Greece & enjoyed European fare thoroughly. Actually he sampled international cuisine throughout the trip through the Happy Baby Food grinder we packed to make all his food Happy Baby Food. He ate eveything we did.

I felt like superwoman those last weeks in New Zealand; head nurse of the Children's Ward, breastfeeding Joshua, & carrying yet another new life in my womb. As fully productive as I could possibly be. And very, very happy.

One episode New Year's Eve with Bernie foreshadowed the Bluebeard-like monster he could & would become that year. It was when Marta & I lingered in the ladies' room & shared a cigarette. I didn't tell him but he smelled it on my breath & became livid. He almost divorced me then & there. Perhaps I would have fared better if he had then & there. But there's no going back. Remember Lot's wife.

So, there we were, back in Beantown, back to our cozy, New England existence. Our house had been well & lovingly tended in our absence & the remainder of that summer.

I, being great with child, worked at a Girl Scout Camp in Salem, New Hampshire while my husband helped my Dad tend his 20 acre antique farm on th seacoast, about an hour away. I had Joshua with me, running now all over the place including near the lake the camp was situated on & giving my adrenaline system a periodic run for the money, which, by the way, was a mere pittance for the crises I ended up having to deal with there. (At last! you're thinking, she's getting to the disasters!)

Well yes, I was, by now great with little baby girl (I hoped) & part of my daily routine was to hike a mile & a half route around to the cabins for a cabin inspection. I found this amusig as I am, despite my R.N. status, not known for my meticulous cleanliness as a rule. As a rule my own personal quarters 99 times out of a hundred look like a cyclone hit it as I'm always jumping out of civilian clothes into whites & visa versa.

But I was stuck with the job of neatness marshall & did in fact enjoy the exercise My best friend Jenny from high school had the camp director job & was the one who drafted me into this in the first place. I had envisioned a long semi-lazy summer on the farm working a couple of evenings at Excalibur Hospital as I had before we left, but took pity on Jenny & thought camp would be an easy, pleasant change of pace.

Change of pace, yes. Easy, no.

First there was the matter of lesbian love affairs was intermittently called upon to listen about & counsel. I really could not have been in a more heterosexual way at the time ( & to this day I might add), but because I was the nurse I was the receptive ear & "healer" in the camp.

In my spare time I read "The World According to Garp" & marvelled at the parallels between my own life & Garp's mother's, although I still love fashion & never would give it up & just wear white!

I thought she was extremely clever to have jumped a dying pilot & often wondered why I was so bent on making a domestic blissful haven for my spouse.

After all, for the second summer in our 5 year union I was essentially abandoned to my own devices while he, Bernie, did his thing & visited every once in awhile. (The first summer of our marriage he went to Outward Bound.) I've turned the table on him since then, though.

Then there was the bedbug epidemic in the Hillside cabin, necessitatng the complete washing & drying of 13 sleeping bags while the maintenance man fumigated the cabin.

And the three pigs on the loose, (We were teaching the girl scouts something about an ecosystem.) And the near death of the inexperienced cook who blew the stove up in her face the first week. And the attempted CIT suicide (she walked as far as she would in the water, but couldn't swim). On & on it went.

Of course, there were the usual bee stings, homesickness, not so usual stomach viruses associated with food preparation, sexual identity questions ("It looks like jelly bean," "What looks like a jelly bean?" "This", & points to clitoris). And panic whenever Joshua turned up missing which was every once in awhile, only to be found laughing & giggling in some girl scout's arms.

My poor friend Jenny lost it. She cracked & checked into a hospital. I guess my hormone were protecting me at the time so I didn't. I maintained a madonna-like serenity through it all & shuttled from the hospital to camp with each crisis, always making sure emergency arrangements for Joshua's care were in place first. I hardly noticed my rotundity so preoccupied with the constant drama was I. Adlaide (my daughter-to-be) would kick reassuringly to let me know another HEALTHY girl scout was on the way so I never really worried about her. She was my ballast in a rocky sea. She remains so to this day.

Camp drew to an end at last & we, the weary band of world travelers turned homeward to Concord. We had lived from Spring to Summer to Spring to Summer & for the first time in 2 years faced Fall & Winter again, back at the birth place of American freedom. Only this time there were 3 & 3/4 of us. Occupying a very small house which badly needed an addition put on it.

That bleak Fall, (now we are on the crest of the disaster wave, or if you will, the ham part of the sandwich, or the chauvinist pig part of the tale), I was rounder than round & still, in my ninth month looking for shift work through nursing agencies. I went out a couple of times, but the rest homes I was sent to considered me nearly useless since I wasn't able to lift 300 lb. semi-comatose diabetic patients. All I could do was push pills.

The beginning of the modern day apostacy was upon us, the dooming (instead of dawning, get it?) of the Reagun era began. I felt it in my very core & being. As social service cut-backs were made we, in the "trenches", the hospitals & nursing homes were required to take care of more patients with less staff & material. Work took on a nightmarish quality. How could one woman possibly reasonably care for 65 Italian-speaking elders in the North End, 30 of whom required injections with only one aide? This is making it in Massachusetts? I began to loath my work & my profession.

Bernie's beard began turning bluer & bluer. "I need help with the bills, you must work part-time" he'd intone in his no-nonsense voice. And the days grew colder & bleaker. My pineal gland sensed the lack of light. He was gone from the crack of dawn until long after the sun set. Joshua was careening into the terrible twos & a handful to say the least.

Adelaide came into the world like a human explosion. I went into labor at 2:30 in the morning & she arrived at 4:15 AM, all nine pounds, eleven ounces of her. I felt ravaged. She had enormous blue eyes & as I looked at her I had this strange feeling that she knew far more & was more advanced psychically than I was.

I bled profusely after her birth. I felt I never had enough time or space to recover after she was born. And truly I never did until now, when I have the time to write about it all during the nights I sit vigil in one after another sick person's room doing private duty.

We slipped ineviteably into Winter that fateful year, 1979 &, as I said, I bled alot & worked feverishly to be the perfect mother & get my figure back & get ready for Christmas when we would set out on a journey down the Eastern seaboard which preluded disaster.

A man walked into my life at this juncture, this critical crossroad of my path with an archangel's name. His hair a flaming orange-golden, his skin white as cream & his eyes an intense blue. He had the physique & grace of a demi-god. His attention to me in my rotund & bleak state of mind that end of that year of 1979 was electricity that sustained my spirit into my personal twilight zone. He knows who he is, & I know,& so does most of the Concord town folk as our affair ignited & inflamed the staunchly puritanical of the village. In this narrative I shall simply call him Archangel & encourage my readers to read Revelation in the Holy Bible to discover his God-given name.

Anyway, prior to Adelaide's birth he came to me in answer to a call I'd made to him when searching for a mother's helper prior to my second confinement. He had run an ad in the Concord Jammin' seeking childcare work. I was intrigued that a twenty-six year old man; male musician would be interested in such work. He seemed eminently enlightened to me.

He came over. I introduced him to Joshua who looked up at him clinging to my left leg, & showed him my piano with a certain pride mixed with timidity that I always feel when it comes to my music.

I showed him the garden area, where my organic carrots could be pulled, discoursed upon the cornfields & the sacred ground behind our little abode, & with beating heart attempted to draw the angel out.

We were drawn to each other like magnets. He saw Madonna. I saw Christ. Of course hindsight is always 20/20 & I am truly Charity & he is truly Archangel, but at the time we each neatly filled the other's idea of perfection. He was, & to this day I am convinced, only attracted to the unattainable woman, & at that time I could not have been more so in my fecund state. And, although I was unable to even touch my toes, to lie comfortably in any position, once meeting archangel I could think of little else but lying near him. I was totally in lust.

I'm in love now for the very first time, genuinely in love with someone who is my soul mate so I know now what I did not know then; the distinction between lust & love.

These are the elements; lust is temptation, love is a fulfillment, lust thrives on secrecy, love grows in sunlight & moonlight, lust longs for the forbidden, love secures eternity.

Lust requires deceit, love insists on honesty. My archangel saw me & set out to attain me precisely because he thought I would never be attained. I fell for him because he flattered me. Me, I, who felt like a swollen elephant & later a deflated weather balloon after Adelaide's arrival, & did not for a second believe I would ever amount to anythig more than a human feeding machine, was wooed by his pretty words, & later his stolen piano bench kisses.

I felt trapped & near suffocating in my tiny home teeming with young life. Archangel offered blessed escape. Through music, a perfectly legitimate venue I reasoned. And he had a partner so it wasn't solely he & I who performed or went out to clubs at night, we had a "chaperone" so to speak. I am sure Ned Planet, Archangel's partner, was the only reason Bernie let me out those musical nights.

Anyway, as I said before, my archangel supplied the only electricity in my life at that time & for this I will always be grateful. What later happened, & didn't happen between us I am not so grateful for, but in reality he taught me more about the distinction between love & lust so I really can't complain.

Without the experiences he put me through I would not to this day perhaps, have been able to pray for & receive the mature love I now give AND receive. I would not have found my King. So thank you Archangel, for the rose & the thorns.