Escape to Malibu, Part 9

"I've got to get out of here right now," I told Bernie. "I feel dizzy & nauseous, something is very wrong, I just can't sit down." I told him under my breath so as not to cause a scene.

"O.K., honey," he said, & walked with me in Mom's big racoon coat to the entrance where there was a small vestibule leading both in & out of a cozy, too cozy little restaurant in Portsmouth, New Hampshire. The vestibule was cold, but not the bone-chilling cold, the deep freeze that awaited us outside.

I was losing it. The cool air helped, but I needed to walk. He walked with me, our boots squeaking & crunching the snow as boots will when the thermometer reads 20 below zero. We walked down a side street & ahead of us I saw a dark, brown, furry creature the size of a large dog. But it was not a dog. It was Fleet Street we were on & the creature I saw had large haunches like a kangaroo & a head like a kangaroo but covered with more curly fur than one. The most notable thing, the most frightening thing about this creature was its tail. It had a long tail like an overgrown rat's tail with a dark triangle at the end of it. It was demonic.

"Did you see that Bernie?" I shuddered.

"See what" he said in his usual non-seeing pedantic fashion.

"The creature that ran down that alley," I said.

"NUh-uh."

"Let's go back to the restaurant," I said, hoping the cold was wearing off the drug & herb in my system. We stalled again at the vestibule. I tried, but some force held me back from reentering that restaurant that night. I stared into Bernie's face & as I did it disappeared & in his place, where his face should have been, appeared the face of Jesus with a crown of thorns upon his head. His eyes looking with complete compassion into mine. He said not a word, but conveyed in that moment an incredible sense that he knew the suffering I was & would go through. Then He was gone.

I don't recall eating or how we got home to the farm, but we did. I felt estranged from my family for no one had seen or experienced these things, & they could not make sense of them. I can't really blame them. I am sure if I had not been so weak I may never have stumbled upon this realm that I did that night, but it altered the total construct of my rational world permanently.

The fairy tales my grandmothers read to me as a child were true. There ARE different layers of reality & different realms & kingdoms. I had stumbled into a darker realm, perhaps the telestial kingdom the Mormons have spoken of, quite by accident or so it seemed to me at the time.

Anyway my life was to get stranger before it got normal again. If you could ever call it normal. Actually I am quite content now with the uniqueness of it. I own it all & I earned it all. Every journey & adventure worth taking has its dangers lurking, its own set of crocodiles & evil spirits & challenges & shiny goals & holy grails.

A Swedish princess intuits this from her life experience. She wouldn't have it any other way. This princess is devoted to following her bliss wherever it my lead her. But I am digressing as I have often been accused of. I wandered off the main trek of the tale. My apologies.

We returned to the farm & I tried to sleep between feeding Adelaide, but I couldn't as usual of late, & puzzling over the meaning of these visions left me more exhausted when the rooster crowed than when the night owl hooted.

My mother was anxious & worried which was all she was capable of being at the time. Of course this was no help to me at all because she was just another child needing my attention which I wasn't able to give. I needed a real strong mother. My Dad worried too, but also was useless as he was, at the time, more devoted to his cups than anything else. He was actively boozing his life away. Our clan was ill-equipped to deal with the next generation coming into our lives, I have to admit.

I was trying more desperately each day to get some uninterrupted sleep. I craved this like a drowning man craves air or a parched one water. My whole body & mind screamed for lack of it. I was running on below reserve tank & close to the edge, had already crossed over the border of the scariest realm of all to people who pride themselves as being "normal". I was going insane from SLEEP DEPRIVATION. I can now understand in an experiential way how it can be used for torture. For torment. I would not wish it on my worst enemy.

That morning following the vision of Jesus, I looked into my own bathroom mirror at the farm, a lovely round gilded-framed mirror & watched my familiar earth-mother's face, (I always think my face looks very Swedish & almost androgynous at times), leave the reflection & replacing it, staring back at me was a visage of an old Russian-looking, rough-cast, peasant woman's face with a large bulbous nose complete with wart & hair growing out of it. Her head was covered by a shawl of subdued earth tones & she leered at me revealing a snaggle-toothed mouth with a tooth or two missing. She was hunched over & very homely.

I was horrified. I ran back to my bed & pulled the covers over me in an attempt to cocoon myself in familiar, warm bedclothes. I stared at the ceiling & attempted to calm my mind which was in overdrive, running on empty & circuit-blowing at random trying to make sense of the insensible. I was overwhelmed with fear & panic.

I was losing my mind, my fairy tale life was plumbing the darker realms, I was glimpsing through the gates of Hades, the underbelly of the adversary. So crazy was the last 24 hours, I dared not tell my parents or my husband, & darling & precious as my children were & are to me, I was less & less able to cope with their demands on mind & body. I was depleted inside & out as my body continued its slow, bloody leak.

My mother worried. Had she been Jewish she would have sat near me & wrung her hands. She is Gentile, but learned from one of her best friends the fine art of worry & chicken-soup making. Try as she would to take care of Adelaide, the two did not hit it off, & my infant daughter being a Scorpio she is could set the whole household upside down with the tantrums she as able to throw when something, anything was not going her way. Her mother going bonkers was anything but advantageous for her, poor thing, & she let everybody in a 10 mile radius know about it with her powerul set of lungs & steady rain of crocodile tears.

She would not snuggle up to Mom, he writhed in her arms like a serpent, but for some strange reason Dad seemed to have a magic touch with her. Something in the authority of his arms & the way he talked to her calmed her when no other living soul could quiet the screaming mass of protoplasm. He'd take her outside & on a little tour of the grounds, always checking on the calves & the chickens on his rounds, & pointing out the beauty of the stars at night she would finally sigh that wonderful shuddering sigh a babe will do meaning the storm is finally over & past, & inner calm & blessed sleep are in store & restored.