Escape to Malibu, Part 11

The night before my first incarceration was "out there, man". Communication between my husband & myself was non-existent. I was a broken, desperate woman. In my too full house brimmig with life & activity I was intensely lonely. I ached for I knew not what then, but MORE.

I had been averaging 3 hours of sleep a night for some time, at least a month or two. Hindsight is 20/20 as they say, & in retrospect I know I was suffering from sleep deprivation which led to a bizarre course of events that unfolded that terrible March of 1980.

Anyway, as I said before, Bernie & I were not communicating at all. One night, as usual, I could not sleep. I had nursed Adelaide & lay down next to my husband who had long since gone off to sleepy-bye and & was gently snoring away. I too, drifted off momentarily, only to wake (or so I thought at the time) with my mind full & overflowing with frustration. I had been dreaming & in my dream I was trying to get through to Bernie that I was decompensating, that I needed household help to no avail.

Suddenly, I was standing at the foot of our bed gazing down at my husband, Weirdly, my own body which lay reclined next to his.

"I'm out of my body I realized to myself. "There it is on the bed, & I am not in it at all!"

After the initial shock,I felt tremendous exhilaration & freedom. I knew, without a doubt that "I" was not a body at all. "I" am a soul, a spirit. My essence was entirely free to be in or out of my body.

As this thought came to mind I was suddenly transported out of my house & into outer space instantaneously. Some unseen soothing voice was guiding me. As I "astral projected" (a term I learned later on in my research to apply to this novel experience), I was given an incredibly beautiful view of our precious planet earth, a view similar to the one thousands of people have shared watching the movie "To Fly" at the Smithsonian Aeronautics Museum. A view brought back to earth in photographs by our astronauts in rockets.

The earth looked like a beautiful blue-green-white marble set like a jewel lit by the sun with a backdrop of velveteen blackness all around. My guide whispered, "Take this vision in & keep it sacred. It shall sustain you through many trials," or words to that effect. I drank the vision in, marvelling at the vantage point I was in.

"You don't NEED a metal spaceship to see the world from here," I thought to myself. I was excited about this discovery. I couldn't wait to tell people about it. Bear in mind, however, that this all ocurred before Shirley MacLaine had gone "out on a limb" in public about such experiences, & that my astral travel was occurring in the bastion of New England conservatism rather than the free-spirited atmosphere of Malibu. I was in for some hellacious moments back on the planet.

I don't know how long I was out there looking at this precious planet jewel we call home, but it seemed like a mere wink of an eye before it was time to navigate my return. I recall pin-pointing Concord in my mind's eye & zooming in to earth's outer atmosphere as dawn broke over the Eastern seaboard.

But before I arrived back in my bedroom I was gven a vision of the future. I saw a wedding takng place between a young man whose particular features were not noteworthy, & a breathtakingly lovely blond woman with a wreath of flowers in her hair. Both were standing barefoot with a small assembly gathered in the cornfield behind our house. The bride held a bouquet of informally gathered wildflowers & stood gazing lovingly up at her husband's face.

My spirit witnessed this scene as one watches a movie. I was observing a slice of the future, I knew this with certainty, & the lovely girl I beheld was Adelaide. Then I was back in the cramped little bedroom of our over-brimming farmhouse & not at all well.

Too much had transpired for one night. Too many veils had been pulled aside & I had been exposed to too much reality in too little time. I wanted to STOP so I could quietly & carefully sort through it all & make sense out of the non-sensical.

My husband Bernie, the evening before this night of intergalactic travel, had been downstairs talking in hushed tones to our pediatrician. I was watching Nova upstairs. The program was about primates, specifically the great apes & their mating & rearing practices. I was moved by the closeness the creatures maintained with their young. How family units gathered closely together to support & protect the young-bearing females.

How out of sync I felt from my natural self that night! How worn out & exhausted & alienated from my own family I was feeling.

Anyway, I found out later Bernie was calling to find out what to do about his going-bonkers wife. Our pediatrician, Dr. Highny, is a woman whom I'd been working with through my pregnancy with Joshua & a woman who had been my pediatrcian growing up. I held enormous respect for her as she was a ground-breaker; a woman who made it through medical school with a husband & a child,then opened a private practice having five children.

She was also a formidable force which I began to loathe & fear, as she united forces with Bernie to strip me of my freedom to be a nursing mother. I hated her for that. I've worked though my rage & anger now, but I hated what she did in allegiance to a misogynist, male-dominated medical profession which tore apart my nursing infant daughter & myself.

I tried to stop time that morning in March when I returned from outer space. Literally. I grabbed my old-fashioned copper alarm clock with the two bells on top where the alarm hammer alternately struck in rapid succession & threw it across the room. One of the bells was dented, but time ticked on.

I turned on the T.V. to orient myself. I wasn't sure what decade I was in, let alone what day. Reassuringly, there was Gene Shalit the movie critic talking in his usual; Morristown, New Jersey style. Then Jane Pauley & Tom Brokaw flashed on the screen. As I watched them ping-pong off the international news of he morning (which was largely dismal), they turned into vultures before my very eyes.

Oh no! I thought. I'm losing it. But I tried, basically unsuccessfully, to act "normal". It was March, I was too cold, spring hadn't sprung & that morning I wanted to take the very forces of nature into my hands & make flowers bud & bloom & the earth thaw.

Bernie didn't go to work that morning. He stayed home, talking on the phone which I thought odd, but being exhausted as I was, I was glad someone else AT LAST was at hand to help ease the burden of the children.

I put on a light gauze peasant blouse & satin handkerchief-style skirt with my Boy Scout shoes to go hunting for spring. As I headed out the door Bernie asked, "Where are you going?"

"To find spring," I tossed over my shoulder determined to bring it to my home. The storm door slammed behind me & my little boy peered out of the house after his crazed mom, pressing his snot-filled nose to the glass. It was windy & bitterly cold outside against my bare legs. I headed for the pond behind our house imagining that I was a combination of Maid Marion, Robin Hood's love out to save the poor from the oppression of the rich, & Wendy, Peter Pan's ideal woman who knew better than anybody else how to take care of lost boys.

My psychiatrist, Dr. Pryingson, later explained that under stress the individual will often regress into comforting fantasies of childhood. Wendy & Maid Marion were wondrous role models to me as a child. This was as logical an explanation as I could have hoped for at a time that bled together like untended children's water colors.

At the edge of the pond were clumps of pussy willows which were, miracle of miracles, budding ever so slightly. I found a reassuring pile of rabbit pellets, albeit frozen solid, but a sign of life in the thicket nonetheless. I gathered a bit of both, the willows & the pellets & marched on in March, discouraged that the mud which had oozed so freely just days before in my cornfield had frozen solid in rigid tracks.

No lilacs, no apple blossoms, no sunshine this day to be found. Just a slate-grey, mean-tempered morning. I was not clothed properly. My nipples stuck out through the gauze peasant blouse frigid with cold while the rest of my skin raised itself up pale with goosebumps.

With my few carefully gathered treasures, including the remnant of a robin's egg shell,I turned back for home. I walked in disheveled & distempered. Bernie said "Some friends are coming to see you."

"Oh," I said blankly. I no longer had any idea of how to organize my life that day. All the odds were against me. I wasn't dressed right. (Normally I take time to groom myself & pick out a carefully casual-looking ensemble), & the weather & lack of sleep combined to rob me of any impetus to change the condition my condition was in.

Next thing I knew, two men whom I did know from the Fire Department were at the front door, & again before my mind could fully appreciate what was going on, going down, separated me from my beloved babies & stuffed me in an ambulance. We had done CPR together earlier in the year. The conversation somehow alluded to this, but mainly I got the strong sense that they were taking my life into their hands without asking & I was being taken....!