Escape To Malibu, Part 15

I used the hospital as best I could. I spilled my guts four times weekly to Dr. Heifer. I negotiated special privileges such as a daily afternoon nap I desperately needed to alleviate the sleep deprivation. I continuously lobbied for changes in medication until I was discharged on Lithium, a salt capsule currently used to treat "manic-depressives". Dr. Heifer believed I had a "manic episode" but showed no signs of depression.

She reached this conclusion despite the despair & outrage I manifested on entry. She reached it not knowing how many times I pondered seriously whether playing the game was worth living for.

Of course psychiatry, with all of its DSM-III codes for various psychiatric levels barely scratches the surface of the range of human emotions & psychological states. She had satisfied herself that she was fulfilling the part she chose to play in this drama. I had analyzed all the ink spots, jumped through all the hoops, pressed all the appropriate buzzers & the light was finally green. I could go home.

I had had a few trial weekends before the final approach. I could manage. Homeward bound at last.

And in fairness to "talk therapy", I had exorcised some demons. I had recalled some highly disturbing childhood experiences I had repressed which in light of adult consciousness were good to examine & confront, if only to work toward prevention in the future. Like being tied into my crib at night. Stuff like that.

She discharged me to the care of Dr Pryerson, the Carlisle shrink I was to see for the next nine months to ease my entry back into the fabric of my life, the man I developed a temporary love & affection for, the man who pronounced, along with me, my "cure" in January of the following year.

I saw him twice weekly & he helped me look more closely at the neurotic family I was born into, helped me regain my own self-esteem & strengthened my identity. I looked forward to our sessions together. He let me be me. We laughed togther, cried together, philosophized together & made meaning out of suffering. He took me off drugs. He returned me to my whole self as he acted as a partner in self-examination. Those months from April to January were filled with elegant work on both of our parts.

Our code name for me was Viking Princess. It has stuck. Alternately I have been named by my children the Indian name "Thunderthighs", a woman with thighs so powerful that when she rubbed them together thunder bolts lit up the sky & split the night with earth-shaking clamor. But I'm getting ahead of myself.

You want to get back to your M.T.V., don't you? You want it all to end here with "and they all lived happily ever after in the quaint town of Concord, all problems solved successfully, family unit healed & together, marriage firm & healthy, just like Leave It To Beaver's family", right? That's what Mom & Dad wanted. That's what everyone in the neighborhood wanted. It just didn't script out that way.

As I came to an end of my therapy, Bernie at last, became willing to look into his own can of psychic worms. He got his own therapist for awhile. I went on to graduate school, Divinity School in Cambridge. The Divinity School. Affiliated with The Law School. The Business School. And The Medical School.

As far as this University was concerned, all who matriculated through, played squash & tennis at its courts, smoked pipes in its various clubs & dorms, drank beer on the Charles River banks, considered it the University of the Universe. Ver Ri Tas.

I enrolled in my unquenchable search for truth. I had had several more visions & messages of the divine-type & in pondering & reading Margaret Mead essays, especially one in particular about women in ministry. I applied to The Divinity School.

My left brain figured a twenty dollar investment was worth finding out if I had "the right stuff" for Grad school at The University. And lo & behold, I did.

I was admitted as a student of Unitarian-Universalist ministry. I received the largest scholarship award they had to give. I got a government H.E.L.P. loan. I was the right sex. They were bending over backwards to welcome women into the ivory-towered bastion of male supremacy. Somehow, learned men had finally in a candid look at the condition of the planet, been willing to concede that sharing leadership with women in all walks of life might possibly mean their salvation.

It was 1981. I felt I had drawn the Golden Opportunty card in the game of LIFE. I planted Joshua & Adelaide in Childercare, a nation-wide franchise for day care twice a week on Tuesdays & Thursdays; I went to God-school classes those days. The other days were spent in Concord fulfilling my calling as student minister to the First Church of Concord.

I studied voraciously amidst diapers & peanut butter sandwiches, exciting books about feminist theology, reimaging God in a feminine way, reshaping worship services, plus books written by Buechner, Kant, Kierkegaard.

I met & mingled & matched minds with people of all races & walks of life with a rainbow of spiritual paths in classes such as Intro to Theology, Pastoral Care & Counseling, Medical Ethics & the Tuesday afternoon teas I grew to love. I had professors who ranged from dusty to highly inspirational, but I think I was most stimulated & intrigued by my fellow students,especially the women.

Study at the Divinity School was largely a matter of reading, deciphering, & interpreting stories. Stories about the gospel found in the Bible, stories unearthed in the Dead Sea Scrolls, stories of creation, stories of the power of God as received & given by prophets of old. I learned of the history of the Divinity School, that it was the school of the prophets, & the history of how New England & Concord were settled through the line of pastors who originally led their little flock inland from Boston. How white folk met Indians & exchanged & learned from each other. I learned about the function of the Meetinghouse: the building First Church was housed in & felt wonderfully blessed & enriched by the fertile academic ground I trod.

Working at First Church meant working primarily with two men: a warm, extremely energetic senior minister Dean Groping & his laid-back California assistant Mathias & his wife Plum Pit. The elder minister (I realize today this sounds sarcastic & as if the senior minister was in some way inappropriate with me---he was not! I think I meant more that he was always reaching intellectually to explain mysteries only sometimes gained through experience within the body)...the elder minister was internationally known for his work for peace & very much a born & bred New Englander having been born in Lexington at home in his mother's bed, & other than gallivanting & globe-trotting to promote peaceful international relations, stuck close to his native soil, eventually being called to Concord to minister for the rest of his life.

Mathias had a vision of pastoring his own flock & found being in the great shadow of Dr. Dean eventually confining. He moved on to the Cape to head up his own parish & is still happily at it last I heard. They had one mystical daughter, Anarchy Blue who was with them often, at potluck suppers, the worship services, the retreats.

I write all this in the recall of my emotional state at my time of entry to the D School. I was energetic, enthusiastic, & ready to change the world. Getting beyond the surface of this place & people afforded me a glance into another dimension & in particular; one of my female feminist professors, the one teaching Ethical Challenges in Social Justice Ministry carefully took my rose-tinted glasses off.

We looked at the history of women's work & women's oppression. I read "The Women's Room" & "Gyn Ecology". And in exploring the deeply imbedded roots of sexism in the soil of our modern, computer-based nuclear age, my anger at injustice was kindled & fanned.

I was an activist in those days. I belonged to the League of Women Voters & People vs. Nuclear Arms. I attended local peace demonstrations with my children, wrote & performed songs & poetry. I danced in churches with a sacred dance group called Skyweave. I counseled couples in prepared natural childbirth & use of massage & herbs.

I saw people's auras, & through Archangel & my astrologer friend learned the basic interpretation of what I saw. Our home became a mere way station, a place to pick-up messages, crash at night & organize each family member's schedule. I was in perpetual motion, driving through fast food windows for meals, going from church to school to hospital to library to day care & at last home, to the house under construction & expansion.