tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-44361211288835914912023-12-04T23:25:22.743+11:00Blowing My Own TrumpetMemoir prepRosemary Nissen-Wadehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05913841031559499568noreply@blogger.comBlogger45125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4436121128883591491.post-66346334583258271232022-12-24T16:42:00.004+11:002022-12-24T16:42:24.351+11:00BREAKING INTO PENTRIDGE – memoir<p> Blog posts which were draft chapters of this memoir have now been removed, prior to publication of the book in 2023.</p>Rosemary Nissen-Wadehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05913841031559499568noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4436121128883591491.post-5760613713464896892017-10-15T03:00:00.004+11:002017-10-20T01:04:43.331+11:00Getting Back to Normal<div class="p1">
<span class="s1"><b>Return Journey?</b></span></div>
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<span class="s1">'How was it, coming back</span></div>
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<span class="s1"><span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>I've never<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span></span></div>
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<span class="s1">known normal. My path leads<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span></span></div>
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<i><span class="s1">Normal: </span><span style="font-size: normal;"><span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;">conforming to a standard; usual, typical, or expected; t</span></span><span style="font-size: normal;"><span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;">he usual, typical, or expected state or condition.</span></span></i></div>
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<span class="s1">As I said in the beginning, my life has never seemed to me to be what most people regard as normal, even though it has included the usual common human experiences – childhood, family, schooling, community, work and play, falling in love, marriage, parenthood, illness and accident, dealing with money, the death of loved ones....<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span></span></div>
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<span class="s1">I cherish the ordinary and simple aspects of life, but for most of my life I felt that any appearance of normality about me was just that, an appearance. In the course of my therapy, describing my lifelong feeling of not fitting in, I told the Doc that, from my schooldays on, I had always felt as if everyone else was in on some secret that no-one was telling me. He said, 'Yes, there was something they all knew and you didn't. It's called acting naturally.'</span></div>
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<span class="s1">I was far too anxious and self-conscious to know how to do that. My Mum was anxiety-ridden and phobic. I know she didn't mean to pass those things on to me; she just meant to keep me safe. But she did pass them on. When I got to High School it was a bit better, I found other misfits to make friends with – non-sporty book-lovers like myself. </span><br />
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<span class="s1">At University it was even more so; and choosing to work in libraries pretty much guaranteed that I would be among kindred spirits. But as a young mother in the suburbs mixing with others, I often felt out of step. I was never all that competent in the kitchen; I didn't quite get my clothes right for social occasions. Or so it seemed to me, though I have to say no-one else was making me feel unaccepted. </span></div>
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The big thing was going public as a poet, which quite soon led to my involvement in the Melbourne Branch of the Poets Union of Australia, and my participation in poetry readings. I vividly recall the first one I went to. 'All those people running around with their folders of poetry under their arms,' I said afterwards, 'just as if it was normal.'<br />
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And perhaps that's it. Maybe there's not just one 'normal' but different kinds for different people. Among the poets, I finally found my kind of normal. I fitted right in. Poets are a diverse lot; it isn't a matter of conformity. We are a group that regards individual differences as perfectly fine. At the same time, our shared preoccupation means that we are a coherent group: a tribe.<br />
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Later I found other tribes: the mystics, the healers, and finally – after Andrew and I moved from Melbourne to the Mount Warning Caldera where I still live – the witches and Pagans. Andrew was very accepting of this development. I wasn't thinking of myself as a witch at the time that my younger son was drugged and robbed on his first visit to Bali. But just after we heard this news, I happened to be reading a women's magazine with a section in which a 'good witch' shared spells. There was one for retrieving lost property. I looked at it and realised we had the ingredients in the house. I stood up, saying, 'I'm just going to do a spell' – a thing I had never said before. Andrew said 'Oh, O.K.' and returned to reading his newspaper. I thought that was a wonderful attitude! After that beginning, things progressed rapidly. Andrew soon joined me on the Pagan path, with which he too was very much in sympathy.<br />
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No, the spell didn't result in the retrieval of my son's precious computer. But there was a result. I had been in the habit of talking to the Archangels. After I did the spell, I heard a voice in my head, which I knew by the energy to be one of them, saying, 'Rosemary, we wish to speak with you.' I was very taken aback, but tried to keep my composure. As I felt particularly close to Gabriel at that time, and Gabriel's direction is the West, I turned to the West and asked out loud, 'What do you wish to say?' I heard, in tones that were reassuringly emphatic: 'He is well. Have no fear.' This of course addressed my main concern. I would have been glad for my son to get his property back, but mainly I had become afraid for his safety.<br />
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I have since heard the energy of the Archangels described as being at once full of enormous strength and huge peace. That was exactly how their energy felt to me on that occasion.<br />
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Now, having found my congenial place in the world, among congenial people – and with advancing age – I am at ease with myself, and therefore with others. It's ironic. Now that I don't give much of a damn what anyone thinks of me, I find that I am widely liked and accepted. And I can 'act naturally' without even thinking about it, because (I have discovered) that just means being me.<br />
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Rosemary Nissen-Wadehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05913841031559499568noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4436121128883591491.post-91991257301447865332017-08-29T23:36:00.001+10:002017-08-30T23:59:00.949+10:00Coming Back from Therapy<div class="p1">
<span style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: initial;">I stayed in therapy for six interesting and empowering years.</span></div>
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What happened in group therapy was of course confidential as it related to the other people, but I did share with Bill, as my new fiancé and then husband, some of the insights I was gaining into myself. Bill had difficult relationships with his parents and siblings, and after a while started to think he might benefit from therapy too. Our GP was happy to refer him, and the Doc to take him on. He went into a different group from me, so that we could both always feel free to say whatever we needed.</span><br />
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My more dramatic episodes in therapy (e.g. those related in previous posts) happened early, followed by years of more gradual progress, during which time Bill and I bought a house, got married, I changed jobs a couple of times, we had our two sons, I stopped work, then later worked part-time, he went from being a builder working for his father to his very successful career as an abalone diver, we renovated and sold our first house and bought a bigger one, and we acquired two teenage foster-sons.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span></div>
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<span class="s1">Their whole story is one to tell separately, later, if at all. Briefly, they were from a family Bill knew, where serious problems developed; they ran away from home to come to us, and we were allowed by the authorities to foster them. They had been traumatised. The younger, a country boy at heart, soon went to live with other people he knew, who had a farm in a rural area. The older stayed with us for his last two years of High School and then went on to university. After he had been living with us some months, he also decided to seek therapy from the Doc to help him deal with the things he had experienced. He had a briefer period of therapy than we did, and undoubtedly benefited. <br />
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He moved out into a residential college at university, as the<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>campus wasn’t very near where we lived, but always kept in close touch. I still, fifty years later, have a very affectionate relationship with both my foster-sons – men in their sixties now.</span></div>
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<span class="s1">Eventually Bill and I got to a point where we wanted to try life without that weekly therapeutic support. It felt strange and vulnerable at first, but then I realised that the therapy hadn't stopped just because I wasn't attending sessions any more. I had ‘internalised’ the Doc, and in moments of difficulty would<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>hear his voice in my head – saying, for instance, ‘Just keep putting one foot in front of the other, and after a while, if you look back over your shoulder, you'll see that you’ve travelled quite a long way.’</span></div>
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<span class="s1">I’ll be eternally grateful for having been referred to an excellent therapist. I have learned from other people since that the experience is not always so positive. Were he still alive, I’d have no hesitation in recommending him to anyone who needed that kind of help; but, sad to say, he’s no longer with us.</span></div>
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<span class="s1">Therapy not only enabled me to address and heal the disturbing influences of the past, it helped me go on from there – to grow from a timid, sensitive introvert, at times almost pathologically shy, and often ‘away with the fairies’, into a stronger, more decisive person. I became much more grounded in my self, more at home in everyday reality, more at ease socially, more able to be spontaneous and authentic.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span></span></div>
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<span class="s1">Readers have commented, on some of my previous posts, how strong I was for one so young. The strength they praise came about directly through being in therapy. I was gradually ‘toughening up’ as the Doc once put it.</span></div>
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<span class="s1">He made that remark to Bill (who relayed it to me) after Bill mentioned that I wasn't getting sunburnt as easily as I always used to with my fair skin. There were other things the Doc said over the years, which similarly pointed to the effect of the mind on the body. He must have been the first to present me with that concept. Or perhaps not, as such ideas were starting to gain currency then, in the early to mid-sixties – but he would at least have been one of the first. Coming from him, it must have carried weight as scientific fact, not just a ‘New Age’ speculation.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span></span></div>
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<span class="s1">On the other hand, I remember his assertion that he and his fellow-psychiatrists were extremely conservative people. They had to be, he explained, because they were messing around with the insides of people’s heads.</span></div>
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<span class="s1">He was far too conservative to indulge his patients in ‘magical thinking’.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span></span></div>
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<span class="s1">‘If you’d seen as many visionary schizophrenics as I have, living in mental hospitals, lost in their own worlds….’ he said.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>Or, in answer to something, ‘Sorry, you’ve come to the wrong shop. I don’t deal in miracles. Dr X down the road sells that sort of thing’. (Dr X was the darling of the press at the time, promising that the meditations he taught would cure everything from depression to cancer.)</span></div>
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<span class="s1">So I emerged better able to function in what we see as normality – and uncertain about the reality of anything metaphysical. After the breakdown, being restored to functionality was a very good place to be.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> Questions of metaphysics, which didn't seem to have any direct bearing on my life anyway, I could probably afford to shelve.</span></span></div>
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<span class="s1">I’m interested now to recall one question the Doc asked me, as to why I was so concerned with the state of the world and all the people who were unfortunate or suffering. It was hard for me to understand why he asked; I took it for granted that everyone of course must care about such things. He said that he himself didn’t spend a lot of time worrying about, ‘Oh, those poor Vietnamese’ or whoever, and he hadn't observed that many people did, at least not to the extent that I did. He asked again why I thought I did so.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> I </span>didn’t have an answer.</span></div>
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I took it that he was suggesting there was something wrong with me for doing so: that it was unbalanced in some way, that perhaps he thought it a displacement from addressing my own problems.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>But I didn't say any of that. I just shut down, stubbornly telling myself, inwardly, that my reactions were perfectly normal, natural and right.</span></div>
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<span class="s1">He may indeed have been suggesting what I thought he was, but in hindsight I wonder if he wasn’t simply asking me to examine myself in order to know myself better. Perhaps he had some inkling of the healer within me – which was yet to emerge consciously, though I look back now and see that it was always part of me and there were always signs.</span></div>
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<span class="s1">Another time, in answer to something I said, he replied, ‘That’s the teacher in you.’ I stared at him and he said (interpreting): ‘What’s that silly psychiatrist saying now? I’m not a teacher, I’m a librarian’ – which was just what I was thinking. Then he repeated, gently but firmly, ‘It’s the teacher in you.’ I decide to at least entertain the possibility that it might be an aspect of me, although I had always thought teaching was one of the last things I’d ever want to do. Of course, in later years I became a very successful teacher of adults in such contexts as writing workshops, meditation classes, Reiki seminars….</span></div>
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<span class="s1">When I started conducting workshops, years later, I realised that I had somehow absorbed, as if by osmosis, the way the Doc conducted his group therapy sessions. I don't mean that I began analysing people! It was more a matter of group dynamics, a way of letting everyone be heard, asking pertinent questions in a non-threatening way, interpolating with occasional expertise or opinion only as necessary and useful. In truth, it’s hard to explain; it’s just a thing I do naturally, a way I instinctively fell into, which I recognised as having been his way, and which works.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span></span></div>
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<span class="s1">It was also from him I learned that, in groups, learning happens best in an atmosphere of laughter. I learned that it’s OK for a group facilitator to make mistakes sometimes and be wrong sometimes – so long as they’re always truthful. And I learned how to ‘open my antennae’ (a phrase he occasionally used) and listen intently, not only to what is said but also the unsaid. But it was only later, when I started teaching, that I learned what joy and fulfilment it would give me. I loved it.</span></div>
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<span class="s1">I didn’t at all set myself up to play psychiatrist, or try to heal or improve people in any way. Yet, when I taught poetry writing at Box Hill TAFE and Bill and I hosted live-in weekend workshops for my students, my boss Issy, who attended, said publicly afterwards, meaning it as praise, ‘What Rosemary does isn’t just poetry; it’s therapy!’ I think the therapy was partly in the approach, and partly in the fact that poetry workshops (like group psychotherapy!) can’t help but promote intimacy.</span></div>
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<span class="s1">But when I left therapy it wasn't exactly with the Doc’s blessing. He thought I could get more out of it yet, but said he couldn't help me any longer as I was no longer drawing for him the maps he needed to help me navigate my journey. I didn't know what he was talking about, couldn't identify anything I was concealing. He pointed out that he had other patients eager to get into group therapy, and it wasn't fair to keep me on if I wasn't progressing. So I left, somewhat comforted by the fact that, if he'd thought I was in a serious mental condition, he would surely have hospitalised me instead. There was no suggestion of that.</span></div>
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<span class="s1">It was some little time later that I had my 'lightbulb' moment. I was in my early thirties, and inexplicably discontented. I asked myself, 'Why are you feeling discontented when you have everything you're supposed to want - good husband, two gorgeous kids, nice house, friends, as much work as you choose to do? What is it you really want?' A lightbulb went on in my head, as depicted in cartoons, and the answer was immediately present. What I wanted, had always wanted, was to be a poet.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span></span></div>
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<span class="s1">I had been one since I was seven, but, having been discouraged from seeing it as a viable career, I merely scribbled privately. I seldom showed my poems to anyone, let alone submitting them anywhere for possible publication. But, with the lightbulb, I thought, 'OK, well I'd better do it for real.'</span></div>
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<span class="s1">That meant I had to start working on my poems to make them as good as I possibly could. When you're only scribbling privately for your own amusement, there's not the same impetus to do that. It also meant I had to be brave enough to submit them to literary magazines.</span></div>
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<span class="s1">The response to my first submission was, 'These are too long for us. Please send us some shorter ones.' Greatly encouraged, I did. They were accepted, and I never looked back. It became apparent that I had a vocation, which I had not been honouring. I have followed it ever since. Not following it had been causing unsuspected problems in my life. I wasn't fully being myself.</span></div>
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<span class="s1">I encountered the Doc years later in a personal development course we were both doing. There was a large number of participants; we didn't need to do more than spot each other across the room. He in fact gave no sign of recognition, and I realised this was because he was bound by professional ethics not to publicly acknowledge a patient unless they first acknowledged him. I did that, in one of the breaks. I had something I wanted to tell him.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span></span><br />
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'Excuse me,' I started. 'Do you remember me?' (Maybe it wasn't professional ethics, I thought. After all, he must have so many ex-patients.)</div>
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<span class="s1">'Of course I remember you,' he said.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span></span></div>
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<span class="s1">So I reminded him that he had said I wasn't drawing him the maps he needed. I explained that I had discovered the missing piece of the map, which was that I was a poet, and that I was now living my vocation. He said he had seen some poems published in the newspapers under my name and had wondered if they were by me, if it was the same Rosemary Nissen. He asked after Bill and our foster-son; we had a brief, pleasant conversation and then got back to the course we were doing. I don't know if he bought my explanation about the poetry, but he didn't indicate otherwise. What was noticeable was that he treated me like an acquaintance rather than a patient - perfectly proper, as I was no longer a patient, and no more than I would have expected from him. He always understood these niceties and was completely appropriate.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span></span></div>
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<span class="s1">It was some years later again that I discovered I also had a vocation as a healer. Six months after learning Reiki I, the basic technique for hands-on healing, Bill and I learned Reiki II, the technique for healing in absence. As I’ve explained in an earlier post, I learned Reiki initially with the notion of helping Bill who, as a spiritual healer, was getting drained if he did too much of it. I suggested he learn too, to get some formal training to put to his gift. But in practice the Reiki superseded what he had, and prevented him from getting drained anyway. Meanwhile, I found I loved it.<br />
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I fell in love even more with Level II – such a wonderful gift, to be able to send healing across space and to some extent across time. I’m so constituted that when I find something good I want to share it with the whole world. So of course, at this point I decided I would train as a teacher. (The term ‘Master’ in ‘Reiki Master’ means teacher.)</span></div>
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<span class="s1">I was so elated and grateful, the morning after<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>completing Level II, I woke up early, put Amazing Grace on the stereo, and danced. I was in bliss.<br />
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Reiki seems to me to be magical. It certainly is not yet explainable in terms that science recognises. And it works! So it was one factor in having me open again to the possibility of magic. It has been a wonderful path for me ever since. </span><br />
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<span class="s1">So has the path of psychic mediumship, which developed soon afterwards, as outlined in a previous post. The famous Tarot author Rachel Pollack describes Tarot as ‘the outlaw therapy’. My readings, in which Tarot is only one of my tools, are a form of spiritual counselling. </span><br />
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<span class="s1">I have also qualified in many other energy healing modalities besides the original Reiki. And my magical path has essentially been about healing too, in a broad sense. (For instance, in ritual, ‘turning the wheel of the year’, we intend to look after the wellbeing of the planet.)<br />
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A few years back, a friend devised a way to discover what one’s ideal job would be. She told me mine would be to heal the world via poetry. She was so right! As soon as she said it, I realised that's exactly what my ideal job would be. In fact she saw me doing it by sharing poetry online. It didn't take me long to understand that I am doing exactly that. </span><br />
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<span class="s1">Not that I am the only one doing it, I hasten to note. Poetry is healing for the one who writes it, as I have experienced in times of trauma and bereavement. It can also be healing for its readers, whether it soothes, uplifts or is cathartic.</span></div>
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<span class="s1">I once had a reading from someone who was an excellent channel for various angels and spirit guides. I asked what I could label myself, e.g. for purposes of putting something on a business card. She told me that ‘they’ would prefer that I didn't label myself at all as it is limiting to do so. But they could see that I needed something for practical purposes. Only it was difficult, they said, because I was a good healer, a good teacher, a good psychic reader … in the end they suggested I might call myself ‘a teacher of metaphysics’; they would be happy if I were to use that label. I do, but not exclusively. I don’t think it means much to the average person, so I use more specific ones as well, such as Reiki Master, psychic medium, poet … a list.<br />
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These new directions that opened up for me, these explorations into healing and magic, started happening at the time my children became young men and got out from under the parental roof, when I was newly free of the practical duties of motherhood. Perfect timing, I think, as I look back now.</span><br />
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</style>Rosemary Nissen-Wadehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05913841031559499568noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4436121128883591491.post-47098832053914678212017-08-20T14:29:00.001+10:002017-08-21T08:09:40.839+10:00An Interpolation<i>Before continuing with new bits of memoir writing, I'm inserting this story, published in 1991 </i><i>(under the name Rosemary Nissen) </i><i>by Women's Redress Press, Inc. of Sydney in BODY LINES: A WOMEN'S ANTHOLOGY. I include it at this point as it illustrates some lessons I learned which influenced my behaviour, as described in the previous post. (If you've been following all these posts, you may recognise a couple of the incidents, that have been mentioned before though in less detail.)</i><br />
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<span class="s1">White face in the car. Young, smug, fat, balding. White shirt, smooth white hands. Round the corner, then slow, cruising to a stop. The night is late and cold and I am alone. This corner, this intersection of five busy daytime streets, is deserted except for me and now this car. I press my back against someone’s fence as the car starts its crawl. I’m twenty-five: I know the rules. Stand straight, look away, don’t speak. Soon they’ll give up; just endure till then.</span></div>
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<span class="s1"><i>I was fainting with fear, but I stood straight. ‘Please let me past,’<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>still coldly polite, and at last he moved aside. I hadn’t believed he would. I walked deliberately down the passage and out the door, then fast along the street to cut through Melbourne Uni—my Uni—and catch a tram. I was twenty-two, about to graduate; it had been my Uni for five years. I felt safer among these familiar paths and buildings than I did on the street, though they were bleak and deserted this winter night. Only Dr R, the handsome Philosophy lecturer, walked past in his own mood, scowling. His black gown flapped in a sudden gust. I stalked in my opposite direction, scowling back.<br />
</i></span><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><br /><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">Big, crinkly, chunky face. Mobile face, tanned. Sensitive face, artist face, playing to his own mirror, his own eyes and mind. Handsome, vain, leering face, God’s gift. Little-boy wide eyes: aren’t I cute? But not a little boy—thirty to my nineteen. Dark, volatile, my old friend’s husband. His contrast with her dreamy blondeness, her twenty years. A flirter, pincher, squeezer, whom all her friends put up with, ignored, tried to fend off with jokes. A mass collusion with him to keep her happily ignorant. Can she have been so vague, so unaware?</span></span></div>
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<span class="s1"><i>Lank hair, blue stubble, open pores. Spit spraying out of his mouth. His body pressing mine down on his narrow bed in his narrow room in the strange, dark, silent boarding house. ‘I’ll take you out for dinner,’ he’d said. ‘May I meet your family first?’ and charmed them in spite of the spray with his laughter and easy talk.</i></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">Twinkling innocently as he pinched my bottom hard and I gasped and yelped. The clout, the satisfying smack. His skittering face on his skittering body, sliding and falling backwards across the room, stopped by the old couch hitting the backs of his knees. My hand still lifted, frozen in my own surprise. His sprawling collapse. ‘Serves you right,’ said his wife.</span><br />
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<span class="s1">Earlier tonight I saw my husband off on the Sydney train. ‘Trial separation,’ he kept saying and, ‘Join me as soon as you’re ready to start again.’ But I know I’ll never want that. I cry for hours. I go to my friends in Elsternwick, sit in their kitchen with coffee and cigarettes, and I cry and I talk, and finally walk to the corner in spite of all their pleas, to catch the Brighton bus. I am cried out, emptied, ready to be alone.</span></div>
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<span class="s1"><i>‘We just have to go to my place first, to pick something up,’ and when we arrived: ‘Sit down. Sit on the bed, it’s the only place.’<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>It was. He made me coffee in a grimy cup. I hid my face in my hair, pretending to sip. He shoved at me a slice of apple strudel in torn white paper. ‘You wanted dinner? Here’s dinner.’<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>It looked greasy and old. ‘No thank you,’ I said. He sat down and pushed me flat on the bed. I squirmed my face away. ‘Anyway, today’s my birthday,’ he said.</i></span></div>
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<span class="s1">My face is thick with crying, red and blotched. My eyes burn. My eyelids have swelled —puffy, transparent, glistening, they will look like slugs for another twenty-four hours. I feel ugly all the way through. I’m past caring.</span></div>
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<span class="s1"><i>‘You’re not like all the other girls,’ he’d said when we met. ‘You seem more innocent.’ He’d led me to shop windows. ‘There, do you like that dress? Do you like that one?’ until, to stop this uncomfortable game, I’d agreed,’That one’s all right.’ He’d dropped my arm at once. ‘I suppose you want me to buy it for you,’ he’d spat. He had been spitting on me all night, talking as we danced. I was brought up to be polite. I’d held my face as far from his as I could, kept my expression<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>bland, agreed to another dance, accepted the walk to the train, not to hurt his feelings. I didn't want the dress, I didn't want him. ‘I’m very busy studying,’<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>I’d tried to excuse myself. But, ‘Let me meet your family,’ and now we were struggling here on his bed.</i></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">Gasping and holding his face. Slack, childish face wiped blank of shifting expressions, gaping up at my hand. Every face in the room, including mine, gaping at my frail right hand—usually too weak to open a jar without help. My hand still stinging. His hand nursing the side of his gone-stupid face.</span><br />
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<i>I managed to push him off. My voice was cold but polite. ‘I’m leaving now.’ He stood with his arm across the door, a bulky man, blocking my exit while he accused. Gold-digger. Heartless. Deserve what you get. His mouth twisted hard to one side, the side that sprayed spit. His face, more than his words, said he always knew no bitch would ever love.</i><br />
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<span class="s1">He leans across the passenger seat and rolls the window down. I am emptied of everything. I am at the end. Before he can speak, I step forward. I thrust a contorted face at the open window and say, clearly and fiercely, <i>‘You get out of here and you leave me alone.’</i> His face is suddenly contorted too. His face is terrified. Without a word, he steps on the accelerator and speeds off. Five minutes later the bus trundles up. I begin the ride home to my safe, solitary flat.<br /><br /><br /><i>Copyright © Rosemary Nissen 1991</i></span></div>
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</style>Rosemary Nissen-Wadehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05913841031559499568noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4436121128883591491.post-36300925267426007492017-08-19T17:02:00.000+10:002017-08-19T23:00:35.646+10:00Learning from My Ordeal<div class="p1">
<span style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: initial;">I see myself as having experienced a protracted ordeal of several phases: my parents' divorce, two years of the Wicked Stepmother, and my bizarre first marriage. The latter provided enough stress that I couldn't keep covering up the effects of the earlier trials. It was the final straw, if you like. And it pushed me onto the path back to normal life, which was my psychotherapy.</span><span class="Apple-converted-space" style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: initial;"> </span></div>
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<span class="s1">It appeared that I had already returned to normal life simply by getting out from under the Stepmother's roof. I had a few years when things must have looked normal enough on the outside, as I lived the life of a university student and then got my first job and rose rapidly to a position of responsibility. (These years included first love, which was also first sexual awakening, and the subsequent break-up of that relationship, but I don't count that as an ordeal even though it ended in disappointment.)</span></div>
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<span class="s1">But it was only an appearance of normality. The traumas and stress made cracks in my psyche, and eventually I shattered. I am one who breaks down very quietly, as my therapist later remarked, so that even the people closest to me would not have been aware of how much was wrong. There were months of breaking down quietly before the final, dramatic collapse – but not so quietly that I could quite conceal it from myself. I tried, but it became impossible to deny. I hoped, though, to conceal it from others, until finally I couldn't. I was very scared, desperately trying to hold myself together against increasing disintegration. In the end, going into therapy became less terrifying than trying to go on without it.</span></div>
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<span class="s1">I look back at what I learned from the whole experience. There was much I learned during the years of therapy, but before that there were things I learned from the ordeal — sad things, mostly, or which have their basis in sad experiences. I can see how they played out in my life afterwards, which is the proof that they were thoroughly learned.</span></div>
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<span class="s1">I learned that you can't necessarily trust those you love to take care of you, not even someone who has always up until now been the best Dad in the world and has given you no reason to believe that this could ever change – who probably would not have believed it of himself, beforehand.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span></span></div>
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<span class="s1">And I learned that if someone is in my care, I have to stay with that responsibility. I couldn’t, I discovered, go away even for a long weekend, leaving my little brother among enemies, and think that would make no difference. My presence not only counted for something, it was crucial. When I was there, I couldn't protect him entirely, but I managed to stand up for him enough to mitigate most things. Let’s just say, if anyone was standing up for him in those days, it was me, and only me – and it did some good, if not enough.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span></span></div>
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<span class="s1">So when my sons' father, while they were still very young, fell in love with another woman – one, moreover, who lived in another country – I made damn sure to win him away from her again. I was by no means a perfect mother, but at least I trusted myself to love my kids and have their best interests at heart. I gave them a great Dad, and to be fair I don't think the woman he fell for would have been unkind to any child – but there was no way I was going to take a chance on it.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> I was never going to see them get a stepmother, nor let them go far away from me into someone else's care. And I didn't trust their father to be selfless enough; I knew that fathers are not always sufficiently clear-headed and protective.</span></span></div>
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<span class="s1">Much later, when my last husband, Andrew, had to go into a nursing home because I was physically unable to give him the care he needed, I visited him three times a day – even though the first place, from which I very soon extricated him, tried hard to discourage me from coming so often. That was my darling husband – no way would I not spend as much time with him as I could, no way would I not keep a close eye on the care he was getting. And a good thing I did!</span></div>
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<span class="s1">I've never put a pet into an animal home either, when I've gone away. I've always been able to get people </span>to come in and look after them <span style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: initial;">whom I and they know well. If I couldn't, I wouldn't go. That is still the case. I am just not prepared to take anything at face value when it comes to the care and wellbeing of loved ones in my charge.</span></div>
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<span class="s1">I look back and realise I had more courage and more cunning than I thought. I had to learn how to stand up for my brother and me without being so confrontational about it that it would make matters worse. I had to really hone my gift of the gab! I had to learn how to form arguments that would appeal to my adversaries, whilst not letting them see I regarded them as adversaries.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span></span></div>
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<span class="s1">Ever since, I have been very good at talking myself out of trouble – including, one time, a potential date-rape when I was alone and quite at the man’s mercy. It’s a very useful skill! One thing it involves is being able to tune in and read the other person accurately, to anticipate their reactions; so no doubt it honed my intuition too. I see that I have a lot to thank the Stepmother for, and in a way I am grateful, though not with any personal warmth towards her.</span></div>
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<span class="s1">I would not easily put myself in anyone’s power again, either. For instance, I don't think I would ever become involved with a potentially violent man, although many women do, because I would be able to read their energy too well. I never have been involved with any such man. The ones I have been involved with have usually been capable of strong views, and we have sometimes had heated differences of opinion, but it was all verbal; there was never any threat to me.</span></div>
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<span class="s1">Similarly, I have never let anyone control me mentally or emotionally. I might in some circumstances keep my own counsel rather than stirring up dissension – the words, ‘You could be right’ or, ‘Well, you’re entitled to your opinion’ sometimes come in handy! – but I am not swayed by others’ opinions unless they meet my own tests of logic, integrity, etc.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span></span></div>
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<span class="s1">I’m not so stupid as to hold to a viewpoint which is obviously mistaken; I will change my mind if the evidence warrants it. But I can't be tricked into it, because I can tell when someone is trying. And I can't be browbeaten. I have a core so stubborn, it might made of granite.</span></div>
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<span class="s1"><i>In the next episode I’ll look at what I learned from my therapy.</i></span><br />
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Rosemary Nissen-Wadehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05913841031559499568noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4436121128883591491.post-61142477801166826452017-07-27T20:19:00.002+10:002017-07-28T11:33:57.486+10:00The Grandmother, or Elder, Cycle<div class="p1">
<span class="s2"><span class="Apple-converted-space"><b>Grandmother or Elder?</b><br /><br />This week the Wisdom Circle, still working with Brooke Medicine Eagl</span></span>e's questions, <span style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: initial;">considered the Grandmother / Elder stage of life. Not all of us are actually grandmothers; some of the group chose lives without children. <br /><br />I myself have step-grandchildren. While I am fond of them and they of me, they live interstate; I seldom see them and we have little interaction.</span><br />
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<b style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: initial;">Elder or Crone?</b><br />
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<span style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: initial;">The question arose, what is the difference between Elder and Crone? We used to be familiar with the concepts of Maiden, Mother and Crone, but nowadays many women include the role of Elder before the Crone stage.</span><br />
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<span style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: initial;">One of the group, Dede, explained that she sees it in terms of the symbolism of a rose. First there is the bud, the Maiden stage. Then the rose opens to fullness, the stage of Motherhood or Maturity. Then the rose grows older and scatters its petals on the earth, as the Elder scatters her wisdom. Finally the rose shrinks and transforms into the rose-hip, holding the seeds for new birth, equivalent to the Crone stage when one becomes more still and goes inward.</span><br />
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<span style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: initial;">This makes beautiful sense to me!</span><br />
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<span style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: initial;">These are my own answers to the questions raised:</span><br />
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<span class="s2"><br /><b>What are your beliefs about ageing and what </b></span><b><span style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: initial;">a woman's role is expected to be</span><span class="Apple-converted-space" style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: initial;"> </span><span style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: initial;">in her later years?</span></b></div>
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<span class="s2">I don't know that I have beliefs so much as observations. There is such a variety of ways to age! I suppose I believe in a certain slowing down after the age of 60, and again in the late seventies, because this is what I have experienced and other women have said things which confirm it. But I also know that our minds affect our bodies in ways we are only beginning to understand. (I’ve recently become very interested in brain plasticity.) So I don’t know that the slowing down is inevitable; perhaps it can be countered. At present I am working on reversing it!<br />
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On the other hand, the things we associate with ageing are not necessarily bad things. It may be a blessing to take life at a slower pace! Perhaps we finally get to smell those roses that people keep talking about.</span></div>
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<span class="s2"><b>Was menopause a signpost and/or a gateway on your path to ageing?</b></span></div>
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<span class="s2">It was bit of a nuisance when I was going through it. However, I had it easy compared to some. My Mum told me she ‘sailed through menopause’ without noticing it much, and I was the same. Only two hot flushes (mind you, they were memorable!) and only a few episodes of flooding. Then it was nice not to have periods any more, and to dispense with contraception. It felt like new freedom. At that time I read the words of many older women who said it was an entry into one’s full power as a woman, and one’s full wisdom, and I embraced that idea. Perhaps it was both signpost and gateway. I think the crucial question is, what does it point to or open to?</span></div>
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<span class="s2">[Someone in the group suggested it means ‘men on pause’, with sexuality becoming less urgent, and that being with oneself would be welcome. I had the opposite experience and have heard of many others like me, with a post-menopausal surge of new eroticism and a delight in the freedom to express it without worrying about childbirth. It's now, decades later, in widowhood, that I enjoy learning how to be with me.]</span></div>
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<span class="s2"><b>What belief do you hold about menopause?</b></span></div>
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<span class="s2">It marks the end of the reproductive years.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>That’s it, full stop.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span></span></div>
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<span class="s2"><b>From whom did you acquire these beliefs and attitudes ---- Mother – </b></span><b>sisters – friends – older women – society?</b></div>
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<span class="s2">Probably from my mother and the other women in my family, on both sides. Everyone seemed to be pretty sensible about it, and not scared of it.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span></span></div>
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<span class="s2"><b>In what way are these messages brought home to you and reinforced –<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>at school – through the media – at work? </b><br />
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I don't think my attitudes were reinforced by these groups. I think school, the media and society sensationalised it a lot more than my family did.</span></div>
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<span class="s2"><b>– through women's groups?</b></span></div>
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<span class="s2">The women’s groups I belong to now, like those I belonged to then, don’t regard older women as has-beens, or defective in any way. Far from it. So this reinforces the intelligent attitudes I was brought up with.</span></div>
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<span class="s2"><b>What are the greatest feminine aspects you display in your unfolding path?</b></span></div>
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<span class="s2">I’m good at caring for people when that is necessary, in both practical and emotional ways.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>I’ve learned about unconditional love, compassion and nurturing, and I find new ways to apply them. </span></div>
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<b><span class="s2">If you have children or young people and can influence </span>their learning in any way, what are the important values you can teach them about the feminine aspect?</b></div>
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<span class="s2">(I don't get much opportunity for this, but if I did) </span>That feminine strength doesn’t have to be like the masculine. We can be strong and tough without being aggressive, power-hungry or unfeeling.</div>
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<b><span class="s2">What aspect of the feminine are you connected with at this<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span></span>time of life?</b></div>
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<span class="s2">I see in myself aspects of all the great Goddess archetypes, so I suppose I would have to say wholeness – even though I don't express them all in equal measure.</span></div>
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<b><span class="s2">What are the greatest feminine aspects you wish to display </span>in your unfolding path now?</b></div>
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<span class="s2">Love. Wisdom. Strength. Intuition. I don't think these are particularly feminine, but I might perhaps express them in a feminine way, with tolerance and gentleness.</span></div>
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<span class="s2"><b>Thank your teachers.</b></span></div>
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<span class="s2">I thanked Brooke Medicine Eagle, and all my sisters in the Wisdom Circle.</span></div>
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Rosemary Nissen-Wadehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05913841031559499568noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4436121128883591491.post-72354086607432262562017-07-27T17:58:00.000+10:002017-07-29T16:09:06.692+10:00Reflecting On My Journey <i>– and on the writing of it here</i><br />
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I'm surprised and a little confused that I set out to write about my journey in magic, as many people had requested, only to find myself sharing other aspects of my life – family stuff, student days, love and marriage, psychotherapy.... <br />
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Perhaps this makes more sense if I regard my journey as being about healing, a broader focus which includes the magic. Like many witches, I see magic primarily as a tool for healing. And of course I have others, most notably Reiki but not only that. I have learned and often incorporate a variety of other methods of energy healing, too. Also the psychic readings and mediumship, in the way I do them, are forms of counselling.<br />
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I could even include poetry. It's my art before it is anything else – and as well, many times in many situations, it has been healing for me to make it. Other people sometimes tell me they experience it as healing to read or hear. I don't do it as therapy, for myself or anyone else, but it can and does serve that purpose.<br />
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One of my life cards in the Tarot is the Hermit, the Wounded Healer, who is also the Way Shower. Looking over my life as I have started to write it here, I see very clearly that it has been a journey of self-healing on many levels. And I see that it has not been solely for myself. While it has indeed been for me, that's not where the story finishes. The message of the Hermit card, particularly as interpreted by my favourite Voyager™ Tarot, is that I learn how to heal myself so successfully that I can then show others how to do it for themselves.<br />
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And then – saying the same thing in a slightly different way – my Spiritual Astrology book tells me that, as life goes on, I will find that all the things I accomplish for myself are actually meant to be shared with other people. It happens that I teach Reiki, Tarot, Creative Writing ... and have done so for many years.<br />
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What I've written at this blog so far is clearly a first draft, or worse – a hodge-podge, jumping all over the place chronologically and in its focus. But now that I've understood the pattern and (unconscious) organisation of my life, I think it will be easier to structure a final draft later.<br />
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My dear friend Katherine, a healer and visionary, told me long ago, 'You ARE Reiki. Poetry is what you do; Reiki is what you are.'<br />
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My magical mentor, Ridge, once channelled a message for me: 'Your value is not in your poetry! But it is good that you continue to play with your poetry.'<br />
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I didn't want to hear those words. A poet was THE thing I most wanted to be since I was a child, and that has never changed. And I am that; I have spent my life on it, with no regrets. Poetry is my joy and my purpose, my reason for living, the thing I can't not do, that which would make my life worthwhile even if everything else were stripped away. When you come right down to it, I do it for me.<br />
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Now, after all, crucial as it is, it turns out to be part of a much larger context and direction for my life. How about that! Now that I see it, it's just so obvious.<br />
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Mind you, my other life cards are Death, which means drastic change, transformation, rebirth: still suggestive of healing – and The Moon, the Muse of poets! (Smile.)Rosemary Nissen-Wadehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05913841031559499568noreply@blogger.com6tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4436121128883591491.post-100085025243027582017-07-14T15:59:00.000+10:002017-07-14T18:30:59.367+10:00Anecdotal Asides: Gigi and Lassie<div class="p1">
<span style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: initial;">The memoir excerpts on this blog are necessarily condensed, otherwise they’d go on and on forever. Also I am relating them to stages on the Heroic Journey, so as to have a structure to work with. (For many years, lacking a structure, I couldn’t even make a beginning on telling my story.) </span><span class="Apple-converted-space" style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: initial;"> </span><br />
When I start remembering, all sorts of things come flooding back, which don’t seem to fit into the general narrative or would expand it too much for the parameters I’ve given it. Yet they seem like good stories, which perhaps my family and friends would like to read, if no-one else.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span></div>
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<span class="s1">Maybe I’ll weave them into the main narrative if that ever does become a book. Meanwhile, I thought I could add them here as discrete anecdotes.</span></div>
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<span class="s1"><b>Finding Gigi</b></span></div>
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<span class="s1">Bill told me he was wanting a dog, and he heard about an old lady who had this beautiful German Shepherd she wasn't able to look after any longer.</span></div>
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<span class="s1">He went to her house, got out of his car, and saw the dog in the yard. He looked over the fence, whistled to her and said,</span></div>
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<span class="s1">‘What do think, sweetheart? Will you come with me?’</span></div>
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<span class="s1">She took a flying leap over the fence, jumped into his embrace and started licking his face.</span></div>
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<span class="s1">It was a done deal.</span></div>
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<span class="s1"><b>Losing Gigi</b></span></div>
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<span class="s1">I wonder how old she was when Bill found her. I know she was fully grown, not a puppy. I would guess maybe three or four. I seem to remember that she was five when I first met her.</span></div>
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<span class="s1">As I’ve told in the memoir, we didn’t keep her with us when we got together. Bill’s parents couldn't bear to part with her. He saw her daily at<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>work during the week, as his father used to bring her to whatever building site they were working on.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span></span></div>
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<span class="s1">Sometimes Bill brought her home to us for the weekend, but things were tense between her and my cat, so this didn't happen often.</span></div>
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<span class="s1">She died some years later, from a heart attack. Bill blamed his parents for feeding her too many fatty tidbits – as they fed themselves. His mum was very fat; his father less so only because he always did a lot of physical work.</span></div>
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<span class="s1">But he didn't reproach them. They had loved her and looked after her in what they thought was the best way. She had a happy life, within the average span for a Shepherd, and always knew she was loved.</span></div>
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<span class="s1"><b>About Lassie</b></span></div>
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<span class="s1">Lassie, as I said in my last blog post, came to us via a young friend who was moving house and couldn’t take her. He wanted her to go to people who would love her.</span></div>
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<span class="s1">At that point I was still a little scared of big dogs. Lassie proved the instant cure.</span></div>
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<span class="s1">On her first evening with us, she was lying at our feet on the kitchen floor when my cat, Guinivere, walked into the room. Lassie, who had been peaceful until that moment, instantly went for the cat.</span></div>
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<span class="s1">The cat dived under the kitchen table, which perhaps would not have protected her for long – except that, without stopping to think, I leapt out of my chair, grabbed the dog by the collar, hauled her off and clouted her across the snout, shouting, ‘Leave my cat alone!’<br />
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She did, then and forever after. And I realised I was braver than I’d imagined, given enough motivation.<br />
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Guinevere clearly knew she was now off limits, and felt free to torment the dog. She did sweet things like lying in wait on top of the table, and as Lassie walked past she’d jump on her back, rake her claws along it and then jump back up on to the table in one swift, easy sequence. She did not respond to orders to leave the dog alone!</span></div>
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<span class="s1">But then Lassie was hit by a car out the front of our place one day, got a broken leg, and spent a few days at the vet’s. She came home with a leg in plaster and a bucket around her head.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span></span></div>
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<span class="s1">Guinevere approached her, they touched noses, and then appeared to commune telepathically for a little while. I could imagine Guinie saying, ‘Whatever happened to you?’ and Lassie having a bit of a whinge about it. After that, they were the tenderest of friends, often having a chinwag and at times even curling up together. There were no more attacks by either on the other; you’d think such things could never have happened.</span></div>
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<span class="s1">Despite our first encounter, Lassie and I became dear friends. This was also in spite of a power struggle over her food. Peter had told us she should have a<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>mutton flap every day, boiled to tenderness. The first time I did this, which took a long time and made the kitchen smell, Bill declared it ridiculous and said I should feed her raw meat. He got her a juicy big bone.<br />
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‘Look,’ I said next day, ‘She hasn't touched her food. I’ll have to do what Peter said.’</span></div>
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<span class="s1">‘Don’t you dare,’ said Bill. ‘Put it in the fridge overnight and give it to her again tomorrow.’<br />
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The next morning, again, she turned up her nose at it. Bill insisted I persevere. The third day she fell on it and gorged! Thereafter, she happily ate her meat raw.</span></div>
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<span class="s1">She was a gentle, motherly soul. When I had children, she loved them as if she was their mother, and was very protective. This had its disadvantages.</span></div>
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<span class="s1">As they got older, if I told them off for doing things they shouldn’t, she would place herself between me and them and give me a soft, warning growl. I didn't for a moment think she would ever hurt me, but sometimes it gave me pause to wonder if I was speaking too harshly to them and moderate my tone.<br />
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She was also highly intelligent. Not only did she show this in the usual doggy ways; I could sit and have long talks to her and she would gaze into my eyes giving me the distinct impression she understood it all – or at least understood what I was feeling. She mothered me too, e.g. coming to fetch me if she thought I was sitting up too late writing my poetry, and indicating clearly that I should go to bed now. She wasn't wrong!<br />
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She was the whole family’s dog, but perhaps mine most of all. I was the one who spent the most time with her, and most often did the care and feeding.</span></div>
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<span class="s1">She lived with us a long time. Calculating it as best I can now, I think it must have been about 13 years – and she wasn’t a puppy when we got her. Eventually she succumbed to age; it became obvious she was struggling to cope with life.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span></span></div>
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<span class="s1">She was tired all the time, her breathing was laboured, and it was an effort for her to move. It was Spring. I didn't want her to endure the summer heat in her condition. I said we needed to take her to the vet to be put down. Bill and the kids were absolutely unwilling to accept this idea, but I was adamant and eventually persuaded them that it was what would be best for her. (I have a<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>ruthless streak when I need it.)<br />
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We thought she would like to see Peter again before she went. We hadn’t seen him for quite a while, but we got in touch, told him what was happening, and invited him over. He came and spent an evening with us. Afterwards he thanked us for doing that for him. We didn't contradict him, but it wasn’t him we did it for; it was Lassie.</span></div>
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<span class="s1"><span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>We had various animals over the years, most eventually left us, and we’d usually experience some ghostly manifestations for some little time afterwards, gradually becoming less frequent. That didn't happen with Lassie.<br />
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What did happen was that one night, some years after her death, I was sitting up late one night, when something made me turn around from my desk. There in the doorway of my study, I saw Lassie walking in as of old, looking at me meaningfully to tell me it was past time I was in bed. She was right, as always.<br />
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I didn't feel spooked, but peacefully glad to see her and full of love. The interesting thing was that – as ghosts are often described – I could both see her and see through her. <br />
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When she saw that I had got the message, she quietly vanished.</span><br />
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I am a cat person, as everyone knows, but that doesn't mean I can't love and appreciate dogs too.<br />
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</style>Rosemary Nissen-Wadehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05913841031559499568noreply@blogger.com5tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4436121128883591491.post-24854609757762088502017-07-13T11:40:00.000+10:002017-11-13T11:49:08.037+11:00The Rewards of ...<i>... well, certainly not virtue!</i><br />
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<span class="s1">In terms of the Heroic Journey, I see my years with the Stepmother as a significant ordeal, after which I received some rewards such as coming under the care of my nice aunties, attending university, making new friends, and<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>finding my first love (even though there was sorrow involved in that). But the ordeal had not really been dealt with or resolved. The further ordeal of a stressful first marriage, with some bizarre and even crazy aspects, was what I needed to claim the reward of real resolution. You might not think of entering psychiatric treatment as a reward, but for me it absolutely was – a great gift for which I remain fervently grateful.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span></span><br />
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<span class="s1">I embarked on what would become six years of group psychotherapy. The Doc, as we all called him affectionately behind his back, explained that he preferred to use group therapy because it enabled him to charge each individual patient a lot less and still earn what he needed to, and because, 'If one person is telling you you're being paranoid, you might doubt it; but if a whole group of people is telling you so, it's harder to dismiss'.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span></span></div>
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<span class="s1">I was very lucky in being referred to that particular psychiatrist, as I realised later when I heard stories about how unsatisfactory some others were. He thought of his patients as people, not as illnesses or labels: as 'Mrs Freeman' rather than 'that woman with anxiety'.</span></div>
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<span class="s1">'Anxiety state' was m</span>y official diagnosis. I always thought that was simply a convenient label because I had to be diagnosed with something in order to claim medical benefits. I suppose that hallucinating skulls over people's faces and having to be sedated after a party could be viewed as extreme anxiety!<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span></div>
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<span class="s1">In the course of our first, one-on-one conversation, at one point he approvingly responded, 'Good girl!' to something I said. Instantly triggered, and to my own surprise, I yelled, 'I don't want to be a good girl!'<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span></span></div>
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<span class="s1">'What do you want to be?' he asked, but for that I had no clear answer. I didn't want to be a bad girl either – not outright nasty, not evil. Probably, what I really didn't want was to be conformist, to perform a role. <br /><br />It appeared there was some division between aspects of myself. He promised that<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>by the end of my treatment they would be beautifully integrated.</span></div>
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<span class="s1">One thing I thought I was there for was to cure what I perceived as my frigidity – forgetting how passionate I had been with John. All the foreplay was fine with Don, too, but when it came to penetration, I had very extreme reactions. I went into uncontrollable shrieks of terror without any rational basis, and my vaginal muscles clamped tight shut (a condition known as vaginismus). Don did suggest that he might be part of the problem.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span></span></div>
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<span class="s1">'If I was a different kind of man ...' he said. Spelling it out: 'You could be raped.'<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>I wasn't so sure.</span></div>
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<span class="s1">In the course of my therapy, I uncovered a memory of a woman telling me, when I was a child, that men had great big things like red-hot pokers to stick into women. I thought it was my mother who told me that. Years later when I confronted her with it, she was horrified. And indeed, common-sense tells me now that she would never have said or even thought such a thing. She was furious that anyone would have told me that. She thought it must have been the woman who came in every week to help with the housework while she was expecting my brother. I'll never know.</span></div>
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<span class="s1">Early on, we had psilocybin as part of our therapy. That was the term the Doc used, adding that it was the synthetic version – in other words, LSD. He told me it would act like a corkscrew to lift the lid off my subconscious, and that the advantage over hypnotherapy was that I would be able to split my consciousness into the experiencer and the observer. (With hypnotherapy, he had to tell the patient afterwards what transpired during the session.) </span></div>
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<span class="s1">Patients would book in as outpatients for one day at a private hospital, lie down in separate rooms and be given what I believe was a small dose of the drug. It did exactly what I had been told it would: I re-experienced childhood events, with my adult consciousness alongside to observe and interpret them. This included some events I had always consciously recalled, others which I had forgotten but remembered when they were brought to the surface again, and some which I needed help to understand – such as seeing, as an infant, a large area of black-and-white squares, which the Doc suggested might have been the chequered pattern of someone's clothing.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span></span></div>
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<span class="s1">I imagine that the more bizarre experiences under the influence, which recreational drug users have reported, would involve much larger doses – and also the lack of that simple explanation about the corkscrew, to put them in context.</span></div>
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<span class="s1">We were monitored during the treatments, and given another tablet at the end (I don't know what) to bring us back to normal. Then we would meet as a group and discuss what had happened. I found it illuminating. But after some months these treatments were discontinued. Evidence came to light that there could be genetic side-effects, so the psychiatrists using this drug stopped at once rather than put their patients at risk. After that we reverted to weekly group therapy, 'the talking cure', in the Doc's professional offices.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span></span></div>
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<span class="s1">One day, lying on the hospital bed – I don't recall what triggered it – I had an experience as if I was melting. It wasn't scary, it was blissful. But it involved a physical flowing from various orifices: tears, snot, saliva, as well as blood and some tissue from between my legs. I went to the toilet and cleaned myself up. It wasn't my imagination and it wasn't my period either. It was the spontaneous coming away of my hymen! The Doc was a rational, scientific man (albeit Jungian). As he once said, he didn't deal in miracles; if that's what we were after, we were in the wrong shop. So he was taken aback when I reported that experience, but he accepted that it had happened.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span></span></div>
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<span class="s1">It didn't lead to a consummation of the marriage. I look back now and find I don't recollect any details about why that was. Perhaps it was because Don wasn't well. He ended up in hospital, briefly, with a kidney stone. Perhaps it was because I had already given up on the marriage. It had got to the point where we hardly communicated. He began spending a lot of time going out with his mates and coming home drunk. For a while I kept on desperately trying to make our marriage work, until it dawned on me that I was the only one still trying. That couldn't work!<br /><br /><b>Satisfaction</b></span></div>
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<span class="s1">Meanwhile, I wanted to experience sex. I propositioned a married man I knew. It was common knowledge that his marriage was no longer a sexual union; his wife didn't like it. One might wonder whose fault that was – but I soon found out that there was nothing wrong with his performance. Far from it! Nor did I have the extreme fear responses by then. (Yes, therapy does work!) I also realised, once I had someone to compare him with, that Don was semi-impotent.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span></span><br />
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<span class="s1"><span class="Apple-converted-space">I confessed my infidelity, and we agreed to separate. He decided to move to Sydney and start over. He actually helped me move to a new flat and let me keep most of our stuff – of course including our tabby cat, Guinivere, no longer a kitten, who was with me the rest of her life to the age of 18.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span></span></span><br />
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<i>My Guinivere, 1965</i></div>
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<span class="s1"><span class="Apple-converted-space">Before he left Melbourne he visited me often, we went out together, and it was like our courting days all over again. Don and I got on beautifully and had a great time with each other so long as we weren't actually living together. </span></span></div>
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<span class="s1">I decided to take him to bed, now that I knew how to go about it. I felt I owed it to him. And yes, we did finally manage it. He said – heartfelt – that it was wonderful. Then he confessed that he had never before succeeded in making love to any woman. (People have since speculated that he may have been gay, perhaps suppressing it. I don't know, but I think it's unlikely. He was very interested in heterosexual porn – not movies, in which one might suppose he could have been looking at the men, but books – books written for straight men.) We knew this belated success wasn't a reason to resume our marriage, though. Our incompatibilities were many, and that had become obvious to us. We really had almost nothing in common.</span></div>
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<span class="s1">When, along with several of his friends, I saw him off on the train to Sydney, he and I both cried. His friends told us we were being stupid and obviously shouldn't be parting if it upset us so much. But we knew it was right. We had entered into the marriage in good faith, we began and ended it as friends, and in some ways we'd shared a lot. We did care for each other, but it wasn't enough.</span></div>
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<span class="s1">I knocked up some friends close by and had a tearful coffee with them, then went to catch my bus. It was late by then. As I stood alone on the deserted street corner, one of the 'gutter crawlers', who were notorious in those days, slowed and rolled down his window. I was emotionally at the end of my tether. Instead of being fearful, I stepped up to the car, bent down and thrust my face, contorted with fury, close to his. 'You get out of here and you leave me alone!'<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>He was the one who looked terrified as he sped off.</span></div>
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<span class="s1">The affair was wonderful, and we did have heaps in common even out of bed. The essential secrecy was a drag, though. And it becomes disappointing to have wonderful love-making with someone who then, instead of staying all night in your arms, has to get out of bed and go home to his wife – repeatedly. It was the old story: he had young children he loved. He didn't want to lose them, nor in any way disrupt their lives. He agreed to the affair in the first place on the condition that it must remain absolutely secret.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span></span></div>
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<span class="s1">We did fall in love, in a grande passion. As he said at the time, 'Love can have everything to do with sex or nothing to do with sex.' In our case it was everything. He was a very sexual man. It was even more important to him than it is to most people. I was by no means his first affair, but I think the one that meant the most. Sadly for him, that did not remain so for me. I went on to break his heart when I ended it. He was devastated, and it was made worse by having to try to appear normal because it was all a secret. When we had occasion to meet at a function a few years later, and needed to greet each other in public and exchange some conversation, he could barely get the words out. Then, when I mentioned my young children, he suddenly looked purposeful, said something about the vital role of parents, gazed meaningfully in my eyes and said, with emphasis, 'Never forget that YOU are a very important person.' I reeled a bit and acquiesced, and that was the last time I ever saw him.</span></div>
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<span class="s1">Decades later I read a death notice. He had had a very successful, even distinguished career, and a long second marriage to a woman whom he had been having an affair with when I came on the scene. He had ditched her for me, which I didn't know at the time – never occurred to me he might already be straying from the sexless marriage. He did tell me about it later, and it was clear it had been a very compatible relationship. He must have gone back to her. Evidently she forgave him; I guess she truly loved him. Once his children were grown, he'd have had no reason to stay with his first wife. I'm glad to think<span class="Apple-converted-space"> there was life after Rosemary, a happy and fulfilled life.</span></span></div>
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<span class="s1">When we were together, we had vowed to each other to meet in eternity and be together forever. I'm a psychic medium; spirits sometimes contact me. His spirit sought me out soon after he died, to reiterate that vow. But I hadn't loved him deeply after all. I told him no, I was withdrawing that promise and releasing him from his. There was someone else I wanted to spend eternity with. (Imagining eternity in terms of monogamy, I note now!)</span></div>
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<span class="s1">While we were having our secret affair, there was no ostensible reason I couldn't have other men friends. In fact it could be a way of throwing people off the scent. I didn't plan to sleep with them, of course. I got a phone call from a man I had met at a friend's wedding, Dutch-born Bill Nissen. </span><br />
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<span class="s1"><b>New Horizons</b><br /><br />I'd attended that wedding with Don; it was near the end of our marriage. Bill was newly-engaged, but his fiancée had been unable to come to the wedding. Don was flirting with everything in sight and I was trying to maintain my dignity by ignoring it. Bill and I got talking, just in a casual way, for lack of anyone else to talk with. </span><br />
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<span class="s1">Don and I had come to the wedding in a taxi. When it came time to leave, Bill offered lifts to a few people who were going in his direction. We all piled into his car, a tight squeeze, with me sitting on someone's knee. (You could do that then, before seat belts.)<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span></span></div>
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<span class="s1">I learned afterwards that Bill had been shocked to find himself wishing it was his knee I was sitting on – shocked because I was a married woman. But he put it out of his mind. Over the next few months he broke off his engagement and booked to go on an overseas cruise, with the idea that he might stay away indefinitely. Then, he met for coffee with an old friend who had been bridesmaid at the wedding where we met. She mentioned that Rosemary and Don had split. When he told me about it later, he said he could feel his eyes light up.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span></span></div>
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<span class="s1">'Hey,' said his friend, 'Don't go getting involved. You've just booked on this big trip you've been dreaming of all your life.' But he phoned me anyway.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span></span></div>
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<span class="s1">'I believe you have a degree in English,' he said. 'I'm writing a novel and I'd love some help with my English.'<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span></span></div>
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<span class="s1">'Oh yes, ha ha,' I thought, 'A novel pick-up line, anyway.' I didn't say that, of course. <br /><br />I actually had him mixed up in my mind with another guy who'd been at the wedding. When he turned up at my work to fetch me when I knocked off, I didn't recognise him until he came up and spoke to me. (I don't think I ever told him that.) He took me on a nice, safe date to visit the friends at whose wedding we had met. At one point in the evening, he knelt at my feet, gazed rapturously up into my face, and whispered, 'Are you enjoying yourself, darling?' I was startled at the 'darling' but he seemed to be genuinely concerned that I was having a nice time.</span></div>
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<span class="s1">We started spending time together, platonically. He was about to go overseas, we'd both come out of relationships quite recently ... and I did tell him I was involved with someone else, but not who. </span>We enjoyed each other's company. We were just going to be good friends.<br />
<span class="s1"><br /></span>
<span class="s1">Bill was a person who loved to help others. When my TV broke down, he came and took it away in his ute to a mate who fixed it as a favour. He would pick me up from work and take me shopping so I didn't have to lug groceries on public transport. He'd come around on weekends when my lover was with his family, and keep me company.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span></span></div>
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<span class="s1">We would have long talks, sitting in separate armchairs, never running out of topics. He was in fact writing a novel, and told me the plot, though I didn't get to see the manuscript until much later. One night, after he finally left, I saw that it was 3am. I hadn't even looked at the clock before then. He told me later he'd had the same surprise on the way home when he drove past a big public clock. We laughed to think no-one would ever believe we had been sitting in separate chairs talking all that time. All our friends would be certain we were having a red-hot affair.</span></div>
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<span class="s1"></span><br /></div>
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<span class="s1">He was living with his parents. He told me about his beautiful dog, a German Shepherd called Gigi, who was the love of his life, went almost everywhere with him, and was jealous of his girlfriends. He had a story about one young woman who wasn't a girlfriend but came up close trying to be flirtatious. Gigi stood on her hind legs, put a front paw on each of the girl's shoulders, and snarled softly into her face. It thoroughly discouraged her!<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span></span><br />
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<i>Bill and Gigi</i></div>
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<i><br /></i></div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
I was rather apprehensive about meeting this Gigi, and wondered if she would attack me. Bill said, reprovingly, 'Gigi is a lady' and assured me she would come to love me. When he finally brought her around to visit, she went one better than that. She came up to me, sniffed me, and nuzzled my hand for a pat. Bill was amazed and ecstatic.</div>
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<div class="p1">
<span class="s1">My cat, Guinivere, lived outside all day while I was at work. When I got home, she would meet me at the gate then rush ahead of me down the path to my front door. As soon as I opened the door, she'd dart inside to the kitchen for me to feed her. One evening, Bill brought me home, Guinivere met us at the gate, I rushed to open the door for her, leaving him to get the groceries out of the car – and Guinie turned around, retraced her steps, waited for him to come in the gate, then walked beside him down the path. Again he was ecstatic. We said later that the animals made up our minds for us. But in truth we waited until our own minds caught up – which didn't take long.</span></div>
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<span class="s1"></span><br /></div>
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<span class="s1">One day I looked at him and thought, very quietly, 'Oh. I love you.' No bells, no fireworks, just the recognition of a fact. Almost at the same moment, he turned to me and said, 'I love you,' with an air of mild surprise. This was a love that had nothing to do with sex, based on shared interests, friendship, respect, affection, and feeling very comfortable with each other. Naturally it became sexual after that and I broke it off with my lover.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span></span></div>
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<span class="s1">I insisted Bill should have his overseas trip. He had indeed been dreaming of it for years. Before he went, he introduced me to his family and all his friends. His parents were disappointed. They had a nice Dutch girl lined up for him, a pretty lass who could cook and sew and wanted babies. Bill had taken her out a couple of times to please them, but said they found nothing to talk about. His parents were nice to me, but I know I was not their notion of the ideal daughter-in-law – a divorced woman, a career-woman. </span></div>
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<span class="s1"><br /></span></div>
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<span class="s1">By then I was Deputy Librarian at the municipal library where I worked – at that time, and perhaps since, the youngest Deputy Librarian in the Southern Hemisphere. (When the position became vacant, all the other staff, who were my friends by then, urged me to apply. So did my boss. I wouldn't have thought of it for myself.)</span><br />
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<span class="s1"> This time I was prepared to contemplate the idea of having children, particularly as Bill loved kids, but I wasn't in any hurry and neither was he. We thought we'd get a home established first, and some money behind us. Anyway, he had this overseas trip to do before any of that.</span></div>
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<span class="s1">Most of his friends welcomed me. One, a woman who was best friends with his ex-fiancée, spent the whole evening when we visited her discoursing on why he should still be with his ex! Another woman also tried repeatedly to persuade us we were making a great mistake. She had been out a few times with Bill and then married someone else after he ended it because, as he told me, he just wasn't all that attracted to her. (Her story, which I had heard earlier, was that she had ended it because she decided she could do better!) However, these were the exceptions. </span><br />
<span class="s1"><br /></span>
<span class="s1">My friends liked him too, and thought him a great improvement on Don. Mum at first wrote to me: 'We feel it's far too soon after your recent break-up for you to be contemplating another marriage,' but when I phoned her and told her it was my decision thanks very much, she offered to come over and meet him. He charmed her! She went home much happier.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span></span></div>
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<span class="s1">He asked his family and friends to please keep an eye on me while he was away. The only one who did was his best mate, Jim Cathcart. Jim was a rep (I can't remember what for ... maybe menswear) who used to travel around the suburbs visiting his firm's clients. Whenever he was near where I worked, he'd come and take me out to lunch and see how I was going. He became my friend in his own right. When his territory extended to Launceston, Tasmania, I told him to look up my Mum and stepfather. They made him very welcome and they all got on famously. He always used to see them after that, when he went to Launceston.</span></div>
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<span class="s1">But I wasn't doing very well. I couldn't go out and socialise as a single woman any more without attracting unwelcome advances, and I couldn't go out as half a couple when the other half was so far away. When I wasn't at work, I felt desperately lonely. And for ages no letters came from Bill. It was evidently a posting problem as suddenly several arrived at once. I tore open the first and nearly cried. I couldn't understand it! It took me some days to realise that he was spelling everything as it would have been spelt in Dutch to make those sounds. Then I was gradually able to work it out. Meanwhile I was writing him letters furious with frustration, complaining about how I was scrubbing my floors until midnight to try and work off my sexual energy.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span></span></div>
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<span class="s1">I had vivid dreams about him. One time I even had what was apparently a hallucination. I had lain down on top of the bedclothes for an afternoon nap, and half woke to find someone lying next to me and hugging me. I felt the bed sink to accommodate their weight, I felt their arms come around me. I thought it must be a dream, but I wasn't quite sure. Without opening my eyes, I asked aloud, 'Who is it?' A hoarse male voice whispered in my ear, 'It's me.' I opened my eyes and there was no-one. The bed was smooth. My mind went spinning and somersaulting as if in a vortex; I thought I was going mad. But I gradually calmed down, the room stopped spinning, and (apart from what had happened) I didn't seem to be crazy. It must have been an exceptionally vivid dream, I decided.</span></div>
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<span class="s1">So when I answered a knock on my door one morning and opened it to see Bill standing there beaming at me, for a moment I thought it was another dream. Then I noticed he had a suntan which hadn't been there last time I saw him. He must be real. <br /><br />'Yes darling,' he said. 'Your husband's home.' </span>(He wasn't officially my husband yet, but had every intention of being.) He'd received one of my furious letters and immediately cut his trip short. </div>
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<span class="s1">He'd sent a telegram to his parents asking them to book him on a flight home. It turned out the poor things thought he must have been taken ill, or perhaps robbed. He expected that I'd be with them when they met him at the airport. The first thing he said to them was, 'Where's Rosemary?' Then he learned that they had not told me, nor contacted me at all during his absence. (I think they hoped our attachment would fizzle out while he was away.) He insisted on being dropped off at my place, which he said surprised them. But after that I guess they knew he meant it, and accepted the fact that he was going to marry me.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span></span></div>
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<span class="s1">I myself wasn't too damn sure about getting married again. I'd done it once and that hadn't worked out. 'If I'm planning to spend the rest of my life with you anyway, what does the bit of paper matter?' I asked him. He hadn't done it before, however, and he was very keen to shout our love from the rooftops and make it as official as could be. So we were at an impasse. I thought he was beginning to come around to my way of thinking; then one day when we were visiting his parents, his mother, who had completely accepted and befriended me by then, mentioned the new hat she was making for our wedding. I didn't have the heart to tell her there wasn't going to be one.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>Oh well, I thought, if the bit of paper doesn't matter one way, I suppose it doesn't matter the other way either. </span></div>
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First I had to get divorced. Don and I were in touch by letter. He had a new job and a new girlfriend in Sydney. It was before the days of no-fault divorce; one of us had to be 'guilty'. Desertion would take three years; adultery was quicker. He wasn't willing to shoulder the blame, even though he was in a new relationship. We left my married ex-lover out of it; Don came to Melbourne for the divorce hearing and told the magistrate that we had been having a trial separation when I had written and told him I had met Mr Nissen, had started living with him and wanted to marry him.</div>
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The magistrate asked Bill, 'Did you know she was married?'</div>
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'Oh yes,' said Bill cheerfully, 'I knew'.</div>
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The magistrate then asked whether Don was claiming damages or property. Don said no. The magistrate expressed surprise that he was so generous, and granted the divorce. The three of us went and had a cup of coffee together, exchanged some meaningless but amiable remarks, then Don walked out of my life – very straight-backed, knowing our eyes were on him; not turning his head – to catch his train back to Sydney. </div>
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<span class="s1">Bill had a coffee lounge before I knew him, the first in Melbourne to feature jazz musicians playing to the patrons. It was in Frankston and was called The Cat's Whiskers. As a keen snorkeller, he had also run a diving school. But when I met him he was working for his father as a builder, along with his elder brother. So when he bought us a house in the leafy bayside suburb of Beaumaris, it was one that needed some work, which he could renovate himself, saving money on both the sale and the work.</span></div>
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<span class="s1">One of my other lifelong best friends, Pam, came into our life. She came to board with us, in the spare bedroom. There was also a bungalow in the back yard, which we rented out to a young couple; the man was an old friend of Bill's. And I still had my lovely cat, Guinivere. We didn't have Gigi. Bill's parents had looked after her on his brief absence overseas, and when he came home and moved in with me, they begged him to leave her with them. He still saw her every day, as his dad brought her to work.</span></div>
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<span class="s1">We acquired another dog, a beautiful Scotch collie called, unoriginally, Lassie. She belonged to a young man we knew who was changing his address and was not able to take the dog with him. She was a very wise and wonderful dog, who became a treasured member of our family for many years, until she died of old age.</span></div>
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<span class="s1">I wanted to avoid running into my ex-lover, which was likely if I'd kept the same job, so I got an even better job, as Head Cataloguer at a big technical library in the city. I had to learn a different classification system, but I enjoyed the learning. They thought I was wonderful because I cleared their cataloguing backlog in record time. It was nothing to the backlog I'd been used to in a municipal library.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span></span></div>
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<span class="s1">This was a time when it was socially unacceptable to 'live in sin' as it was still called. Bill and I were living together, so I used his surname even though we hadn't yet made it legal. That's what 'de facto' couples did then. We started out renting, not in the little flat I had when we met, but one he found us closer to the library where I was first working, and also with less travelling time to his work. No-one would have rented to us had we not presented as a married couple.</span></div>
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<span class="s1">In the paperwork required for the new job, my real status must come out. I confided in my new boss, a lovely older woman. She advised me to make an appointment with the Personnel Manager and disclose it to him in confidence. The fact that Bill and I had set a wedding date probably helped; anyway the disclosure was treated with great respect and complete confidentiality. Having begun a new job, I wasn't eligible for leave so soon. We didn't have a honeymoon, just a long weekend at home. We made up for it with lots of travels later.</span><br />
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<span class="s1"><b>My Second Wedding</b></span></div>
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<span class="s1">We got married in the Unitarian Church, because at that time of our lives we liked their ideas. I was 25 and Bill was 28. I wore a pale pink dress. 'Slightly scarlet,' I joked. This time my stepfather did attend. I didn't bother asking my father. After I married Don, I graduated as a Bachelor of Arts. I invited Dad to my graduation ceremony, telling him that Mum would be there but hoping he would come anyway. He didn't. He expressed disappointment that Mum didn't have the tact to stay away. He said he thought a girl needed her mother on her wedding day, but it would have meant so much to him to see me graduate. Well, it meant a lot to my mother too, and my position was that I gave both of them the choice to come, to my first wedding and to my graduation, and whoever declined was refusing to put me first on one of my special occasions. Under the circumstances, it would obviously be a waste of time to ask him yet again. I didn't see why I should punish my mother, who was prepared to come under any circumstances.</span></div>
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<span class="s1">The wedding reception was in our home, where we'd been living for some months. The renovations were nearly completed, but not quite. My mum, who set great store by appearances, went around draping tea-towels over exposed beams. I came home, threw a tantrum at the sight, considering it disgustingly twee, and ripped them all off again. </span><br />
<span class="s1"><br /></span>
<span class="s1">It was one of those days when everything goes wrong. For example, the flowers didn't arrive; the florist had messed up the order and had to hastily supply something that wasn't what I'd had in mind, after heated phone calls back and forth. We were so stressed that at one point, as we stood either side of the double bed we'd been sharing for months, I yelled at Bill, 'I wouldn't marry you if you were the last man in the world!'<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span></span></div>
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<span class="s1">'Well, how do you think I feel?' he bellowed back. Then the ridiculousness of it struck us, we collapsed on the bed in laughter, got up and finished dressing and went off to the church to get married.</span></div>
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<span class="s1"><i>Just married</i></span></div>
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<span class="s1">I'd decided to leave my glasses off, and I wore a fluffy white hat that came down over my ears. Bad choices! I went up the aisle feeling blind and deaf as well as nervous. But we tied the knot, everyone said it was a lovely ceremony, and the party afterwards was fantastic. We catered it ourselves, with lots of food from the local Chinese takeaway. I remember my stepfather cheerfully washing dishes, having a ball. My friend Diane remembers Bill's mother regaling her with tales of his childhood. Jim Cathcart, who was Bill's best man, met a lovely young woman called Joy, one of our other guests, who eventually became his wife.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span></span><br />
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<span class="s1"><i>Jack washing dishes</i></span></div>
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<span class="s1">One young woman, Elizabeth, had arranged to stay the night. We put a spare mattress on the floor in Pam's room. Elizabeth succumbed to alcohol and went to bed a bit early. Bill went to check on her, bending down to where she lay. Tipsy Elizabeth murmured, 'You married men are all the same' – much to his amusement – before collapsing.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span></span></div>
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<span class="s1">Bill's muso friends and others from his coffee lounge days were playing guitars and other instruments in our big garage, where we'd put chairs, trestle tables, drinks and food. They used to call themselves, collectively, 'the tribe'. I was very chuffed when one of them said to me, that night, 'You were always one of the tribe, Rosemary.'</span><br />
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<span class="s1"><i>Lassie was at the wedding reception too<br />(this photo taken outdoors)</i></span></div>
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<span class="s1">It was the wee small hours by the time everyone called it a night. I changed into my wedding night outfit: not a romantic, flowing nightgown but a pair of sexy red bikini pyjamas. But I was exhausted. For the first time in 11 months of living together, I said, 'Not tonight, I'm too tired.' On our wedding night! He said afterwards that he thought, 'Oh, is this what happens once you get married? The sex turns off?' (But no, it didn't.)</span></div>
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<span class="s1">And so they lived happily ever after? Not quite. They lived a very interesting, eventful life, with two children, two foster-children, several pets, much travel in and out of Australia, excellent friends and many adventures, and they were happy a lot of the time.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span></span></div>
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Rosemary Nissen-Wadehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05913841031559499568noreply@blogger.com5tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4436121128883591491.post-7040014336110070782017-07-11T00:29:00.000+10:002017-11-13T11:43:31.281+11:00Love and Marriage (2)<div class="p1">
<b style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: initial;">Learning</b></div>
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<span class="s1">I went to university for the joy of learning, rather than as vocational training. I did a Bachelor of Arts course, i.e. humanities. There was never any doubt that I'd major in English Literature for the sheer love of it. But my other inclinations and attitudes proved to be different from what I'd thought and I ended up rearranging the course I initially mapped out, swapping a Psychology major for one in Philosophy, and two years of French for two of History (Ancient and American – I thought I'd had enough Australian at school).</span></div>
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<span class="s1">I didn't know what I wanted to do after university; I was just clear I didn't want to be a schoolteacher. I'd had some notions of maybe being a psychologist, but a year of Psych 1 cured me of that. So, because I couldn't think of anything better, I settled for what my mother had always thought would be a lovely career for me: librarian. She was right.</span></div>
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<span class="s1">In those days librarianship was not yet a university course in Australia (I don't know about other countries). I attended library school, which in Melbourne was at the State Library of Victoria. I can't remember why I enrolled when I was also, simultaneously, still finishing my university course; perhaps it was so as to be able to start work as soon as I finished, when my scholarship ran out. I stretched my BA course over four years instead of the usual three, which made it easier to add in the library studies to my schedule. </span><br />
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<span class="s1">By the accident of sitting next to each other, I met a lifelong best friend, Linda, at library school.</span></div>
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<span class="s1">I got a scholarship to library school, too, but still had to be frugal. Sometimes I felt I was missing out on the fun that other girls my age who were not students were having. There wasn't money to splurge on clothes and outings, and anyway I was too busy studying for much of a social life. But I managed to have some.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span></span></div>
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<span class="s1"><b>Young and Single</b></span></div>
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<span class="s1">While I was living at Mrs Duncan's, my friend Diane whom I'd met at the hostel, suggested we go to some of the Town Hall dances on Saturday nights. I wasn't a good dancer, but I'd been to enough school socials to be able to fake it. I could get around the progressive barn dance, and do a fox trot. I never could get the hang of a waltz, but I could move my feet the wrong way and still end up where I was supposed to. Sort of.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span></span></div>
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<span class="s1">I hadn't yet discovered what a difference a good partner could make.</span></div>
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<span class="s1">It was the era of rock'n'roll, so there was always some jive. I used to dance to my radio at home, all by myself, but was scared to try it on the dance floor. I thought I'd make a fool of myself. But, like all the girls, I wore full circle skirts and petticoats with rope hems to the dances; just right to jive in.</span></div>
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<span class="s1">There was one wonderful night when two bodgies came to the Caulfield Town Hall dance. How can I explain bodgies? A bit like the British teddy boys, maybe, except they dressed like Elvis or the Fonze, with wonderful, duck-tail hairdos.</span></div>
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<span class="s1">Much later, I recorded that night in verse. Not my best poem by a long shot, but I'm fond of it for the memories.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span lang="EN-AU" style="font-size: 16pt;"><b>Generational
Adolescence</b></span><span lang="EN-AU"><o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-AU" style="font-size: 11pt;"><span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: x-small;">I
was just fifteen<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-AU" style="font-size: 11pt;"><span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: x-small;">when everything changed –<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-AU" style="font-size: 11pt;"><span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: x-small;">when freer children,<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-AU" style="font-size: 11pt;"><span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: x-small;">who were allowed to go<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-AU" style="font-size: 11pt;"><span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: x-small;">to movies like that,<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-AU" style="font-size: 11pt;"><span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: x-small;">leaped up and jived in the
aisles<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-AU" style="font-size: 11pt;"><span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: x-small;">to Rock Around the Clock,<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-AU" style="font-size: 11pt;"><span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: x-small;">even – or especially –<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-AU" style="font-size: 11pt;"><span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: x-small;">in staid country towns<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-AU" style="font-size: 11pt;"><span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: x-small;">around regional Australia.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-AU" style="font-size: 11pt;"><span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: x-small;">I
was still fifteen<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-AU" style="font-size: 11pt;"><span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: x-small;">when Elvis arrived.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-AU" style="font-size: 11pt;"><span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: x-small;">Handsome as the devil;<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-AU" style="font-size: 11pt;"><span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: x-small;">voice of an angel.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-AU" style="font-size: 11pt;"><span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: x-small;">The mothers and fathers
hated<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-AU" style="font-size: 11pt;"><span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: x-small;">his slim gyrating hips. <o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-AU" style="font-size: 11pt;"><span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: x-small;">We loved the tilt of his
lips,<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-AU" style="font-size: 11pt;"><span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: x-small;">the wicked light <o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-AU" style="font-size: 11pt;"><span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: x-small;">in his laughing eyes,<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-AU" style="font-size: 11pt;"><span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: x-small;">and the singing, the
songs, the beat.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-AU" style="font-size: 11pt;"><span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: x-small;">At
seventeen <o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-AU" style="font-size: 11pt;"><span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: x-small;">I moved to Melbourne.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-AU" style="font-size: 11pt;"><span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: x-small;">Every
Saturday night<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-AU" style="font-size: 11pt;"><span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: x-small;">there was a Town Hall
dance.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-AU" style="font-size: 11pt;"><span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: x-small;">Hawthorn, Caulfield,
Albert Park, Box Hill.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-AU" style="font-size: 11pt;"><span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: x-small;">Diane Rosewall and I went
to them all.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-AU" style="font-size: 11pt;"><span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: x-small;">We wore circle skirts,
wide belts,<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-AU" style="font-size: 11pt;"><span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: x-small;">flat ballerina slippers,<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-AU" style="font-size: 11pt;"><span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: x-small;">and white flouncy petticoats
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<span lang="EN-AU" style="font-size: 11pt;"><span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: x-small;">hemmed with ropes.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-AU" style="font-size: 11pt;"><span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: x-small;">We were good middle-class
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<span lang="EN-AU" style="font-size: 11pt;"><span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: x-small;">One night two real-live
bodgies<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-AU" style="font-size: 11pt;"><span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: x-small;">claimed us for a dance.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-AU" style="font-size: 11pt;"><span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: x-small;">Oh how those wild boys
moved!<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-AU" style="font-size: 11pt;"><span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: x-small;">swinging us through their
legs<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-AU" style="font-size: 11pt;"><span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: x-small;">and up on their hips.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-AU" style="font-size: 11pt;"><span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: x-small;">Oh how we twirled and
swirled.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-AU" style="font-size: 11pt;"><span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: x-small;">But we must have seemed tame
to them.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-AU" style="font-size: 11pt;"><span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: x-small;">They thanked us very
politely<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-AU" style="font-size: 11pt;"><span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: x-small;">and went hunting faster
girls.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-AU" style="font-size: 11pt;"><span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: x-small;">Tall lads they were,<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-AU" style="font-size: 11pt;"><span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: x-small;">in the extreme of fashion:<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-AU" style="font-size: 11pt;"><span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: x-small;">skinny black pants, long
jackets<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-AU" style="font-size: 11pt;"><span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: x-small;">with shoulder pads and
shiny lapels,<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-AU" style="font-size: 11pt;"><span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: x-small;">their hair slicked back<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-AU" style="font-size: 11pt;"><span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: x-small;">into lovely ducktails.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-AU" style="font-size: 11pt;"><span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: x-small;">Oh how our careful parents<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-AU" style="font-size: 11pt;"><span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: x-small;">would have disapproved!<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-AU" style="font-size: 11pt;"><span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: x-small;">That
makes anything<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-AU" style="font-size: 11pt;"><span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: x-small;">more exciting.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-AU" style="font-size: 11pt;"><span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: x-small;">Or anyone. <o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-AU" style="font-size: 11pt;"><span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: x-small;">I
ended up choosing men<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-AU" style="font-size: 11pt;"><span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: x-small;">who worked with their
bodies,<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-AU" style="font-size: 11pt;"><span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: x-small;">rode motorbikes, <o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-AU" style="font-size: 11pt;"><span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: x-small;">knew how to use their
fists;<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-AU" style="font-size: 11pt;"><span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: x-small;">men who swore.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-AU" style="font-size: 11pt;"><span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: x-small;">Later
I preferred<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-AU" style="font-size: 11pt;"><span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: x-small;">beards and flowing hair.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-AU" style="font-size: 11pt;"><span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: x-small;">I wore long robes. We sat
and smoked<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-AU" style="font-size: 11pt;"><span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: x-small;">in dark coffee lounges,
listening to Folk.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: x-small;"><br /></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-AU" style="font-size: 11pt;"><span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: x-small;">But that was after the era
ended;<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-AU" style="font-size: 11pt;"><span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: x-small;">the wild boys and girls
and the rest<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-AU" style="font-size: 11pt;"><span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: x-small;">all sang "That'll Be
the Day,"<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-AU" style="font-size: 11pt;"><span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: x-small;">and cried when Buddy died.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-AU" style="font-size: 11pt;"><span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: x-small;">And it doesn't matter
where I am,<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-AU" style="font-size: 11pt;"><span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: x-small;">every time the band <o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-AU" style="font-size: 11pt;"><span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: x-small;">plays Rock Around the
Clock,<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-AU" style="font-size: 11pt;"><span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: x-small;">I'm
up and dancing<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-AU" style="font-size: 11pt;"><span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: x-small;">and shouting the words<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-AU" style="font-size: 11pt;"><span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: x-small;">till I drop. Till the
broad daylight.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: x-small;"><br /></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-AU" style="font-size: x-small;"><span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;">© Rosemary Nissen-Wade
2007</span><span style="font-family: "optima";"><o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: x-small;"><br /></span></div>
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<span class="s1">One of my Carlton housemates (the 'kindred spirit' one I kept in touch with) and I used to go to all the 'new wave' French movies that were coming out then, and Ingmar Bergman's films too. We were amazed, thrilled and fascinated by The Seventh Seal; I don't know that I ever quite recovered. We fell in love with Alain Delon. We dreamed of embodying Jeanne Moreau. We wept over <i>Bonjour Tristesse</i>, the book and the film. And we went to student reviews at the university's Union Theatre. We irreverently called it the Onion. There we enjoyed the brilliant singing, dancing and comic talents of an unforgettable young Germaine Greer amongst others. (Many of those 'others' went on to acclaimed acting careers.)</span></div>
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<span class="s1">I still saw a lot of my stepsister, Merrie. We didn't only go to sexy parties; we did daytime things like going shopping or meeting for coffee.</span></div>
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<span class="s1">An old friend from Launceston High School, whom I'd continued to see when I went home on holidays, came to Melbourne, so I saw a bit of her too.</span></div>
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<span class="s1"></span><br /></div>
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<span class="s1">I went out with a few young men who didn't last. I never pretended to any of them that they were the only one. How could things be serious when we'd only just met? But apparently they expected it. If one phoned up asking to see me on a particular date and I said, 'Oh sorry, I'm going out with someone else that night,' that would be the last I'd hear of him. As I wasn't very smitten anyway, I didn't really care. I was still getting over John. I wasn't heartbroken exactly; I had been persuaded by then that marrying him wouldn't have been a very intelligent idea. But I still thought of him a lot.</span></div>
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<span class="s1" style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;"><b>First Husband</b></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span class="s1"></span><br /></span></div>
<div class="p1">
<span class="s1" style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;">Then I met Don. My friend Diane tells me now that it was at Dandenong Town Hall and I'm sure she's right, but when I wrote of it many years after the event, I remembered it as Hawthorn:</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span class="s1"></span><br /></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;"><br /></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: small;"><b>First</b></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;"><br /></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-AU"><span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;">Hawthorn Town Hall, Saturday night.</span></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-AU"><span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;">The best band, playing hot.</span></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-AU"><span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;">The tune was Mack the Knife.</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;"><br /></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-AU"><span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;">He turned, a suave stranger.</span></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-AU"><span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;">"May I have this dance?"</span></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-AU"><span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;">That wicked smile! </span></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-AU"><span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;">I stepped into his arms</span></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-AU"><span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;">and we began.</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;"><br /></span></div>
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<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span lang="EN-AU"><span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;">… Oh, the shark has <o:p></o:p></span></span></i></div>
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<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span lang="EN-AU"><span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;">pretty teeth, dear….</span></span></i><br />
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span lang="EN-AU"><span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;"><br /></span></span></i></div>
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<!--EndFragment--></div>
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<span lang="EN-AU" style="font-size: 11pt;"><span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: x-small;">©
Rosemary Nissen-Wade 2005</span><b style="font-size: 11pt;"><o:p></o:p></b></span></div>
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<span class="s1"></span><br /></div>
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<span class="s1"></span><br /></div>
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<span class="s1">Don's recollection, much nearer the event, was that the music started, he turned around to look for a partner, saw me right behind him and thought, 'This'll do.' Evidently he kept on thinking it. Reader, I married him.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span></span></div>
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<span class="s1"></span><br /></div>
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<span class="s1">But before that happened, he took me out to dances, dinner dates, parties, movies, picnics, to the beach.... It was a real courtship, though perhaps not initially with marriage in mind.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span></span></div>
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<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg7iwsddlqUww81taQ0cGbB0g7PX97aSsm0ccKlTP4KgyMHQZ8EkH2KKPJ6yI2KieaFkkV1vtQkKDJQKyCxQk9BXEjSrgC3EQeD5w5kpKpFO3X5uUWWU8R1tsYsiYjt9uGnhqK-Cf6kCuS4/s1600/IMG_4057.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="779" data-original-width="1088" height="286" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg7iwsddlqUww81taQ0cGbB0g7PX97aSsm0ccKlTP4KgyMHQZ8EkH2KKPJ6yI2KieaFkkV1vtQkKDJQKyCxQk9BXEjSrgC3EQeD5w5kpKpFO3X5uUWWU8R1tsYsiYjt9uGnhqK-Cf6kCuS4/s400/IMG_4057.jpg" width="400" /></a></div>
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<span class="s1">He worked as a postman, and instead of a car he had a motor scooter. There was a spare helmet for me and we went a lot of places by scooter. Other times, we went out in a group with his mates and their girlfriends, in a couple of cars. If it was somewhere fancy, such as a ball, we took a taxi.</span></div>
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<span class="s1">Don was a champion ballroom dancer with cups and medals to prove it. I loved dancing with him; he could make me look and feel good on the dance floor. It wasn't so enjoyable for him, so he sometimes excused himself to have a dance with someone more skilful, but not so often that I felt neglected.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span></span><br />
<span class="s1"><span class="Apple-converted-space"><br /></span></span>
<span class="s1"><span class="Apple-converted-space">He could sing a bit too, and at parties with his mates they always wanted him to be MC, which he did with verve and flair, microphone in hand. Life was exciting around Don.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> He had lots of energy and seemed always in high spirits. This photo shows him and his friend Rupert in an enthusiastic rendition of <i>My Old Man's a Dustman,</i> Don singing and Rupert banging the dustbin lid.</span></span></span></div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh5KrB6GsR6JRUZ8dsADW1mcYNqqbFD5__9Y_PIwqZOmfCHHZ90AZVy4OIYwgCWBgTsAUt1dkXY8UphF3DU82MK0X3sG35nyFBfLoioISjsFJ67vFdeAWE-niU2orqDFdimOLyk5GuiRq6D/s1600/IMG_4056.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="780" data-original-width="585" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh5KrB6GsR6JRUZ8dsADW1mcYNqqbFD5__9Y_PIwqZOmfCHHZ90AZVy4OIYwgCWBgTsAUt1dkXY8UphF3DU82MK0X3sG35nyFBfLoioISjsFJ67vFdeAWE-niU2orqDFdimOLyk5GuiRq6D/s400/IMG_4056.jpg" width="300" /></a></div>
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<span class="s1">I have often said that I married the first man who asked me because I thought no-one else ever would, and there's truth in that. But I enjoyed his company and conversation. He was an upbeat, charming escort. We loved the same music and some of the same movies. He was a reader too, even if we had very different tastes in books. And so we got engaged – to the consternation of my family and friends.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span></span></div>
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<span class="s1">Don's frail, elderly parents liked me, and were glad their youngest was finally settling down. He was 28, six years older than me, and had shown no signs of settling down before.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span></span></div>
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<span class="s1">Mum and Jack liked him, even though they didn't think we were well suited. Don and Jack were both convivial men who enjoyed partying. We had some good times together when Don and I visited Tasmania. Jack nicknamed him Charlie, from the song <i>Champagne Charlie</i>. He thought Don was just that kind of jaunty personality.</span></div>
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<span class="s1">My Dad was less enthusiastic, though he was polite. My brother, by then a first-year university student, and some of my girlfriends were desperate to stop me marrying Don. They thought I was throwing myself away on this fellow who liked drinking, gambling and partying. They thought his values were materialist and his intellect sadly lacking. They approached my father (I found out a few years later) to beg him to try and stop the wedding. But Dad told them that he feared opposition would only bind Don and me closer together. He hoped that, if the match wasn't opposed, I might soon see for myself that it wasn't going to work.</span></div>
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<span class="s1">No such luck. We got married in the Presbyterian church near Don's home. Though not a churchgoer, he was a member of the parish. I had a beautiful white gown, my stepsister was my only bridesmaid, and Don's best friend was best man. I was given away by an old family friend from Tasmania. My father said he would not attend the wedding if my mother was going to be there. Jack wouldn't do it because he felt it was my father's place, and couldn't believe Dad would really stick to his refusal. But I knew he would and so I asked the friend, who said he was honoured.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span></span></div>
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<span class="s1">We went to Sydney for our honeymoon – in our eyes the big, exciting city of glamour and sin. We had a wonderful time. And afterwards, at first we had quite a nice time playing house.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span></span></div>
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<span class="s1">I knew Don liked a flutter, but for several months that didn't appear to be a great problem. He owed his bookmaker money, so had a strict limit on his betting until he had paid it off.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span></span></div>
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<span class="s1">He finally did, and after that he started splurging large amounts. Our life was run by whether he won or lost. I might come home to a house full of new furniture (he loved rose mahogany) if he'd had a big win, or a house emptied of furniture if he'd lost a lot. Even worse than that, his moods changed accordingly. He could go into black depressions in which he lay on the couch and spoke of suicide. I didn't know how to deal with this. Sometimes he wouldn't speak at all for hours. I found the silent treatment very hard to take. Once, in frustration, having just come in from the laundry, I threw the peg bag at him. That roused him from his apathy for a while. We were both shocked that I'd done it.<br /><br />I now realise that he was bi-polar, which wasn't even a word back then. It was called manic-depressive. It was never diagnosed, and as I was the only one who saw the black moods, I doubt if anyone ever guessed. </span></div>
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<span class="s1">He still loved to party, and now we hosted parties in our own home. Also he often took me to the races. I enjoyed the day out, dressed up all glamorous, looking at beautiful horses and drinking champagne. </span><br />
<span class="s1"><br /></span>
<span class="s1">I realised then that Don's gambling was an addiction. I would sit next to him while a race was run that he had a bet on, and I observed that it wasn't really winning or losing that he cared about, although he made the appropriate responses in either case. It was the running of the race, the huge build-up of excitement, and then finally the explosive release of emotion either way as the race ended. It was positively sexual.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span></span></div>
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<span class="s1">Our actual sex life was nowhere near so exciting. Don was very uninhibited, at ease with his body, and taught me to be the same, which I've always been grateful for. ('You take off all your clothes!' said a later lover, in astounded delight.) But despite that, our lovemaking wasn't very satisfactory. Having at that stage no basis of comparison, I blamed myself and my inexperience. When we went out, he started flirting with other women. The only time I objected to this (in private, because I was raised as a nice girl who wouldn't make a scene) he told me so fiercely not to dare question his behaviour that I never did dare again.</span></div>
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<span class="s1">Outwardly life went on as normal. We held down our respective jobs. (I was working in a library by the time we married. It was a good thing we kept our money separate! At least mine didn't get gambled away.) We ate and slept together. We kept house. We socialised. We even got a kitten.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span></span></div>
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<span class="s1">I started feeling lonely and lost, but not telling anyone. I had some bizarre hallucinatory experiences, like seeing another passenger on the late night tram home with a skull, instead of a head. No, I wasn't on any drugs except the birth control pill. (Thank heavens, Don didn't want children, and at that stage I didn't either. I thought I wanted to be a career woman.) </span><br />
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<span class="s1">I began having nightmares in which I was about to see something terrible but woke up before I did, then would lie awake scared that some looming horror would finally reveal itself.</span></div>
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<span class="s1">My doctor suggested that I might consider seeing a psychiatrist. He could recommend somebody excellent. I declined politely. I wasn't MAD or anything.</span></div>
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<span class="s1">Then, at<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>one of our parties I got very drunk and suddenly found myself screaming that I hated my father and wanted to kill him! This came as a complete surprise to me as well as everyone else. I couldn't control myself. I sobbed and shook, and had to be put to bed and sedated.</span></div>
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<span class="s1">The next day I looked at all the lies I'd been telling myself about my nice life and saw them crumble away, one by one. I went to my doctor and said, in a very small voice, 'I think I'd better see that psychiatrist.'</span></div>
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</style>Rosemary Nissen-Wadehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05913841031559499568noreply@blogger.com6tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4436121128883591491.post-45029089118547671462017-07-06T01:09:00.005+10:002017-07-06T08:18:07.124+10:00Learning Womanhood<i>More answers to questions raised by Brooke Medicine Eagle. (See also the earlier post, <a href="http://owntrumpet.blogspot.com.au/2017/06/girlhood-as-social-construct.html">Girlhood as a Social Construct</a>.)</i><br />
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<b>Womanhood. ---- Look at your models for the qualities of the feminine eg.</b><br />
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Nurturing – renewing life – receptivity – harmony – creativity –<br />
gentle strength – spiritual powers --- any other.<br />
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<b>• Name the women in your life who best reflect these qualities.</b><br />
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My first great role model, and indeed my first great love, was my Nana, my Mum's mother. She was a warm, soft lap to sit in, a safe, generous bosom to rest my head against, a sweet voice singing. She told me that gentle Jesus loved me, and I believed it without question because she was so sure. She herself exuded love. I was the first grandchild – though I have to say she adored the later ones just as much. Somehow, without promoting competitiveness, she made each of us feel extra special. She loved animals too, and had several dogs that used to follow her around. Luckily she lived in the country, with plenty of room for them, and for cats as well, which the dogs didn't chase. And she loved plants; she made beautiful gardens. She died when I was four, but by then she had left an indelible impression and many memories which are still vivid 73 years later.<br />
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Also there were the stories about her, which I heard at family gatherings when I was growing up. How strangers would spontaneously tell her their whole life stories – like the day she went to answer a knock at the door and came back half an hour later, saying, 'That was the milkman. Oh, the poor man, he's had such trouble with his family! His wife's very ill....' etc. She had been a nurse, back in India where the family came from. She must have been a very good one.<br />
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Everyone loved her. Although she was Anglo-Indian with exotic dark colouring, she had never been a beauty by either Indian or British standards, even in her youth, and by the time I knew her she was old and fat. I saw her as beautiful, though, when I watched her brush out her long hair before bed and then wind it up again. Like a fairy queen, I thought.<br />
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She was attractive to men all the same, and had several lovers before she finally married. My Mum said that when she (Mum) was a young woman, her boyfriends would sooner talk to her mother than to her. Perhaps it was that ready ear and sympathetic nature. My Dad, who loved Nana dearly, remarked that she also had an exceptionally beautiful voice – meaning not a singing voice but her speaking voice.<br />
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My Mum, by contrast, was not very huggy or cuddly. It wasn't entirely her fault. She was told by a male doctor not to pick me up every time I cried, and to feed me strictly by the clock. She told me, many years later, that as I cried with hunger she used to cry herself, waiting until the permitted time. <br />
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We didn't bond. Although there was love, we were never close or demonstrative. <br />
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My next warm, nurturing mother figure was my Aunty Ev, who I went to live with as a university student, after finally getting away from a vicious, insane stepmother who gave me two years of hell. <br />
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Aunty Ev was kind, warm, affectionate, and did plenty of hugging. She was also very practical. She was the one who taught me the best way to poach eggs, and how to use lemon juice and salt to clean a copper kettle.<br />
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<b>• Name any men, animals, or natural forces that have shown these qualities to you in your life.</b><br />
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My Dad was a nurturing father when I was little, though he disappointed me later. He was great for playing games, carving me wooden toys, and reading me stories. He was the one who would sit up with me if I had nightmares. <br />
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He made me a swing which hung from the bottom branch of a huge willow tree. In Spring and Summer I loved sitting on my swing surrounded by willow fronds, in my own green cave. I spent many hours there, swinging, gazing at the sky, dreaming.... That tree was like a nurturing presence for me, a safe haven.<br />
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When I got older there was another tree, a black wattle with a wonderful nook in the lower branches where I could sit comfortably against the trunk and read my book. (There was always a book.) I felt nurtured and guarded by that tree, too.<br />
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Living in Launceston, I was surrounded by mountains. They seemed to me like beautiful guardians. The mountains here feel the same way. So did the Andes when I was in Peru, and so did the craggy mountains in Scotland. <br />
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Tasmania itself, a beautiful island where I grew up delighting in the natural world, was itself like a mother to me, embracing me and sustaining me. I don't feel nurtured in cities, despite the joys of theatres and art galleries. <br />
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My Grandpa – my Mum's stepfather and the only father she knew – used to take me for long walks from an early age, pointing out all the beauties of nature. <br />
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As long as I lived, he gave me wonderful, classic books every birthday and Xmas: Dumas and Dickens, all the Brontes.... He wrote me letters, advised me on what clothes suited me (and got it right) and when he died when I was 9 he left me his typewriter in his will because he knew I would be a writer. That was very special nurturing, not just a of a grandchild but of ME, my individual self.<br />
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Neither Grandpa nor Dad was a man's man. They were bookish rather than sporty. (Also Dad had a crippled leg from the age of 10 so he didn't have much choice.) It meant that they showed me what gentle men could be like. <br />
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Also they both had a firm belief in the equality of women, even though they were blind to their own social conditioning which went against it in some ways – so I learned from them that womanhood was a matter of gender, not behaviour, and didn't have to be the subject of rules.<br />
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<b>• When did the responsibilities of womanhood become obvious to you?</b><br />
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Perhaps not until I had my first child. Before that, I saw what responsibilities women usually took on, and I didn't particularly want them. Also I didn't see why they MUST be done by women. Nor did I see why men couldn't cook and clean. Well, I was raised in a feminist family, where dinner-table conversation included remarks such as that men make wonderful chefs. Nevertheless, most people in that family adopted traditional roles. <br />
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When my first child was born, his father and I automatically stopped having the 'equal relationship' we'd been so proud of up until then. It was just more practical for me to stay at home and do most of the child-rearing and domestic stuff, while he went out hunting for food ... er, earning a living. And I wanted to be with my baby anyway.<br />
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I don't know that I thought it was necessarily a woman's role, though. I probably would have said that a man could do it as well, if necessary. Not breast-feeding of course – but then, I was unable to do that anyway. <br />
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I just felt it was a human responsibility to look after the young, or anyone in need.<br />
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<b>• What have been the special joys of this period of your life?</b><br />
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I was never much good at domesticity but I did enjoy my children. Unlike most mothers, who complained about school holidays, I loved having my boys home and spending time with them, at any age. <br />
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I took the role with them that my Dad had with me, playing games with them, reading to them, taking them sightseeing, having great conversations. Their father did some of that too, but often worked long hours with early starts, so he wasn't as available. <br />
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I also enjoyed my creative life, with my various arts and crafts – but that's been lifelong, not specific to one period. <br />
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Sex was a particular joy during this period, too. It still was as I got older, but nothing beats all that wonderful rush of falling in love, and then exploring what bodies can do, which is so intense and exciting in those decades of youth through middle age. I was only in my fifties when I married Andrew, so I'm counting him in here too. Over the course of my adult life I've had three husbands and several lovers, and also some unconsummated but deeply emotional romances. I'm lucky enough to have been rich in love, and to have experienced, I think, every kind of love possible between women and men. I have no need to feel I've missed out on anything. <br />
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I belong to an online group which writes erotic haiku. When people assume I'm writing from present experience, I tell them my tools are memory and imagination.<br />
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<b>• Take special note of where and how you are learning the qualities of womanhood from your experiences now.</b><br />
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I am learning from my women friends – my Goddess sisters in particular. We have so many varieties and shades and expressions of womanhood amongst us, it's easy to see that beauty is richly diverse and that love can be demonstrated in many ways.<br />
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<b>• Thank your teachers.</b></div>
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Thank you all.<br />
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Rosemary Nissen-Wadehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05913841031559499568noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4436121128883591491.post-9470099038629289612017-07-05T17:20:00.001+10:002017-11-13T11:57:30.936+11:00Love and Marriage (1)Holidays in Tasmania were always glorious. Mum and Jack (our stepfather) were very happy together and enjoyed life. They were keen to give us a good time when we were with them – everything from parties in their lavish home (Jack playing his piano accordion at some point, and Mum the piano), dining out at the swankiest spots in town, movies and theatre and even the races … to seaside camping trips with caravan and annexe and a little runabout we used for fishing. <br />
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From my childhood on, my Dad’s nickname for me was Mary Rose. My favourite uncle, Tommy, adopted it too when he came to stay with us when I was little, and used it the rest of his life. I loved it from both of them: a special name from my two favourite men, exclusively.<br />
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My Dad was jealous and bitter towards Jack, and didn’t want my brother and me to like him. But we did, and soon loved him too, as he did us. If we had the worst stepmother in the world, we had the best stepfather. I remember Stepmother saying one time, about my brother – who had supposedly spoken to her cheekily, which in fact he would have been much too cowed to do – ‘Maybe old Abbott [my stepfather’s surname] can lam some sense into him.’ Charming, huh? I didn’t bother telling her it was the last thing our stepfather would do. He was a very masculine man – and for him that included being protective towards women and children, not brutal.<br />
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He never used my father’s name for me in conversation, but when he built a new and better runabout, he called it the Mary Rose. I loved that too.<br />
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He taught us how to steer the boat, and how to fish – including gutting and filleting our catches. It was play fishing for him. He was a keen angler (fly-fisherman) and loved to fish the Tasmanian Great Lakes for rainbow trout with his mates – standing in the water wearing long waders and a macintosh – or the famous Shannon Rise, where at a particular time of year a prolific swarm of caddis moths would hatch and the water would boil with hungry fish. (The Shannon Rise was a popular spectator sport too; I’ve watched it from land a few times.) Dropping a line over the side of a boat and hauling in flathead, or trawling for perch, was no great challenge for him, but it was fun for us and he enjoyed our enjoyment.<br />
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Mum told my Aunty Katy years later, when she asked what Jack was like, ‘He showed us a different way of life.’ It was an adventurous way, a way full of gusto and joie de vivre.<br />
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I also kept in touch with my old school friends in Launceston, and as I got older went to teenage picnics and parties with them. To some of the local boys, I was the glamorous visitor from the Mainland! (Particularly after I started living in Melbourne.) There were a few dates, a few kisses, a few fumbles, but I had to return to the Mainland before long, so these were not lasting relationships. As I recall, all parties were shy and stilted anyway, trying to make a good impression instead of relaxing and being ourselves.<br />
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A student from Singapore, whom I met in the Evangelical Union, got a crush on me. He was definitely not the sowing-wild-oats kind of Asian student, but a very lovely young man who surprised me with the gift of a book, a treatise by a Christian author. He wrote sweet but chaste protestations of friendship on the flyleaf. I was always convinced I was not very attractive and it didn't dawn on me until later how he really felt. (Dumb or what?) <br />
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He even went to Launceston during one long vacation and got a job in the local bookshop. Perhaps it was impulsive; he didn't tell me beforehand of such a plan. He told me in a letter afterwards, explaining that he had looked up all the Robinsons in the phone book (my surname) but couldn't find me. <br />
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Of course I was staying with my mother and stepfather, who had a different surname. Obviously, the romance was mostly in his head as he had not even talked to me enough to know such basic facts about my life. Still, I felt sorry I hadn’t known he was there. My family would have made him welcome. Fate! I often visited that bookshop when I was home, but not that time. Ah well, he was a devout Christian and we wouldn’t have suited. I wrote a reply explaining, but after that we both let things fizzle out.<br />
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The best times were when my cousin Anne came to stay, when we were both in our late teens. She was one of <span style="font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: 24px;">‘my cousins from Burma’ </span>as I always referred to them collectively. My Grandpa brought them out to Tasmania from Burma on an assisted passage scheme, when I was seven. They were related to Nana, who was dead by then. The lady I knew as ‘Aunty Irene’ was my Mum’s first cousin. That made her my second-cousin and her children my third-cousins. They were Anglo-Indian like my Mum, but ‘Uncle Leo’, a tall, handsome, intellectual man, had been employed by the Burmese government for his brilliance as an engineer.<br />
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Aunty Irene was by no means his intellectual equal, but he loved her for other qualities. She was the oldest of a tribe of siblings who had been orphaned when she was only in her teens. She became a mother to her younger brothers and sisters, and apparently did a wonderful job of looking after them all until they could make their own way. He admired her selflessness. It surely didn't hurt that she was a good Catholic girl, and Uncle Leo was a devout Catholic. We all came to love her for those other qualities too – her huge, warm heart; her playfulness; her fund of fascinating stories, both family stories and folk tales. We loved Uncle Leo for his wisdom and gentleness, and for never talking to us like children.<br />
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It was very exciting when they all arrived, fresh off the boat. The whole extended family was there at Grandpa’s home to meet them. It was after dark when the taxi finally turned into the long driveway. They had the exotic dark looks of our Anglo-Indian heritage, which I longed for and didn't get. I fell in love with them collectively, but particularly with my cousin Leo, the second son – ‘Little Leo’ as he was known, being both younger and shorter than his father. He must have been about 14 then, a very handsome boy with a lovely nature, and brainy like his dad. He was nice to us younger kids, not dismissive as many older children would have been. I sat on his knee and told everyone, including him, that I was going to marry him when I grew up. I hung on to that intention for at least a couple of years.<br />
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They were excited to meet us, too, and eager to get to know their new environment. I remember us all piling into a couple of cars one night to go to nearby Devonport to see the musical <i>Meet Me In St Louis </i>with Judy Garland. John, the older son (probably 16 then) was particularly thrilled to be able to see it and was the leading instigator of the expedition. I remember him trying to explain to me on the way there why it was such a great opportunity, but I didn't get it. I understand now that Judy was the pop sensation of her day. The big deal for me was being allowed to go to a movie at all with my older cousins who seemed to me so grown up and sophisticated. I did enjoy the outing, and still get a small, sentimental thrill if I ever hear the title song.<br />
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We saw a lot of them, both at Grandpa’s and when they visited us in Launceston. My Dad considered all religion superstitious nonsense, but had great respect for Uncle Leo in other ways and they became friends. It was Anne, the youngest, who became my particular friend, being only18 months older than me. We had a lot in common, not least our love of reading, and became close confidantes.<br />
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But they found Tasmania too cold for them, and eventually moved to Ingham in North Queensland. I suppose that Uncle Leo must have sourced work there. They left behind their eldest, Joan, a beautiful, joyous, sweet-natured young woman who was courted by a Launceston man. He had a dreadful reputation; no-one wanted her to marry him, but he knew how to seduce a girl. Even so, he wasn’t going to get this girl without marriage, but why wouldn't he have wanted to marry our Joanie? He turned Catholic to do so, and I remember the interminable wedding mass which was very tedious for a child like me. <br />
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They went on to have three children quite quickly, while he broke her heart slowly and she eventually left him. But that took some years. Meanwhile Aunty Irene and Anne both came from Ingham to visit her from time to time. Her husband didn’t make them very welcome. It became easier for Anne, whose visits were more frequent, to stay with Mum and Jack, who loved having her. She made some extended visits and found secretarial work while she was there. When I was there for my holidays, she would take holidays too. That was the icing on my cake. Mum and Jack began referring to us as ‘the girls’ and arranging for us to be there at the same time. We all looked forward to that.<br />
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One year she wasn't there, but her brother John was. I think he must have stayed with Joan, but we saw a lot of him. He was in the Air Force by then, taking some leave. By then I was 18 and he was 27. His brother Leo was in Melbourne visiting Aunty Irene’s brother Noel, who had migrated to Australia separately, married a lovely girl called Norma, and become a father. After visiting Joan, John was going to Melbourne to see Leo and the rest of the family there, crossing Bass Strait on the Taroona (known to locals as the Tub). Mum and Jack thought it would be nice for me to travel back with him. Perhaps they thought he would look after me like a big brother. But I had very different ideas.<br />
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We began quite a serious flirtation on the boat. Luckily neither of us was prone to sea-sickness, even crossing the notorious Bass Strait on the equally notorious Taroona. I’m not quite sure who started it first, but I’m sure I made it clear he wouldn't be rebuffed. I mean, I was a virginal 18 and here was this drop-dead-handsome older man in uniform. AND we were already acquainted – family, but not so close as to be taboo. We were both sharing same-sex cabins, and we couldn’t get up to too much on deck, but we certainly wanted more.<br />
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I was still living at Aunty Ev’s. I’d been home maybe a day when I got a phone call inviting me to a barbecue at Noel and Norma’s. John and Leo both arrived in Leo’s car to pick me up. Leo was just as much a darling as ever, and just as good-looking. He lived in Melbourne for some time after that, and we saw a bit of each other, but only as affectionate cousins. He was the one who adopted a big-brotherly role towards me, and kindly included me in his own social life. (Possibly John asked him to keep an eye on me, but he never made it seem a chore.) He had a girlfriend for a while, who didn't seem to mind me tagging along, and I became friends with her too. <br />
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I no longer wanted to marry my cousin Leo; I’d fallen passionately in love with his big brother. It was entirely reciprocated and we made no secret of the fact. Our family members were surprised, but could see how we felt. The more romantic ones hoped for wedding bells; others were cautious. I remained virginal – but only just. In fact he was a wonderful lover for an inexperienced girl, gradually and considerately teaching me to know my own passion. By which I do not mean to suggest that he was lacking in passion himself! Far from it. I’ll be forever grateful he was my first lover, even if not quite ‘all the way’.<br />
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John had to return to duty of course, which was in North Queensland. We wrote loving letters for many months. Finally he came to Melbourne again. By that time I was boarding at Mrs Duncan’s house in Caulfield, a leafy suburb. That was my next home after letting go the shared house in Carlton.<br />
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My cousin Anne was in Launceston then, at Mum and Jack’s, for the usual wonderful Christmas vacation. She’d got work in Melbourne and would be returning at the same time as me. We’d both be looking for a place to live; what could be better than finding one together? She was the one who found Mrs Duncan, a widow with a daughter our age, who took in other young women as boarders – full board with meals, washing and cleaning all taken care of, at a reasonable price. <br />
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We thought to stay there temporarily, giving ourselves time to look around and find a flat. We moved in on that basis, sharing a big bedroom. There were two other boarders besides us, as well as Mrs Duncan and her daughter. We all clicked and it was like being in a family. Mrs Duncan was just motherly enough, in a kind and practical way, making sure we had healthy food and didn’t stay up TOO late. It was early days of TV in Australia, and we had great fun clustering in the living room to watch shows like <i>Bonanza</i> and <i>Maverick</i>. <br />
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Anne and I liked being there so much, we decided to ask if we could stay on. When we did, Mrs Duncan yelped with delight, saying, ‘I was just saying to [her daughter] that I wish those nice girls didn't have to leave.’<br />
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Anne did leave though, eventually, for a better job in Sydney. I think it was a promotion within the firm she was already working for. But before that we enjoyed our time together in Melbourne. For some months, on top of our daytime occupations, we got temporary work as programme sellers at one of the picture theatres in town. It was showing a Royal ballet film: Fonteyn and Nureyev. We had to dress up glamorous, and afterwards would sometimes go to dances in the city with the usherettes. They knew all the good places that were still open late.<br />
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I stayed on at Mrs Duncan’s after Anne left, but when John paid an extended visit to Melbourne again during one of my vacations, I spent a lot of time at Noel and Norma’s house where he was staying. He did take me out on dates too, as in the photo below (complete with photo bomb from random child):<br />
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He usually came to fetch me from the Caulfield house, and met Mrs Duncan and the girls. We started tentatively exploring the notion of marrying each other. His Catholicism was a stumbling-block for me. I was firmly agnostic by then. The Virgin Birth seemed particularly preposterous, and I couldn’t come at the idea of praying to Mary, as I knew Catholics did, asking her to ‘intercede’ for them. My landlady, Mrs Duncan, who was Catholic, tried to help. <br />
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‘Mary,’ she said emphatically, ‘is as real to me as my own mother!’ This didn't strike me as a very convincing argument against my intellectual doubts. However I was willing to entertain the possibility of converting, if I could reconcile myself to the beliefs. I was studying Philosophy at the time, including Logic, and the two systems of thought were not very compatible. But I knew I could 'take instruction' from a priest, and hoped to meet one who would be a man of ideas. I wanted to be convinced.<br />
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Then Aunty Irene and Uncle Leo came to Melbourne to visit Noel and Norma – who had an old house with several bedrooms and ’sleep-outs’ (semi-enclosed verandas) which could accommodate a number of visitors, and were generous with hospitality.<br />
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I look back and wonder if they also came to observe first-hand the romance between John and me. As John had already pointed out to me, for Catholics there is no divorce; we had to be very sure. I of course, 20 by then, thought, despite my intellectual stumbling-blocks, that love must conquer all.<br />
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I guess my own parents must have had misgivings, though they were tactful. I do recall Jack making dreadful jokes about a future in which I’d be tied down with lots of kids, slaving over a hot stove and living on potatoes. But I couldn't take that seriously.<br />
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Aunty Irene loved the idea of having me for a daughter-in-law. I think she was also desperate for her older son to settle down. They were already a little worried about his liking for alcohol. I look back now and realise that about 4 in the afternoon, every afternoon, he’d get a little edgy until he had a beer. Then he’d have some more during the evening, but he never seemed particularly drunk. Later he became a full-blown alcoholic for many years, until at last he kicked it with the help of AA. Late in life, finally sober, he married for the only time, a woman with whom he was 'happy ever after', and I’m glad he found that happiness. <br />
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I never had any rancour towards John, but for a time I had plenty towards Uncle Leo. He was always sweet and kind to me, and we had some lovely conversations during that time. It was only after he and Aunty Irene went back home that John told me his father had advised him not to marry me, on the grounds that our thinking was too different – I was an intellectual, and would eventually want more than John could give me. It wouldn't be fair to me, Uncle Leo argued. He convinced John to break it off with me. John was sad but resolved. Uncle Leo must have been very persuasive. (And he was, when you came right down to it, the patriarch of his family – the wise elder whose word, if not law, was still taken very seriously.)<br />
<br />
He was right of course. John was like his mother and his sister Joan – very sweet-natured and by no means stupid, but no, not intellectual, not bookish, not given to deep reflection. Anne and Little Leo were more like their father: good people too, and with keen intellects. It was Little Leo and Anne I could have long, confidential talks with. John and I were always much too busy otherwise for deep conversation! <br />
<br />
I didn’t see it that way at the time and was furious with Uncle Leo, but I lived to be very grateful. How sad it would have been to spoil that first girlish passion by a disastrously mismatched union. How dreadful if we had come to hate each other instead of remembering each other kindly for the rest of our lives, and always with a little bit of lingering ‘first love’. (I believe I was his too, though by no means his first lover.) Oh, and imagine our families caught up in it all! No doubt there would have been children involved as well. What a mess it would have been.<br />
<br />
I never saw him again. His beloved wife died when they were both in their sixties. (I sent him a sympathy card via my cousin Anne, who gave me the news when I lunched with her in Sydney in 1994 to introduce her to my newish third husband, Andrew.) I expect he has died too by now. I lost touch with that branch of the family after my Mum died. I spoke to my cousin Anne on the phone to break that news, and she said loving things. Soon afterwards she retired and moved to the Blue Mountains to be near her sister Joan. Anne was a successful career woman who had some long relationships but never married. She fell in love young with someone unavailable and could never quite get over him enough to ‘settle for second-best’ as she put it.<br />
<br />
Little Leo became an engineer like his dad, worked for a while in Coober Pedy – or was it Mt Isa, or both? – married the young schoolteacher there, moved back to Queensland, had six children, a successful career and a long and happy marriage, saw his children grow up and do well, and died of illness some years ago.<br />
<br />
Noel and Norma moved to a better suburb, and ended up with three children, all of whom went on to live successful, happy lives. As a very young man in Burma during the Second World War, Noel escaped the Japanese invasion by trekking through the jungle, nearly starving, with some other men including Americans. He rather fell in love with the idea of America, and was delighted when one of his sons ended up living and working there, especially when he and Norma made the big trip to visit. Apparently it lived up to his dreams.<br />
<br />
As for me, I went on to marry someone who was a bigger disaster for me than John would ever have been, in a very different way – but it was a lot easier to get out of.<br />
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Rosemary Nissen-Wadehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05913841031559499568noreply@blogger.com6tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4436121128883591491.post-17854159670180280062017-07-04T14:40:00.000+10:002017-11-04T17:32:08.799+11:00Learning to Fend for Myself<i>(With a little help from my friends and relatives)</i><br />
<br />
My brother and I were soon, and forever after, glad that we ended up in Melbourne instead of Hobart for our university years, due to the fact that we finished our schooling in the State of Victoria. I don't say it made the two years under our Stepmother's roof worth it, but it turned out to be the one good outcome of our father's desire to have custody during school term. <br />
<br />
Nothing against Hobart Uni (which I know very little about) but Tasmania as a whole was quite parochial in those days. It was a wonderful place for a child to grow up in, but would have been stifling for an adolescent. <br />
<br />
I loved my island, and still do in memory and on my increasingly rare visits. If something about Tasmania comes up on TV or in a movie, I'm riveted to the screen, I drink in the images. But it's interesting that when I lived there I used to sit in my classrooms gazing out the windows and dreaming of 'over the hills and far away' – listening to the planes leaving Launceston to fly across Bass Strait to what we called The Mainland. I pictured them landing in Melbourne, the closest capital city. That city – only vaguely imagined – was the focus of my daydreams. Not being there, not what might happen there, but just arriving there. I saw a glorious but undefined future opening up like a golden sun once I went to live there.<br />
<br />
For us it was The Big City. Hobart wasn't that. We went to Hobart quite often as kids, to visit our cousins. It was a small city, not much bigger than Launceston, and even colder. Melbourne, though, seemed huge, dangerous, exciting. After we settled in and learned our way around it (or around some parts of it anyway) it became another dear, familiar home while simultaneously retaining the Big City edge. In many ways, too, it was a beautiful city. I loved it dearly for decades.<br />
<br />
I was often pathologically shy and self-conscious during my university years, but for the most part concealed it fairly well. I think I might sometimes have seemed aloof. Nevertheless I enjoyed my time there, and became on friendly terms with some other students. <br />
<br />
My stepsister Merrie and I had gone through a religious phase while living under the Stepmother's roof, largely for social reasons, but also falling in love with Jesus for a while. We had joined the local Methodist Youth Fellowship, and met nice, boring boys who dreamed of becoming ministers or missionaries. This phase didn't last! At university I joined the Evangelical Union briefly, but found I had too little in common with the other members and couldn't get excited about their events and activities. I certainly felt <span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;">no call to try and convert anyone. (But I have stayed a little in love with Jesus, despite not following a Christian path and utterly repudiating the churches created in his name.)</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;">Merrie was living in Melbourne by the time I got there, doing her nursing training. (She never did put that finishing school to good use by marrying a wealthy grazier or corporate baron.) She got over her churchiness too. With big-sister concern for my social life, she took me to parties of nurses and wealthy (male) Asian students who were sowing their wild oats whilst away from strict parental eyes. My Aunty Ev was dubious about me going to parties with folk she didn't know and couldn't vet, but after the first time Merrie arrived to collect me in a friend's car, she relaxed. </span><br />
<div>
<br />
'Merrie's so reassuringly wholesome!' she said. <br />
<br />
In fact she was right to be worried; however I came to no harm. I looked back later and realised that those parties always ended with couples pairing off and finding semi-private corners as the hour got later and the lights got lower. It was assumed that everyone would stay the night. I used to find a spot on my own to fall asleep, usually with others who hadn't got lucky. In my case I was blithely oblivious. Once a young man tried to roll on top of me, and I pushed him off the high bed to the floor, laughing loudly as I did so. I hadn't even taken him seriously. And in fact it was a very half-hearted attempt. He got the message and slunk away. <br />
<br />
I look back now and wonder that I came unscathed through what were almost orgies. Innocence was its own protection, I guess. And let's face it, I wasn't even trying to look sexy, only pretty. Socially, I was gauche. I wouldn't have had much attraction for young men who were looking for 'fast' girls. But it got me out of the house and made me feel that I was having a life.<br />
<br />
I enjoyed living with Aunty Ev and Uncle Tommy for a year, experiencing warmth and something like normality. But it wasn't very practical. I was quite far away from the university (University of Melbourne, the only one that city had then, though later it acquired two more) and spent long hours daily travelling back and forth. I wasn't so far away as the crow flies, and in these days would get there much faster, but roads and public transport were both more limited then. <br />
<br />
Eventually Uncle Tommy wanted the use of the room I was sleeping in. Aunty Ev booked me into the Salvation Army hostel for young women, in the city. My brother stayed with them a few more years, attending a local school. He says now that Aunty Ev wasn't as warm to him as she was to me, and that may be so. But she was a lot better than the Stepmother. She was kind, practical, and a good cook, and had a basic wish for our wellbeing. <br />
<br />
She always used to tell the story of how, after we first arrived, she found him lugging his sheets out to the laundry in the morning and asked what he was doing. He told her he'd wet the bed and was going to wash his sheets.<br />
<br />
'Oh, don't worry about that,' she said. 'Give them to me and I'll put them in the washing machine. If you don't want to wet the bed, just don't have anything to drink after 4 o'clock.' Problem solved! I loved her for that as well as everything else. She couldn't fathom that such a big deal had been made out of something so simple, or that anyone could be so unkind to a child.<br />
<br />
I found hostel living quite strange, but tolerable. There were some strict rules, such as being in by 10pm unless you had special permission for a very good reason. The doors were locked at that time, and if you were later and had to knock, you'd better have permission! The threat hung over our heads of being thrown out for failing to comply with the rules.<br />
<br />
The rooms were small, occupying several floors. There was a huge communal dining room, a cold, old-fashioned laundry in the basement with coin slots to start the machines, and a roof balcony with views over the city.<br />
<br />
Many of the girls were students like me, including Asian students from Malaysia and Singapore. Others were girls from the country who had found work in Melbourne. Then there were the unmarried mothers. They were working for their keep, scrubbing the floors and washing the linen. <br />
<br />
The staff, all senior Salvation Army officers, were cold, stern women who seemed to think we were all naughty children. At least they were frostily polite to the paying customers. They treated the handful of unmarried mothers like slaves, speaking to them scathingly and working them hard. Those girls themselves had a crushed, hang-dog air, never looking anyone in the face. I know the Salvation Army is famous for its good works, but that first impression of them stays with me. I tell people that's where I first learned the meaning of the expression, 'cold as charity'.<br />
<br />
As for the rest of us, we were in some ways naughty children. <br />
<br />
I made some friends. Two of them became important friends in my life, and one of those I'm still in touch with today, nearly 60 years later. Some of my friends encouraged me to ask for a transfer from my ground floor room to the floor they were on. They knew a room near theirs was coming vacant. <br />
<br />
The transfer was granted, which made it easier to spend giggly nights crammed into one or other of our rooms, drinking alcohol and cooking chips on our tiny methylated spirit stoves – both of which activities were strictly forbidden. <br />
<br />
Two of my friends, chafing at the restrictions of hostel life, invited me to join them in renting a house in Carlton, near the university. Rents were cheap there, and although they were both wage earners, not students, they weren't earning much. It was close enough to their places of work by public transport, as well as being ideally situated for me. <br />
<br />
My father came to Melbourne and spent a day with me, buying furniture (at auction) for my room and arranging its delivery. It was a companionable day, in the course of which we saw an art exhibition advertised, wandered upstairs and were shown around a studio by the white-haired man who lived there. The paintings were by his friends. Dad remarked how much he'd like to be able to paint like that.<br />
<br />
'You can!' said the man. 'Look at that horizon. That's just a line. You can draw a line.' <br />
<br />
That made such an impression on my father, he soon started to paint landscapes, first with acrylics and later oils. He continued for the rest of his life, sold many paintings, and some are in the Art Gallery where he lived. I have several hanging on my walls, and love them. Mine are of Tasmania. <br />
<br />
He and my stepmother used to travel on vacation to various places including Tassie, avoiding anywhere they might run into Mum or any of Dad's old friends from his earlier life. They couldn't avoid it entirely, and stories came back to Mum of old friends rushing up to hug him warmly, only to be frozen out by my stepmother's icy manner.<br />
<br />
He was unable to hold down a job in his new environment, and ended up being kept by his wife in return for odd jobs around the property. It was also clear she'd turned off the sex pretty soon. Ironically, this former womaniser, terrified of his second wife and her nasty tongue, and without money or free time, lived the rest of his life celibate. But at least he got to travel to some good places, and he made himself a life as an artist. <br />
<br />
In the Carlton house, life was enjoyable and frugal. We learned the usefulness of the local pawn shop, and seldom redeemed our goods. We walked places as much as possible. But we liked the new freedom. One of the others painted a mural on her bedroom wall. I got myself a cat. Every week I bought a lettuce and sixpence-worth of mincemeat (quite a large amount back then). I lived off that, sharing the mincemeat with my cat. One of my flat-mates had a big sack of oranges sent from her country home, and we shared those too. I still visited Aunty Ev sometimes, at weekends. I didn't do so just because I'd get a good meal – but of course I always did get one there. The student café was fairly cheap too. I didn't starve.<br />
<br />
My other favourite Aunty, my Dad's sister Kathleen, aka Katy, who never married and was a favourite with all her many nieces and nephews, worked in a big bookshop called Robertson and Mullens. She got me holiday jobs there (in the short vacations when I stayed in Melbourne) which I enjoyed very much. I had won a Commonwealth Scholarship which paid my university fees but provided only a meagre living allowance. When I was still living with Aunty Ev, she encouraged me to advertise, by notices in the local store, for jobs baby-sitting and ironing, so for a time I was able to augment my income that way. After I moved from her house, the work in the bookshop was a godsend. I lost my shyness in that situation, and liked interacting with people, helping them to find what they wanted.<br />
<br />
While I was living in Carlton I applied for, and to my surprise got a job at Victoria Market, Melbourne's biggest market, right in the city. I assisted on a toy stall run by an old German couple who were very sweet to me. I enjoyed that too, working weekends and public holidays.<br />
<br />
At the end of the year, though, two of us went home to our families for Christmas – the 'long vacation' in my case, lasting three months. We couldn't afford to keep renting the house while we weren't in it, and the other lass couldn't keep it on by herself. Sharing a house had polarised us anyway, as it so often does. One of the others was a somewhat older young woman, who found me and our third irresponsible and tiresome. (The third and I were kindred spirits who remained close friends for a number of years.) Abandoning our rental suited us all by then. I found another loving home for my cat, and joined my brother on a flight to Tassie.<br />
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Rosemary Nissen-Wadehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05913841031559499568noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4436121128883591491.post-5277235214638323052017-06-28T15:45:00.000+10:002017-07-06T01:41:39.516+10:00Girlhood as a Social Construct<i>That sounds scholarly, doesn't it? But these are just notes really. In The Wisdom Circle, a discussion group I participate in, we're currently answering questions posed by Brooke Medicine Eagle in her book </i>Buffalo Woman Comes Singing<i>. It's been a marvellous exercise so far, bringing up all sorts of recollections and realisations for each of us.</i><br />
<i><br /></i>
<i>As this blog is a compilation of pieces in preparation for a memoir, rather than the final version of the memoir itself, I thought it could be useful to include this particular raw material. Here are my personal answers to the questions about the first stage of life: girlhood. (I grew up in the 1940s and 1950s.)</i><br />
<i><br /></i>
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<span class="s1">Girlhood. ----- Begin with your earliest memories and consider the messages you received from women in your family.</span></div>
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<b>How were you expected to behave: </b><br />
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To be polite. To speak nicely.<br />
<br />
To sit with my ankles crossed. <br />
<br />
When a teen, to wear stockings and white gloves when out in public. <br />
<br />
That it was important to be pretty. In my family it was also OK for girls to be intelligent and talented, and I was praised for that. It was considered a blessing which would make up for not being pretty. <br />
<br />
It was important to get married. As I was not pretty and therefore might not marry, it was lucky I had a brain and would be able to support myself with a career.<br />
<br />
In my family, it was considered an advantage for housewives-and-mothers to be intelligent too, even though they didn’t have to work. The term ‘houseproud’ was not a compliment, but denoted a woman who had no interests beyond housework and therefore was somewhat despised or pitied.<br />
<br />
Working-class boys were not suitable as husbands. Neither were any young men with low-paying jobs and poor prospects.<br />
<br />
I was supposed to want babies.<br />
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<b>Did you receive the same messages from Mother – Father – Aunts – Grandmother – ?</b><br />
<br />
Pretty much – but my father hoped I would be a free spirit and have many lovers before marriage, whereas the rest of the family still thought virginity a requirement for a bride.<br />
<br />
<b>Teachers – ?</b><br />
<br />
Not overtly, but it was taken for granted.<br />
<br />
<b>Girls of your own age?</b><br />
<br />
Preteen, they were as innocently rebellious as me. As they got older, they adopted the conventional views.<br />
<br />
<b>How did you feel about these messages?</b><br />
<br />
I thought my mother’s life looked unutterably boring, and I didn’t want that.<br />
<b><br />Were there things you wanted to do that you were not allowed to do because – "Girls don't do things like that?" – list some.</b><br />
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I didn't like the fact that certain games and sports were for boys only. I didn’t particularly want to play them anyway, but I resented not having the choice. <br />
<br />
I also didn't like the fact that there were things I was supposed to DO by virtue of being a girl, such as cook and sew, neither of which had any appeal for me.<br />
<br />
<b>Were there things about being a girl that you loved? – list some.</b><br />
<div>
<b><br /></b>I liked my sleeping doll, Julie, and I still have her.<br />
<br />
I liked watching my Mum get dressed up for parties, with beautiful clothes, perfumes and jewels and I looked forward to growing up like that. But I didn't like the party dresses I had as a child, because they restricted me and I had to keep them clean.<br />
<br />
It appeared that boys were obliged to be rough and tough, and to settle some things by fighting. I was glad girls didn't have to.<br />
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<b>How do you feel about these now?</b><br />
<br />
I mostly wear trousers. I still like perfume and jewels, and enjoy getting dressed up for parties. </div>
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<br /></div>
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I still wouldn't want to have to be physically rough and tough, as something expected and required of me. I don't think I'd be very good at it, and anyway I think there are better ways to solve problems. Besides, I'm a physical coward.<br />
<br />
<b>Were there hopes & dreams you had as a girl that you have put<br />aside growing older?</b><br />
<br />
Only being a ballet dancer, which it turned out I was no good at because I was uncoordinated and had no ear for music or sense of rhythm. I have fulfilled all my other dreams. My parents and grandparents were feminists before we even had the word, so I was encouraged to believe I could follow my dreams.<br />
<br />
(Only the dream of being a poet was considered too impractical; I was told it would have to be a hobby, not a job. This was nothing to do with gender, however – and I must admit they had a point!)<br />
<br />
<b>When did you feel you became a woman instead of a girl?</b><br />
<br />
When I married my first husband at the age of 22. (Even though I graduated university and had a responsible job before that.) This realisation surprises me. I think it was something to do with having one's own home, one's own domain that one was in charge of.<br />
<br />
<b>What would you tell a little girl of your own now about being female?</b><br />
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There are many ways to express that. Find the one that suits you. Follow your joy; that's your clue and your guidance. </div>
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I would say the same to a boy about being male.<br />
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Rosemary Nissen-Wadehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05913841031559499568noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4436121128883591491.post-20646957901107614562017-06-26T17:45:00.000+10:002017-07-04T10:35:02.452+10:00Living My Nightmare<br /><br />I called Aunty Ev my second Mum. She understood that we had been through trauma. She didn't dwell on it, but gave us positive feedback and support. She was like a cross between a mother, a sister and a pal to me. I could talk to her about clothes and boys, books and movies, moral values and politics, and the way our stepmother had treated us. <br /><br />She didn’t say about that last – as the girls at school had, the only time I tried to tell them – ‘You don’t expect me to believe that, do you?’ She accepted my word, listened with understanding, and took my side. <br /><br /> She had opinions and firm values, and expressed them. They didn't always agree with mine, but she wasn't attached to being right. She could allow for different points of view without surrendering her principles. She didn’t tell me how to be, but she did give me advice if I asked. She presented me with options. I found it amazing.<br /><br />It wasn't surprising that my school friends didn't believe me. My experiences with the Wicked Stepmother were bizarre. <br /><br /> Dad married her not so much on the rebound as to get away from a small place where everyone knew that my mother had fallen in love with someone else, and almost certainly knew that she had good reason after many years of serial infidelities on my father's part. <br /><br />It was the old, 'But they didn't mean anything!' – to which I now wonder, ‘Then why do it?’ But he is not here any more to answer that.<br /><br />Many years later, Mum said to me, 'If only he hadn't always felt obliged to confess!' Back in those days it wasn't widely understood that confession (followed by some form of forgiveness, absolution or self-punishment) is a way of giving oneself permission to sin again.<br /><br />It was different when she finally turned the tables and it did mean something. (Not one for light affairs, it had to mean a lot or she would never have done it, even with all the excuses she had.) Ironically, Dad gave her an ultimatum: give up the other man, or it's divorce. Like her daughter decades in the future (facing a husband who said, in effect, 'Do as I want or it's over') she threw his ultimatum back in his teeth. <br /><br />Her lover's history was much the same: a wife who embarrassed him with her notorious affairs for many years while he tried to keep things together for the sake of the children, and then – by the time his children were grown up and married themselves – falling in love with Mum and finally straying in his turn.<br /><br />Then, for the divorce laws of the time, these two had to be the guilty parties, caught in the act. It was a big scandal, written up in Truth, the local gutter press of the day. Then there was a quick divorce. (Well, two divorces.)<br /><br />After which – Mum told me many years later, when she confided the whole saga – Dad said privately to her, and her lover's ex-wife said separately to him, 'Don't rush to get married. You can do better.' <br /><br />'I don't know what they thought we went through all that for, if not to marry each other!' she said.<br /><br />My Dad demanded custody of my brother and me during school term, and my mother didn't fight it. Whatever his faults as a husband (and really there weren't that many, except for the big one) he had always been a great, and adored, father. <br /><br />Visiting his family interstate to break the news of the impending divorce, he met a rich widow. She was holidaying with her daughter, who was eighteen months older than me. They got chatting on a train journey, and spent time together at their destination. (I found out the details later from the girl who became my stepsister.) <br /><br />When he returned home to Tasmania, they followed, putting up in a hotel for appearances' sake. My father and the widow arranged outings that included her daughter, Merrie, and me. They expressed the hope that we would become great friends. And in fact, innocent of any agenda (Australian teenagers were a lot more naive in the fifties) we did get on well. <br /><br />He then proceeded to introduce Merrie's mother to all his friends. The cover story was that she and her daughter were on holiday, and Merrie and Rosemary had chummed up. His friends weren't fooled. Polite for his sake (he was well-loved) and with initial goodwill, they didn't really take to this woman. One who had regular business in the hotel where she stayed remarked years later that he used to see her waiting for Dad in the foyer, 'like a big Black Widow spider'. <br /><br />Also, she seemed to expect that Dad's old friends would side with him against Mum instead of still counting her as a friend and being 'civilised' about the whole thing. She held it against them forever after. Well, perhaps she had heard a one-sided view of events. Come to think of it, he very likely didn't confide in his intended that he had been a serial philanderer! However, her adversarial attitude didn't endear her to anyone.<br /><br />My Mum was a pretty woman and a good conversationalist, with nice manners. She had humour and sweetness. People were fond of her too. She and Dad had been a popular couple. The Wicked Stepmother (not yet in that role) was probably slightly older than him, stout of stomach, with a finely wrinkled face, and she reeked of heavy perfume. As far as one could gather, she didn't even seem to share Dad's values or political leanings. Everyone thought he was marrying her for her money, and I still think so. <br /><br />But that was only part of the story. He couldn't stand the loss of face at his wife having left him for another man. And, to be fair, despite all the infidelities he did actually love my mother. She was truly the love of his life. Only I believe he was one of those men who had women separated into sexy bad girls to have a good time with, and the good girls to marry and have kids with. At any rate, he couldn't bear to stay in a small town on a small island, where everyone knew what had happened and where he could not avoid seeing Mum with her new husband – where, in fact, they would have continued to move in the same circles because the town wasn't big enough for it to be otherwise. He resigned his job and prepared to leave.<br /><br />Though it wasn't what Mum had expected, and she didn't warm to her replacement at their one meeting, she put a good face on it. <br /><br />'We'll have you for the holidays,' she said.<br /><br />My brother knew nothing of all this, except that Mum and Dad had separated. When Dad went interstate to tell his mother and siblings, he took my brother with him and, as it was the long school holidays, left him with a sister and her family on a farm, 'to get to know his cousins'.<br /><br />Eventually Merrie and her mother went back home. Dad followed with me, making a detour to the farm to leave me there with my brother for a week or so. That bit was good; we had fun with our cousins. Then he arranged for us to take a train to our new home.<br /><br />He asked me not to tell my brother about our mother's remarriage. He would explain it later, he said. What he did explain, when he picked us up after our train journey, was that he himself had just got married. It was a shock to me, and devastating for my 11-year-old brother, who had had no idea and got the whole lot landed on him at once.<br /><br />We had grown up in a temperate climate, in a hilly, tree-lined town on an island with mountains, lakes, rushing rivers, forests, and of course the sea. We arrived to a flat inland region of low scrub and one large, sluggish river. It was a place of harsh, dry heat. The countryside was so parched that many irrigation channels had been made to water the grapes and oranges which were the major crops and livelihood. There was not a hill in sight, let alone a mountain. Except along the river bank, trees were also in short supply.<br /><br />We had been part of a neighbourhood and community where we and our family had a place, where our parents’ adult friends treated us warmly, and we went to school with their children. We had an extended family of my mother’s relatives whom we saw often. In our new home we didn't even have my father’s relatives, whom we at least knew of. During our childhood my Dad’s brothers and sisters and of course his mother, my Grandma, kept in touch with Dad and Mum often via letters and photos. Some cousins, and some aunts and uncles, we met in person when they visited us in Tasmania. Grandma visited a number of times. But they all lived in and around Melbourne, in the south of the State of Victoria. Stepmother had a home and thriving business (a general store) in a very different kind of place, a tiny village outside the town of Mildura in the north of the State.<br /><br />My stepmother's way of life and house rules were different from what we were used to. Things were much more formal in some ways. But it was the country, not the suburbs, and life was in other ways more rough and ready than we were used to. We didn't have the practical self-reliance of country kids.<br /><br />We were presented with a 19-year-old step-brother who clearly resented both us and our father. He was barely polite at the dinner table and not at all anywhere else. He mostly ignored my brother and me as if beneath contempt. He had left school and was working in the family business, which had been his father’s. His mother was keeping it going until he could step in and take over. (It occurs to me now, so very belatedly, that this was admirable on her part, and quite something for a woman unexpectedly widowed to take on.)<br /><br />Merrie and I were glad to see each other. We had some whispered discussions about the surprising fact of our parents' marriage, working out with hindsight that it must have been planned soon after they first met. We didn't at that stage realise the Stepmother had an agenda too. She wasn't likely to find a new husband in a community where she was well-known and not much liked. <br /><br />Her late husband had been very well liked – had grown up there, taken over in his turn the family business started by his grandfather, and was admired as a local sportsman in his youth. She was the daughter of a wealthy grazier (Australian landed gentry) far south, and they fell in love when she arrived as a new teacher at the tiny local school. She was attractive when young (I saw the photos) and must have seemed a glamorous, even exotic stranger. He was handsome and well-to-do, and I gather quite a dynamic personality. Apparently it was a passionate, devoted match. But then he had a heart attack, or stroke or something (I’m hazy on the details) and died suddenly, much too young.<br /><br />The fact that she was a snob probably wasn't enough to cause her to be disliked, as she was mingling with the local upper crust anyway; but I overheard gossip from people who had no idea that the schoolgirl within earshot was connected to her – she was considered vain and conceited by many. I expect there was resentment, too, that he had married a newcomer instead of one of the local girls. And then, after being widowed, she took to drink. I have some sympathy for that, but what it turned her into wasn't nice.<br /><br />We, her new family, took a little while to realise that the heavy perfume was to cover up the smell of alcohol. She held it well most of the time, but when she was drunk by the end of the day she would become irrationally angry and make strange, unfair accusations. My brother and I would try to be polite, and as inoffensive as possible, while she subjected us to long tirades. She would impose penalties such as extra chores for things we had not actually done. There was no reasoning with her.<br /><br />At first we tried to talk to our Dad. His response wounded us deeply: ‘I’ve had one broken marriage and I won't have you kids wrecking another!’ <br /><br />(Years later, my psychiatrist, hearing this, exclaimed, "Why didn’t he say to her, 'Leave my bloody kids alone!'?" [Yes, this experience was a huge factor in a full-scale nervous breakdown that happened when I was in my twenties. I’ll get to that.] I didn't have an answer then, but I have one now: my father was a weak man.)<br /> <br /> She soon realised my father had not married her for love but was in truth still pining for my Mum. Her jealousy, taken out on my brother and me, was fierce. I've said that what drink turned her into wasn't nice – but in truth she wasn't very nice in the first place. <br /><br />In some ways her behaviour was quite funny, even to us then, intimidated as we were (we wouldn’t have dared laugh openly). She had a way of playing favourites, being charming to most of the family alongside addressing foul remarks in a hideous tone of voice to whoever was out of favour at the time. I still remember one day when everyone was in her bad books, and she turned to her crabby old orange cat, saying in her sweetest voice, ‘Oh, you’re such a beautiful lad, Fritz!’ Funny as in pathetic, ridiculous, obvious and silly!<br /> <br /> It wasn’t funny at all when my little brother, traumatised, started wetting the bed, and rather than receiving any understanding was treated as ‘naughty’, required to cart his heavy sheets to an outdoor laundry trough and wash them by hand in cold water, even in the middle of winter.<br /><br />It wasn’t funny one night when she gave us a dinner with small pieces of broken glass in it. No, we didn't eat it; it wasn't ground too fine to detect, and we weren’t stupid. Neither did we complain. As I said, we were not stupid. We disposed of it quietly and went hungry. I expect we snuck into the kitchen later and got ourselves a piece of fresh fruit, hoping she wasn’t counting what was in the fruit bowl.<br /><br />It wasn't funny when some of my best books went missing, and some days later my stepmother led me to where they lay under a hedge, damaged by rain and mud. <br /><br />‘That naughty little boy!’ she said, oozing fake sympathy. I knew who had done it, and it wasn't my brother. He claimed, of course, to know nothing about it; I believed him, my father didn’t. There was some punishment, I forget what.<br /><br />It was even less amusing when I accepted an invitation to spend a long weekend with my godmother in Melbourne, and came back to find that in my absence my athletic 19-year-old stepbrother had decided to inflict on my small, skinny 11-year-old brother some tortures he’d learned at his posh boarding school. Why? My brother had wet the bed again, or been accused of disobedience or ‘cheek’ or something. I forget; and in any case I think the ‘reason’ was an excuse. When I was there, I was able to stand up for him a bit despite being intimidated myself. I was a good talker and, combining that with a meek, placating manner, could often talk our way out of trouble, or at least mitigate the punishments.<br /><br />Nor was it funny when my mother bought me a beautiful party dress after I turned 16, which I wore to a couple of parties on a school holiday visit home (Tasmania was of course our real home, in our minds and hearts) only to have it disappear after I took it back to that other home. Some time later, my stepsister spotted it on a stall of used clothing, at a fair to raise money for charity. (My stepsister was allowed to go to the fair, and on other outings; Cinderella and her little brother were of course not.) It was a very distinctive dress, easily recognised. But my stepsister was not brave enough to make an issue of it. She wasn't game to arouse her mother's anger either.<br /><br />She was not an ‘ugly’ stepsister but an ally as much as she could be. She confided in me that soon after their father died, she and her brother (13 and 15 then) sat down and plotted as to how they could murder their mother and get away with it, as her treatment of them became ever more crazy and horrible. They couldn’t work out a foolproof murder, so they abandoned the idea. (I can tell this secret now, as all parties are long deceased.) So you see, it wasn't just my brother and me being upset and super-sensitive; our reaction was not exaggerated. I feel obliged to say this, even now, as our few attempts to talk about it at the time were not believed. <br /><br />I don't remember us fantasising about murder; not as a serious possibility anyway. But we did dream of getting away. Because the divorce court had decide the custody arrangements, I didn't think that was possible. I was 15. It didn't occur to me that I might ask for the ruling to be reconsidered. And when I went home for holidays, I had such a good time with my mother and a stepfather who turned out to be sensible, kind and fun, that I put the horror of school terms behind me. I was living my nightmare most of the year, treading on eggshells, utterly unable to be spontaneous or authentic while under Stepmother's roof. Certainly not free! When I went home, I could be me again. I could have a life like a normal teenager. I revelled in it. In that normality, I wanted to forget the nightmare while I could. I never even mentioned what was going on. <br /><br />My brother told me many years later that he mentioned it, as hard and often as he could. I asked Mum about that, and she explained that because I said nothing, and the stories seemed so preposterous, they thought he must be exaggerating because he was upset by the divorce. They could not believe my father would tolerate such things if they were true. (I am sure no-one else who knew him earlier could possibly have believed it either. But I witnessed him being mentally castrated, bit by bit, over the two years I was there.) By the time my mother and stepfather understood what had been happening, we had escaped. Meanwhile, the nightmare wasn't completely unrelieved.<br /><br />My stepsister had finished secondary school and was sent to a ‘finishing school’ in Melbourne – a place where daughters of the wealthy went to learn domestic arts that would enable them to manage a household with servants – so I only saw her when she was briefly home for long weekends and holidays. Even so, because her holidays were not identical with ours (when we went to Tasmania) we had some time to cement our friendship. It was one alleviation of the situation, for me if not for my brother. <br /><br />My brother and I both made friends at our respective new schools, so that helped a bit too. Our days were not entirely Dickensian. And my mother had insisted that my brother continue his music lessons, at her expense, so a teacher was found. That got him out of the house regularly, which must have been some relief.<br /><br />The one thing my Dad did in my brother’s defence was to arrange for him to leave for Melbourne with me when I left to take up my University place. He told me long afterwards that he could see that, without me as a buffer, my brother wouldn’t have survived emotionally. This did not make me feel better towards my father; rather I blamed him more, that he had that much awareness yet did so little. However, I remain very thankful for his decision, as I believe it was indeed a matter of my brother's survival. <br /><br />I still recall vividly my stepmother’s goodbye. My brother and I were waiting with our luggage for Dad to get the car. As soon as he was out of sight and earshot, she leaned down to my little brother, and right in his face said venomously, ‘Don’t you ever think you can come back here to see your father!’ Then she stood up, turned to me, and said in a voice dripping honey,’Rosemary dear, you’re welcome here any time.’<br /><br />No, I didn't spit in her eye; still much too intimidated. If I remember rightly I made no response, and next minute Dad was there with the car. But I made a silent vow never to set foot in her house again.'Where my brother is not welcome,' I said in my mind, 'I will not go.' And I never did. I never had anything more to do with her, despite some letters from her at first, which I ignored. She soon gave up. My Dad said tentatively, once, that she was hurt I didn't answer her letters. I can't remember how I responded to that, but I'm sure I made my position very clear. He never broached the subject again.<br /> <br /> When my brother was a young man living in Melbourne, my father and stepmother came for a visit. They stayed with Merrie. (No chance of my brother or me offering HER any hospitality.) My stepmother had appointments to which, for some reason, neither my father nor Merrie was available to drive her. Dad asked my brother, as a great favour, if he would. He decided to do it, solely for my Dad. I was amazed and admiring. I wouldn’t have done it. <br /><br />Later my stepsister said to me, as one puzzled and looking for clarification: ‘Mum said that when he drove her around that day, he was really strange – he didn't address one word to her the whole time!’<br /><br />‘What did she bloody expect?’ I said (thinking: Have you forgotten???). ‘She should have gone down on her knees in gratitude that he took her at all! She wanted conversation as WELL?’ <br /><br />My stepsister took one startled look at my face, and wisely shut up.<br /><br /><b> Aftermath</b><br /><br /> I hated my stepmother implacably for decades – until finally, in my late forties, I noticed that the hatred was poisoning me, not her: I was beginning to experience physical symptoms which I could trace directly to that. By then I had met and worked with Ridge and Jenette, and experienced both The Forum and the Andronicus Foundation group. I had powerful techniques which enabled me to finally let go of the hatred and move on. But it was only when I did my Reiki Master training that my initiating Master, Ann, helped me see that my stepmother had been one of my greatest teachers and, on the soul level, had perhaps even incarnated with that purpose. <br /><br /> It was in large part thanks to my stepmother that I was eventually able to overcome the softness and timidity I had as a child, and become better able to stand up for myself. <br /><br /> It was thanks to her that I got very clear on who I was and am, and confirmed for myself the vital importance of both freedom and authenticity. Conversely, I learned how to read people and tread carefully when necessary. <br /><br /> I honed the gift of the gab which has got me out of some very sticky situations at times, including one potential rape. <br /><br /> And, in the end, after many years of hanging on to it, I learned how and why to let go of hatred.<br /><br /> It was thanks to her, too (though not to her alone) that at the age of 23 I went temporarily crazy and ended up in years of psychotherapy – which turned out to be one of the most positive things I ever did, and almost certainly the reason I am happily alive at the age of 77 instead of dead or incarcerated in my twenties or thirties.<br /><br />You may ask: What place does all this have in a magical memoir? I see now that my experience in those nightmare years, particularly the time I wasn't there to protect my brother from our stepbrother, was the motivation behind a successful piece of magic I did in my sixties. A close relative, a divorced mother of a seven-year-old son, found a new partner and the three of them were very happy together until his ex-wife died suddenly and his children, who were in their late teens, came to live full-time with him instead of only at weekends as it had been.<br /><br />They were, naturally, very upset by their mother's death. They resented my relative and her little boy, were rude and aggressive to her and started bullying her son physically. Their father refused to intervene. I was furious when I heard. They were seventeen and nineteen; he was seven.<br /><br /> 'This isn't on,' I said to myself. The young mother had been urging her partner to set up his children in a house of their own close by, where he could visit them often but they wouldn't be disrupting his new family. Seemed like a good idea to me. I did a spell of banishing, to move them out into a separate house. It worked almost immediately – but the father went with them. That was the end of his relationship with my relative, which was very upsetting for her and her son.<br /><br />A long time later, I asked her, 'Was it better that they all went, or would it have been better if they'd all stayed?' She thought about it a while, then said, 'It was much better that they all went than it would have been if they had all stayed'. Then I told her what I had done. She forgave me and still loves me. She found a more satisfactory partner in due course, and her son is now grown up and in a happy relationship of his own.<br /><br />It was only in writing this part of my memoir that I realised – my experience with my 'steps' accounts for times in my life that I have been moved to assist young people in need, in various ways. It is surely what lay behind my fury at a young boy being tortured by much older people on the brink of adulthood, and my taking action in his behalf.<br /><br /><div class="p2">
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Rosemary Nissen-Wadehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05913841031559499568noreply@blogger.com5tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4436121128883591491.post-23032514519923169502017-06-11T17:44:00.001+10:002017-07-04T10:37:28.764+10:00My Deepest Fear<br /><br /><i>(Before I go on with my story, it’s necessary to back-track.)</i><br /><br />My greatest fear through childhood and for much of my adult life was that I would not be free to be myself – my authenticity would be stolen from me, or forced into suppression. I can see two sources for this. <br /><br />My mother wanted me to be sweet, lady-like, well-mannered, always spotlessly clean. I must think before I spoke. If I laughed, it must not be heartily – that was ‘coarse’. It was a mystery to my mother how I could play outside and come back in dirty, or with scabby knees. She once told me that when she was a little girl, if she got the tiniest bit of dirt on her finger, she would be holding it up and crying for someone to clean it. This comparison was not meant to be in my favour! <br /><br />‘Yeah, Mum,’ my 77-year-old self growls now ‘You had an Ayah [an Indian nursemaid, a servant] whose job was to run to wipe the dirt from your finger if you held it up and cried.’ However the differences were deeper than that. I didn't notice or mind getting dirty. I wanted to climb trees, and on to the roof of the trellis summerhouse in the back yard. I wanted to crawl in amongst the shrubs and berries to watch the insects going about their lives. I wanted to go for walks in the bush.<br /><br />When she had ladies over for afternoon tea, she would be sending me little signals across the room to sit straighter, uncross my legs, keep my hands still…. I became very self-conscious.<br /><br />I also became quite ‘split’. Sometimes I’d scramble with my book up into a comfortable nook in the black wattle tree above the garage, and pretend not to hear when Mum called me. At other times I became fearful, inept, awkward. That side won; I became more and more timid, gauche and withdrawn. Instead of climbing a tree with my book, I’d lie reading on my bed for hours.<br /><br />‘Where is she?’I’d hear my parents say. ‘Is she in her room? Why doesn’t she get out into the good fresh air?’ (Well perhaps because, when I did, I wasn't supposed to get dirty or risk a scraped knee.)<br /><br />The other thread, of course, was the suppression of my natural psychic tendencies. I never could completely suppress them. I would still get little hunches that would turn out to be right. I would have what seemed to be idle daydreams about something happening, and then it would. I had dreams which were prophetic; the flavour of them was quite different from ordinary dreams, and I remembered them clearly after waking. Somehow I rationalised all these things to myself as not being crazy. I also kept very, very quiet about them. For many years I was completely secretive about my inner life. <br /><br />So the fear of losing my true self meant that I buried it deep. In effect, I did lose it, at least in all practical ways. I kept a stubborn, secret core which I never lost. I think it was my saving. But I lost conscious sight of it. I created, I now realise, a persona which served quite well. It could interact with people adequately, despite some shyness and anxiety. It could do my studies, pass my exams and so forth. (Being successful academically was not only allowed but very much approved of by my elders. And particularly for a girl like me. The family story about me was that I was not pretty but at least I was clever.) Later I could hold down a job, and even shine.<br /><br />The two years from 15 to 17, living with my mad, sadistic stepmother and always walking on eggshells, had me retreat even further to the inner realms and display an even more opaque mask.<br /><br /><div>
At least I wasn't ambivalent about her. She wasn't my beautiful mother whom I adored and wanted to please, at the same time as feeling that I would always be a failure in her eyes – yet knowing, resentfully, that my way of being was valid too. No, I could hate my stepmother without any ambivalence whatsoever. <br /><br />They say our enemies are our greatest teachers. She reinforced my belief in myself and my views, because her example of how to be was so obviously flawed and her opinions so opprobrious. (Snobbish, racist, gossipy, devious, unkind … and that’s putting it mildly.) She was also an example of everything my mother had (however unwittingly) been teaching me – how to be a fake: gracious and charming in company, behaving with perfect decorum and social nous, and none of it genuine. Definitely not what I wanted to be!<br /><br />What a breath of freedom, after two years, when my brother and I moved from there to my dear Aunty Ev in Pascoe Vale, a suburb of Melbourne. Her down-to-earth commonsense and warm heart redressed some of the harm that had been done. <br /><br /><style type="text/css">
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Rosemary Nissen-Wadehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05913841031559499568noreply@blogger.com8tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4436121128883591491.post-29842142881878475352017-06-03T11:23:00.000+10:002017-07-04T10:40:19.157+10:00Explaining Myself<br /><br /><i>(Editorial aside)</i><br /><br />‘What drew you to things like Reiki and Tarot?’ I am asked.<br /><br />I thought I would be answering this question later on, when I reach a place in my memoir where I become more fully myself. But then I realised that what I have in mind will be more the ‘how’ than the ‘why’.<br /><br />When I reflect on the why, I realise that I am not a person who does things for reasons. (Not the most important things, and not rational reasons.) I never have been. Instead I operate by intuition and follow the guidance I receive. <br /><br />I had thought the ‘why’ was apparent in what I have written. In a way, the how IS the why: for me indistinguishable, as the ‘why’ is so much a given. I was assuming – as one does – that my personal experiences must be common and widespread. Perhaps, after all, not everyone is conscious of guidance from birth, and trusts it?<br /><br />It’s not a blind trust. I’m consciously aware of energy, and of different energies. I don't know that I could always describe it in words that would give anyone else an accurate impression, but I ‘get’ the particular flavour of any energy. They don't shout at me; it’s a background consciousness, like an extra sense. <br /><br />We don't usually stop to think about how amazing it is to be able to see, touch, etc.; we just see and touch. And so I just apprehend energy, as a matter of course. It’s easy to know who and what to trust. Even during the growing-up years when I was ‘shut down' as I’ve described, I had this inner knowing. Sometimes, when I was younger, I ignored the inner voice – from wishful thinking, or from having been taught to be extremely polite – but it was still there.<br /><br />Impossible to explain to others!<br /><br />‘My dead friend came to be beside me while I was waiting for my train. He was happy and loving. He was in the shape of a small, square, tightly compressed brown box….’ <br /><br />And then there are the ones – most of the time – with no visuals at all.<br /><br /> (I admit, the small brown box was startling, and I have no idea what it signified; but the feeling of his distinctive energy was the same as it had been in life, and that’s how I knew.)<br /><br />My personal guides, guardians and angels have their own energy signatures, which include the quality of being trustworthy. So I seldom question my guidance. <br /><br />It can come in the form of sudden impulses. I don't always discover why it suddenly becomes imperative to use this street instead of that (the one I had planned to use). Sometimes it does become apparent – I bump into someone special just when I or they need to connect, or I come across a shop with an item I’ve been wanting. When it’s not apparent, I think it must be protective, to avoid some accident or mishap I was headed towards.<div>
<br />There are times when I double-check by kinesiology testing, or with a pendulum (usually when the guidance contradicts my wishful thinking). There are other times when it’s essential to act NOW, without hesitation. Luckily I can feel the difference.<br /><br />I’ve described how various Tarot readers came into my life, and how a Major Arcana deck was given to me by Spirit. So I started playing with the cards. I think I also explained that a Tarot reader I knew did a reading for me in which she predicted that I myself would become highly psychic.<br /><br />As for the Reiki, that too was a natural-seeming progression, from experiencing Reiki treatments to seeing an ad for Beth Gray’s classes and getting a huge, irrational conviction that this was for me.<br /><br /> When I was guided to do both these things professionally after we moved to Three Bridges, it felt daring but also right.<br /><br />My personal development work with Landmark Education and my spiritual work with the Andronicus Foundation enhanced my intuitive faculties and my clarity in knowing what was right for me, but life had always been inherently magical even when I tried to suppress that aspect.<br /><br />My passion is poetry and that has been my vocation since the age of seven. Katherine (the friend I met in the New Age shop at Elsternwick) once said to me, about me, 'Poetry is what you do. Reiki is what you are.' At the time I didn't get it, thinking she incorrectly devalued the poetry by comparison, but now I see what she was trying to convey. Psychic abilities and magic and other-worldly, other-dimensional realities have always been part of the fabric of my life, and of me. <br /><br />Healing and metaphysical counselling have become secondary vocations. (I have certificates of Mastery in both, including a number of healing modalities in addition to the Reiki which I first learned.) I've always had an innate impetus to heal whatever I could; to ’save the world’ not in a preachy but an energetic / magical / healing kind of way (including of course practical / material / physical ways of looking after the environment). I’ve always experienced the planet as alive and sentient, as much as everything on it. <br /><br />With such a background, I could almost say there was no ’why’ when I answered the call to learn both Reiki and Tarot – or that this background itself was the why. At the time they were the next things to do, and were quite emphatically put in my way, in a manner I instinctively trusted.<br /><br />I guess I live my life taking leaps of faith.<br /><br /><div class="p2">
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Rosemary Nissen-Wadehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05913841031559499568noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4436121128883591491.post-67914388584669277582017-05-29T22:34:00.000+10:002017-11-13T11:29:06.641+11:00Romance!<div class="p1">
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<span class="s1">Peter, the Tarot reader, wasn't the only one to foresee a new romance for me. My Reiki Master, Ann, was a seer. At one of her seminars, while we were on a lunch break, she suddenly got a flash and said, 'Oh! Nice man coming for Rosemary soon.' That was exciting, but there were no details.</span></div>
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<span class="s1">Katherine and Peter broke up. Katherine, heavily pregnant with the babe who was to become my fourth god-daughter, Jasmine, kept the shop going. With even more learning and practice under my belt, I advertised Tarot classes of my own there, and conducted several, each consisting of a number of weekly sessions. </span></div>
<div class="p2">
<span class="s1"></span><br /></div>
<div class="p1">
<span class="s1">One class attracted only one student, but I told him I was happy to run a class of one. Max was tall and rangy, a few years younger than me. He was doing outdoor work of some kind (I forget what) so he was fit-looking with nice lean muscles, not the horrible 'Mr Universe' kind. He was basically a hippy in his attitude to the natural world and living free, but he was starting to adopt a more materialistic point of view. He said he wanted a comfortable old age, and was looking to marry a rich business-woman. He meant it too, and we both knew I didn't fit the bill.</span></div>
<div class="p2">
<span class="s1"></span><br /></div>
<div class="p1">
<span class="s1">We enjoyed the lessons, and fell into an easy friendship. Knowledgable and </span>experienced in things esoteric, he was basically a very nice bloke. We really liked each other. In the course of the lessons we opened up a lot about our personal histories, finding it easy to confide in each other.</div>
<div class="p2">
<span class="s1"></span><br /></div>
<div class="p1">
<span class="s1">He had an intriguing black-and-white Tarot deck I'd not seen before, the Hermetic Tarot. One day he came to class and presented me with my own copy. He said he had been driving past a little Tarot shop he knew, when suddenly was impelled to pull over and go into the shop. Like me, he was in the habit of following his intuitive guidance. He didn't know what he was looking for, so browsed the shelves until this copy of the Hermetic Tarot practically jumped out and hit him in the face. </span></div>
<div class="p2">
<span class="s1"></span><br /></div>
<div class="p1">
<span class="s1">He thought, ‘But I’ve already got that one.’ </span>A voice said into his mind, ‘These are for Rosemary.’<br />
<span class="s1"><br /></span>
<span class="s1">He thought, ‘Why would I buy Rosemary a Tarot deck?’ </span><br />
<span class="s1"><br /></span>
<span class="s1">Perhaps he’d misunderstood? He put the cards to his forehead, his personal method of checking the accuracy of his messages, and tuned in. The voice repeated, more firmly and somewhat testily, ‘These are ROSEMARY’S cards,’ So he obeyed.</span></div>
<div class="p2">
<span class="s1"></span><br /></div>
<div class="p1">
<span class="s1">I’d been using the Thoth deck for a few years, but it was starting to feel a bit tired and stale, which can happen when you use the same deck constantly over a long period. I gave it some Reiki, told it to have a good rest, wrapped it in its silk scarf and put it away in its velveteen bag. Then I started using the Hermetic Tarot, which looked very different but interpreted the cards in a similar way. I found it great to use, and it became my professional deck for a long time.</span></div>
<div class="p2">
<span class="s1"></span><br /></div>
<div class="p1">
<span class="s1">Max and I sort of knew we were attracted to each other, but we were tentative. In particular, I was. He did start to indicate his interest, in ways that left me free to respond accordingly or not – such as finding an excuse to rip his shirt off one day and display his very desirable torso. It was just the kind of body I liked, but I was as awkward as a teenager when it came to the dating game – I’d been married 27 years – so I addressed whatever the excuse was, and he put his shirt on again. I went home to think about my options. For one thing, while I was sure this would be a very nice affair indeed, I was not what he was looking for long-term and I didn't want to risk getting my heart broken again. </span><br />
<span class="s1"><br /></span>
<span class="s1">Then something else that was playing out took a turn which interrupted these developments anyway.</span></div>
<div class="p2">
<span class="s1"></span><br /></div>
<div class="p1">
<span class="s1"><b>Master Connections</b></span></div>
<div class="p2">
<span class="s1"></span><br /></div>
<div class="p1">
<span class="s1">After getting settled in my new life, I found I missed the Andronicus Foundation meditation group. While Reiki was a spiritual path too, it was a different kind of practice. I had done Jenette's six-week 'Master Connections', the post-graduate course of The Master Game, and that had filled the gap for a while. It included meditation, exercises to develop our spiritual / energetic muscles, and connecting to high-level other-dimensional beings for wisdom and guidance. </span></div>
<div class="p2">
<span class="s1"></span><br /></div>
<div class="p1">
<span class="s1">The Reiki Master training and Jenette's courses between them further enhanced my psychic abilities, such as clairvoyance. I remember one Master Connections session when Jenette channelled a magnificent extra-terrestrial. I know he was magnificent, because I saw him with my physical eyes, as if superimposed on her. I used to send Jenette a zap of Reiki across the room, invisibly, to support her when she was channelling, as she had requested from me when I signed up. This time, just as I did so, this being appeared, looked me straight in the eyes and intentionally flashed a zap straight back to me, in a way that I could recognise. It was a private exchange; what he spoke through her included no reference to it.</span></div>
<div class="p2">
<span class="s1"></span><br /></div>
<div class="p1">
<span class="s1">When I told Jenette later, she said, 'That proves it wasn't me. I wouldn't have a clue how to send Reiki across a room.' She hadn't even learned Reiki at that point, though she did seek out a teacher several years later.</span></div>
<div class="p2">
<span class="s1"></span><br /></div>
<div class="p1">
<span class="s1">So, missing the meditation group, I asked her if I could perhaps attend further Master Connections sessions. She said, 'You never had to leave! I ask people to commit to six weeks as a minimum.' </span></div>
<div class="p2">
<span class="s1"></span><br /></div>
<div class="p1">
<span class="s1"><b>Andrew</b></span></div>
<div class="p2">
<span class="s1"></span><br /></div>
<div class="p1">
<span class="s1">When I resumed attending, there were various people I already knew among both participants and assistants; and it was the night of a new intake of people from the latest Master Game, which had recently finished. We sat around the walls of a big carpeted room, on cushions. We would share around the circle what had been going on in our lives the past week, before moving on to our other activities. </span></div>
<div class="p2">
<span class="s1"></span><br /></div>
<div class="p1">
<span class="s1">One of the new people was a little white-haired bloke called Andrew. (I feel I should give a trumpet-blast here, but neither he nor I heard any at that point.)</span></div>
<div class="p2">
<span class="s1"></span><br /></div>
<div class="p1">
<span class="s1">Andrew's recollection afterwards was that I sat in the corner and said nothing – which surprised me as I thought I was quite vocal. As for him, I was thoroughly put off one night when he shared that an ex-girlfriend had phoned and invited him to dinner. Half lying back on his cushion, with one open shirt button revealing his fat little tummy and hairy navel, he punched the air and crowed, 'I got laid!'</span></div>
<div class="p2">
<span class="s1"></span><br /></div>
<div class="p1">
<span class="s1">'Ewww!' I thought. 'How gross!'</span></div>
<div class="p2">
<span class="s1"></span><br /></div>
<div class="p1">
<span class="s1">Jenette explained to those of us who hadn't been through The Master Game with him that a little while ago he had broken up with this lady, whom he was very keen on. So I guessed I could understand his jubilation. But two weeks later he reported that she'd called it off again. </span></div>
<div class="p2">
<span class="s1"></span><br /></div>
<div class="p1">
<span class="s1">One evening at supper he came up to me and said abruptly, 'I hear you're a poet. I'm doing a course. Could give me some - er - tips or something?' </span></div>
<div class="p2">
<span class="s1"></span><br /></div>
<div class="p1">
<span class="s1">I went straight into ego, and thought (but didn't say), 'Don't you know I get PAID for that?' Out loud I muttered something dismissive and he turned away. Jenette caught this exchange. When she hugged me goodbye a little later, she whispered in my ear, </span></div>
<div class="p2">
<span class="s1"></span><br /></div>
<div class="p1">
<span class="s1">'He needs a counter-balance to the dry, factual journalism he's been writing. He needs to get more into his heart.' </span></div>
<div class="p2">
<span class="s1"></span><br /></div>
<div class="p1">
<span class="s1">Then I felt remorseful, so the following week I took some books and magazines to lend him, and invited him to phone me if anything needed clarifying. He seemed pleasantly surprised. </span></div>
<div class="p2">
<span class="s1"></span><br /></div>
<div class="p1">
<span class="s1">One night a few people couldn't come, so the seating was re-arranged to make a smaller circle. I was across from Andrew. I had some good news to share that night and was quite animated. He told me much later that he thought, ‘Oh, she's quite pretty. I should ask her out. At least we've got writing in common.' But when Jennie told me that an Andrew Wade had called while I was out, I assumed he wanted to ask me something about poetry. I was very surprised when I phoned back, to hear, 'I was wondering if you'd like to go out to dinner tomorrow night?'</span></div>
<div class="p2">
<span class="s1"></span><br /></div>
<div class="p1">
<span class="s1">By this time I had decided that it would be ages before I'd be ready to go out on a date, even in the unlikely event that anyone should ask me. And I resolved that if another relationship ever did happen, I would not move in with the man but keep my independence. As for marriage, forget it. I'd done it twice and it hadn't worked out. Never again! So, at Andrew's surprising request, I opened my mouth to say politely, 'Thank you for the compliment, but I'm not ready to start dating yet after my recent separation.' Instead, what fell out of my mouth was, 'Thanks, I'd love to.' (It was the same when he asked me those other leading questions later on.)</span></div>
<div class="p2">
<span class="s1"></span><br /></div>
<div class="p1">
<span class="s1">He told me afterwards that he used to take women to nightclubs and fancy restaurants to try and impress them, but decided he wasn't going to do that with me. He would just be himself and not try to impress. He’d take me to a pub. So I found myself being ushered into the Argo pub at Toorak, which I knew by reputation as the coolest place in town. I was<i> </i>incredibly<i> </i>impressed! ‘Boy,’ I thought. ‘This bloke’s really got it.’ (He of course knew nothing of its reputation, and had no idea how impressed I was.)</span></div>
<div class="p2">
<span class="s1"></span><br /></div>
<div class="p1">
<span class="s1">We hardly stopped talking all night, discovering we had so much in common that when the waitress asked if we wanted Tabasco sauce and I said yes please and he said no thanks, I exclaimed, ‘Thank goodness there’s something we haven’t got in common. It was getting ridiculous.’ </span></div>
<div class="p2">
<span class="s1"></span><br /></div>
<div class="p1">
<span class="s1">We found we had so many mutual friends and acquaintances, we couldn't believe our paths had never crossed before. Much later we realised they had. There was the Andronicus Foundation weekend in the country, which I’ve mentioned. And we uncovered another event, connected with one of our other interests, which Bill and I had attended and so had Andrew. Bill and I had each had some interaction with him on that occasion, but we’d all promptly forgotten it, having no particular interest in each other then.</span></div>
<div class="p2">
<span class="s1"></span><br /></div>
<div class="p1">
<span class="s1">More significant, perhaps, was the fact that he had attended a session of The Master Game at Three Bridges one Sunday. He’d gone by the time I got home from assisting Ann that day, but it was the same day I walked into my house and thought, ‘I can’t be here any more’ and promptly moved out. I thought afterwards that it was as if, once Andrew’s energy had come into that space, I couldn’t maintain even a semblance of the marriage to Bill. But these things we worked out later. </span></div>
<div class="p2">
<span class="s1"></span><br /></div>
<div class="p1">
<span class="s1">After our very successful dinner, he delivered me to my doorstep. I said something stilted that I’m embarrassed to remember, about how I was newly separated and not ready for goodnight kisses yet. He took it in good part and Jennie’s teenage baby-sitter opened the door just then, so no pash session was going to happen anyway. </span></div>
<div class="p2">
<span class="s1"></span><br /></div>
<div class="p1">
<span class="s1">‘Do you like movies?’ he asked.’Would you like to see a movie next Saturday afternoon?’ I said I loved movies, and we arranged to see the new hit, ‘The Power of One’.</span></div>
<div class="p2">
<span class="s1"></span><br /></div>
<div class="p1">
<span class="s1">As soon as he’d gone, Jennie’s baby-sitter said to me, ‘He’s VERY pretty!’ (This didn’t imply effeminate; it was just the lingo at the time.) I was surprised. I hadn’t thought of him like that. He wasn’t my physical type. I didn't really see things going anywhere deep and meaningful for us.</span></div>
<div class="p2">
<span class="s1"></span><br /></div>
<div class="p1">
<span class="s1">He held my hand in the movie, which we enjoyed companionably. As we strolled around town afterwards to find a café, he took my hand again. It felt easy and comfortable to be walking hand-in-hand with him – except that I was obsessed with the thought, ‘What if we bump into one of my sons?’ Luckily this embarrassing prospect didn’t come to pass.</span></div>
<div class="p2">
<span class="s1"></span><br /></div>
<div class="p1">
<span class="s1">Over coffee we wondered what we were going to say at Master Connections. Group discussions were strictly confidential, but within the group participants were expected to disclose anything relevant that was going on with them. Andrew usually arrived later than me, so he asked me not to say anything until he got there.</span></div>
<div class="p2">
<span class="s1"></span><br /></div>
<div class="p1">
<span class="s1">When he did, he started by telling the story of how he’d had a ‘win’ at work and felt like celebrating, so he’d phoned a ‘young lady’ he knew and invited her to dinner, they’d had a really nice time, then they’d been to a movie on Saturday and that went well too…. He paused, then said, ‘And it was Rosemary!’ </span></div>
<div class="p2">
<span class="s1"></span><br /></div>
<div class="p1">
<span class="s1">Everyone burst into cries of delight. Jenette’s husband, who was of course an old friend of mine, said, ‘That’s why she’s looking so radiant.’</span></div>
<div class="p2">
<span class="s1"></span><br /></div>
<div class="p1">
<span class="s1">I didn't know why I looked and felt radiant. It was nice to be going out on dates – lovely and carefree – but I wasn't sure how I felt about Andrew beyond enjoying his company. </span></div>
<div class="p2">
<span class="s1"></span><br /></div>
<div class="p1">
<span class="s1">I told him I couldn’t go out with him the following weekend as Jennie and I were having a garage sale. He asked what time it would be. I explained that it was starting in the morning but could go on most of the day. I was pleased that he seemed quite accepting.</span></div>
<div class="p2">
<span class="s1"></span><br /></div>
<div class="p1">
<span class="s1">I expected he'd phone me some time later for another date, but he turned up on the morning of the garage sale, wearing a Blues Brothers T-shirt which announced that he was on a mission from God, and quietly pitched in to help with the setting up and the selling.</span></div>
<div class="p1">
<span class="s1"><br /></span></div>
<div class="p1">
<span class="s1">So we continued going out, and he became a visitor to our house sometimes. He was presentable, he knew how to behave in company, he was good with Jennie’s kids, and of course he was a very pleasant companion. But I was in no way committed to a relationship with him. I was amazed one day, after a tiff, when he told me: </span></div>
<div class="p1">
<span class="s1"><br /></span></div>
<div class="p1">
<span class="s1">'I want you to know I'm absolutely committed to this relationship!' </span></div>
<div class="p1">
<span class="s1"><br /></span></div>
<div class="p1">
<span class="s1">'What relationship?' I thought. 'We hardly know each other.' But I mumbled something which I hoped sounded appreciative.</span></div>
<div class="p2">
<span class="s1"></span><br /></div>
<div class="p1">
<span class="s1">I started feeling a bit crowded by him. He seemed to want to be involved in everything I was doing. I had a bit of a whinge to Jennie about this. She rounded on me and said, </span></div>
<div class="p2">
<span class="s1"></span><br /></div>
<div class="p1">
<span class="s1">‘Rosemary Nissen, you are disgusting! He’s trying to SUPPORT you!’</span></div>
<div class="p2">
<span class="s1"></span><br /></div>
<div class="p1">
<span class="s1">That was a revelation to me. I digested it a while and realised: yes, it was like that; and he was simply offering, he wasn't trying to take over my life.</span></div>
<div class="p2">
<span class="s1"></span><br /></div>
<div class="p1">
<span class="s1">Then a friend who was visiting asked me, ‘What’s this Andrew like?’ Before I could answer, Jennie said emphatically, </span></div>
<div class="p2">
<span class="s1"></span><br /></div>
<div class="p1">
<span class="s1">‘He’s a VERY nice man!’ I did a double-take and thought, ‘Oh yes, so he is.’</span></div>
<div class="p2">
<span class="s1"></span><br /></div>
<div class="p1">
<span class="s1">(I still thank both Jenette and Jennie for providing some of the impetus for my happiest marriage.)</span></div>
<div class="p2">
<span class="s1"></span><br /></div>
<div class="p1">
<span class="s1">How did we take it to the next level? He thought it would be nice to go for a lovely, romantic weekend away. I told him I didn't want to rush things, so he suggested I choose the timing. By then I’d received my Master initiation from Anne </span>but was still very busy assisting on her Reiki seminars most weekends. When I looked at my schedule, I realised I was booked up for months ahead.</div>
<div class="p2">
<span class="s1"></span><br /></div>
<div class="p1">
<span class="s1">‘The only weekend I’ve got is next weekend,’ I told him.</span></div>
<div class="p2">
<span class="s1"></span><br /></div>
<div class="p1">
<span class="s1">‘I thought you didn't want to rush things?’ he said.</span></div>
<div class="p2">
<span class="s1"></span><br /></div>
<div class="p1">
<span class="s1">A recent poem explains what happened next:</span></div>
<div class="p2">
<span class="s1"></span><br /></div>
<div class="p3">
<span class="s1"><b>Prelude to a Romantic Weekend</b></span></div>
<div class="p4">
<span class="s1"></span><br /></div>
<div class="p3">
<span class="s1">Arriving on my doorstep suddenly</span></div>
<div class="p3">
<span class="s1">he thrust at me a bunch of roses, red</span></div>
<div class="p3">
<span class="s1">for passion, offered awkwardly,</span></div>
<div class="p3">
<span class="s1">suggesting now would be the time for bed.</span></div>
<div class="p3">
<span class="s1">My house-mate and her children, luckily,</span></div>
<div class="p3">
<span class="s1">were going out. I whispered what he’d said,</span></div>
<div class="p3">
<span class="s1">that he’d decided we should ‘break the ice’.</span></div>
<div class="p3">
<span class="s1">She winked and said she’d stay out longer. Nice!</span></div>
<div class="p4">
<span class="s1"></span><br /></div>
<div class="p3">
<span class="s1">We’d planned a beautiful weekend away</span></div>
<div class="p3">
<span class="s1">to change our new romance to an affair:</span></div>
<div class="p3">
<span class="s1">a seaside venue meant for holiday</span></div>
<div class="p3">
<span class="s1">where we could play, let down our hair …</span></div>
<div class="p3">
<span class="s1">but that was some time hence, he said – and hey,</span></div>
<div class="p3">
<span class="s1">we’d want to be relaxed then, free of care</span></div>
<div class="p3">
<span class="s1">about performance, revelation, trust,</span></div>
<div class="p3">
<span class="s1">and all those issues that might hinder lust.</span></div>
<div class="p4">
<span class="s1"></span><br /></div>
<div class="p3">
<span class="s1">And so we had our first time then and there</span></div>
<div class="p3">
<span class="s1">inside my double bed, too long unshared.</span></div>
<div class="p3">
<span class="s1">Now, understand, we were not young; we were</span></div>
<div class="p3">
<span class="s1">the later end of middle age. We bared</span></div>
<div class="p3">
<span class="s1">imperfect bodies to each other’s stare</span></div>
<div class="p3">
<span class="s1">and moved like adolescents newly paired –</span></div>
<div class="p3">
<span class="s1">like clumsy virgins! But we worked it out</span></div>
<div class="p3">
<span class="s1">quite soon. And yes, his bright idea was right.</span></div>
<div class="p4">
<span class="s1"></span><br /></div>
<div class="p3">
<span class="s1"> ******</span></div>
<div class="p4">
<span class="s1"></span><br /></div>
<div class="p3">
<span class="s1">In twenty years of happy marriage, till</span></div>
<div class="p3">
<span class="s1">he left me when the angels called him home,</span></div>
<div class="p3">
<span class="s1">we loved each other thoroughly and well.</span></div>
<div class="p3">
<span class="s1">Reality was sweeter than a dream.</span></div>
<div class="p3">
<span class="s1">And memories can sweeten my heart still,</span></div>
<div class="p3">
<span class="s1">as if he never left – so it can seem.</span></div>
<div class="p3">
<span class="s1">He loved to give me roses. In my head</span></div>
<div class="p3">
<span class="s1">I still hear: ‘Get yourself some roses – red!’</span></div>
<div class="p4">
<span class="s1"></span><br /></div>
<div class="p3">
<span class="s1"><b>© Rosemary Nissen-Wade 2017</b></span></div>
<div class="p4">
<span class="s1"><b></b></span><br /></div>
<div class="p1">
<span class="s1">After that, I was a little more formal in my manner towards Max, so as not to encourage any vain hopes. Being the open person he was, he asked me straight out if there was something wrong.</span><span style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: initial;"> I was less frank. Nothing had ever been said between us. I felt I couldn't officially rebuff an advance that had not actually been made. So I handled it by saying, with some truth, that I was a bit preoccupied because my gentleman friend had a touch of flu and I was concerned about him.</span></div>
<div class="p2">
<span class="s1"></span><br /></div>
<div class="p1">
<span class="s1">‘Oh,’ he said, ‘Yes I suppose that would explain it.’ Lovely man, he wasn't being snide, just thinking aloud and seeing my point of view. If he was surprised to learn about the ‘gentleman friend’, he didn't say so, but he didn't flirt with me any more either. With my position clear, I relaxed and we still enjoyed the classes and conversations for their own sake.</span></div>
<div class="p2">
<span class="s1"></span><br /></div>
<div class="p1">
<span class="s1">I did have some regrets. </span></div>
<div class="p2">
<span class="s1"></span><br /></div>
<div class="p1">
<span class="s1">‘Why did I have to order the happy, lasting one to be next?’ I chided myself. A fling with Max would have been lovely, and if Andrew was just around the corner anyway…. But after all, neither Andrew nor I was getting any younger. I decided it was still better not to have deferred getting together with him for the sake of a brief fling, however delightful.</span></div>
<div class="p2">
<span class="s1"></span><br /></div>
<div class="p1">
<span class="s1">Just for the record, Ann’s message about ‘a lovely man coming for Rosemary’ happened when Max was already my student but I hadn't yet met Andrew at Master Connections – so it must have been Andrew she was seeing, as the one still to come.</span></div>
<div class="p4">
<span class="s1"><b></b></span><br /></div>
<div class="p1">
<span class="s1">I started spending most of my nights at Andrew’s place. He would pick me up on his way home from work and drop me back in Elsternwick on his way to work next morning. I was still based there in terms of my own working life; besides, I had a commitment to share with Jennie for a year.</span></div>
<div class="p2">
<span class="s1"></span><br /></div>
<div class="p1">
<span class="s1">I thought I’d better tell Bill before someone else told him, so I invited myself to dinner. </span></div>
<div class="p2">
<span class="s1"></span><br /></div>
<div class="p1">
<span class="s1">‘There’s something I need to tell you,’ I said. He said,</span></div>
<div class="p2">
<span class="s1"></span><br /></div>
<div class="p1">
<span class="s1">‘No, don't tell me; I’ll tell you. There’s a new man your life. He’s a business-man. I “saw” him taking you out to dinner. He was wearing a suit.’</span><br />
<span class="s1"><br /></span>
<span class="s1">Andrew did in fact have his own business at that time, creating newsletters for all kinds of other businesses.</span></div>
<div class="p2">
<span class="s1"></span><br /></div>
<div class="p1">
<span class="s1">Bill, as I mentioned earlier, had developed clairvoyance quite suddenly, shortly before we moved to Three Bridges, as a result of some dramatic experiences which unexpectedly opened him up. His gift was genuine – as this incident confirms.</span></div>
<div class="p2">
<span class="s1"></span><br /></div>
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<span class="s1">He was sincerely happy for me. </span><br />
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<span class="s1">Then I felt free to let my children and my friends know. Andrew and I started meeting each other’s friends.</span></div>
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<span class="s1">After dinner at his flat one night, he asked me if I’d be willing to move in with him eventually. I opened my mouth to say that I wanted to keep my own residence and maintain my independence, and heard myself agreeing instead. We had a talk about it, and decided to wait until early in the new year, when Jennie and I would both have to find new accommodation anyway.</span></div>
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<span class="s1">Then, when he was driving home, as we were waiting at a red traffic light, he suddenly said, </span></div>
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<span class="s1">‘Would you marry me?’</span></div>
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<span class="s1">Again I opened my mouth to say the mentally well-rehearsed line about choosing not to marry again, having done it twice already. And again I opened my mouth and ‘yes’ fell out.</span></div>
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<span class="s1">Then I realised he had not said ‘Will you’ but ‘Would you’.</span></div>
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<span class="s1">‘Er, was that a hypothetical question?’ I asked. He smiled. </span></div>
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<span class="s1">‘No, it wasn't a hypothetical question.’</span></div>
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</style>Rosemary Nissen-Wadehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05913841031559499568noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4436121128883591491.post-64727989309823214842017-05-28T15:23:00.000+10:002017-10-08T22:38:11.419+11:00Endings and Beginnings<div class="p1">
<b style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: initial;">Starting Master Training </b></div>
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<span class="s1">Ann began my Reiki Master training in the second half of 1991. I was only the second Master she trained, and was dazed at the privilege of being accepted into training. There were very high entry standards.</span></div>
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<span class="s1">Bill seemed almost equally glad for me, and declared emphatically, ‘I support you one hundred per cent!’ </span></div>
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<span class="s1">The training involved, among other things, assisting at her classes, which were held not only in various suburbs of Melbourne but also at certain large country centres around the State. When we went out of Melbourne I would leave my car at Ann’s and travel with her. They were two-day weekend courses; we’d stay a couple of nights in a motel. Ann was a busy Reiki Master; I was away most weekends, though not always overnight.</span></div>
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<span class="s1">There were all sorts of practical things to see to, such as setting up the room for students. I had no idea at first about taking care of the energy of the room as well as the positioning of the chairs.There was a lot to learn! For a while I went straight into ego, as if it was all about me. I had to learn that I was actually there to serve the students, which included serving Ann so that she could serve them better herself. And at first I was quite clumsy. If there was so much as a tissue on the floor, I'd trip over it; if I sat on a chair it would be the squeaky one – and always just as Ann needed peace and quiet for leading a meditation or conducting attunements. I wonder now at her patience with me. </span></div>
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<span class="s1">Over the months I gradually understood, and became more comfortable in the role. After a time she began giving me bits of the teaching to do, while she looked on. She needed to ensure that I could not only do Reiki well but also teach it well.</span></div>
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<span class="s1">Then she was contacted with information that Phyllis Lei Furumoto, who was then the new head of the world-wide Reiki Alliance, was to visit Australia for the first time. For Reiki people, this was a very big deal. She would be staying in Sydney and wanted to meet as many Australian Reiki Masters as possible during a designated week. She also invited trainee Reiki Masters to do a course with her in Sydney on the previous weekend. Ann thought I should go. </span></div>
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<span class="s1">‘Deduct the fee and travel expenses from your Master training fee,’ she said, knowing we were struggling financially. She felt the course would itself be an invaluable part of my training.</span></div>
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<span class="s1"><b>Selling the Property</b></span></div>
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<span class="s1">Meanwhile the financial problems were clearly becoming insurmountable. Ann paid us to hire the place for the Reiki classes she did there. Also Jenette needed a rural setting for one all-day session of her Master Game, and hired our place for that. But neither of these things happened often enough to be a big help in keeping us afloat, and our combined earnings weren’t really doing it either.<br />
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We realised we’d have to sell the property, and reluctantly put it on the market. It took time to sell. In the end our friends in the Andronicus Foundation tuned in to see what the hold-up was, and found that on the etheric level there were bars across the gate. It became apparent that they were formed by our reluctance to sell – we loved the place – so we had to do some serious energy work to shift them.</span></div>
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<span class="s1">Then it sold quite quickly to a couple who didn’t want to move in immediately and asked us to stay on as caretakers for a while. This seemed ideal – though in practice it was hard to live in a place that had been ours after it became someone else’s. They visited for day trips fairly often, and started making changes such as planting ornamental non-native trees around the edges of the lawns. They had different ideas from ours, and we just had to accept it. But they were pleasant enough to deal with. </span></div>
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<span class="s1">Then Bill dropped his bombshell. Out of the blue, so it seemed to me, he announced, ‘I no longer support you in your desire to be a Reiki Master!’</span></div>
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<span class="s1">I was flabbergasted. It turned out that he thought it was all costing too much, what with the trips away. He demanded that I stop the training forthwith or our marriage was finished. </span></div>
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<span class="s1"><b>A Spiritual Homecoming</b></span></div>
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<span class="s1">This was almost on the eve of my trip to Sydney to study with Phyllis.</span></div>
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<span class="s1">‘I’ll have to phone Ann,’ I said. </span></div>
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<span class="s1">She said, ‘Don’t make up your mind at once. Go to Sydney and do the workshop; that'll help you get clarity to make the decision.’ So I told Bill that’s what I would do.</span></div>
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<span class="s1">The clarity was immediate. As I have often told people since, I arrived at the venue and walked into a room where other trainee Masters were already gathering – and walked into an energy which told me, ‘These are your brothers and sisters. You are home.’ My decision was made in that moment. This was the truth of who I was. I was not prepared to give it up. I realised I had made many concessions over the years, all of which seemed small at the time but had the cumulative effect that I wasn't being wholly me.</span></div>
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<span class="s1">It was a great weekend in all sorts of ways. In one discussion a student shared about grappling with a particular dilemma, and after listening a little while Phyllis said, ‘It’s simple. If it compromises you, don't do it.’ At which point I shared what was happening in my life, what I had felt when I walked into the venue the first day, and my instant decision not to compromise myself. It was greeted with loving acceptance; no-one tried to influence me, they simply understood. I was able to tell Ann straight away too, as she arrived for the Masters’ week with Phyllis before I left for home.</span></div>
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<span class="s1"><b>Separation</b></span></div>
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<span class="s1">Bill wasn’t best pleased of course. I think now that he may have been bluffing, in which case I unwittingly called his bluff. But that didn't occur to me then. When I gave him my answer, I knew it was the ending of our 27-year marriage. Afterwards he told people it was my decision to end it. I thought it was his idea! I guess, like some other things, it takes two.</span></div>
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<span class="s1">Then there was an awful period of trying to live separately under the same roof. I don't recommend it. I was away a lot, continuing my Master training, but when I was home the atmosphere was cold and strained. </span></div>
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<span class="s1">My friend, poet Barbara Giles, told me by phone, 'There's a bed here if you ever need it.' I declined with thanks because Jennie Fraine planned to move back to Melbourne soon after her baby was born – the father having abdicated all responsibility – and she suggested we find a place together. There were only a couple of months to wait. So when I was at Three Bridges I spent my time trying to divide up the possessions, and arguing with Bill about who was entitled to what. </span></div>
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<span class="s1">I stopped attending the Andronicus Foundation meditation group because Bill was part of it too. I thought it would be too difficult to do that together under the circumstances, and felt I should cede that to him as it was his only spiritual group, whereas I had the Reiki work.</span></div>
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<span class="s1">There was one Sunday that I came home from a Reiki seminar to catch Jenette and her chief assistant Val (my intuitive drawing teacher) just leaving after a Master Game session. They knew our situation of course, and were pleased to see that I appeared to be doing well. Bill had made himself scarce about the property while the Master Game was in session, but was in the house by the time I entered. </span></div>
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<span class="s1">After a wonderful Reiki weekend and then the affectionate exchange with Jenette and Val, the bleak atmosphere in the house was suddenly too hard to take. I phoned Barbara and said, 'Is that bed still available?' I took only what I needed for my personal use (including my Tarot cards and Reiki table) and left next day.</span></div>
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<span class="s1">Barbara, then already in her eighties, was a lovely hostess. I reconnected a little with the Melbourne poetry community, particularly my closest friends in it such as Joyce Lee and Olga Novak, and generally had a nice time being normal instead of walking on eggshells. I was still teaching at Box Hill and continuing my Reiki Master training, which now began to include tuition in the more esoteric aspects. Ann was gently and gradually raising my energy to be able to receive the Master initiation, a powerful process of energy transmission. </span></div>
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<span class="s1">It felt momentous to have left my marriage and be striking out on my own, into the unknown. I was surprised that my sons, at the news of our split, said things like, 'About time!' Some friends seemed to think the same. Evidently it was more obvious to others than to me that Bill and I were not travelling the same path any more.</span></div>
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<span class="s1">I remember, before we decided to separate, while I still imagined my marriage was forever, asking Bill, 'What is it you really want to do in your life?' with some idea of supporting him to achieve it. He said he wanted to do more travelling around Australia. </span></div>
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<span class="s1">'No, that's not what I mean,' I said. 'I mean, what's your vision?' </span></div>
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<span class="s1">He kept reiterating the wish to travel around Australia more, see the bits he hadn't got to yet, such as Perth in Western Australia. I didn't get it, simply couldn't hear what he was telling me. For me, a vision of what to do with one's life would be some aspect of saving the planet! We really were not on the same wavelength by then. After we separated he did indeed travel around the country a bit, including a visit to Perth, and then I realised he had been telling me loud and clear all the time; I was just incapable of understanding.</span></div>
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<span class="s1"><b>Back in Melbourne</b></span></div>
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<span class="s1">Jennie had her baby, a daughter. Through a mutual friend she learned of a family who needed to live overseas for a year for his work and were seeking trustworthy people to rent their house. We applied and were accepted. So I found myself sharing a lovely two-storey house with garden in the suburb of Elsternwick, close enough to both city and beach, with lots of trees and some funky shops. I made several trips to Three Bridges to retrieve some of the possessions we'd decided were mine, loading them into my tiny car; but the Elsternwick house was furnished, so Bill agreed to store my books and furniture for a year. Jennie moved in with a seven-year-old son and a new daughter; I moved in with my dog and cat.</span></div>
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<span class="s1">My other cat, Sam, had died some time before. He had been diagnosed with feline leukaemia when very young, but Reiki kept him alive much longer than expected. He also had a nose for healing hands. When any of our numerous healer friends would come to visit, he'd take a running jump into their arms. He would go into long remissions. But one morning at Three Bridges I woke up and knew instantly that his energy was absent. When I went into a room in which I'd put two ornamental cloth cats on a windowsill as if looking out, one was face down on the floor. So I knew. If it had fallen accidentally, it should have landed face up, and in a different position. </span></div>
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<span class="s1">Denise was still living with us then. She said she had been noticing a lot of road kill the past week, when out driving. (Our indigenous animals, such as wombats, have never developed traffic sense.) We tuned in and got that Sam knew his time was come, went away to die where we wouldn't find a body to cause us distress, and that he had probably chosen the quick way of going under a car. In any case, he never came back; not in that body. So I moved into the Elsternwick house with one cat, gentle Ishtar, and my huge dog. </span></div>
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<span class="s1">I had the front bedroom with ensuite, and the front living-room. A central rumpus room became a storage area, with one small section for my desk. Jennie and family had the upstairs bedrooms, their own bathroom, a small office and a TV room adjacent to it. We shared the big kitchen-dining room and the small back yard with its crab-apple trees, lawn and rosebushes. We went about our respective business most of the time, and had dinner together in the evenings.</span></div>
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<span class="s1">Jennie's very efficient. She suggested weekly meetings to see how it was all working and to communicate any glitches or wishes; she initiated working out a roster of jobs for cleaning and maintenance. Putting these ideas into practice had everything flow smoothly and amicably. And of course we were old friends anyway, through poetry; I'd known her since before she had any children. </span></div>
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<span class="s1">It was also her idea that we host some poets’ dinners ‘to welcome ourselves back to Melbourne’. Six people was about the right number to fit around the dining table, so we’d have to have several dinners. We invited both old friends from the poetry community and, daringly, some we only knew of by name. We trusted they’d know our names too, and accept. They did. We also asked people to bring some new work to share over after-dinner coffee. We didn't have very many of these dinners as it turned out, life becoming full and busy as it does, but those we had were most enjoyable.</span></div>
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<span class="s1">Later Jennie devised a writing course as part of her business activities. (Her wonderful business name was ‘Poetic Licence’.) I of course participated, as it was for both beginners and experienced writers. Those gatherings were great, too.</span></div>
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<span class="s1">Sometimes I stepped in and baby-sat her kids, if her regular sitter wasn't available and she couldn't find a replacement. I'd been in Adam's life since he was born, so he accepted having me around. Mikaela became mobile, crawling happily and safely up and down the stairs, and then a toddler walking. </span></div>
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<span class="s1">Jennie had asked a mutual friend to be Mikaela's godmother but this young woman found herself at a loss as to what that entailed. She asked Jennie to define the term, and when Jennie explained about being someone who would always take an interest in the child, and in particular watch out for her spiritual wellbeing, she said, 'That's not me. The person you're describing is Rosemary.' So Jennie relayed this conversation to me and asked if I would accept. </span></div>
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<span class="s1">And so I acquired my third god-daughter. For much of her life since babyhood we have connected more via social media than in person, though we do meet now and then. She was always very loving. When she was still in her teens, I asked why she loved me when she hardly knew me and she said, as if it should be obvious, 'Because you're my godmother.' She's an extraordinary young woman, an animal lover with a strong social conscience. She doesn't seem to have the writing bug herself, but is married to a writer.</span></div>
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<span class="s1"><b>New Problems</b></span></div>
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<span class="s1">The animal loving had to be taught, as it must to all young children – otherwise they think animals are toys, without feelings, and child or animal or both will likely suffer for it. One time I noticed my cat Ishtar trembling when Mikaela was in the room. Jennie said, a trifle guiltily, 'I think Mikaela's been throwing bits of Lego at her.' Obviously she did learn to treat animals more gently after that.</span></div>
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<span class="s1">There were problems with Flint, too. He'd always been a bit of a roamer, which is no doubt how he got to be a stray in the first place, but always came back home to us. The neighbours in Three Bridges got to know his friendly nature and where he belonged. (We did have to discourage him from chasing anyone's cattle. That can get a dog shot in the country, no questions asked.) In the city, we needed to keep him contained. The back yard was small. I walked him as often as I could, but I had actually created some work in addition to the teaching, which took up time. I advertised for a dog walker and a vibrant young woman turned up, a student who needed extra income. I needed only a short conversation to know she was perfect. She loved Flint, and he came to love her so much that I was almost jealous.</span></div>
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<span class="s1">Bill and I had declared bankruptcy soon after we split. I registered with Centrelink and went on the dole. I was required to look for full-time work. I didn't find that, but I did find Reiki and Tarot clients. I walked past a little New Age shop near the station and saw a weekend class in Tarot reading advertised. I was doing all right with my readings, but thought some training would be useful. The shop was owned by a young couple expecting their first child. He was the Tarot teacher, and a very good course it was. I was one of four students.</span></div>
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<span class="s1">They had rooms for hire above the shop, which became my venue for giving Tarot readings and Reiki treatments, and leading meditation groups. Peter had a day job while Katherine minded the shop. She would take bookings and phone me with the information. As I was only a five minute walk away, if I was home she could slot clients in immediately. I even conducted some Reiki classes there at weekends, using the whole space. It didn't get me off the dole but it did satisfy the authorities that I was doing something to help support myself. </span></div>
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<span class="s1">I felt irrational shame at having lost my marriage, my home and my well-to-do status. I hated going to the local dole office. Elsternwick was adjacent to some areas of high unemployment and poverty; the dole office, which served several suburbs, seemed full of angry and depressed people. Even the staff seemed that way, particularly one security guard who was constantly approached by people wanting directions as to which counter they needed (which wasn't his job). I saw him snap at someone one day, just as I was leaving, and had some judgmental thoughts about him. </span></div>
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<span class="s1">I stepped outside, tripped over, and fell on my face on the bitumen footpath. I ripped the knee of my slacks, jarred my thumb painfully, and bled copiously from my forehead. The plastic bridge of my glasses had snapped in half, and one spiky broken end had stabbed me right between the eyes. I’m thankful it wasn’t IN either eye. </span></div>
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<span class="s1">I grabbed a wad of tissues, clamped it to the spot and in a moment it was saturated, so I threw it in the gutter and applied my hand instead, using Reiki to stop the bleeding. A kind young man came and helped me to his car, parked nearby, so his wife (who was sitting in it feeding their baby) could take a look at the wound. He explained that she was a trained nurse.</span></div>
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<span class="s1">‘It’s stopped bleeding,’ she said, ‘But you're going to have some nasty bruises.' I was shaken, so the young man kindly drove me, in my car, just around the corner to their doctor and then walked back to his own vehicle. I kept Reiki-ing my face in the doctor’s waiting room. When he cleaned it and had a good look, he said, ‘It’s not bruising, but it will probably get all swollen and puffy.’ </span></div>
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<span class="s1">I kept Reiki-ing it constantly. No bruising or swelling occurred, but I did get big, unsightly scabs on my forehead and cheek. I phoned Ann to say I couldn't possibly assist her next weekend. I told her I looked so awful that I wasn’t going out in public for fear of frightening children. I could hear her smile over the phone. </span></div>
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<span class="s1">‘Just keep Reiki-ing it,’ she said.’You’ll be fine.' And she was right. Luckily one of her other assistants had called in and seen it at its worst or no-one would ever have believed me, my face was so smooth and unmarked by the weekend.</span></div>
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<span class="s1">I thought about the metaphysics of the injuries. I’d been feeling superior to the angry security guard and next thing I was brought to my knees (‘pride goes before a fall’). My thumb took some time to recover: I literally ‘lost my grip’. I had been feeling shame about my situation, and for a little while the face I showed to the world was so damaged and ugly that I didn't show it.</span></div>
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<span class="s1">I decided it was time to smarten up. I was a Reiki channel, training as a Master – why the heck wasn’t I fixing that dole office? I could hardly bowl up to strangers and request to give them Reiki, but I could put it into the environment. So I started discreetly Reiki-ing the seats and counters every time I went there, and over the months the energy there lightened. That same security guard turned from an angry, bitter-looking man to a cheery, friendly fellow who was only too happy to help the clients when asked. I can't swear that it was regular doses of Reiki that made the difference, but it was very coincidental. It made a big difference to me too, to take charge and do something positive instead of feeling sorry for myself.</span></div>
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<span class="s1">It was also interesting to notice that, while Bill and I had used to be heavy drinkers, I no longer felt the inclination to drink to excess. I was eating healthier too, and doing more walking. I rapidly lost most of my overweight. </span></div>
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<span class="s1"><b>Animals and Men</b></span></div>
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<span class="s1">Flint was inclined to jump the hedge and wander around the neighbourhood. Though he always came back safely, it was a worry. Large dogs aren’t supposed to roam the suburbs unattended. I asked Bill (who had been a builder) if he could come and put up a high fence behind the hedge. We were on speaking terms again by then. </span></div>
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<span class="s1">He had had his own adventures. The people who bought our property split up, the man and his adult son moved into the Three Bridges house with Bill also still in residence. It was not a happy household, with two newly-separated, disgruntled husbands! Bill borrowed some money from an old mate, found himself a house in need of renovation (hence selling cheaply) in an outer suburb called Ringwood, got himself a job in another old friend’s fish canning factory, moved out of Three Bridges into the Ringwood house and renovated it on weekends.</span></div>
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<span class="s1">He did put up the fence for me as requested. But one night when everyone was out, Flint jumped the fence with ease, got hit by a car in the dark, limped home and lay bleeding on the front veranda to greet Jennie when she arrived home. She got him to the veterinary hospital, meanwhile wondering whether I was lying dead or injured somewhere, as I had not initially planned to be out too!</span></div>
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<span class="s1">He only had a broken leg, and convalesced in my big bathroom. But I couldn't spend as much time with him as I’d have liked, nor could Jennie, and even my dog walker had to attend university during the day. It was just after this that I found out toddler Mikaela was throwing things at Ishtar. I decided I needed to find a safer home for both my animals. And really, who else would you ask to look after your children but their father? I put the hard word on Bill. He had always missed them, so he was delighted to agree.</span></div>
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<span class="s1">I took my dog walker with me when I delivered them, so she and Flint could have that last bit of time together. Bill had invited us for dinner. He and the animals were rapt to see each other, and he served us a very nice meal. (He always was a good cook.) I couldn't help noticing that he had slimmed down too, and was dressed very smartly. He was looking good! On the way home, the dog walker said that, from the way he was looking at me, she wouldn't be surprised if we got back together.</span></div>
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<span class="s1">‘No way,’ I said. But I did mention to some friends how good he was suddenly looking. </span></div>
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<span class="s1">‘That’s dangerous,’ they said, ‘when your ex starts looking attractive. Better find someone else fast.’</span></div>
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<span class="s1">I had a Tarot reading from Peter, who had taught the Tarot course. He was an excellent reader, and I was consulting him on other matters, mainly my finances and career prospects. But he also saw several possible men for me in the future. He thought one might in Tasmania (my birth State, where I still had family). Also there seemed to be someone in Melbourne. Yet another, he thought, might be younger than me; that would be very nice but probably not permanent.</span></div>
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<span class="s1">‘Oh no,’ I said. ’I’m sick of failed relationships. I want the next one to be happy and lasting, thanks very much. Don't bother with any temporary ones.’ </span></div>
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<span class="s1">I repeated this in no uncertain terms to the Universe later, but I didn’t really expect anyone to show up in this lifetime; I meant to be putting in my order for the next incarnation. I thought I was far too old, fat and ugly (even after some weight loss) to ever attract another man. When my adult sons expressed curiosity about whether I wanted a new relationship, I replied that I expected to be celibate for the rest of my life. They roared with raucous laughter and fell about.</span></div>
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<span class="s1">‘YOU! Celibate? Ha ha ha ha ha!’ I was quite hurt, but they were right.</span></div>
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<span class="s1">As was Peter, who turned out to be correct in his predictions about each of those men – and in this lifetime.</span></div>
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Rosemary Nissen-Wadehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05913841031559499568noreply@blogger.com8tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4436121128883591491.post-21335411348284374872017-05-27T16:15:00.000+10:002017-11-13T11:51:21.703+11:00Comrades and Allies<div class="p1">
<span style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: initial;">Writing this, I am beginning to realise I've had an eventful life. I wouldn't have had it any other way, but it's startling to perceive just how packed with incident it has been – particularly in those Three Bridges years. Some of these events held the seeds of the new life that was to come for me. The adventures into Reiki and professional Tarot reading, for instance, and the work with the Andronicus Foundation and the Master Game.</span><span style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: initial;"> </span>Also, some strikingly important friendships began at that time.</div>
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<span class="s1"><b>Denise</b></span></div>
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<span class="s1">Denise, who had contacted us via the Andronicus Foundation, became a close friend. </span>She learned Reiki I and II from Ann in classes held at our house. Eventually, heavily pregnant, she phoned one night to say that her partner, who had a drinking problem, had turned violent. Could Bill come and get her and her son Luke? He did, and she came to live with us. We had plenty of room. After her baby daughter was born – by emergency Caesarian, with me as Denise's support person, giving her Reiki throughout – they all continued to live with us for a time. When we tuned in to this babe, before and after her birth, Denise and I both got that she had incarnated to be with both her mother and me. It was mostly to be with her mother, but apparently there were things she would learn from me. (When we did some past life regression work, it appeared that Denise had been my daughter in a Scottish lifetime, a long time ago.) </div>
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<span class="s1">At this point, let me backtrack to my friendship with Ridge, and a time when he 'saw' certain figures around me, dressed in shining robes. One, a female, spoke to him telepathically and told him I knew them, had known them all my life. He asked for her name, and said she showed him a coin, a very bright, shiny coin. 'Penny?' he wondered aloud, then said, 'No, it's silver.' Suddenly I knew.</span></div>
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<span class="s1">'Sylvie!' I shouted. That was the name of one of my 'imaginary playmates' from when I was little. Then I remembered them all: Sylvie and Maudie had been my closest friends of the group, but there were others. I particularly recalled a long-legged boy named Andy. Ridge said they were spirits of children who had died, and that they must have grown along with me. As an adult looking back, I realised their clothing as children (not shining robes then) indicated different historical eras and social classes. They were all English-speaking, which makes sense as I wouldn't have been able to talk with them otherwise. It seemed they must have been assigned, as guardian angels. </span></div>
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<span class="s1">Fast forward to Denise and her new baby. One afternoon she was in their bedroom, the baby asleep in her bassinet and Denise sitting beside her doing 'absent Reiki'. Not that the baby was ill, but Reiki is not only for treating illness; it enhances wellbeing in general. Obviously the baby was present in the room, not absent, but using that method meant Denise didn't have to disturb her sleep. Reiki II, the technique for 'absent healing', allows for telepathic contact with the client; useful in many circumstances, including when treating an infant too young to talk. </span></div>
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<span class="s1">I was in the living room. Denise suddenly called out, 'Was there ever a TV show called The Mavis Bramston Show?'</span></div>
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<span class="s1">'There sure was!' I said. 'I always used to watch it.' </span></div>
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<span class="s1">Denise said, 'This baby is telling me she used to watch it with you!'</span></div>
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<span class="s1">The Mavis Bramston Show was a wonderful Australian satirical comedy show which aired from 1964 to 1968. Denise had obviously never heard of it, which is not surprising as she was probably not even born at the time, or at most would have been a very young child. The year of this conversation was 1991.</span></div>
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<span class="s1">We both assumed that the baby must have had a past incarnation with me. Yet that didn't quite fit. I watched the Mavis Bramston Show with my immediate family, not usually anyone else. Denise then tried asking telepathically what the baby's name was when she used to watch it with me. </span></div>
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<span class="s1">She said, 'I can't quite get it. Oh, wait a minute, she's trying to show me. I'm getting an image of a shiny coin. Penny? No, it's silver...'</span></div>
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<span class="s1">'Oh my God,' I said, 'Sylvie! She's my imaginary friend come back to life.' Then I had to explain to Denise about the so-called imaginary friends, and the conversation with Ridge, so like the one I'd just had with her. While we were still gob-smacked about that, she added,</span></div>
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<span class="s1">'She's telling me that she used to help you write your poetry.'</span></div>
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<span class="s1">'That was HER?' I said. I remembered times when I was writing late at night, and felt a presence looking over my shoulder, taking an interest. It even seemed this being was making occasional suggestions. I once tried to ask who it was, and thought I got the name Sylvia. I was right into Sylvia Plath at that time, and dared hope the great Sylvia was mentoring me from Beyond. But of course Sylvie would be an affectionate version of Sylvia.</span></div>
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<span class="s1">Denise found a place for herself and her family when the baby got a little older, but the friendship continued for many years, in various places, as we both moved house several times. There was a time we shared a house, when her daughter (my god-daughter) was 12. The girl asked me to teach her magic, so I gave after-school lessons to her and a school friend, with parents' permission. </span></div>
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<span class="s1">Denise died too young, from cancer, some years ago. Her daughter has come through the loss of her mother at a young age to become a beautiful, strong young woman. She loves animals, the outdoors and travel, shows no great interest in poetry, and is in a relationship with a fine young man. Recently they visited me and I finally told her the story of her birth, and of her time with me as Sylvie, my friend in spirit. Denise was psychic, also she eventually trained as a Reiki Master; so her daughter, who had grown up with all that, was able to deal with this kind of information.</span></div>
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<span class="s1">She was actually the second god-daughter I acquired in those years. </span></div>
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<span class="s1"><b>Helen</b></span></div>
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<span class="s1">It was while I was teaching at Box Hill TAFE that my friend Jennie Fraine was running a poetry workshop and used my first book of poetry, UNIVERSE CAT, as a teaching aid. One of the students fell in love with the title poem:</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "palatino";">I AM the cat<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "palatino";">with silent eyes<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "palatino";">I mark the fall of the leaf<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "palatino";">and the grasses glistening<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "palatino";">I listen to life<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "palatino";">and
death.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "palatino";">Life grieves<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "palatino";">death
leaps<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "palatino";">outside<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "palatino";">and
both together breathe.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "palatino";">I sleep in the warm<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "palatino";">inside.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "palatino";">I
am tied to the loves of my house.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "palatino";">But sometimes<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "palatino";">I
come untied.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "palatino";">Wild in hail or rain<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "palatino";">electric
to thunder<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "palatino";">voluptuous
for sun<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "palatino";">I am chameleon<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "palatino";">old
wise woman<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "palatino";">the
witch<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "palatino";">and
then<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "palatino";">the
child on your lap<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "palatino";">I
am a universe.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "palatino";">Cat.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-family: "palatino"; font-size: 11.0pt;">© Rosemary Nissen-Wade 1981</span></b><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-family: "palatino"; font-size: 11.0pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></b></div>
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<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-family: "palatino"; font-size: 11.0pt;">from <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Universe Cat</i>, Pariah
Press (Melb.) 1985</span></b><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-family: "palatino"; font-size: 11.0pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></b></div>
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<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-family: "palatino"; font-size: 11.0pt;">First published<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">
Luna </i><o:p></o:p></span></b></div>
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<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-family: "palatino"; font-size: 11.0pt;">Also in <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Secret
Leopard: new and selected poems 1974-2005<o:p></o:p></i></span></b></div>
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<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-family: "palatino"; font-size: 11.0pt;">(Paris, Alyscamps Press, 2006)<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><o:p></o:p></i></span></b></div>
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<span class="s1">She was a cat lover, of course. She asked Jennie if she could have my address to write and tell me how much she liked the poem. Jennie didn't think I'd mind. She thought, quite correctly, that I'd be thrilled. And so Helen Patrice wrote me my first (and to date only) fan letter about poetry. It was charming, she included a terrific cat poem of her own, and of course I wrote back to thank her. I met her in person when Jennie invited me to her group as a guest workshopper. Helen and I were something of a disappointment to each other, we found out many years later. She couldn't believe this plumpish lady in late middle age had written all those fiery, uninhibited poems. I couldn't believe this meek, mousy little girl hardly out of school was the strong, frank, charming letter-writer. </span></div>
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<span class="s1">I don't recall how we got past that, and why we stayed in touch, but we did, via letters and phone calls. (This was before we all had personal computers, and used emails.) I guess we had so much in common that we could dismiss the superficialities. Besides our shared passion for cats and writing, we were both starting out as professional Tarot readers, and we had similar literary tastes, socio-political views and senses of humour. As Helen once said, we ‘get’ each other at very deep levels. Somewhere along the way we became ‘best friends forever’ despite a roughly 20-year age gap, and she is still very much in my life</span></div>
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<span class="s1">She was newly engaged to her first husband when we met, and was married soon after. Her daughter Susan, my first god-daughter (now herself a mother of three) was born late 1989 and her son David, my god-son, mid-1992. There were visits back and forth during those years, Helen came and stayed with us for a brief ‘retreat’ at one time, and in 1991 she did Levels I and II Reiki in Ann’s classes at Three Bridges. We practised our Tarot readings on each other, and read and critiqued some of each other’s writings.</span></div>
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<span class="s1">Both her children were born profoundly deaf, which demands a big commitment on the part of parents, e.g. managing and constantly cleaning the complex hearing aids required. Helen recently reminded me: </span></div>
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<span class="s1">‘With me drowning in oceans of nappies and hearing aids, you suggested, in a letter, that I write small poems to keep my writing alive.’ </span></div>
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<span class="s1">I think she’d have found a way anyhow, but as she’s one of my favourite writers I’m glad for whatever part I’ve played.</span></div>
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<span class="s1">I’ve mentioned the writing workshops I held in the local community. After they finished, I became inspired to run a one-day writing event for poets, and invited some old cronies from Melbourne. That was before I knew Helen, but Jennie Fraine attended. So did a young woman called Leah Kaminsky, a poet and fiction writer, whom I hadn't previously met. A mutual friend asked me to invite her, feeling she needed that kind of contact.</span></div>
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<span class="s1">We all had a great day, and Jennie and I so clicked with Leah (whom Jennie hadn’t met before either) that we arranged to get together again, just the three of us. Not only were we very much on the same wavelength as women and writers, we were all graduates of powerful self-development courses with an organisation now known as Landmark Education. This had given us increased ability to confront things, complete things, maintain commitment and integrity, and stand for whatever we intended to accomplish. It also meant that we could communicate from that shared background, without having to explain the concepts to each other. It was a great basis for encouraging each other’s writing.</span></div>
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<span class="s1">We began to meet regularly at each other’s homes to eat lunch, write together into the afternoon, and encourage each other’s projects. This in itself was quite a commitment, as Leah lived in a Melbourne suburb, I was up in the hills out of Melbourne, and Jennie was outside Melbourne in a different direction, on the Peninsula. So we took it in turns whose home we used, and only two of us at a time had to travel long distances. Later we found a school vaguely in the middle, willing to let us use a room in return for doing some poetry workshops with the students. (To the best of my recollection, Jennie, who was </span>was already working with schools in that way, fulfilled this commitment on behalf of us all.)</div>
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<span class="s1">This association continued for many years. We soon named ourselves the WIGs, short for Withhold Identification Group, as we discerned that when there was something not working in our writing, it usually involved some kind of withhold. We still sometimes address each other as 'Wiggie'. We also became inspired by Natalie Goldberg’s book, WRITING DOWN THE BONES. It was then a new publication which Jennie discovered on a trip to America, and she brought back copies for us all. </span>Some little time later Leah visited America and brought us back the just-published sequel, WILD MIND. We christened Ms Goldberg 'Saint Nat' amongst ourselves, and adopted her ‘timed writing’ practice henceforth. </div>
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<span class="s1">Eventually Leah got married to an Israeli and went to live in Israel; Jennie, who already had a young son, got pregnant (with my third god-daughter, as it turned out); Bill and I broke up ... (more of this anon). Through these and many other adventures, including a time Jennie lived and worked in New Zealand, we stayed in touch – by email, eventually – and continued to write together on designated days, in our respective countries. We shared the results by email.</span></div>
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<span class="s1"><b>A New Alliance for Bill</b></span></div>
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<span class="s1">Rewind to Three Bridges. I started teaching the Poetry section of the Professional Writing Course at Box Hill TAFE in 1989. Some time during that year we invited class members and the Head of Department, Izzy, a brilliant woman whom we all loved, to come to Three Bridges for a writing weekend. By then I had a lot of innovative and fun ways of sparking pieces of writing. Later Izzy pointed out an ad for something similar at a country venue, for which a fee was being charged, and said, ‘You could have made money!’ But we did it for the enjoyment. </span></div>
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<span class="s1">I think people brought food to share, and their own bedding. We had enough rooms, beds, couches and bits of floor. We gave two students who were a couple a room to themselves, and another to a single mum who had to bring her little daughter.</span></div>
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<span class="s1">Bill really clicked with this young woman and her little girl. I thought nothing of it. He was a very paternal man who usually related well to kids, and we had always thought it perfectly possible to have platonic friendships with people of the opposite sex without endangering the marriage.</span></div>
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<span class="s1">But the years at Three Bridges gradually eroded our marriage. I continued to work at Box Hill, and we maintained friendships with a number of my students from those years, even after they graduated from my classes. Bill’s friendship with (let's call her) Annette was a bit different, though. </span></div>
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<span class="s1">Gradually it became more of a friendship between him and her, excluding me. I still didn't pay much attention to that. I was busy with my various interests and commitments. If Bill happened to bump into Annette somewhere and they had a cuppa, or if she was moving house and he was helping her shift furniture, so what? She was a single mum with a young child; we had both always helped people when we could. It was only later that I realised it’s a bit strange when you rush home from work, shower, and change into your good clothes in order to go and help someone shift furniture!</span></div>
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<span class="s1">After we split, they did have a very close friendship, and went out on what looked like dates. But she was in the ‘off’ of an off-and-on romance with someone else, whom she eventually went back to and they have been together ever since. She invited me out for coffee one day, I accepted from curiosity, and she assured me there had never been anything sexual between her and Bill. I didn't contradict her – but it wasn't what Bill had confided to others, who saw no reason not to tell me, since we were split up by then and I wasn't pining.</span></div>
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<span class="s1">However, Annette was not the ostensible cause of our break-up when it finally happened, though I’m sure the thought of what might be possible with her gave Bill some secret impetus. The official catalyst was my Reiki Master training.</span></div>
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</style>Rosemary Nissen-Wadehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05913841031559499568noreply@blogger.com7tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4436121128883591491.post-20047514053139696552017-05-09T10:30:00.000+10:002019-03-30T18:13:48.944+11:00No I Don't Want To Revisit My Traumas, Thanks!<div style="font-family: Arial, Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: 12px;">
<b style="-webkit-text-stroke: rgb(0, 0, 0); font-family: Times; font-size: 24px;">The Background</b><span style="-webkit-text-stroke: rgb(0, 0, 0); font-family: Times; font-size: 24px;"><br /></span></div>
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<span class="s1" style="font-kerning: none;">My dear husband Andrew had Alzheimer's before he died. He also had physical conditions – diabetes, peripheral neuropathy in the legs, an artificial heart valve. Gradually, in his last two years of life, he came to use a wheely walker some of the time, then all of the time. All this required more and more care from me and his medical helpers.</span></div>
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<span class="s1" style="font-kerning: none;">The Alzheimer’s wasn’t as bad as it could have been. Its onset was quite late. At his eightieth birthday party, it wasn’t apparent – he made a great speech. (The wheely walker, too, was still an unexpected part of the future then – he did lots of dancing that night.)</span></div>
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<span class="s1" style="font-kerning: none;">Even when the Alzheimer’s did show up, we were lucky that our GP referred us to an excellent geriatric specialist, who prescribed medication which slowed the progress of the disease (although it could not halt it). He stayed in the early to middle stages. For many people, sufferers and families, it gets much, much worse.<br /></span><span class="s1" style="font-kerning: none;">And yet it was far from easy.<br /><br />I’m thankful he didn't stop knowing who I was, or who any of his friends and family were. But he got confused in other ways. </span><span class="s1" style="font-kerning: none;">He wanted to go to his office in town, and became anxious and argumentative when I didn't cooperate. How could I? There was no office in town; that had been decades ago, in a very different city. It was a little easier when he thought we were already in his office, and wanted to lay out magazines half the night, by pre-digital publishing methods, until I could persuade him we had done enough for the time being and could go to bed.</span><br /><span class="s1" style="font-kerning: none;"><br />From something on the TV news one night, he decided our Prime Minister (Julia Gillard at the time) needed his advice, and set off down the passage to see her in her office, which he seemed to think was through our spare room. It was disconcerting and deeply scary for him to find that was not so. In various ways he often thought that what was happening on the TV was also part of our here-and-now reality.<br /><br />He would get agitated about things on which it was impossible for me to reassure him. Sometimes I managed it, but no-one can prepare you for how to cope with early stage Alzheimer’s; you have to play it by ear. It’s all very changeable. His reality was constantly altering. There were general tendencies, like those I’ve just described, but the details were never predictable.</span><br /><span class="s1" style="font-kerning: none;"><br />The medication which reduced his regular evening agitation had to be carefully monitored for side-effects, such as making it even harder for him to walk. Although life became a round of medical appointments, sometimes almost a conspiracy between me and the doctors, we didn't always get the dosage right.</span><br /><span class="s1" style="font-kerning: none;"><br />His physical ailments were not due to Alzheimer’s, yet some were very similar to what happens to Alzheimer’s patients in the advanced stages. They too can lose mobility in their legs, for instance. Like their carers, I knew all about trying to wrestle the wheely walker in and out of the car, while simultaneously trying to forestall its user from wandering off into traffic.<br /><br />His incontinence, though, was indeed due to the Alzheimer’s. Early on I learned to manage it in a way that preserved his dignity and saved embarrassment; later he was less aware of it himself, so it was simply a matter of keeping him physically comfortable. </span><br /><span class="s1" style="font-kerning: none;"><br />I loved him and wanted to make life easy for him. </span><br /><span class="s1" style="font-kerning: none;"><br />It was heartbreaking to see him lose the capacity to use his computer efficiently. He was a writer and researcher; he had had one of the first pc’s in the country, even before the invention of Windows and Apple operating systems; he taught me how to use a computer. </span><br /><span class="s1" style="font-kerning: none;"><br />And there were many other heartbreaks.</span><br /><span class="s1" style="font-kerning: none;"><br />But he is dead now. He has been dead four and a half years. He died peacefully, he was ready to go, and until the end – even at the end – he did know who he was, who I was, who his children and his friends were. I still love him and miss him, but I have adapted to being alone and I think I have a very nice life. I am eternally grateful that he did not linger longer and deteriorate further.</span><br /><span class="s1" style="font-kerning: none;"><br />Yes, it could have been a great deal worse. Nevertheless, it was arduous. I went through great stress and grief, and after it was all over my doctor diagnosed me with post-traumatic stress disorder. I have many resources for self-healing, as well as good friends similarly gifted, and for some time I also had the services of a good therapist – until the time I felt I didn't need her any more, and she concurred.</span></div>
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<span class="s1" style="font-kerning: none;"><b>The Objection</b></span><br /><span class="s1" style="font-kerning: none;"><br />So I came through all right. But I don’t understand why some people think that – <em>because</em> of my experience – I will be excited to see films or read books about Alzheimer’s – particularly about long, loving marriages where one partner contracts the illness and the other has to learn how to cope.</span><br /><span class="s1" style="font-kerning: none;"><br />‘You’ll really love this!’ they say. </span><br /><span class="s1" style="font-kerning: none;"><br />No, I won’t.</span><br /><span class="s1" style="font-kerning: none;"><br />It’s easy to avoid the movies. The ads and trailers aways give the game away. If some fool lends me a book with title and blurb that don’t immediately alert me, still I don’t read very far. There was that best-seller not so long ago, about an old man with dementia escaping from a nursing home in only his pyjamas, and having adventures which readers and reviewers described as hilarious. But I didn't find that out until after a kind friend lent it to me to give me a good laugh. I closed it after the first page. Not my idea of funny! </span><br /><span class="s1" style="font-kerning: none;"><br />The afore-mentioned fools – and there are quite a few of them – are my friends, you understand, people who saw me go through it all and said they couldn’t imagine how I coped. They were very supportive at the time. They don’t mean to be offering me a nice dose of mental torture now. </span><br /><span class="s1" style="font-kerning: none;"><br />I decline the deeply moving poems; I avoid the brilliantly acted films and plays; I return the incredibly amusing books so kindly lent. And I explain why, briefly and politely. It surprises people. </span><br /><span class="s1" style="font-kerning: none;"><br />'Oh, that never occurred to me.' </span><br /><span class="s1" style="font-kerning: none;"><br />'I didn't realise you'd see it that way.'</span><br /><span class="s1" style="font-kerning: none;"><br />'I just thought it was so moving / hilarious / brilliant.'</span></div>
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<span class="s1" style="font-kerning: none;"><b>The Exception</b></span><br /><span class="s1" style="font-kerning: none;"><br />After all, all by myself, I found one book on the subject which I could read and even sort of enjoy. The public library was selling off old stock, and there was a novel by Kate Jennings for $2: <em>Moral Hazard.</em></span><br /><span class="s1" style="font-kerning: none;"><br />Kate Jennings was a wonderful Australian feminist poet of the seventies, who disappeared as a poet after moving to America and becoming an essayist and fiction writer. There she married a much older man who eventually developed dementia. She then became the sole breadwinner, and went to work as a speech writer for a major financial institution – very much against the principles she had always held, as a matter of economic necessity.</span><br /><span class="s1" style="font-kerning: none;"><br />So did the heroine of her novel. I'm quite prepared to believe she fictionalised the story in some ways – changing people's names, collapsing several events or characters into one, that kind of thing. I'm guessing; it's simply described as a novel, without further elaboration. There must be some justification for that label. But, however the book was fictionalised, I know it's based on the life she lived. I think that's what enabled me to read it, after I got it home and discovered what it was about.</span><br /><span class="s1" style="font-kerning: none;"><br />It wasn't somebody's wonderful idea about what it must be like to be married to an Alzheimer's sufferer. This author knows. She doesn't need to write a moving account; she just needs to write what happened, which she does baldly yet understatedly. </span><br /><span class="s1" style="font-kerning: none;"><br />One thing I like about the book – apart from her writing, as skilled as ever – is that some of the story concerns the protagonist, Cath's, job: a bad fit which she takes only because illness is expensive and she needs the income. Jennings acknowledges that, even though her husband's illness is the most important thing in Cath's life, it's not the whole of her life. Other practicalities must be lived and dealt with too, around the edges of that central fact, becoming important in themselves. We don't and can't exist in a vacuum.</span><br /><span class="s1" style="font-kerning: none;"><br />I also like the renewed realisation this book gave me that Andrew and I got off lightly. Cath's husband gets much sicker than Andrew ever did, and takes seven years to die instead of two. I'm thankful all over again. At the same time I recognise many of the things that befall Cath and her husband, and I know very well from first-hand experience that the author is restrained in conveying the harrowing details. She doesn't dwell on things which I know (from what she does say) would have happened – repeatedly.</span><br /><span class="s1" style="font-kerning: none;"><br />So I'm actually glad I read it. For sure I would not have kept on reading if I hadn't wanted to. (I am still not planning on reading anything more on this topic!) The characters come across as real, which of course they are, and Cath and her husband are engaging. I like her 'voice'. </span><br /><span class="s1" style="font-kerning: none;"><br />I would call this book a fictionalised memoir. However, reading it as a novel allowed me not to go to pieces while doing so. </span><br /><span class="s1" style="font-kerning: none;"><br />And it's a good book. </span><br /><u><br /><span class="s1" style="font-kerning: none;">Post-Script:</span></u></div>
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<span class="s1" style="font-kerning: none;">It’s a very good book! (Which might also have something to do with the fact that I liked it.) After I wrote this post, I checked some of my facts on Wikipedia, and also learned:<br /><br />'Jennings was awarded the Christina Stead Prize for fiction for Moral Hazard, which was also shortlisted for the 2003 Miles Franklin Award, the Los Angeles Times Fiction Prize, and the Tasmania Pacific Region Prize. Snake [an earlier novel] was a New York Times Notable Book of the Year, as was Moral Hazard.'</span></div>
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Rosemary Nissen-Wadehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05913841031559499568noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4436121128883591491.post-38452038988079466132017-04-19T10:12:00.000+10:002017-11-13T11:52:37.640+11:00Trials, Tests and Tribulations, Part 2<div>
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We grew apart gradually, though to me it seemed sudden. Let me try now, with hindsight, to trace those unravelling threads.</div>
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I see that, in our four years at Three Bridges, while we had various adventures in the new way of life in the new location, many of them pleasurable, we also had as a constant backdrop the huge financial challenges which ultimately became too much for us. </div>
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Early on we asked some wise spirits, via our Andronicus Foundation meditation group, how to be able to afford living there after our supposed co-owners left; how to make this unexpected situation financially viable. We were told, 'Use what you have.' It seems, now, such straightforward advice, perfectly clear and easy to understand, but at the time we couldn't grasp the obvious as we tried to find some deeper meaning. We puzzled and puzzled over it. Did 'they' perhaps mean we should cut and sell the timber on our property? Did they mean we should plant crops or run cattle? </div>
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We didn't attempt any of those things, which would have been beyond us. But we did spend money on things we could have done without, which I see now (but didn't then) as directly contrary to the advice we received. We put in a modern stove in addition to the wood stove which was already there, because it was what we were used to cooking on. Bill did some building modifications to the house, which weren't really necessary – but he always needed to be physically active and would create such jobs for himself. 'Use what you have' seems to me, now, to say clearly, 'Be content, don't spend on "improvements" '. We just couldn't fathom it at the time. I guess we were caught up in the habit of doing rather than being. </div>
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There was one crop already there, which we did use. The previous owners had planted a big field of daffodils. I asked the local florist if they'd be interested, and after taking one sample bunch to check the quality, they ordered some every week. It wasn't a huge number, but provided a bit extra cash for me to run the household on, and didn't need much work. There were proteas growing too, but unfortunately they weren't as fashionable then as they had once been. They had lost their novelty value, and the florist wasn't interested.</div>
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I look back and think that one thing Bill and I did together very well was parenting. Now we were without resident children, and that glue that had held us together was very much weakened. At first, when 'the boys' needed help, and called on us as they were used to doing, we'd drop everything and drive to Melbourne to the rescue, but this was now over an hour's drive to wherever they were. It soon became obvious to us all that it simply wasn't practical and they'd have to start standing on their own feet. Indeed, it was the right time for them to do so, having left school and started university.</div>
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We still saw them fairly often, either in Melbourne or at Three Bridges – they'd bring their girlfriends up for weekends, or we'd take the chance to drop in on them if we had errands in town – and of course we kept in touch in between times. But it wasn't the same as being a family under one roof. Bill and I were thrown much more on each other's company, without a buffer in between. This revealed that we didn't have so much in common any more.</div>
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He was busy trying to bring in money, getting building jobs in the nearby townships. Eventually he became deckhand to a new young abalone diver. This young man perceived Bill as an old has-been, and was probably insecure as well, so instead of respecting Bill's years of expertise and taking his advice on things like the best fishing grounds, he treated him disdainfully. He was downright rude. We were so much in need of the money that Bill swallowed his pride and resentment, and the angry rejoinders he would have given anyone else. Some of the other divers said to the young man, 'Wow, you're lucky having him decking for you!' but it didn't sink in. Between hard work and mental stress, Bill was constantly exhausted and miserable. A naturally exuberant man, he did try to keep his spirits up, but it was more and more difficult.</div>
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As for me, I got very fat. Two things happened at the same time, just before we moved to Three Bridges: I stopped smoking after 42 years, and I started menopause. Either of those things on its own often causes weight gain, let alone both at once. </div>
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I noticed that many people in the area were also carrying extra weight. When I moaned to Marie at the Neighbourhood Centre about how much I'd put on since moving there, she (distinctly plump herself) said, 'We all do here. It's the lifestyle.' There was probably something in that, too. Anyway, I think it's fair to say that I stopped being sexually attractive to my husband. There certainly wasn't a lot of sex happening between us in those years.</div>
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I wasn't initiating it either. I remember waking up one morning and, before I opened my eyes, realising that he, over on his side of the King-size water-bed, was masturbating as quietly and surreptitiously as possible. Instead of saying something like, 'Do you need any help with that?' I pretended I was still asleep. A marriage is surely not going very well when one party would rather take matters into their own hands even when there's a readily available spouse right there, and when that spouse would prefer to let them. </div>
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Soon after that Bill made an excuse to start sleeping in one of the other bedrooms. I can't remember now exactly what he said, but I think it was to do with needing a sounder sleep now that he was working as a deckhand. It was plausible. He had to get up very early in the morning for a long drive, on the days of good diving weather, and it was a very physical job. Then there was the long drive home, and the need for an early night.</div>
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But, as I said, the disintegration of our marriage was a gradual thing. Or at least, it was for me. I've always been quite good at amusing myself when necessary. I was an only child for my first four years; perhaps it started then. With Bill being away quite a lot, either at the caravan park or working as a deckhand, and being more and more dour and distant when he was home, I increasingly relied on my own resources. They were the same ones as always: writing, reading, home-making, thinking and dreaming; exploring the esoteric. I hardly noticed that we were gradually sharing less and less real conversation. </div>
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I look back and think it must have been very lonely for him. He was an extroverted, gregarious man. But that simply didn't occur to me then. He was busy doing his own things, as I was mine. I wasn't lonely; I was my own companion. I wasn't discontented; I knew how to make myself content. If our marriage had lost its spark, well, we were middle-aged, weren't we? I'd just make the best of it, keep myself busy, and enjoy other aspects of life – which of course, I see now, threw me even more on my own resources and gave me even less motivation to bridge the widening gaps between us. Back then I had no perception that something was seriously wrong. </div>
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It came as a complete surprise to me when, on our 24th wedding anniversary, he came into the bedroom fully dressed to wake me – not with a cuppa and Happy Anniversary wishes, but to announce that he wasn't happy in the marriage and we had to separate. Then he walked out and drove to work. I still don't know if he realised it was our anniversary or if it was an unhappy coincidence. That's how little we were communicating then. It's not impossible that he might have completely forgotten; I was the keeper of significant dates like anniversaries and family birthdays.</div>
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I had just started my friend Jenette's Master Game program. Part of our agreement was that participants would contact her if any problem arose in their lives. I phoned her in tears. She said, 'Don't make any decision yet. Just keep doing the program. It's only a few weeks until you complete it. Put everything on hold until then.' That calmed me down, and that evening I asked Bill to wait those few weeks before taking any definite steps. He said it would make no difference to his decision, but he agreed.</div>
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It wasn't that Jenette or I imagined that her program would necessarily save the marriage. We both knew it would clear my energy, therefore Bill's energy would shift in response, and so we'd be able to make the decision lucidly, uninfluenced by extraneous baggage. </div>
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For those weeks, things did seem to improve between us – to the extent that I confided in him that one reason I'd been so devastated by his announcement was that I'd been very much looking forward to celebrating our Silver Wedding Anniversary, in only one more year.</div>
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We did get to celebrate that anniversary. By the time I finished the Master Game, things were much friendlier between us, we were sharing a bed again, and the possibility of separation wasn't mentioned any more. </div>
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Bill organised a wonderful anniversary party for me, as I mentioned in my previous post. It was a joyful occasion. Our friends were happy for us, we had a ball, and I was relieved that we weren't going to separate after all. </div>
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This was still a year before he fell for someone else.<br />
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Rosemary Nissen-Wadehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05913841031559499568noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4436121128883591491.post-74470065919302821732017-03-28T01:14:00.000+11:002017-11-13T11:54:40.993+11:00Tests, Trials and Tribulations: Part 1<div class="p1">
<span style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: initial;"><b>Money Matters</b></span><br />
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<span style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: initial;">Along with the adventure of making a new life for ourselves at Three Bridges, and the many new experiences, came some less welcome changes.</span></div>
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<span class="s1">Money became a huge problem for us. Bill wasn't an abalone diver any more, I had no regular 9-5 job, and suddenly we were responsible on our own for a purchase we'd thought we'd be sharing with another couple. And that wasn't all.</span></div>
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<span class="s1">While we were still in Melbourne, Bill had bought my Mum, who lived in the island State, Tasmania, a house in the town of Devonport. She wanted a move from where she lived, in Launceston, after being widowed. All her friends there started dying off, and her home was too big for one person. She moved to Hobart to be near family there but they were busy working, she knew no-one else and didn't drive. She sold the Hobart house and came to stay with us in Melbourne while deciding what to do next. Then an old friend from Devonport, where Mum had spent her girlhood, phoned to say there was this great house for sale. Mum was enthused by the description but felt it was more than she wanted to pay. Bill offered to buy it and rent it to her.</span></div>
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<span class="s1">So then we had trips to Devonport to visit her, just a quick flight or a very short boat trip across Bass Strait. She caught up with old friends there, whom she'd grown up with, and made new ones. Bill, being a builder as well as a diver (building work had always kept us going in the lean times between fishing seasons) went over and made some alterations to the house according to what she wanted. </span></div>
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<span class="s1">While he was away, friends turned up to give me two kittens they'd seen in a pet shop and hadn't been able to resist. They'd bought two of four for themselves, then thought, 'Who else needs a kitten? Oh, Bill and Rosemary.' My cat and all our dogs had died by then, the last dog only recently. </span><br />
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<span class="s1">I had promised Bill, no more animals. He wanted the freedom to travel spontaneously, and not to have the expenses that pets bring. But I couldn't resist the kittens either, so I broke my promise. I felt guilty, though resolved. How would I tell him?</span></div>
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<span class="s1">I had extracted a promise from him, too: no more major purchases without talking to me first. Bill had a habit of bringing us close to poverty with impetuous, under-capitalised business decisions, then working very hard and finally restoring the family fortunes. It was a recurring pattern.</span></div>
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<span class="s1">When he phoned from Tassie and said, 'I've got something to confess. I bought a caravan park,' I didn't berate him. I told him I had something to confess too – we had two new cats. Neither of us felt we could object to the other's broken promise when we'd broken our own. Writing this now, it doesn't seem to be quite comparable in magnitude – but I still think we were even, ethically (or rather, unethically). </span></div>
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<span class="s1">That was in the boom era, notorious in Australia, when the banks encouraged people to borrow big. The bank certainly gave Bill every encouragement in this purchase and saddled him with hefty interest rates. I know; I was there in Devonport, in the bank manager's office, to sign new papers when Bill wanted extra money to upgrade the caravan park. </span></div>
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<span class="s1">We were already in sole possession of our Three Bridges property by then. I was worried about what we were asked to sign, as this property too would revert to the bank should we default. I demurred, asked questions. I was no business-woman, but it seemed to be risky and weighted against us. The bank manager said he'd leave us to discuss it a little while, and stepped out of the room. Bill turned on me and hissed, 'You sign or this marriage is over!'</span></div>
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<span class="s1">I have often said since, in hindsight, that if someone says that to you, the marriage is already over. (Even if you stay together. Just the fact of them being able to say that and mean it....) But I didn't understand this then. I was completely taken aback. I actually didn't believe he would follow through on such a threat, but it did tell me how much the deal meant to him. </span></div>
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<span class="s1">I still said, when the bank manager returned, 'I'm worried that if the worst comes to the worst, we could lose our home in Victoria.' The bank manger said to Bill, with a smile and a wink, 'Oh I don't think it'll come to that, will it, Bill? We'd work something out.' And so I swallowed my reservations and signed.</span></div>
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<span class="s1">Bill began spending more time in Tasmania supervising the upgrade, doing a lot of the physical labour himself. He had a friend managing the day-to-day running of the caravan park for him, and all seemed to be going well. Then the boom collapsed, Prime Minister Paul Keating gave us 'the recession we had to have' and </span>suddenly, overnight, banks which had been lending money lavishly started foreclosing. It was a terrible time in Australia. Many people went broke, including, eventually, us.</div>
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<span class="s1">But before that happened, or was even thought of, came news that there was to be a paper pulp mill built near Devonport. That proposal was delayed and eventually defeated because of the outcry from the population about the huge degree of water pollution involved. Up until then, Bill had been an environmentalist like me and all our family and friends. But he got dollar signs in his eyes. </span><br />
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<span class="s1">'All those workers they'll be bringing in to build the mill will need accommodation,' he said. That was the reason for trying to upgrade the caravan park and going further into debt to do so. Had he left it running as it was, we might have made enough out of it to stay afloat; it was the extra expenditure – even before the pulp mill was approved! – that put us too far in the red.</span></div>
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<span class="s1">I and everyone else he knew tried to argue him out of it, fervently and repeatedly, on both environmental and financial grounds. We could all see that he was stretching the finances too far, as well as betraying his own principles. He wouldn't listen. (God, he could be a stubborn man when he wanted to be.) </span></div>
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<span class="s1">He went and talked to the bigwigs who were there ahead of time to prepare the way for the mill. He got copies of the copious literature they put out to convince the Tasmanian Government and everybody else that the mill would actually be good for the environment as well as the economy. And he bought the specious arguments, and argued for them himself. He would never have done so before, but I believe he was blinded by the thought of making lots of money and becoming the wealthy man he'd always dreamed of being.</span></div>
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<span class="s1">But the mill didn't go ahead; and, pretty much simultaneously, the country went into recession. Bill believed he could trade out of trouble. He kept doing projections, putting his case with lists of figures appended, and sending them to the bank. It was before everyone had computers. I, who am not mathematical, spent hours typing and retyping them on an electric typewriter, making sure all the columns lined up as they were supposed to and double-checking that the figures made sense. </span></div>
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<span class="s1">I now think the bank manager shoved them in a drawer and never even read them. It was a new bank manager by then, whom we'd never met, and I think he was under orders to give no quarter. </span></div>
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<span class="s1">Finally seeing the writing on the wall, Bill told Mum she stood to lose her house unless she would buy it from him. She complained, but did. Sure enough, the bailiff came calling, and she was able to show him proof that it was hers, not Bill's. But the caravan park was sealed off. Bill was able to get some things out, such as big gates he'd installed, and sell them, just before that happened. We had other creditors besides the bank, and they got paid. But the bank got the caravan park. (And later sold it for a good deal less than what they said Bill owed, to someone who appeared to be 'on the inside'. Perhaps we were unduly suspicious, but in any case had no time or money to take the matter further, and nothing practical to gain if we did.)</span></div>
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<span class="s1">We were asked to go to a real estate agent in Lilydale, down the road a bit from Three Bridges, to complete in person some paperwork about the bank's claim on our home. Apparently there were some necessary signatures lacking. (Perhaps my reluctance to sign things that day in Devonport had proved enough of a distraction that something did get overlooked and I got my way after all!) </span></div>
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<span class="s1">While we were talking to the estate agents, I noticed an interesting detail on the paper in front of us. I don't remember, after so long, exactly what it was, but at the time I thought I'd spotted a loophole – that we didn't have to lose our house if we didn't sign it away here and now. </span></div>
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<span class="s1">I indicated it to Bill with one finger, as surreptitiously as possible, and saw that he realised too. We didn't let on. The people in front of us weren't on top of the details; they were just delivery boys really. Bill asked if we could have a copy of the document we were about to sign. There was no copier on the premises, but they said we could take it to the newsagent a couple of doors down. We picked up the document, left, and drove away with it. A lawyer confirmed we were not obliged to sign, so when the inevitable follow-up demand came, we pointed out we were not required to comply. One small victory. The other was to go bankrupt voluntarily before the bank forced us into it, which left us in a marginally better position. </span></div>
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<span class="s1">Well, saving our home was not so small a victory of course, but we were still overwhelmed by the trouble we were in. W</span>e realised we'd have to sell that home, and did. We were still living there, renting it from the new owners and acting as caretakers, when we decided we'd have to go bankrupt too, before the bank inevitably did it to us.</div>
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<span class="s1">[About 10 years later, when all this was long behind me, an Australian movie was made, called The Bank, starring David Wenham and Anthony LaPaglia. In it, an individual wreaks a brilliantly clever revenge on a bank and bank manager who ruined his family in those disastrous times – when, as I said, many Australians went bankrupt and lost everything. Though the story was fictional, it filled me with savage glee.</span><br />
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<span class="s1">Much more recently I received a request to donate $17 towards an ad to try and stop this same bank from funding a huge coal mine that would destroy the Great Barrier Reef. (They haven't changed; they've only got worse!) I sign a lot of petitions but I am on such a low income that I seldom contribute financially, even small amounts. This time I did. Destruction of the Reef cannot be allowed; I think fossil fuels should be phased out; and ... only too happy to help screw that particular bank!]</span></div>
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<span class="s1">This saga, which I've collapsed into a few paragraphs, stretched over several years. Bill bought the caravan park, and started work on it, before we left Melbourne. (I remember how fit and muscular my son David became one year, working there as a labourer in his university vacation.) Things deteriorated bit by bit during the following years. </span></div>
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<span class="s1">Alongside these trials was the gradual breakdown of our marriage.</span></div>
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Rosemary Nissen-Wadehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05913841031559499568noreply@blogger.com6tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4436121128883591491.post-41994652418633958972017-03-03T23:57:00.001+11:002022-08-26T11:47:34.643+10:00Crossing a Threshold Part 3<div class="p1">
<b>The Good Stuff</b><br />
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<span style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: initial;">I’m a Scorpio, sign of death and regeneration. I sometimes say of myself that I’ve lived many lives in one.</span><span style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: initial;"> My</span><span style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: initial;"> four years at Three Bridges might be seen to constitute one distinct life: so different from how I lived both before and afterwards.</span><span style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: initial;"> </span><span style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: initial;">At the time it seemed that by moving away from Melbourne to the Upper Yarra Valley I had indeed crossed a threshold into a new life there. Later it became apparent that the whole of my time there was an extended threshold between two much longer phases – including two marriages, two different kinds of working life, and two stages of my spiritual/magical journey.</span></div>
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<span class="s1">What I left behind (albeit by choice) was: having my children under the same roof; the easy accessibility of many good friends; a home and neighbourhood I enjoyed; membership in poetry groups, including a publishing cooperative; opportunities to showcase my work at festivals and performances; positions as Poetry Writing teacher in Professional Writing courses at two different Colleges; an invitation to join a State Government Board responsible for funding poets and poetry, issuing grants and so forth, which carried prestige as well as responsibility; proximity to my beloved theatres, galleries and bookshops; and living by the ocean. What I entered into after leaving Three Bridges … will come later.</span></div>
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<span class="s1">Meantime, we settled into life in that part of the country. Various friends from Melbourne came up from time to time to spend weekends with us, and we made new friends locally. </span><br />
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<span class="s1">When our firstborn, David, turned 21, he and all his friends came up for a big three-day-weekend party. We parents made ourselves scarce fairly early in the evening. There was plenty of sleeping room, some of it dormitory-style; and they enjoyed walks in the bush or picnicking in the garden during daylight hours.</span></div>
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<span class="s1">The nearby towns were Yarra Junction, Warburton and (a little further) Healesville. I discovered a second-hand furniture shop in Yarra Junction, where I picked up treasures very cheaply to help furnish our new home, and was proud of myself for finding these bargains. I still have a wonderful basket we used for logs for our open fire. It hasn't served that purpose for a long time – no open fires anywhere I’ve lived since – but has had various other uses. It’s still good 28 years later, and I think it’s handsome. (That's the base of an electric fan behind it – a very different climate here.)</span></div>
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<span class="s1">We decided to start a writers’ group at home, as we had sometimes done in Melbourne, because it’s fun to play with others. I approached the Yarra Junction Neighbourhood Centre and met the warmly welcoming manager, Marie. She advertised the writers’ group, took enrolments, and we ran it as one of their outreach programs. A diverse group of lovely people turned up, men and women both, with a wide age range. With my old contacts, I was able to bring guest speakers to talk to them at times, about different aspects of writing. Everyone chipped in a small amount to cover the visitors' travelling costs, and we fed them. We ended up producing a book of our work, using a local printer.</span></div>
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<span class="s1">The group ran its course and eventually disbanded. Marie asked if I'd like to start another. On impulse, I said that what I'd really like to do was run a meditation class. I didn't mean esoteric meditation, just the relaxation kind. I'd been thinking I should get back into some of that, and that it might help to have a group around me. Marie got very excited.</span></div>
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<span class="s1">'Ooh, can you do that? I've been looking for someone!' And so I ran successive short, basic meditation classes.</span></div>
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<span class="s1">I met a wonderful woman, an author called Dulcie Stone, who ran an innovative Adult Literacy class. We were kindred spirits! </span>I trained with her as a teacher of Adult Literacy. <span style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: initial;">But as it turned out, I never used that qualification professionally.</span></div>
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<span class="s1">A poet friend from Melbourne was working as a tutor at Box Hill College of TAFE, a suburb on the side of Melbourne closest to the Upper Yarra Valley. They needed a Poetry Writing teacher in their Professional Writing course and he suggested me. I was surprised and pleased to get the call. It was work I loved, we could use the money, and the travelling was reasonable. I did that for some years, loved my students and fellow staff, and we even hosted some wonderful writers' weekends for them at our place. (Later someone pointed out that we could have charged money for that, but we never thought of it. We did it for the enjoyment.)</span></div>
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<span class="s1">I met the editor of a local newspaper emanating from Healesville; she asked if I would contribute occasional poems and articles, so I did. At one time we collaborated to run a poetry competition through the newspaper</span></div>
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<span class="s1">Because of Reiki, I became fascinated by healing and energy, and while I lived there I had the opportunity to learn other forms, such as Touch for Health, which is the beginners' version of Kinesiology, from a local teacher, and Shiatsu in Melbourne from visiting American teacher Denise Linn. (They are good modalities, as are others I've studied since, but I always come back to Reiki for its ease, power and beauty.)</span><br />
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<span class="s1">My friend Ann Adcock came for a visit. I had met her through Reiki, and she had recently become a Reiki Master. When she saw our big room, and the number of bedrooms, she got excited about the idea of holding Reiki seminars there, and as she spoke of the possibility, we got excited too. We went on to hold several weekend classes there, Level I and Level II, with both local students and some who came up from Melbourne.</span></div>
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<span class="s1">Ann and I soon realised I would do Reiki Master training with her – but not just yet. I had to be a Reiki channel for five years before even being eligible to train. Because she knew of other healing and spiritual work I’d done, Ann waived the fifth year, but I still had to complete the fourth. I finally began training late in 1991.</span></div>
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<span class="s1">Meanwhile, this was when my friend Jenette invited me to do her course, The Master Game. She promised it would be extremely confronting as well as transformational. It was! And perfectly timed for me, as it turned out – of which more later.</span><br />
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I was invited to do a course in intuitive drawing, taught by an artist called Valerie Anderson. We worked with chalk pastels, and I loved it. Bill made me an easel, and I set it up on our long veranda. Also I spontaneously followed my teacher's example, with her approval, doing aura drawings for people (aka energy portraits). I used coloured pencils, tuned in, and got a knowing about what colours to select and what they should do on the paper. I don't actually see auras; it was all channelled. I would simultaneously get a type of spiritual reading for the person, different colours signifying different things. (Later on – post-Three Bridges – this became a professional skill.)</div>
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In June 1991 Bill and I celebrated our 25th wedding anniversary with an 'at home'. People could come any time afternoon or evening and stay whatever length of time suited them. Lots of friends travelled from Melbourne – we had plenty of parking space – most of them arriving mid-afternoon and staying late into the night. It was a great party!<br />
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<span class="s1">The Committee responsible for the annual Warburton Bookfest asked me for input. I became one of the organisers several years running. (Three? Four? I’m not sure now.) Naturally I brought poetry into the mix – and again I sometimes brought big names up from Melbourne to participate, as well as getting local poets involved.</span></div>
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<span class="s1">In Melbourne I’d had my own independent publishing business, Abalone Press (because Bill, an abalone diver, was funding it) which published contemporary Australian poets. It was pretty well defunct by the time we moved to Three Bridges. But while I was there, I wrote a poem I was pleased with called 'The Small Poem in Autumn' and showed it to my friend Jenette, who said, ‘You could write a book called "Small Poems of April".</span>’<span style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: initial;"> </span><span style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: initial;"> So I did: a new small poem most days, and sometimes more than one a day. Abalone Press had never published any of my work – I thought that wouldn't be quite ethical – but I decided I could wind the business up, 10 years after it began, with a book of my own. So <i>Small Poems of April</i> was launched at the last Warburton Bookfest I was involved with.</span></div>
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<span class="s1">Warburton had a lot of nostalgia for me. The Bookfest was held in what had once been the cinema – which my (paternal) Uncle Don had run decades before. I had memories of attending that cinema during my teenage visits to Grandma, who lived with Uncle Don and his family in a granny flat. The old Mechanics Institute Library was still there. My Grandma ran it when I was a teenager. I used to go and help her when I was visiting, and that was no doubt a factor in my becoming a librarian after I left University. And there had been Aunty Amy, my spinster great-aunt, Grandma’s older sister, with her beautiful home and all her old family stories. My late grandfather, whom I never met, had been one of the founders of Warburton; he and his brother had built and run the pub. But that was long before.</span></div>
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<span class="s1">Now Grandma and Aunty Amy were dead. </span>Uncle Don, once a builder (his day job), had long been in care elsewhere, after becoming a paraplegic when he fell off a roof. My cousins were grown up and married, and only one still lived in the area. I knew Aunty Margo (Don’s wife) was somewhere around. She finally caught up with me at one of the Bookfests, and that was nice; but although it was a friendly encounter, we didn’t have any great stake in socialising with each other.<br />
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<span class="s1">M</span>y Dad, my connection to the place – though he spent his adult life far from there, first in Tasmania and then Mildura – died in 1988. </div>
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<span class="s1">In 1991, the year before I left Three Bridges (though I didn't yet know I would) I saw in the paper that Don Robinson had died, and his funeral would be at one of the Warburton churches. I put on a smart black suit and attended. As I walked towards the church, an elderly woman learned out of a car window to ask me, ‘Where’s Don’s funeral?’ and I directed her. I thought she must be my Aunty Margaret, sister to my Dad and my Uncle Don, whom I hadn’t seen since I was 15. </span></div>
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<span class="s1">Don’s eldest, my cousin Bernard, whom I also hadn’t seen for many years, spoke. Afterwards I went up and said hello to him and his wife and congratulated him on an excellent speech. ‘Your father would have been proud,’ I said, truthfully. But then I left without greeting anyone else. I had grown up in Tasmania, didn't really know the extended family in Victoria, and I was embarrassed that Bill hadn't come with me. He’d refused.</span></div>
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<span class="s1">I’ve made it all sound wonderful, haven’t I, up until that point? And I’ve told the truth. I look back in amazement at how much I accomplished during those four years. But there was another side to the story, running parallel.</span></div>
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</style>Rosemary Nissen-Wadehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05913841031559499568noreply@blogger.com8tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4436121128883591491.post-21221961822068903012017-02-28T18:38:00.004+11:002022-06-29T16:11:53.379+10:00Crossing a Threshold Part 2<div class="p1">
<b style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: initial;">Occupying the Space</b></div>
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<span class="s1"><i>(Apologies – some people who have read earlier attempts at this memoir may find me repeating familiar information at times.)</i></span></div>
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<span class="s1"><b><i>Why were we there?</i></b></span></div>
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<span class="s1">We were still attending the Andronicus Foundation meditation group. It was a longer drive from Three Bridges in the Upper Yarra Valley than it had been from the Melbourne suburb of Beaumaris, but quite do-able. </span></div>
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<span class="s1">Then Ian, who started the Foundation, organised a residential long weekend for members from any of the meditation groups to get together for an in-depth sharing of our experiences and exploration of the phenomena. And it was to be in the Upper Yarra Valley, </span>at another little hamlet just down the road from us. He hired a comfortable venue with several bedrooms and a couple of meeting rooms, as well as kitchen, dining and bathroom facilities. </div>
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<span class="s1">Bill and I didn't sleep there, being so close to home, but attended daily. I suppose that meant we missed out on some of the after-hours fellowship, but on the other hand it meant Ian could offer a couple of extra places as we weren’t using the sleeping quarters. It also meant we didn’t particularly notice one attendee called Andrew, whom we were not acquainted with. Nor did he particularly notice us. </span><span style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: initial;">Four and a half years later he was my partner, and a year after that my husband!</span><span style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: initial;"> </span></div>
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<span class="s1">The sessions were arranged so that the assembled company broke into smaller groups for the exercises and discussions. Andrew was in a different one from us. I didn't even remember his name or face afterwards. I expect it was wise of the Universe to ensure that we had no closer interaction ahead of time; no doubt there was a reason. We worked it out later that we'd been at that same event, at which point I vaguely placed him in memory but he still didn't recall me at all.</span></div>
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<span class="s1">I did remember a story he told, though, of a very strange craft crashing in the playing field behind his school when he was a little boy, after which men in suits arrived and sternly told the kids they must say nothing to anyone – albeit giving them some explanation which would have been believable to people who hadn't seen the event. In hindsight he was sure it was a spaceship.</span></div>
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<span class="s1">Various people attending had had personal ‘encounters of the third kind’. Others had done a considerable amount of research into the subject. Both kinds of information were shared and discussed. We also looked at more ‘spiritual’ or ‘psychic’ experiences. One woman present was a channel who could see into the deep reasons behind things. During a lunch break I asked her how come we had been placed at the property in Three Bridges by such a strange set of circumstances. I was wondering also how we could survive now that we had the whole financial responsibility. She closed her eyes and held my hand (a familiar method to me by now!). </span></div>
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<span class="s1">‘Do you have some special flowers growing by your gate?’ she asked, attempting to hone in on the property, which she had never seen. I told her that, yes, it had Bella Donna lilies (aka Naked Ladies) growing by the gate. When we first saw the place, I had taken them for a good sign, as they grew at my favourite childhood home and again at Bill’s and my place in Beaumaris, and I’d always loved them. [Picture from public domain.]</span></div>
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<span class="s1">She told me that we were meant to be there. She said, ‘They have given it to you as an oasis of peace for your development.’ (We were familiar with ‘They’, whom Jenette referred to as ‘The Guys Upstairs’ even though some were female. We had all experienced the presence of multiple benevolent guides.)</span></div>
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<span class="s1">‘That must be for Bill’s development in particular,’ I said. At that time Bill was the psychic and the healer, and fairly new to both, having received the gifts quite suddenly after particular life experiences. I was just a former librarian who wrote poetry.</span></div>
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<span class="s1">‘No,’ she said.’for YOUR development.’ She added that I would be there as long as I needed to be. I was surprised, but she didn't offer more information, just said, ‘It will all unfold.’ I have learned since that things do. On another occasion, in our own meditation group, I enquired why I was seldom given much detail about my future. The reply, via the channel, was, ‘Because you like surprises.’ True, I do. I much prefer not to know everything beforehand. I</span><span class="s1"> </span>certainly had plenty of surprises in our time at Three Bridges.</div>
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<span class="s1">With that reader’s words in mind, I made sure to get outside a lot, and to meditate daily – both of which were very easy there. Bill palled up with our next-door neighbours, a large Italian family, and tried to learn from them how to manage our property. There wasn't a lot we needed to do, as we didn't have cows like the neighbours. He just liked to be busy and have projects. He got Council permission to slightly divert the stream. I can’t think why now, and possibly didn't understand then either. It somewhat spoilt the beauty of it, and involved removing some bushes which had acted as a natural filter keeping the water pollution-free. But anyway, he did that sort of thing, enjoying the ride-on tractor that came with the place, and also found building and handyman jobs in the locality, while I wrote, meditated, and minded the house.</span></div>
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<span class="s1">Our two cats thrived. They would come for long, frolicsome walks with us up the bush track. I used say that Sam got his balls back! Despite being neutered, he started acting like a big alpha male, leaving his droppings on top of tree stumps or flat stones instead of burying them – a sign, in the wild: ’Dominant male here. My territory.’ Sometimes we would look up to see both cats peering down at us, side by side, from the roof of the house. At night they would be on our laps purring in front of the TV – and the log fire in winter. </span></div>
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<span class="s1">We had no TV reception, being in a deep, enclosed valley, but we could hire and watch movies on video instead. We were among the few who didn't see newscasts of Tiananmen Square at that time – which may have been a blessing. We got to know spiritualists Doug and Rita Osborne, who lived in the hills closer to Melbourne, not too far away. They had been guided to their home and were advised from Upstairs not to have TV because it would interfere with their energy. They heeded the advice, and had remarkable gifts. So I guess that the lack of reception at our home was necessary for that spiritual development I was promised there.</span></div>
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<span class="s1"><b><i>Flint</i></b></span></div>
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<span class="s1">Then my dog arrived. As I walked down the path to fetch the paper of a morning, I began ‘seeing’ in my head a dog accompanying me – a big, brown dog with a long nose and floppy ears. I felt I could reach out to where he (I knew he was male) trotted beside me, and give him a pat – which meant the top of his back was as high as my thigh. Sometimes I saw him dart into the bush beside the path and nose around as if chasing a lizard or rabbit or something. I had never wanted a dog for myself, only cats, though as a family we had had several dogs, but now I got interested. I mentioned the experience to a few people, and I’m glad I did or they would never have believed me when he manifested. I tried a manifestation spell and included a date by when this was to happen.</span></div>
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<span class="s1">A musician friend was hired to present a special course at a school for a few weeks, and was required to live in a cottage on the grounds so as to be available for more informal contact with students too, after hours. Her young daughter was welcome, but the school could not accommodate her dogs. She had a black Labrador-Collie cross, a female, and that one’s son, who looked mostly Golden Lab. She asked if they could come to us for a few weeks; she would supply their food. Of course they could! This happened by the due date for my dog manifestation, and no other dog turned up in that time, so I wondered if maybe the boy, Beau, was the one I had been seeing. He didn't quite fit the description, but came close. </span></div>
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<span class="s1">Mother and daughter popped in to see their dogs at our place now and then, but missed them greatly. So one weekend, when the school was empty except for them, Bill and I went over for dinner on the Friday evening and left the dogs there to be returned to our place late Sunday. We woke Saturday morning to the sound of a bark in our yard. But hang on, the dogs were away. We looked out and saw a dog resting his head on the top rung of the metal gate to the back paddocks – standing on his hind legs to do so, we assumed. We thought he must belong to some nearby farmer, and if we ignored him he’d run back the way he’d come. </span></div>
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<span class="s1">Then he barked again, so Bill jumped up and opened the gate to let him through that way. It was just near the French windows to our bedroom, so Bill dived back into bed, and we saw the dog run past. Oh, much bigger than we’d thought. He would not have had to stand on his hind legs to rest his head on the top of the gate! Our front gate was open, so we expected him to run straight through our front yard and out.</span></div>
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<span class="s1">We lay in bed then, idly musing on what kind of dog we’d like if we were to get another. We liked big dogs, but couldn’t decide what breed. Eventually we settled on German Shepherd. It didn't feel quite right, but we’d had two of them before, they were lovely dogs, and we couldn’t come up with anything else …and after all, we were just fantasising.</span></div>
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<span class="s1">I got up to make us a cuppa to bring back to bed. Outside our glass front door, on the mat, lay the strange dog. I opened the door to shoo him on his way. He stood up, half eager, half tentative, and I took a good look at him. He was dirty and skinny. </span></div>
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<span class="s1">‘You’ve been on your own a while, haven’t you?’ I said. Well, I had dog food in the house, so I invited him in. He came hesitantly. I had to coax him. I wondered how many places he’d been chased away from before he found us. Or perhaps he’d been owned by people who thought dogs that size belonged outside.</span></div>
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<span class="s1">Then, as he came in, I took another look and said, ‘Oh. You’ve arrived.’ Yes, he was the dog I’d been seeing. I gave him food and water and brushed some of the dirt out of his coat. He was very hungry and thirsty! Then he lay down happily by the hearth. I finally took Bill his cuppa, at the other end of the long house, and explained. ‘Congratulations!’ he said. ‘You’ve got yourself a dog.’</span></div>
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<span class="s1">‘What will we call him?’ I wondered. From somewhere Bill hit on the name Flint, and I liked it too. ‘But first I’d better ring the police and the vet and see if anyone’s reported him missing,’ I said – hoping desperately that no-one would have done so. And they hadn’t. ’How long should I wait before I decide he’s mine?’ I asked the policeman. He said about two weeks, and that I should advertise him as found. I put a notice in the local paper and displayed flyers at the vet’s and in shops. To my great happiness, no-one claimed him. I didn’t expect anyone would. I had already asked The Guys Upstairs if he was mine to keep and been told yes. But I did the right things for form’s sake, and so no-one could ever say I hadn't tried hard enough.</span></div>
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<span class="s1">We had someone else’s dogs coming back the next night, and two cats in residence. I booked him into the vet that first morning to get checked for any diseases (not that I saw signs of any), to be vaccinated, and – with a leap of faith that he really was mine – to be neutered. Well, it wasn't such a huge leap, after the way I had ‘seen’ him, morning after morning, accompanying me to the letter-box, and after the reassurance from Upstairs. It had got to be how I lived then: in this world and the other-dimensional simultaneously, knowing both to be real and natural.</span></div>
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<span class="s1">There were seldom-used leashes for the other dogs hanging in the cupboard. I borrowed one, and Flint drove with me happily on the back seat of my car to the vet, and sat politely in the waiting-room. I was to leave him there and come back three hours later, after his operation. Everything was fine until his name was called. I passed his leash to the receptionist, and she started to take him through the door. Suddenly there was a commotion, as he tugged against her and scrabbled frantically to get back to me. I turned round, put a soothing hand on his head and said, ‘It’s all right. You go with the nice lady and I’ll be back to get you later.’ He calmed instantly and went without any more fuss. At this point he’d known me less than half a day, and already had such trust. He was mine all right! </span></div>
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<span class="s1">The vet put his breed as Curly Retriever X. He said he couldn't tell what breed the ‘cross’ was. Flint was very much bigger than anything we see in Australia with the name Curly Retriever. We used to say he must have been crossed with a Great Dane. A couple of years later a friend found pictures in a dog book of pure-bred Curly Retrievers in Ireland, the same size as Flint. He was beautiful, anyway, with a smooth face, curly hair on ears and body, long sweeping tail, barrel chest for swimming, and more delicate hind legs. They are bred to accompany duck shooters, and have soft mouths to retrieve birds from the water without damaging the feathers. But to us he was a dear companion, not a working dog.</span></div>
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<span class="s1">When our musician friend brought her dogs back, they were outraged. They clearly thought we had moved them out in order to move Flint in. But he was gracious and deferential, putting himself at the bottom of the pecking order, so they tolerated him. He and Beau became pals. I’d had to train Beau and his mother not to chase our cats, but never needed to do that with Flint. He loved them and they him from the start. </span></div>
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<span class="s1">In a few weeks our friend’s time at the school ended, she retrieved her dogs, and then Flint came into his own. He was the most good-natured animal I ever met, as well as highly intelligent, obedient, and protective on the rare occasions that was called for. He had a deep, baying bark which could sound terrifying to people who didn't know him. Mostly he was the gentlest of giants. I don't have a photo of him, but this (from the public domain) is very like, except that his expression was even sweeter. </span></div>
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<b style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: initial;"><i>Clairvoyance</i></b></div>
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<span class="s1">It was a time in our meditation group when we were given various kinds of homework by The Guys Upstairs, and had astonishing experiences as a result. We became highly clairvoyant, though it was not permanent. I suppose we were being shown beyond doubt how much there is outside the limitations of the physical, but did not need to retain it all for daily use. </span></div>
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<span class="s1">I remember one time looking at a tree in our front yard and seeing – with my physical eyes – the foliage suddenly full of faces of Aboriginal men, women and children. Then in the blink of an eye (except I didn't blink) they changed to a group of different Aboriginal faces, before eventually disappearing. I spoke of it to a friend later and she said, ‘Oh yes, when you unfocus your eyes you can see all sorts of things.’ I have experienced this, but it was not what happened looking at that tree. I wasn't doing anything with my eyes except look, in a perfectly ordinary way. Another time I was in a building with group photos (stills) on one wall, and as I looked, the people in the groups started moving and interacting. (No, I wasn't on anything, I promise!)</span></div>
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<span class="s1">Jennette suggested Bill and I might start a new Andronicus Foundation meditation group in our area (while continuing to attend the one at her place). We liked the idea, and put an ad in the Foundation’s newsletter. One young woman phoned up immediately to enquire, and so began my long association with Denise.</span></div>
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<span class="s1"><b><i>Reiki</i></b></span></div>
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<span class="s1">We saw an ad for Reiki classes by Beth Grey, a visiting Reiki Master from America. I had experienced Reiki, from a massage therapist I sometimes had treatments from in Melbourne. We’d met at a personal development course. She said to me, ‘You look a little stressed; I may be able to help,’ and gave me her card. She was way across town, so I only went when I felt particularly stressed, often leaving many weeks between appointments. One time she said, “I’ve learnt this new thing called Reiki. It’s a more gentle laying on of hands. May I try it on you?’ I said yes, and blissed out, unaware of what she did exactly except that it felt good. Some months later, she said, ‘I’ve learned the advanced technique, Reiki II. May I try that on you?’ I said yes once more; blissed out once more. I didn't realise until much later that after that treatment I never felt stressed enough to see her again. (Reiki practitioners tend to lose their clients quickly, like that!) And eventually I moved out of Melbourne to Three Bridges.</span></div>
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<span class="s1">So I viewed Reiki as a kind of superior massage technique. When I saw the ad, I had a huge hit to do the course. I persuaded Bill he should do it too. I saw him getting tired and drained if he healed too many people in too short a time. ‘Who heals the healer?’ I thought, and decided this technique would enable me to do that for him. I thought I would be using it only on him. Also he had buggered my shoulder by trying to do massage on it, and Jenette (a trained masseuse) had to come and put it right. I thought he needed some technique to put to his gift. (He wasn't charging anyone money, but even so.)</span></div>
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<span class="s1">The time and money for us to do the course became available with the greatest of ease. It was as if the Universe miraculously smoothed the way. And of course it turned out not to be another kind of massage – not massage at all – but energy healing. There was learning involved – hand positions, the history of Reiki, and so on – but the ability was imparted from Master to student by a series of attunements, and then was ours for life. </span></div>
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<span class="s1">Because it is Universal energy, Divine energy (aka Unconditional Love) it does not deplete the practitioner but tops them up on the way through to the client – so Bill never again got drained when doing healings. Also, it is perfectly possible, and highly recommended, to use it on oneself. We loved it and did Reiki II, the technique for healing ’in absence’ (or at a distance) when Beth returned six months later. That qualified us to become professional practitioners if we wished. Funnily enough, it was I, not Bill, who did so. </span></div>
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<span class="s1">I started by giving visitors free Reiki treatments so as to practise what I’d learned. I found it easy and enjoyable. We bought a Reiki table and set up one of the bedrooms as a healing room. </span></div>
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<span class="s1">A very psychic friend from Melbourne, Maatje, came to stay a few days and, as a favour, gave me a reading with her Thoth deck (the same Tarot that Ridge used to use – when he wasn't just holding my hand and closing his eyes). She went into a sort of trance while reading. She told me I would become a very powerful psychic myself. ‘You will see far into the future,’ she said. (She was also, on the same occasion, the first person to predict my move to Northern Rivers NSW with Andrew, but like others assumed the man was Bill.)</span></div>
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<span class="s1">I was already doing Tarot readings for friends with the Rider Waite deck. I didn't need to be psychic. I just read the cards according to what I had learned. They always turned out accurate.</span></div>
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<span class="s1">In Melbourne two different friends had read for Bill and me with the Rider Waite deck. It wasn't from any urgent need. They were readers, and we were curious. In both cases we were impressed. One day at the local shops, I wandered into the bookshop and found myself led to a particular shelf, where a set of Rider Waite Major Arcana cards (the ‘destiny’ part of a Tarot deck, which can be used alone) fell off the shelf to land at my feet. Yes, I picked it up and bought it. I can take a hint! Someone told me, </span> ‘Your first Tarot deck is supposed to be given to you.’ Well, I figured the Universe gave it to me!</div>
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<span class="s1">A range of one-word meanings was written across the bottom of every card. So I started playing with them, and later got a book with the interpretations. Later still – after Ridge died – I got the full Rider Waite deck. I used to read for people, ‘just for fun’, with the book beside me to look up what the cards meant. </span></div>
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<span class="s1">Ridge loved his Thoth deck, and I had thought to buy one like that, but when I went looking for one, it seemed to me that its energy was cold and sinister. The man in the shop said, ‘It doesn’t suit everyone,’ and found me the classic Rider Waite, but with an unusual back picturing pink roses, very soft and non-threatening. Then, a few years later, when I saw Maatje’s Thoth deck, the energy seemed very different, full of love after all. Perhaps I had grown into it! Or perhaps the Reiki energy transformed any negativity for me. So then I got one, loved it, and used it happily for many years (still do occasionally).</span></div>
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<span class="s1"><b><i>Setting up in business</i></b></span></div>
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<span class="s1">It was probably early 1989 that I got a strong ‘message from Upstairs’ to advertise Reiki treatments and Tarot readings. I put a tiny little six-line ad in the local paper – and the phone started ringing. Some people wanted Reiki, some a reading, some both. They were mostly women, and with most of those who booked in as a result of that first ad, I felt impelled to say, ‘I’m starting a meditation group for – um – psychic development, and I think it could be something for you.</span>’ They all accepted with alacrity.</div>
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<span class="s1">Denise herself was able to act as a channel, and by then both Bill and I had tentatively begun to do that too. We went in a somewhat different direction from the other Andronicus groups, as people asked to explore various ways of being psychic, such as holding some item like a ring that one of the others had worn, and sharing what impressions they got (which is known as psychometry). We all turned out to be very accurate with pieces of information we couldn’t possibly have known by any normal means.</span></div>
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<span class="s1">That group met of an evening. I started another, daytime group, and that too filled up quickly. We had some dramatic experiences, such as, on one occasion, a headache that leapt around the room from person to person. One person complained of it, then shortly afterwards said that it had suddenly gone, then another said, 'I've got a headache now,' and so on. <br /><br />Other things that happened were pleasanter. Both groups rapidly developed their psychic abilities, learned about other dimensions, and found their health and their lives benefiting from regular meditation. The morning group didn't last long, however. I think such phenomena as jumping headaches proved a bit too confronting! A number of people didn't return after that day.</span></div>
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<span class="s1">I myself was exhausted after that session, from trying to deal with the energy and look after group members too. Denise, who came to both groups, and had become a close friend, suggested I should lie down for a while, and helped Bill tuck me up before she left. I fell into a deep sleep. When I woke a couple of hours later, it was to see that the bedroom curtains had kindly been drawn to help me rest. I thanked Bill, </span>but he said he hadn<span style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: initial;">'t done it. I thought it must have been Denise, but when I got a chance to thank her, she denied it too. Neither of them had any reason to lie, and seemed truly mystified. And I knew it hadn't been me! Next time that we went to a meeting of our original Andronicus group, I mentioned it. A kindly voice spoke through the channel: 'Yes, we are still looking after you.'</span><br />
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<span style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: initial;"><b><i>Spirit Visions</i></b></span><br />
<span style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: initial;"><br /></span>
<span style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: initial;">I saw some things which had a different flavour from the other clairvoyant experiences. I knew almost nothing about Druidry, yet one day when I was walking in the bush and 'saw' (not physically) a strange male face that gazed down through the trees, I got an inner conviction that this was a deity of the Druids. I got the name Tyr, which actually belongs to a Norse god, but I later discovered he has a Druidic counterpart. (Years later I joined the Order of Bards, Ovates and Druids, but they did not focus on particular deities so much as the creative force, or Awen.)</span><br />
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<span style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: initial;">Another, unforgettable time, I looked out our bedroom window across to the back gate and the bush beyond. (The master bedroom was the width of the house; this window was the opposite side from the one through which we'd seen Flint arrive.) Standing just outside the gate, under a big tree, was a woman. She looked across at me, holding my gaze with hers. It was a long, serious look we exchanged. What did it convey? I search for words, and the one I come up with is 'recognition'. Another would be 'acknowledgment'. Some deep knowing and communication passed between us, at a level beyond consciousness, though we were conscious it was happening.</span><br />
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<span style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: initial;">I expect she was fully conscious of it all. I don't know who she was, except that she had no age. Neither young nor old, she was timeless. She was dressed very plain, some kind of long grey or brown smock or tunic, perhaps – I hardly noticed, I was so riveted on her face. Her hair, too, was a nondescript colour, loose but tidy and maybe shoulder-length. I saw her physically, but I knew she was not human and would not be visible to anyone she did not choose should see her. </span><br />
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I knew she was a nature spirit, but nothing like a fairy, nor yet a being such as the Sidhe. I felt she was connected to the tree, or perhaps all the trees. I would have been willing to believe she was Earth Mother herself – only it wasn't fertility that was displayed, so much as wisdom. I felt understood and approved.<br />
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At last we broke our gaze by mutual consent – knowing that consent at the same moment, without word or gesture. Quietly, undramatically, she vanished.<br />
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Why did I receive such visions? Confirmation, perhaps, that I was indeed in the right place at the right time, and that Nature gave me permission. Permission for what? To be there, I suppose, and to do whatever I was given to do there.<br />
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I expected to stay there for the rest of my life. I imagined myself as a slightly eccentric old lady, years hence, still walking through the bush with my staff and my dog. But no, the Universe had other plans. However, that would be a few years down the track. We still had things to do and experience in that oasis of peace.<br />
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Rosemary Nissen-Wadehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05913841031559499568noreply@blogger.com3