I was a sickly kid, some of it I remember some of it I don’t. I wrote about the tricks of memory and they do abound.
Mostly I recall being in bed, soup, cute PJs…and the things associated with unwellness. I seem to have made it from 6 months to 4/5 years old reasonably ok. I don’t know how long I was in hospital, that is one question I never thought to ask. By the time I was pre school age we had moved to a smaller city. It was a Cathedral City, I am therefore unsure re the population or facilities. Clearly there was a hospital as my mother continued her nursing, at night. She slept through the day.
‘Marjorie’ came to live with us. She was what we would now refer to as a special needs woman. (she had been a long-term ‘patient’ at the hospital where my mother worked) I am not sure what the special needs were. To me she was a rock. An ever-present advocate and defender. She would back me regardless. She made tomato soup for me. She loved me. She stayed in my life for about 5 years, yet she has remained in my heart forever. One day Marjorie, one day….
I started school and I started ballet classes. My ballet teacher married one of my school teachers.
I still recall this happy healthy moment. My mother made the dress. The lining was forest green satin. I wonder now who took the picture? Shortly after I came down with rheumatic fever. I referred to ‘patterns‘ that became part or my life, from this major illness onwards those patterns were a powerful, mostly disruptive part of my life. These days there are some residual effects but the major impact was overcome. Just in time.
As illness eroded normal life, I missed more and more school. We relocated again, this time to a large city and a better lifestyle. The illnesses continued. When I was 8 my mother in, what I can only imagine was an act of desperation, thrust into my hand pen and paper and told me to write…This was a PIVOTEL moment. The 3rd in my life, maybe 4th. I was enrolled in a private school for girls and I felt safe there, able to be me. I see attributes of me now, that only came into being in that environment.
Yet the illnesses continued, increased,and perplexed my parents and doctors. As I entered my early teens the issue of illness began to build walls around me and in me. I began to draw away. To hold back due to the ever-increasing insistence that I was in fact quite well. I tried to believe them. Yet clearly something was wrong. In just a few years we would see what this insistence did to me, and then a few more years later came the confirmation that something was in fact not OK. Something serious.
My education suffered, not due to lack of ability, I see that now, but due to lack of confidence from prolonged absence and the intense expectation that I ‘be well’. If they were telling me I was well and I didn’t feel it then clearly the problem lay in me – somewhere. If not in my body then perhaps in my mind….
I am reminded of the words of Madeline’s lament…
Something is not right
Something is quite wrong
Something is not right….
It was really tough to go through all that. It just shows how strong you are as a person and that you have a lot of wonderful people around you.
Rachael, It really wasn’t a struggle until I grew up. However I am still here, so perhaps you are right. Thanks for reading and commenting.
I haven’t watched a madeline cartoon in a while, but if memory serves, wasn’t it always Miss Clavelle who sang that song?
Christopher Christopher, it is not who sang the words that is relevant it is the words themselves. But yes, Thankyou Miss C did indeed utter them often, but generally it is not her name we recall. Thankyou for you visit.