Floating Home

Dear Readers:  Please know that the following story from my past reveals my birth name, because it's about me long before I gave myself the nom de plume of Gossamer Penwyche. 

There must be quite a few things a hot bath won't cure, but I don't know many of them. Whenever I'm sad I'm going to die, or so nervous I can't sleep, or in love with somebody I won't be seeing for a week, I slump down just so far and then I say: "I'll go take a hot bath."
- Sylvia Plath

I was a breech birth.  That was the first and probably most meaningful sign in my life.  Despite its deep significance, I didn’t learn about the circumstances of my birth until I was thirty-three years old.

Although I knew nothing of numerology, I’d favoured the number three since childhood when I learned that good things (and sometimes bad) happen in threes, such as the granting of wishes by fairy godmothers.  No further thought or reason went into keeping three as my favourite number.  Anything to do with fairies was good enough for me.  So a couple of decades later, as my thirty-third birthday approached, I had a deep feeling I was entering a very good year, and invited a few friends over to celebrate.  My mother came over before the other guests to help me set up for the festivities, after which she would leave to let me party with my friends.
While my mother was still there my guests seated themselves rather demurely in the living room, glasses of wine in hand, waiting to bring out the weed once my mother took her leave.  My friend Calvin, ever the provocateur, changed the very polite, slightly stilted conversation by posing an unusual question to my mother. 
“So, Mrs. Remkins,” he asked, “was Silvia an easy birth?”
I cringed.  I was certain my mother wouldn’t discuss my birth with a dozen strangers, because she’d never done so with me.  I thought she’d be embarrassed and evasive.  After a brief, reflective pause she spoke.
“Well, no, actually.  It was very hard.  Silvia was a breech birth.  The doctor had to turn her around three times before she came out."
I was gobsmacked, not only for my mother’s uncharacteristically frank answer, but because I was hearing this information for the first time in my life, and on my thirty-third birthday no less.  All at once the number three took on even more significance.   Three times I turned my back (or feet) on entering the outside world before I was forcibly removed.  It was an it’s a sign moment long before those three words became a mantra of mine. 
As I pondered my mother’s extraordinary revelation, my roommate Toria, who was sitting next to me, leaned over and whispered “That’s a sign you didn’t want to be born.” 
Talk about signs of things to come.  Suddenly my whole life made a little more sense.  The new knowledge of my entry into life explained many of the choices I’d made, as well as some of the things I liked and didn’t like.  It certainly helped me understand my love of warm baths and hot tubs.

When I first discovered this cheap, accessible form of therapy, I sometimes spent so much time in the tub I’d fall asleep.  (There was never any danger of drowning.  Taking water in through the windpipe has a way of rudely and very quickly waking you up.)  And it was never about washing to get clean.  I didn’t lift a finger to perform any sort of ablutions.  I just lay perfectly still, submerged up to my chin.  Within a few weeks of beginning my multiple soaks a day, I noticed an unsightly, dark ring forming around my neck.  I had no explanation for it, nor did I connect it to my daily soaks.                                
I didn’t figure out why I had a muddy-looking circle around my neck until I met my sister for lunch one day at an outdoor café.  As we chatted over wine spritzers and salad my sister suddenly stopped in mid-sentence and stared at my neck.
“What’s that ugly ring around your neck?”  She’s never been one to mince words, at least not with me.
“I don’t know.  It was very faint a few weeks ago, but it’s getting darker.  I just can’t figure out - Oh..."
Then it dawned on me.  The ring around my neck was the water mark I’d developed after weeks of submersing myself up to my chin in still water.  Even though I wasn’t dirty, the body’s natural oils floated to the surface and stuck to my skin.  I’d contracted a case of bathtub ring.
The ring disappeared quite easily with some soapy scrubbing.  Okay, so my bathtub ring didn’t really have any metaphysical significance, but it was a sign that I was spending way too much time in the bathtub. Since then I always add some bubbles to my bath for self-cleaning purposes, and move around a bit to stir up the water.                      
Water is one of the best conductors of sound, which means that a growing, free-floating foetus feels vibrations from sounds and emotions originating outside of the womb.  My mother was three months pregnant when she and my father were married.  I don’t think I was an unwanted child, but I certainly was an unexpected one.  Add that to an unexpected husband after a rapidly arranged marriage, and setting up new living arrangements, my mother must have been under considerable pressure while she was pregnant with me.

The carefree time I spent submerged in the safety and warmth of the womb also explains my love of floating.  When I spend time in any body of water larger than a bathtub, which is usually a fresh-water lake or river, I prefer bobbing around and floating on the surface to actually swimming.  The element of water is where I prefer to relax or play, not exert myself.  Just let me breathe deeply while doing a gentle breast stroke and I’m exactly where I want to be.  The Australian crawl is for Type A personalities, which I’m decidedly not - another thing my resistance to being born and taking on life in the “real” world would seem to have presaged.  Floating has always been my preferred speed and style.  That’s probably one of the reasons I like my wine and weed.
I’m sure not everyone who’s born breech feels as I do.  But I’m a writer, which is why I can’t ignore a major metaphor that describes the most significant passage in my life so far.  Being born is a struggle, even for people with uncomplicated deliveries.  If everyone remembered the major trauma of their birth, we’d all suffer from PTSD.  Not an auspicious beginning. 
Near death, paranormal, and extreme events aside, death is the other most powerful passage in a person’s life.  If I have any control over how I take my leave of this mortal coil, it’s because I’ve been reading the signs along the way.  I don’t intend to rage against the dying of the light.  Although Dylan Thomas’s poetic advice on how to die is an exquisite metaphor, it’s not mine.
When I go, I hope I float.
- g.p.

From the Mouths of Babes

Hey there Good Readers:  The following story is another piece from my rejected book proposal.  It's more or less a companion piece to the previous post. 

People are like stained glass windows.  They sparkle and shine when the sun is out, but when the darkness sets in; their true beauty is revealed only if there is a light from within.    
 - Elisabeth Kubler-Ross

It was a warm and sunny day, but I was in a dark and stormy mood.  I’d been invited to a friend’s party that evening, and despite my gloom, I really wanted to go.  I hadn’t seen my friend for a while, and needed connection.  While I wanted to stay curled up in a foetal position in bed, I was also restless and bored and dying to get out and do something or see someone.  The conflicting emotions made me feel as if my head were going to explode.  However, I knew I could find sure-fire relief from all the craziness by cutting myself.
Unfortunately, if I cut myself I’d have to cover up my angry, new wounds, which I usually applied to the inside of my arms.  But I desperately needed to express some blood.  My only recourse was to find a place on my body where my shame didn’t show.  I decided that the soft, fleshy inside of my thighs would do.  So that’s what I did.  I was able to relieve my anger and tension without the usual visible signs on my arms.  When I went to the party later that evening I wore a long, loose summer frock that hid my dirty work and didn’t rub against my fresh wounds.  I was good to go.
There were about a dozen to fifteen people at the party.  Everyone spent the evening outside on the patio in the sultry air.  The only person I knew was my friend who was hosting the party, which was fine by me.  I wanted to sit quietly by myself and watch the evening unfold, listening to the ambient sounds of gentle conversation and laughter.  I remained polite and aloof, soothed by the friendly, pleasant, low-key company.  A little girl of around five years old skipped and danced around the patio, weaving in and around the circle of seated guests.  She seemed very happy to be staying up late with the grownups.  On one of her circumambulations, she suddenly stopped directly in front of me.  Then she pointed right at me.     

                                                                                       
"I like her,” she announced to no one in particular.  A moment later she resumed her rounds.
That was it.  She came and went so quickly I wasn’t sure I had heard her properly.  Or maybe I had imagined it.  Nonetheless, I was left feeling surprised, pleased, and puzzled all at the same time.  It was a heady mix of good emotions, something I hadn’t experienced in a long while.  Until that moment I thought I’d been doing a fairly good job of remaining neutral and unnoticed, then along comes an innocent child to indicate otherwise.  And it stopped me in my tracks.
I’ve always trusted the words of very young children.  Kids are disarmingly honest, and don’t care what others might think.  Their neural inhibitors haven’t fully formed, so they tell it the way they see it, whether you want to hear it or not.                                        
The very young, as well as the very old, are able to see beyond the material realm.  The very young have recently entered this world, and the very old are soon to leave it.  For a short while toddlers and elders live in that in-between world where borders aren’t as clearly defined.  They’re able to see beyond the veil.  That little girl saw into my deepest self, and must have seen a light that I thought was long extinguished.  The psychotherapist David Richo has said that our wounds are often the openings into the best and most beautiful part of us.                                                                                      
I trusted that little girl’s unfiltered, untainted feelings better than I trusted my own.  She validated me.  Her message was simple and clear – I see you.  I like you.  You’re worthy.  Her words proved to be both a stop sign, and a signal to go ahead.  Stop hurting yourself.  Move on. Except for one embarrassing incident a number of years later, I stopped cutting myself after that.                     

                                                       
I paid attention to the message that little girl delivered, and it changed me.  My life didn’t exactly turn around that day, but she pointed me in the right direction.  Her words put me on the road to healing.  In my books that makes her an angel, but not for the magically-inclined thinking it appears to be.                                                                    
As a writer I put a lot of faith in words, because they help me to interpret the signs I encounter.  Words by themselves are obvious messages, but when I know their origins I understand them even better.  The English word angel is derived from the Greek angelos, meaning “messenger.”  Angie (that’s what I call her) was a messenger who bore glad tidings, which renders her an angel in a very literal sense.  Okay, so she wasn’t some cherub sent by a big, bearded, white guy in the sky, but she sure as heaven delivered the goods.  
Amen to that.
- g.p.