Sigmund Freud might have something to say; it might be that I have an Oedipus complex. These thoughts have nothing to do with wanting to raise well-adjusted, happy, moral, and sufficiently educated children. This pent-up anger is merely the symptom, but we’re looking for the cause. This is another perfectly normal case of wanting to kill my father and sleep with my mother. He might suggest regular therapy every second Tuesday; I could lie on his couch and he – for a small fee – could creep inside my head. We could pry open those long-closed doors and take a peek inside. What might we find there? How long have I repressed these feeling towards my mother? Did I get enough hugs as a child? Was I afraid of the dark? Would I rather be a hammer or a nail? He might show me some ink spots and ask me to interpret them. I could point out that I see my Calcuttan trains, laden down with messy thoughts, entering dark tunnels, the trains getting longer as new carriages and thoughts arrived. Oh, ho! What’s this? Getting longer! Trains and tunnels! Penis-vagina! Did I think my penis was too small? Did I like to play with dolls? Did I own a Barbie? Would I have preferred Ken? Was I comfortable with my sexuality?
‘What? Yes, I am very comfortable with my sexuality. Why? Are you suggesting that I’m gay?’
‘I’m not suggesting anything.’
‘Well . . . OK . . . you’re not suggesting it but it sounds as though you’re implying it.’
‘No, no. You’re assuming that I’m implying it. Your inner feelings are feeding an assumption; let’s examine that assumption. Why do you do that? I find that interesting – I find that . . . telling. This is worth exploring further. You appear threatened; are you? It’s perfectly acceptable to be homosexual. You will never be happy unless you acknowledge your true self. Allow the real you out and let the truth set you free.’
‘I’m not gay!’
‘Then why are you so defensive? Why do you deny your feelings so forcefully? Are you attempting to convince me – or perhaps yourself? I think we had better explore this a bit more. Oops – look at the time; we can delve deeper at our next appointment. We need to talk about your childhood – your relationship with your mother. Yes, yes, I think we should talk about your mother. This is very interesting; we must certainly explore your childhood.’
‘Oh, for the love of God – what horse-shit – what horse-shiiit! Fuck, these people make me sick,’ Mother would screech; I can hear her now. ‘I’ve never heard such complete and utter bullshit in my life! If they’re not blaming everything on the traumatic moment when you caught a glimpse of your father’s dick, the psychs are trying to convince you that all your problems are because you want to screw your mother. All of this psychobabble is played out through illusions of deep-seated, repressed sexuality – whatever the fuck that means. And what is their solution to this imagined – and worldwide – Oedipus complex? It’s drugs! Drugs and more fucking drugs! It’s always drugs, drugs, drugs; drugs that would kill an elephant. When the drugs don’t work, which – surprise, surprise – they won’t, they’ll give you shock treatment; when that also doesn’t work, which – lo and fucking behold – it definitely won’t, they will drill a hole in your skull to suck up the sections of your brain that they’re just guessing control the behaviour they’re hoping they understand! Health professionals my fat fucking arse! Pompous, ignorant fools! Twats!’
Mother worked in the mental-health business and, on matters relating to the mind, held brutally strong opinions. Nothing could transform her mood as quickly as the subject of psychiatry; a cheerful and hysterically funny woman was transformed in an instant. While she held a lifelong and deep-seated contempt for conventional medicine, the branch inhabited by psychiatrists and neurosurgeons – ‘butchers’ – bore the brunt of her ire. Any form of analysis ‘drove her bat shit’, but brain surgery to rectify a personality disorder, or drugs to alter brain patterns, were, to her, the ultimate invasion, the most savage of rapes. It made her so angry that it ‘got on her tits’. The human mind was the most sacred of temples; any entry to it had to be quiet – barefoot on tiptoes – and respectful. The mere mention of shock treatment or lobotomy as any form of treatment would transform her into an evil witch. At a stage of my life when I went looking for fights just to make the point that I was no longer under her control, I verbalised something I in no way believed, but knew would result in an explosive reaction. With feigned innocence I said, ‘Oh, I don’t know; lobotomy makes perfect sense to me. If you have gangrene, or something similar, you would just amputate the affected limb and the problem would be solved; it stands to reason that if you have a damaged section of your brain which is causing behavioural problems, you should just cut it out. If it means you lose the ability to juggle – so what? What is it the neurosurgeons say? “Oops, there go the piano lessons.”’
‘Rubbish! Bullshit! You don’t just cut out pieces of someone’s brain! What? Are you completely out of your fucking mind? Are you mad?’
A five-foot-one ball of fire and ice.
How did someone with a healer’s disposition come to have such a low opinion of the medical profession? How did someone who specifically worked with people’s mental state come to loathe psychiatry? She wanted desperately to be a doctor. All the ingredients were in place, intelligence, desire, and the necessary academic requirements, but standing in her way was her stepfather: mean-spirited, chauvinistic, and with a tight grip on the purse strings. In his view, a view from which he wouldn’t budge, women did not study; they cooked, typed and bred – that, and only that. She watched her imagined life drift away from her; instead of striding down the corridors of a medical facility, she typed letters and seethed. With perfect generational symmetry, but a symmetry that Mother could never quite see, her children suffered the same fate. Instead of becoming a doctor, she became anti doctors; thirty years later, as a young hobo, I lay under trees, imagined being a doctor – and seethed at opportunities missed.
Whole lifetimes – multiple lives – occasionally pivot on the smallest of details. As a frustrated twenty-something, Mother was walking down the street when a pamphlet was thrust into her hands. It was an invitation to a presentation. She took it home and showed it to her mother and stepfather. ‘This looks interesting – I’m keen to attend.’
‘You’re not getting involved in that rubbish. I forbid it,’ he said.
Those were the words and events that shaped our lives. Not ready to breed, cook or type, and tired of having her life paved out by someone else, she decided to attend the lecture as a simple act of defiance. Her gesture set in motion a sequence of events spanning decades, which would define my life and that of my sister in the future. She discovered Scientology and, with it, her calling. The imperfect creature that I grew to be can be traced to that single day.
Mother’s commitment to Scientology overshadowed anything and everything. Her husbands came and went, while her children grew up and scattered to the winds. The only constant was Scientology; it outlasted all of us. With barely a day off in forty years she set about her purpose: she was going to help people; she was going to save humankind from itself. It didn’t matter that she was a pauper; it didn’t matter what the personal cost would be; it didn’t matter to her that it was going to take her whole life – in fact, she expected it to and was prepared for it. She expected it to take many, many lifetimes. She was going to come back again and again and again in new bodies to continue her work. She was going to start at one end of the human race and keep going until she reached the last person in line. Only then would she stop.
The twenty-year-old me said, ‘What are you going to do, Mom, when you are one millionth into the queue and there’s a bunch of Buddhists in a different queue? What if someone else’s mom took the bodhisattva vow and is herding her million sentient beings towards Nirvana? Oh – who is that over there in that other queue? It appears to be another mom with a million Christians; they must all be on their way to heaven. If these queues are going to different places, whose mom wins? If these queues all converge at some point and, in fact, we’re all doing the same thing, couldn’t we just call it something else? Motherhood?’
Yup. I really got on her tits at times.