Waiting and waiting. I thought it would never end and the suspense was unbearable. After that awful night in purgatory, I endured a morning of dull agitation. After the blood tests, I wandered around the shops like a bored housewife. I ate a packet of dried mango but that didn’t help, so I tried rice cakes, which were tasteless.
I felt dull, numb and surprisingly despondent. I rushed home and phoned the Stork Doctor – too early; the results weren’t ready yet. The morning meandered along at its own tedious pace. I tried eating toast with Marmite but found it too salty, so I tried a carrot muffin, which was too sweet.
I went for a walk to the local deli, but on the way I found the view of Table Mountain and the Atlantic Ocean irritating in its perfection, so I dawdled home to phone the Stork Doctor again. Still no news. I ate five soya sausages and locked myself in my Wendy house, hiding behind the ‘depressed curtains’, the strands and strands of glass beads threaded together when I was too depressed to do anything else.
Then I heard Jason screaming and shouting inside the house. By way of response to the excitement I crouched down in a foetal position, hiding from any news, good or bad. The shouting found me, getting louder and turning into raucous laughter. I opened the door of the Wendy house to find Jason standing there with a face as white as Brad Pitt’s teeth, and I realised he was talking to the Stork Doctor on the cellphone.
Rings on my fingers, bells on my toes, elephants to ride upon, my little Irish rose, I was pregnant!
I remember being sixteen years old, standing with my best friend in the upstairs ladies’ section of the shul, the two of us looking down on all the yarmulkaed heads bopping to and fro in prayer. Naturally the boys were of far more relevance to us than religion. The boys were our religion. It was Erev Rosh Hashanah, the night before the beginning of the New Year.
Looking at a particularly sexy and inspiring yarmulkaed head, I said to my friend, ‘Let’s make this the best year of our lives.’ Laughing, she agreed, and we continued to watch that appealing, now-forgotten boy. The funny thing is that I don’t remember who the boy was or how the year transpired – just the wacky, infatuated hopefulness.
The Monday that I found out I was pregnant I thought to myself, maybe this year at Rosh Hashanah I’ll lug my lazy, irreligious ass over to shul and thank God for it all. I can’t remember if I got there or not, but it’s doubtful. Oy, the promises we make.
There’s so much beauty in the world. Some days it’s uplifting, and other days it’s almost sad in its beauty and it can drag you down, ‘down down where the iguanas play’. But whatcha gonna do? It is as it should be and God is in His universe.
Time passed and Rosh Hashanah drew near. My belly grew and I kept on listening to Leonard Cohen complaining in his melancholy old way. I’d get me a new, new year, the best year yet. And, who knows, a tiny inkling of cheeky thought wondered, maybe the laughing old man, the suicidal urges and the desolate mood wouldn’t come knocking. Except that I knew they would. That’s the thing about my life. The seasons keep changing, the carousel keeps turning, madly turning, the tide goes out and comes in and yes, my mood soars up and it crashes down.
I don’t really get science and evidently it doesn’t really get me, either. Doctors had warned me of the life-threatening dangers of going off medication and conceiving a child. Doctors had told us that Jason was absolutely incapable of reproducing. I had researched surrogacy, adoption and sperm donors. I had at times felt such violently desperate maternal urges that I considered pilfering friends’ children. One healthy child would have been the answer to all my prayers.
Life has expected a lot from me, and I expect a lot right back. When the doorbell rings on an average Monday morning, I automatically assume it’s a stranger sending flowers. Great expectations! So it takes an awful lot to surprise me, but after all the medical setbacks, even I was impressed at my first scan when not one, but two little black blobs appeared on the screen.
Imagine my astonishment a few weeks later when I looked at the obstetrician’s screen and saw a third sea monkey, who had been shyly hiding behind one of the others in the first scan. Three heartbeats. As certain as the science that had assured me I’d never have a child, Tallulah had brought along the whole jolly kindergarten!
Such was Jason’s shock that for two weeks he couldn’t articulate in anything that remotely resembled the English language. I’d say, ‘Honey, would you like muesli for breakfast?’ And his response would be, ‘Aaaghvllupp brupbrupbrup oi fuck!’
Don’t get me wrong; I was also in shock. The night after the revealing scan I lay in the bath and cried into the phone to a friend, ‘But how will I feed and educate three children?’ She sensibly said, ‘Don’t worry, children bring their own money.’ Frankly, I don’t know how Jason’s pulled it off, but today we’re all well fed, cared for and clothed.
A few days into the pregnancy, the morning sickness kicked in: morning, noon, night, midnight and 3 a.m. sickness. Each little sea monkey produced his or her own progesterone, which produced its own nausea. And so it was that for three months I hurled and hurled and hurled. Thanks be to God I’d had some practice as a bulimic.
About two weeks into the pregnancy I got the smarts and set up office in the bathroom. I sat hunched over the toilet bowl, notebook, mineral water and telephone placed neatly on the floor. Every page or so I’d lean over, hurl my guts out, wipe my mouth, take a sip of water and resume writing.
Three months into the pregnancy the vomiting stopped and I began to grow and grow and grow. I started looking like Demis Roussos in drag. I had to wear stretch caftans. A friend made special clothes for me; they were so outrageously large that I could hire them out as marquees for weddings and bar mitzvahs. The mere fact that I was vertical, let alone walking about, was in itself gravity-defying. It was a wonder I didn’t topple over. Early in the pregnancy I became too large to reach the steering wheel of my car, so I stopped driving.
At the beginning of my first trimester Cape Town experienced a heat wave, so I moved office into the swimming pool. I paddled my gargantuan form about with notebook, water and telephone balanced on the skirting of the pool. As I dunked my head under water, then wrote and looked out at the awesome Atlantic Ocean, I mused over what a wonderful life it had turned out to be. It was as if, physically, my entire life had been a preparation for my pregnancy. All the years of dancing, doing yoga, weight training and walking made carrying an extra thirty-five kilos a no-strain situation. What should have been a high-risk pregnancy spent monitored in hospital and on bed rest was in fact eight of the happiest, most chilled, mango-bingeing, gentle, happy-hormone months of my life.
One day my gynaecologist said, ‘You know, I always say people who experience life-threatening illnesses have easier lives.’ For a second I thought, ‘How trite. I wish I’d known how much easier my life was when I was having my stomach pumped.’ But he was right. Previous illness had given me the perspective to appreciate my pregnancy for the magnificent gift that it was. I genuinely didn’t feel any of the discomfort. I felt nothing but amusement and joy. It was a pregnancy of milk and honey. I hurled, laughed, ate, walked, wrote, danced, gardened, dreamt, loved and anticipated through eight blissful months. And in those eight months I could never have imagined, in my wildest dreams, what a magnificent treat lay in store for me.
The Friday before the babies were born I waddled on the beach collecting shells, then went home and did gym. On Saturday evening Jason came home from Saudi Arabia, where he’d been shooting for a month. On Sunday we went to see The Motorcycle Diaries, then had lunch and did some shopping.
At 5 a.m. on Monday 28 February, the day of the Oscars, I woke Jason and said, ‘I’ve just made a huge wee in the bed!’
That day marked exactly thirty-four weeks of pregnancy. Gidon’s waters had broken. He wasn’t waiting another minute. We woke Livicky and, giggling hysterically, the three of us packed a hospital bag and charged out the front door as the alarm clock assigned to wake Jason and get him on a flight to Johannesburg beep-beeped to an empty house.
At the hospital I insisted to doctors and specialists that I wouldn’t have my babies until I’d had a bikini wax, a wheat-free/sugar-free carrot cake and a mineral face spray. I insisted that my babies couldn’t come into the world if classical music wasn’t playing in the theatre at the time. Agitated nurses unceremoniously came at me with disposable razors and determined doctors approached with large epidural needles.
I often wonder whether Gidon yanked the other two out or whether Layla Tallulah was pushing Gidon and pulling Samuel. Possibly Samuel, in his quiet, persuasive manner, gave the other two a giant shove and sent them both, startling, into life. Mostly, I picture little Samuel dozing peacefully and being rudely awakened by Gidon’s insistence that they all come out into the world prematurely. However it was that the three of them had their birth order arranged, at 8.30 a.m. they arrived in this world – Gidon Greg, then Layla Tallulah and, finally, Samuel Jacob: thirty fingers, thirty toes, six ears and three noses. Three teeny-weeny perfectly perfect human beings.
As out of control as my life has generally been, I’d been presumptuous enough to make plans, believing myself to be the puppeteer of my universe. Hah! The universe gave me some perspective in the control department. I was not the decider of sexes, numbers or dates of birth, or, most important of all, the personalities of my children. From day dot, they have reminded me of the power of surrender.
Cycles being what they are and humans being the romantics we are, I secretly made the assumption once again that I was cured. I convinced myself that pregnancy and childbirth had healed me. And for a while, it did. It was a good few months before I even needed medication.
Dreams fail us, and dreams so grand that it never even occurs to us to dream them come true. Sometimes more than our wildest imaginings are realised, but still, certain realities endure. The rich get richer, the poor get poorer. Wedge heels go out of fashion and just when you’ve given yours away, they come back in. Politicians break promises and moods are seldom stable. The world goes round and round, drifting as it does through space. Cycles continue.
I get happy in the extreme, and I also get sad in the extreme. I have the gift of a great outrageous love, doting friends, good family, wonderful children and a sense of humour that carries me through. I have so much that will always carry me through.
Here I am, years later, same time of year, same music. Different home, different view; in fact, no view. Instead, I have a garden for children to play in. Livicky lives down the road and Pnina lives next door. I’m not the same person I was when I sat alone in a hotel room and first started writing about my life. Some days a familiar sadness encroaches on my enchanted universe, a parasite insidiously eating away at my life. Happiness leaks out of my being. Then I take to bed, go into hiding. The children go on outings with kind friends and relatives; Livicky and the staff step in.
No matter how much water I drink, my mouth remains parched. Tears and terror constantly reinvent themselves inside me, threatening violently to erupt. On those days the tears are so much a part of my being that they seem to have manifested in my bones. I imagine that long after my body, memories, words and dreams have disintegrated, my skeleton of bones with its tears and melancholy will remain. It seems that my legacy won’t be my children or my words, but rather this torment.
Once more the sound of dogs barking petrifies me. The phone’s ringing rakes through me like fingernails on a blackboard. I avoid eye contact with the cashier at the supermarket. I can’t talk to anyone I love, because then I’ll break down entirely. Little daily rituals and routines are monstrous, unachievable tasks.
Life overwhelms me and the sadness creates a malevolent screen between my children and me. I watch them playing in the garden. Learning to walk, babbling and gurgling at one another in a language understandable only to them, a language they must have created in the womb. They laugh and discover the brand-new world in a courtyard underneath a lemon tree. Watching, I’m ashamed of my pain.
All my dreams have come idyllically true. Is this sadness so great that it’s even greater than them? Can it consume the sight of these wondrous children? But still, the tears flow. If only someone would phone with good news, if a bouquet of flowers would be delivered, if Amazon would courier a book I hadn’t ordered. I’m waiting for something to happen to lift the weight of the pain. Then I remember – there is nothing that helps.
Delicately I pick and pick away at the peripheral padlock of pain, and then, poof, there it is, a blunt knife stabbing right into the heart of the matter. There’s nothing, the anxiety, it doesn’t come from out there, it comes from within. No matter how good the going gets, this illness will always be lurking, waiting. The monkey on my back, the thorn in my side, the pain in my neck, the black dog barking at my door. The laughing, mocking, sinister voice of the old man reminding me not to get too confident, reminding me that there’s no cure for what I’m feeling.
There may be days, weeks, months even, of light and life restored to me. Times when I feel like an ordinary girl, a kind of remission in a long-term incurable illness. But always, the good times are punctuated by this cycle of despair. It never ends; it never goes away and stays away.
And I know this feeling all too well – I’ve walked this line so many times, carried myself across this dark, forlorn highway. I know every headlight and curve of the road. I know when to be aware of oncoming traffic and when to slow down for the traffic police. It all floods over me like a delayed and unhelpful moment of déjà vu. It seems I’ve trodden this particular journey since time immemorial. And no matter how familiar the black highway might be, it still assaults me with undiminished pain. The same old story, the same pain, but fresh as new, regenerating and regenerating the anguish.
Each night as my head hits the pillow, I promise myself that tomorrow I will bring myself to phone the necessary doctors, lie still for the needles going in to bring mood relief. Tomorrow I will swallow the pills that make me fat and scramble my brain. I will gag as I swallow, but I know how to stomach the potions.
Tomorrow I will stretch every limb of my body, force myself to exercise, charge up and down the mountainside so fast that I don’t notice the view from the top. Tomorrow I will try to cut out the causes of stress in my life even if they bring me much-needed pleasure. I will say at least ten om mani padme hums and bathe in essence of clary sage. I will try not to spend time alone even if I desperately need my solitude and, just in case, just in case, I will double-check all the medication in the household – because you never really know, do you?
Tomorrow, terrified and alone, I will leave my children, get on a plane and fly to Johannesburg to see the Happy Potter doctor. If needs be, I will be checked into hospital and I will sleep alone in a ward among the crazy and despairing until my medications are tweaked, the danger passes, my mood shifts and I’m fit to live in the world again.
It may get better, it may very well get worse, but eventually, as my mother always says, ‘It will pass.’