14
LETTERS FROM NEPAL
The $1.2 billion space shuttle Challenger exploded shortly after launch because of a malfunctioning $900 synthetic O-ring and killed all seven astronauts on board. A Soviet Union nuclear reactor at Chernobyl exploded unleashing a radioactive cloud that spread for thousands of miles. The U.S. government re- corded 21,517 cases of AIDS with 11,713 deaths. The Iran-Contra scandal was exposed. Krishnamurti died.
The house was in town making everything accessible. We were so used to living at least an hour away from the middle of things, this was a nice change. What luxury to walk to the health food store rather than stocking up for three weeks, return a latest release video the next day and be near the few friends we had made. My father called from Montreal and immediately put Susan on the phone because I had complained she wasn't keeping in touch. The wounds temporarily shrouded with distance and time opened, and I entered another world at the sound of her voice.
After two months of easy Califonia living, we returned to Wyoming. Elizabeth's report card said, among other things, she was a great asset to the school and right on track for graduation in June. A letter from her told us she had applied to the Study Club for a scholarship and just had an interview with the women behind the endowment. She was taking the PSAT exam and plowing through verification papers and scholarship applications. A form was enclosed for me to sign for World College West (WCW), a small private institution just north of San Francisco I had discovered a few years earlier while researching alternative schools. (When I called for information, what I heard interested me. The staff lived off campus while the kids ran the college. Their second year was spent in Nepal, Mexico or China on a study program.)
She ended her letter with an issue she had about being accepted and a lot of stuff about Susan and Valerie came up. After walking by the ocean she felt better. Acceptance has been a major issue in my life, with the feeling of non-acceptance going back to the time my birth mother gave me up for adoption. This archetypal wound had been passed on to Elizabeth and my adoptive traits had become hers. Daughters develop like their mothers and unless we are mindful of our methods, there is no growth or change and the generations unfold unaltered.
Valerie wrote that she had decided to go and work for her father. My heart sank. I felt cold and lost and defeated. After all that time by herself, a move back east was a regressive act. When she was with her father, our relationship suffered. And we had come so far. Leaving your boyfriend to live with your father? What's wrong with the boyfriend?
In mid-June Elizabeth's teacher unexpectedly called almost too excited to speak. She couldn't wait to tell us that Elizabeth had won the $1000 scholarship from the Study Club, and we had to promise not to call her with the news. This had never happened to the Community School, since it was always a person from the regular high school who got the prize. She had put them on the map.
While the summer season was in full swing, thoughts of Valerie suddenly filled my mind. I cried and talked about her and in a few days received a letter. She was torn about her decision. She said she couldn't make up her mind, though I knew she already had, but she needed to pacify me in order to feel free to go and live with her father. To this day, I wonder if she realizes what she does in order to keep her parents happy. It's an awful dilemma children find themselves in after a divorce. How can they ever learn to be honest about their feelings when they are constantly trying to please both people!
In the beginning of September, I picked Valerie up at the airport, dropped Elizabeth off at her summer job's staff party, and Valerie and I went out for dinner alone, something we had never done. A Mexican beer for her, some saki for me, and I listened while she told me about her life. She was living with her boyfriend, going to art school, and waitressing evenings. She was fun to be with and we drove home still laughing and talking.
The next day my two daughters and I left for a five-day hike on the Teton Crest Trail. Elizabeth fell asleep, exhausted from her late night out, and Valerie and I talked into the night about her problems with her father and everyday dealings that take up a lifetime, while those deep, forbidden emotions remained untouched. We had been apart for two years … . Valerie and Elizabeth played some gin rummy while I rested and remembered how close they used to be … I stared at my oldest daughter asleep and wondered what really filled her mind. Lost memories that I had buried for so long surfaced. We were mother and daughter, not close friends. There was a painful chasm between us that one day would have to be bridged, if we could find the time. Then perhaps we could be friends.
Valerie left a few days later and I knew that our close feelings would not Continue.
Elizabeth's financial aid was settled and she started at World College West, a cluster of buildings high on a hill amongst trees and open, rolling meadows outside Petaluma in northern California.
At the end of the month Steve and I left for Canada to look for land. After crossing the border all news was about the Meech Lake Accord. The Constitutional Act of 1982 had not sat well with French Quebec, which wanted recognition as a distinct society. Prime Minister Brian Mulroney invited the premiers to a First Minister's Conference at Meech Lake to approve a package that met Quebec's key demands and incorporated the concerns of the other provinces. We found no land that appealed to us and after six days returned.
Elizabeth came to Wyoming for Christmas. A week later my menopause started and I thought my life was over. During the night I was gripped by an indistinct feeling which forced me out of bed to the tiny loft window for a breath of fresh, cold air. The sweats that had started months ago increased and I had to change nightshirts several times. My heart pounded, the darkness was unbearable, and claustrophobic feelings caused me to move our bed downstairs where there was more room to move around. I had a strong desire to bundle up and go for a long walk but not in the middle of the night at twenty below zero.
During the day I was irritable and emotional, crying at almost everything, uncertain about my decisions. Elizabeth and I went for a walk and talked about my feelings. I was surprised when she asked if I was afraid of getting old. I had never really thought about it. I was only forty-six. But menopause represents old age! Only in America is forty-six considered old. Nobody talked about it. Isn't it strange the things we aren't told about our bodies? I asked friends my own age and got nothing constructive. I asked my mother who told me I would just have to learn to live with it. I would? What about Steve?
I read everything I could and found that emotional release, work and exercise were high on the list. I started yoga again, gave up spicy foods and took supplements - vitamins, minerals, don quai, wild yam, black cohosh, valerian and homeopathic menopause pills. For my heart pounding I learned to press the acupressure point at the junction of my wrist and hand on the little finger side, my heart slowed. I kept the light on all night and got rid of those claustrophobic feelings. I exercised for hours but still couldn't sleep well.
The intensity of symptoms continued for six weeks until my naturopath suggested a combination of herbs that might help. Passion flower and valerian did the trick and my system finally geared down from first to third.
Valerie didn't last long in the east. She had received the photographs from our trip in the Tetons and wanted to do it again.
In August, Elizabeth and I headed into the Wind River Mountains, the most inaccessible wilderness in Wyoming, for six days. Valerie never made it. I didn't know at the time that the Harmonic Convergence was happening on August 17, our first night out. According to a prophecy handed down among the Hopi Indians, 144,000 Sun Dance enlightened teachers would "awaken" in their dream/mind bodies and a rainbow ligh