Salesses makes the connection between forced gratitude and its effects on appreciation. He describes an idyllic moment with his daughter. ‘I knew I should have enjoyed myself,’ he said, recalling the perfection of that moment. ‘But I couldn’t.’15
I know this feeling. Somewhere deep down I am convinced I have no intrinsic right to enjoyment. Every good thing is at the mercy of the capricious, shallow whim of luck. Whatever you love today will be gone tomorrow. Every happy moment is a debt that must be repaid.
I have learned to never trust a clear blue sky. But over the years I’ve formed an uneasy truce with luck. I overcompensate. I’m always on time and never late. Every kind deed must be repaid, any gift equalled or bettered. I carry a mental ledger in which I tally every friend and acquaintance. I mark each for repayment or no further action required. If I leave a single column unbalanced, I am stalked by the fear of my luck running out. Of being unchosen once again.
We arrived in Auckland. Hampster had arranged for us to house-sit. In Ponsonby. I was on crutches, one foot in plaster, the other bandaged. The small spinal fractures were healing, but every step was painful. The bruises were fading, but my teeth took months to fix. This was not the Ponsonby of my dreams.
I spent my days alone, aching for my children and at the same time relieved for the break. Unable to walk far, I was stranded in the very place I’d wanted to be. Our host had an extensive record collection. I listened to music for hours, taking the lines of songs as my gospel. I wanted to shed my skin and get started. I wanted someone to throw their arms around me. I wanted to dance in the dark. I wanted the miracle of love, given freely.
There were books on Buddhism on the shelf, and now I had time to read. It seemed I had a ‘universal longing’. A craving that nothing in the world could satisfy. The desire itself, the book said, was the source of my suffering. The answer was to forgo consumerism and to dump attachments.16 I looked around at the book-lined house with the velvet furniture and the polished oak table. I thought about the flat in Christchurch. With the damp concrete walls and the broken coffee table. Consumerism was not my problem.
To the Christians, my sin was the source of my suffering. To my adopters, it was my lack of gratitude. To the Buddhists, it was my craving for attachment. The book said I would find happiness only by overcoming this grasping need. But I knew my craving was the thread that pulled me from the depths. Without it, I would die. I threw the book against the wall in frustration, and the doorbell rang.
The woman I’d met when she was wallpapering a hallway in Wellington stood on the porch. With her blonde curls pulled back and smudged eyes, I hardly recognised her.
‘It’s Christine,’ she said. The brightness that so impressed me had dimmed. She looked so sad I burst into tears. We hugged each other, both of us crying. She’d had a bad experience. We sat on the velvet sofa while she told me all about it. She ran her fingers over the fresh red scar below my lip. ‘I’ll get my bag from the car,’ she said. ‘Then I’ll make some tea.’
Within a week we’d found an abandoned office off Victoria Street in downtown Auckland. A bankrupt film company had walked out on the lease. We’ll be squatters, she said, but no one will know.
I changed the ticket Hampster had bought and went to Christchurch to pack up our life. The girls drew on my cast and laughed at my broken teeth. David helped me pack. He arranged for movers to pick up our meagre belongings. We were moving to Auckland.
‘I can stop you,’ Bruce said. He could go to court, but I knew he wouldn’t. The cost and effort would be too much. I knew it was wrong to take his children away. I understood I was hurting them by separating them from their father. But those weeks on the sofa had crystallised my desire. I wanted more. So much more.
Christine picked us up from the airport and we drove home. We had half of the top floor of a 1920s office block all to ourselves. Room to run and yell and play. We slept on mattresses on the floor and bought a hotplate for the office kitchen. We had six toilets and no shower.
Bruce’s parents came to visit. I could see his mother through the frosted glass of the office foyer, her hands on her ample hips. His father stood natty and small beside her. When I opened the door, she ignored my plastered foot and strode in. She peered into the office spaces where sheets hung over the glass partitions. The girls had arranged their soft toys along the boardroom shelving.
‘This is not good enough,’ she said. She placed a stack of books on a table left behind by the bankrupt company. The Miracles of Jesus, a Jesus Lives colouring book and a Little Golden Book of Jesus.
‘The girls would love some felt-tip colouring pens, next time you come,’ I said.
I looked at these people connected by blood to my children and began to wonder if biology mattered at all. I thought about my grandfather and all the losses he carried and the suffering he’d caused. I imagined my mother standing next to me. Smiling as she met the other grandparents of her grandchildren. She would look at me and raise her eyebrow in our shared complicity. I did not want my children’s sense of heritage formed only by these people. I knew then I needed to find my father. I would write to Jeannie again.
17
Your limbic brain on relinquishment
Jeannie phoned a few weeks after we moved into the office. She would be
