REINVENTING LORNA
‘What is life but a once empty vessel filled with life’s mishaps?’ Lorna painted this on her bedroom wall a long time ago, long before her last ‘mishap’ occurred and long before she even dreamed of reinventing herself.
Born the eldest of six children, Lorna often thought that her birth was possibly the biggest mishap to have happened, particularly because there was a six-year gap between herself and her brother. The remaining four children followed short on each other’s heels. The one was barely out of the nappies when the other was born, so why did her parents wait so long after she was born? As she grew older she learned from snippets of overheard conversation that her parents ‘weren’t ready’ when they had her.
From that she derived that she was unplanned and thus unwanted. Unwanted or not, by the time the other children came along Lorna was ‘old enough’ to take care of herself – according to her parents.
Her school years were filled with being dropped off at various events, as her parents had to rush back home to take care of the younger children. Once she finished school she was dropped off once again, dropped off with family members who were tasked to dispatch her to the university she was enrolled in. By the time the university opened for the academic year Lorna was so sick and tired of being preached to that she returned from an outing to the city with the news that she found a job at a bank.
That was Lorna’s first self-inflicted mishap and by then her vessel had already started to feel the weight of the mishaps of her youth. As a wiser and more interested person may have been able to tell her, the job at the bank did not work out. The monotony of doing the same thing day after day, as well as the strict regime of wearing a uniform and turning banknotes face-up, was not well suited for someone like Lorna, who needed to find a way to negotiate a meaningful existence or herself.
Many dreary jobs and failed romances later, Lorna realized that she had to put a brake on things as, at barely twenty, her five foot one inch, slender, body was already heavily burdened under the weight of her mistakes. She scoured newspapers for the perfect job and reduced her circle of friends by ghosting the ‘undesirables’. Her tactic worked for a while when she did find the ‘perfect’ job as a public relations officer at a publishing company. Months into the job she also ran into the perfect boyfriend – literally ran into him, when in true Lorna-style she smashed into him in a grocery store.
Although she enjoyed the actual work, particularly working in the children’s books section, Lorna was, for the first time in her life, the junior, the baby, in the office and well-meaning senior staff took it upon themselves to try and teach and give advice, not only on the work she was expected to do, but also on more personal issues like food, clothing and relationships. Lorna was completely unfamiliar with such behavior and for a while she reveled in it, but after a year or so it really started to irk her. Having to go to the office became a drag. It was also no different when it came to her relationship.
Peter was handsome. Peter was a brilliant sportsman. Peter was kind. Peter was considerate. Peter was perfect… too perfect. Lorna’s heart told her that she could not have wished for more, but her brain told her that all the attention would eventually suffocate her. Mere weeks before the wedding Lorna woke up one morning unable to breathe, got on a train and ‘disappeared’. She stayed ‘missing’ until she thought that Peter and the rest of her family well and truly got the message, namely that she would not be attending any wedding, including her own. The end of her relationship with Peter also meant the end of her job as she was fired on the first day of her return to the office.
After reading a fashionably acclaimed book on auras and attracting success, Lorna went on a journey to ‘find herself’. The journey was short-lived though as she soon discovered that it was particularly difficult to find anything on an empty stomach. She had no choice but to return to life, as she knew it, sooner than planned. With no clearer vision of a productive and happy existence than before, Lorna realized that she just had to keep going and that knowledge of ‘self’ would come through trial and error.
Every girl has to try everything at least once, or in Lorna’s case, at least twice, thus two marriages and two children later she found herself once again alone. Being alone among people was something Lorna was used to, it felt familiar and comfortable, or so she thought. Self-realization is one thing, but acceptance of self is something quite different. Lorna gave up working for a boss and she gave up on looking for romance, as she realized that there was something wrong with the way she was ‘wired’. This realization was perhaps seen by others as Lorna’s last ‘mishap’, but was it really?
Lorna argued that she was wired for a different plane of existence and just like a jet and a scooter could not run on the same fuel, she could not survive on the things that fuelled the average Joe Soap.
As the children grew up and left home for greener pastures, Lorna turned to the only person she could depend on – herself. She lived in her doodles and paintings, she conversed in the many stories and poems she wrote and the quiet became her music. For the first time in her life she grew a garden. The pleasure of seeing a simple seed bloom into a full-grown plant had her in absolute awe. The tiny ants and bees in her garden mesmerized her for hours on end. Although Lorna lived on her own she did receive the odd visitor or two, including her daughters and eventually their children. Listening to Lorna babble during these rare visits amused them. “Mom, what happened to you?” her daughter commented with a hint of mirth in her voice, “You never said much, and now you have no qualms keeping us entertained for an hour on a story about a single seed? You look happy Mom. Are you?”
Lorna did not hesitate to answer as she had long before realized that she was indeed finally happy. With no one around to criticize, to rush her along, to ignore her or fail her in any way, she no longer felt disappointment or deep sadness. Instead, because she no longer had to use energy to try and be noticed, to be appreciated or to be loved, she had so much more energy to spend on other things. Things like being creative, watching things grow, to learn about minor things she had previously taken for granted became her daily elixir. Memories of the past began to fade and she did not mind that at all. The load was becoming lighter.
The change came so gradually that neither Lorna, nor her occasional visitors, noticed it for a very long time. Lorna’s poetry became the words to her quiet music and in her mind grandiose operas played itself out, sometimes a pop opera with drums and guitars and sometimes voices sang her words in the clearest of soprano’s. Her stories became stage productions, musicals featuring the likes of Sarah Brightman and Susan Boyle. The colours on her canvasses even turned to music, so infectious that Lorna could not help herself but to sway along with the tunes. With time Lorna’s dancing became a daily activity and so happy was she, that she had little time for visitors and sometimes she even got up mid-conversation to continue her dancing, her grey hair covering her face and her feet carrying her body from dream to dream. Lorna was now truly satisfied and happy, the weight of her vessel, containing her life’s mishaps, became lighter and lighter until she could dance freely.
In her mind Lorna was a child again, but not the child who grew up in her parents’ home but a young fairy. A young fairy whose mother was the queen of all fairies and whose father was a kindly gnome. Together they were darting around people’s gardens and making the most beautiful music on acorn drums. Her mother swung her by the hands and danced with her along the large leaves of arum lilies. Her father rubbed his stubby nose against hers, kissed her cheek and tickled her tummy. One particularly sunny day Mommy and Daddy took her to the pond, her favourite place. They dined on tiny cups of honey and sunflower seeds covered in peanut butter. Then they each took one of Lorna’s hands and flew with her high into the sky. They swirled and danced on the clouds and laughed until her sides ached.
Finally, they dropped down onto the soft green grass. Lorna was happy but very tired, more tired than she had been in a long time. With her head on her daddy’s chest and her one hand in her mother’s she closed her eyes and fell asleep.
Copy right
Lynne Lexow