Author: Elisabeth

Public or private?

I saw the picture of a still born baby of twenty weeks on
someone’s blog yesterday.  The
folks at Mamamia put it up in the interests of helping people who have
suffered a miscarriage.  
It shocked
me and clearly, not only me. The editors at Mamamia equivocated about putting
up the pictures as well. 
There’s something devastating and surreal about the sight
of such a tiny underdeveloped baby, one who should still be inside his mother’s
womb and alive, not outside in the world before-term and dead.
 
I do not oppose the publication of such images on line
because something tells me the motive behind their publication is not one of inducing
gratuitous shock.  It’s more an effort to help people share the load of their grief.
So many horrible things are otherwise veiled in secrecy
and hidden from the public view.  People must bear the worst of it alone. 
My own miscarriage happened when my baby was only ten
weeks into life.  There was no
foetus to be seen.  It was no less
traumatic for me for that, but to get to twenty weeks and lose a baby would
have to be worse.  The further into
a pregnancy, the more alive that baby becomes in one’s imagination, and to lose
a baby full term must be worst of all. 
But why compare these events?   They are all ghastly in their own right.  The thing about this woman publishing
the photos from her still born baby’s brief stay in the world is meaningful in a world where many would prefer not to know the details.  While others search for them.  
 
I had an email recently from a woman who read some of my writing and
cannot understand my motives for writing about the traumatic events from my
childhood and my attempts now as an adult to understand them through my writing.  She believes my musings
belong in a diary or journal.  They
are not for publication.
 
Clearly, there’s a whole range of views about what is fit
for the public view and what should stay private.  
As one who comes from an incestuous family, I lean towards
more exposure of these things in the public view because too much secrecy can
be dangerous.  Witness Edward Snowden and other whistleblowers of renown.
 
I also recognise the wish I felt when I saw that unborn
baby not yet ready for the world, my wish to turn away, and not to see
something so disturbing, so raw, so unprocessed. 
And then
there’s all this derision for those who take selfies and put them online,
particularly, the pretty young women. 
Narcissism, the critics say. 
On the other hand, it seems it’s okay for any other person to take a
self portrait, including centuries of artists who have recreated their
self images as one of least difficult ways to get a model and so practice their
craft.
 
Narcissism or artistry?  Catharsis or gratuitous shocking of unwitting and unwilling others?  
Who knows?  As far as I can tell, the jury is still undecided.

Sins of impure thought

My grandsons stayed overnight during the past couple of
days.  At bath time – a bath time
of sorts, a puddle of water in the base of the bath on which the two paddled mechanized
ducks – I noticed how reluctant the older boy was to take off his clothes.  This compared to his younger brother of
two years, who has no shame or modesty.
 
I put those words together effortlessly, shame and
modesty.
 
Why be ashamed of your body?  What drives my grandson as a six-year-old, and not even into
the hormonal stirrings of pre-adolescence, to want to hide his penis from
others?
I remember the sensation as a thirteen-year-old; my
mortification when my older sister insisted I should not try to change my
clothes in private.  My desperation
when all the cubicles at the swimming pool change rooms were occupied and I was
forced to change out of my bathers in public.
Others did not mind. 
Others were okay with standing there naked to towel themselves dry.  Others bent over to pick up clothes,
unabashed by their nakedness, but I had decided early on that it was shameful,
my body was shameful and needed to be kept hidden.
There are those who might suggest my shame comes out of
some sort of desire frustrated, to use a technical term, out of ‘repressed
libido’.  The excitement of looking
at naked bodies,  as I did so
often in those days when I was a child .
 
I scanned the pages of my father’s art books under cover,
hidden beneath layers of blankets so that no one else, none of my siblings,
might see what I was up to.
 
What was I up to? 
Looking at naked men and women in old fashioned settings with bits of
material draped over strategic bits, the occasional fig leaf, but enough
nakedness revealed to send shivers of excitement through me. 
I did not understand my excited pleasure but I recognised
it as wrong. 
By the time I was my older grandson’s age I had begun
preparations for my first confession and first communion.  The nuns took us to the priest who
taught us about the nature of sin. 
Sins like stealing and telling lies.
 
Such tame and obvious sins did not trouble me, but the
priest gave a name to my excitement under the blankets with my father’s
borrowed art books.  
He called mine
the sin of impure thoughts.  And impure
thoughts were worse even than stealing ten pounds.  They were worse even than even the biggest of lies.
 
Whether it is true or not, in terms of Catholic doctrine,
in my mind it became true: impure thoughts constituted mortal sins, and mortal
sins were dangerous indeed.  
Die
with a mortal sin on your soul and you will be banished to hell forever.  Die with a mortal sin and you can never
enter the kingdom of heaven. 
By the time I was eight years old I agonized over these
incessant sins to the point where I imagined God’s pointed finger burning red
at the tip in my direction, but I could not bring myself to tell the priest
about my impure thoughts in the confessional. 
I could not bear to tell the priest things that I feared
might not only cause him to despise me, but might also stir him up. 
Somehow, I knew about that strange contagion of desire; the
way looking and being seen, listening and telling could evoke powerful
responses in the others. 
What could I do?  My sins of impure thought weighed me down as if I were carrying lead,
like the silver grey lump that rested on a bench in my father’s workshop; a
lump of lead, poisonous my brothers told me, and too heavy for us to
carry.
 
How could I be rid of this sin? 
Then I heard about novenas, and relief from sin, of all
kinds and degrees of severity, when a person goes to mass on the first Friday
of every month for nine months. 
How I managed to get to the first Friday of every month Mass
as a ten year old, I cannot fathom, but in my memory I managed it.  I most likely went along with my
sister. She was busy getting up early most mornings by then to avoid our
father’s visits in the night. 
She and I went to early Mass together. In those days daily
seven o’clock Mass was commonplace. 
She and I walked together to mass to cleanse our souls; she for what was
done to her, and me, for what I might do to others.