Wonka again and Baba too
Copyright 2013 Madeleine Masterson
We were in the midsummer now or as I liked to call it, in the bleak mid- summer. In keeping with the new family dynamics I felt a total flop and failure.
‘Don’t tell me about it!’ shrieked Wonka as I started my whine about career changes and personal development. Well I had to tell someone. Yes, I had divulged to the nice GP that the new part-time job that had seemed so full of promise, so right, so very me was the opposite. I think there is a philosopher who has made grand theories based on this kind of happening; the mirage of a shimmering job opportunity that when you get to it fades back into the stony dead end job it was all the time. It wasn’t Nietzsche but it should have been, or maybe one of the other German team, when they weren’t busy dissecting god.
‘Baba’s been pat and mick.’ announced Wonka, and looking down I followed a trail that led from the dining room, through the kitchen and into the bathroom. ‘That’s it.’ I shouted, stomping around searching for wipes and cloths and cleaning things. Baba was stationed by the poor back door, hoping to escape from the mayhem and Wonka was already upstairs peeking from the bedroom door. I just needed a few things to go right, and then I wouldn’t need to shout.
How was I to know, following one of the most arduous and complex interviews consisting of pre-arranged questions (this is fatal) and four intense interviewers, that the job would turn out to be on the level of a school leaver who fancied a few hours doing something? The handing in of my notice to the other anxiety ridden job had turned upon the new one being a chance to relax, show off my multiple talents and have a bit of a life on the side.
I mean the work life balance thing, everyone was after one of these. Anyhow, after three days questioning my sanity, my age (am I a school leaver? No) and considering massive stress levels (according to Wonka I did), I walked out.
‘You’ve never walked out!’ accused Wonka, no doubt fearful of starving.
‘I couldn’t stand it! Being treated like an office junior!’ I moaned, but of course Wonka had a point. The credit card you will remember was a life saver before and goodness knows the company kept sending me letters about raising my credit limit. Any day now I would be able to buy a house with it. The joyous moment of telling the employers to get stuffed faded and was replaced by a more down to earth one, that is the here and now. Lordy.
‘What’s for tea?’ Wonka cuffed Baba who was patiently waiting by his six saucers, and jumped up on the small surface next to the cooker. We’ll have to economise I warned, now that I’m on the breadline. Wonka was having none of it and refused the cat food that Ruggles our best stray wolfed down. Baba’s special diet, any food known to any supermarket that he could keep down, mustn’t be affected by my demise. Maybe it was me that had to cut things out. This thought quietened me down and had the side effect of making me lose my appetite, which under the circumstances was a big plus.
Financial advice anyone?
Alongside the diminishing finances and the increasing anxiety and stress was another fear factor. This was getting over my fear of hospitals. Just being in one had me feeling dizzy and sick, and this year alone had warranted practically moving in. Wonka reminded me of the book I used to lend my clients in the job now relegated to ‘a good job’. ‘You know that one about facing your fears’, he trilled ‘like driving on the motorway!’
Oh yes I remembered it alright. Fine in print and lovely sitting there in a group jotting a few goals down. It turned out that a new and more fulfilling life was only a few fears away. All I needed to do was Do It!. I still had the little diagram somewhere but could not bring to mind what fears I committed to facing. Hopefully I’d put paid to the putting up with poor situations (walking out of job), and getting in touch with friends instead of working myself to death (on the back burner).
You do find, that given a situation, instead of philosophising about it, talking it through with a friend (who) mulling it round for a week or two or just ignoring it, generally you have to deal with it. Either sooner or later. Perhaps Nietzsche prescribed on this, not sure, maybe it came later with the logical positivists. The long car journeys to hospitals housing aged parent killed two birds with the one stone, a) fear of driving on the motor way, and fear of driving anywhere other than the town I lived in and b) being in a hospital with all the smells, the equipment, the consequences of illness and dying.
Yes there I was doing it, and not a book in sight.
The hierarchy in the hospitals was bewildering. They all knew who they were and you didn’t. The only staff I felt clear about was the cleaners and even then I was intimidated by their brisk passage in and out of the room. Wonka had of course advised on being assertive and told me to walk tall. It was no good though, as soon as I entered the building, it sucked me in. I crept into the ward and whispered to the variety of uniforms, and when it came to being a nice kind visitor I failed full-time.
‘It’s like the hotel in the Shining’ I bleated to Wonka, creeping back into my own home,’ like this personality overshadowing you and all these wards and rooms, not to mention Mother!’
Wonka warned against being dramatic and said there wasn’t one character in ‘The Shining’ who resembled Mother. Not even the ghosts. Perhaps Stephen King could base his next best seller on a hospital then I ventured, plenty of material there. And all those romances based on sick beds and nurses? What on earth was attractive about it. Nothing.
The summer wore on with me on my trips back and forth, ranting about hospitals and the care system. More like the don’t care system! I shouted banging the phone down. Baba meowed in my face and clung onto my jeans. This made Wonka hiss and pop a paw out and I ended up shouting at both of them.
‘And I’m not sorry! Though what for and who to, I didn’t know.
;When the brown envelope arrived detailing a speeding offence, Wonka took action and ran straight upstairs and under the bed. Baba asked to go out. After two cups of my healthy tea and a couple of painkillers for the headache I was sure to get in a minute, I read it through slowly.
Ah yes, there was no denying the rate I’d been travelling at on a motorway no less. ‘Look at it this way, said Wonka, a while back you couldn’t even imagine being on a motorway!’ And I certainly tried to see the speeding offence in a more constructive light. However the cost of it all was dampening. And the three points bit.
It turns out more or less everyone has been on the course designed to halt speeding forever. It is run by the police and this other training company who must be making a packet. The room was full of moaning speeders, going on and on about where they were stopped and it wasn’t fair. When I had calmed down enough to read through my options as a speeder, I noted the choice of going on a half a day course that cost an arm and a leg but with the juicy carrot of not having the points on my up to now clean licence.
‘Cost of?’ enquired Wonka, poised to chase Baba off the side. ‘ Well it’s not cheap……’ I daren’t think about it, it cost twice as much as the fine I wasn’t going to pay. No, instead I was going to drive for an hour and a half to the nearest centre, taking up nearly a day out of my life (where is that work life balance) and be anxiety ridden about the credit card. More than this, I distinguished myself by being the only one caught speeding on a motorway. The shame of it. Driving home I of course wanted to go really fast on the country roads. ‘ It’s self-harming behaviour!’ observed Wonka when I trickled back home. ‘It’s risk taking!’. I crawled into the kitchen and crammed down some chocolate. The sunlight poured in and instead of cheering me up it just focussed me on the dust on top of the cooker. Did anyone exist who c
ould beat such dust I pondered.
A little later I took stock.
When everything is lining up to be relentlessly, well relentless, the thing to do advised Wonka, is make a list of the good stuff. I had used this ploy many a time when surrounded by confused and anxious clients, from the ‘good’ job. ‘Good’ job in a relative sense as it swiped all the work life balance and left me stranded with about five minutes to myself. But forgetting this, in the light of the ghastly three day job – ‘the one you walked out on!’ jeered Wonka, yes that one, (bad job) I scrabbled through old hand outs, and workshops, trying to get a tiny hook on my life to date. Admittedly, I had been caught praying the odd time or two, using strange mantras and even resorting to self -hypnosis. This failed though because Wonka and Baba came sniffing round me as soon as I did the deep breathing. ‘It’s if I stop you want to take notice!’ I shouted sitting back up and feeling even tenser.
‘Counselling?’ prompted the nice GP, putting me on the spot. I had enthused about trying counselling a few visits back, only as a distraction. ‘erm….’ Talking about it all was not high on my agenda, and even more alarming to have to take the advice I’d been dishing out to woeful, crying clients. Surely I could recover without telling all, swallowing tablets and weeping at the slightest thing?
Ranged in front of a new and enthralling box set, I wondered what all the fuss had been about. I felt calm, enjoying myself, and not an anxious thought in sight. And as for the counselling thing, I would tell the GP I was talking to a colleague, versed in the wonders of person centred therapy. Yes, a few phone calls, a few meetings, and my many years of mixed upness about parents, why I was here, and the point of going on, would all no doubt become clear.
‘I’m starving’ shrieked Wonka, breaking my positive train of thought. On the other hand, and as he constantly reminded me, looking after him, Baba and the rest was giving me some sort of purpose. I had often lectured clients on the companionship of animals, and one of the students was even doing a whole dissertation on it. Wonka approved and pointed out how often he had been such a friend in need. ‘in need of food!’ I mumbled, tripping round Baba and shaking more expensive biscuits into a saucer.
Apart from the volleys of sneezing, and smelling out the entire house, Baba had a new trick up his sleeve. I had recently purchased a packet of enticing little biscuits, described as pockets of delight and your cat will go mad for them. Well Wonka ignored them completely but Baba, he did go mad for them. So mad, that mid gobble he would sneeze and for a horrid minute or two seem to linger between this world and the next. The world that is supposed to be but one room away. He would then progress to the next stage, of making a rasping noise in his throat, followed by coughing things up.
Me and Wonka were frozen statues, witnessing this and would undergo relief (for a change) when he got to the sickly stage. Any other cat would have picked up and gone on as normal. Not so Baba. This was a false dawn, as he would then dart off, with me and Wonka in pursuit, to find a resting place to continue the horrid rasping noise. I could only relax and breathe easy hours later when he suddenly resumed being Baba again. So biscuits were off the menu until I forgot, or he pinched some of Wonka’s.
In the meantime, I had nursing homes to visit and houses to clear. It was a time of massive confrontation with my life so far and as usual Wonka cheered me on. ‘You can do it!’ he shouted after me as I crept out for yet another fraught journey. ‘Soon be over!’ he soothed as I came crying home with more bags and bundles. Goodness knows I had enough of my own baggage without adding to it. Wonka again led the way, jumping into the cupboard and laying in the space I’d made for the new baggage. ‘Oh I give up’ I wept, shuffling through it all. Would daughter be obliged to wade through all my belongings if I dropped dead?
The Front bedroom took on the guise of a junk shop come crafts fair. Mother had often gone on about Dad’s carvings. Wood carvings, not joints of meat that is, and how many there were. The front bedroom now resembled some sort of exhibition, of wooden animals and boxes. Baba had managed to find a space in between Teakie, a life size carving of a cat sitting up, and a squirrel. Being black he was sometimes hard to pick out in the gloom but then he would spoil it by either sneezing or choking. In a mysterious possibly Karma like way, Dad had returned to us, and Mother in a more challenging and definitely still here way, was rejecting all attempts to settle.
I finally plumped for a nursing home miles away, with a room that Mother took against the minute she got there. Wonka reassured me that this was a typical reaction amongst old folk, and just because the Nurses intimidated me mustn’t put me off. Dusting off the hand-outs on ‘being assertive’, I thought about doing a storyboard or two. ‘Did you tell them where to get off?’ queried Wonka, peering out of the bay window as I shuffled in loaded with shopping and cat litter. ‘Why trouble,’ I shouted,’ to be all reasonable and fair and sensible when you can have a good old emotional outburst instead!’
Knocking back a small glass of red wine and moaning to daughter put it in perspective. Wonka was busy digging a giant hole in the new cat litter tray positioned in the bath. I had hit on the idea of having two trays to get round Baba’s toilet needs. He had a luxury covered in tray that try as it might could not disguise his offerings. Wonka meanwhile had a small red open tray that barely took his size. Yes I was making a small headway into the twists and turns of my life, and what with the GP, the box sets and the helpful colleague, I had a bit of a support network as the social workers like to call it.
‘I know what I’d call it! Said Wonka, and went off looking for Baba.