The Alternate

spooky kids

The Alternate.

 

I was born on the 25^th March, the feast of God the Lecher, anniversary of that occasion when, in the time�"honoured manner of rich older men towards young impoverished women, the Lord sent his procurer Gabriel down to earth to seek the services of a virgin. This day has alternative names in other religious jurisdictions.

 

I do not recall well my birth as I was a very small baby at the time. My earliest memories are of being laughed at for failing to walk without some stumbling, which I found unhelpful as I had not been furnished with fully operative legs by those doing the laughing, who appeared to be my parents.

 

In this and other ways I began to realise that my parents and other people around me were separate and distinct from me and from each other and were not merely extensions of my own being and desires. This is a sore lesson for any child but I took it well and did not grow angry. Rather I mused on the separateness of individuals and the loneliness that ensues from this. It was through such continued meditation that I began to be aware that others may be present but not visible in my life. As my parents continued to exist outwith my sight and to operate on the world in ways which impinged on me, so, I reasoned, were hosts of people and beings operating out of my ken whose existence could be discerned only from observation of how places and objects changed around me.

 

It was in this way that I became aware of my sister, that is the sister who I would have been had I been born female rather than male. It may have started with overhearing the words of my mother lamenting to her own sister, my aunt, that I was not the daughter for whom she had hoped. As my recall is that I was half asleep at the time she probably did not think I could hear or understand her expression of regret. However it is precisely at such times as one falls in or out of the chasm of sleep that I find my mind at its most inquisitive and receptive.

 

I had chosen to refrain from speaking until well after the statistical average, causing the adults around me some anxiety. However as I had listened carefully to the discourse of these same adults, I was able, in due course, to replicate the sounds they made with few of the mispronunciations usually associated with children’s talk. My first public words (I had essayed some practice in private) came shortly after my 4^th birthday, when I indicated that I would prefer henceforth to take my meals at table with the adults rather than in the restraint of a high chair. I also stated that I was not fond of the class of meals being supplied to me and that, until I learned to cook, I would require more wholesome fare. This caused the adults around me further anxiety but they complied as best they could.

 

It was during the period of silence before these words that I had first encountered the phenomenon which I came to call ‘looking down the tube’. A low whine would herald my viewing the world as if removed somewhat from it, seeing fine detail of faces, buildings and trees as down a microscope but with no sense that I was part of the same world. As an adult I have learned that this condition, known as petit mal or childhood absence, is common as the growing brain forms its threads and synapses and the electrical current flowing around it is disrupted. I had limited appreciation of neurology at that time and found it merely cosy and comforting.

 

As I was already, I think, regarded as a trifle eccentric, my occasional distance from others was not especially noted. Even when I began to converse I did not discuss these episodes. I guessed, correctly, that they would be seen as evidence of some physiological cause of my non-conformity, and would be exploited against me. I also feared that I would be cured.

 

I understood myself to be an only child and I neither sought nor missed the company of other children. It was something of a surprise, then, on the 3^rd or 4^th of these absence occasions, to meet the person I came to think of as my sister. I was in the garden observing squirrels gathering and storing acorns, it being Autumn. A metallic hum announced my imminent estrangement from the world. I made myself safe and comfortable on a bench and enjoyed the sensation of being sucked gently up a short wide shaft to a vantage point somewhere above the garden. When this was complete I turned my attention to one of the squirrels, noting the thin ligament of tail running behind its bushy armouring of fine hair, and the oily sheen of the acorn it held.

 

I remember the ensuing conversation very well and so render it as accurately as matters.

“Hello” she said. The voice was like mine but lighter, slightly higher in pitch. It rang from within my own head. I looked around but saw no-one.

 

I had worked out gender by this time; the adults with coarser voices and more hair on their bodies than heads were men, the ones with slighter voices and hair more distributed towards the head were women. This was a woman’s voice, but mine as a woman.

 

“Hello,” I replied. “Who are you? Indeed, where are you?”

“I am you, but not you really, and I’m inside you, behind your eyes,” she said.

“That is somewhat curious,” I said. “Please tell me about yourself.”

 

And so she did and we learned that we were each other, living in the same house with the same people, but as we would have been if she had been the girl for whom my mother had hoped. It transpired, though, that her mother had expressed regret at not having a son. She also experienced the same absences I did but called it ‘being outside the window’ likening it, very accurately, to being outside a room looking in, but with the glass magnifying and clarifying everything within. She had become aware of me during the previous such episode, which it was clear we went through simultaneously, and had resolved to speak.

 

My ignorance of human biology was as profound as that of neurology at that time and it was only long after these episodes that I found that the human embryo is sexless at conception and only makes a choice in the matter during the early stages of foetal development. She did not know this either and so we were left only to ponder the strangeness of this situation and to resolve to meet on future episodes of absence as this one faded away.

 

And so we did and became firm friends, her companionship acting to deepen, but also to compensate for, my isolation from any peers who might have been available as companions. I recall the children of a neighbour visiting once and it being suggested that we ‘play’. I did not know how and was not committed to taking their instruction in the matter. They did not return.

 

In the period after I began to engage in dialogue, the dynamics of the household altered and my father was no longer a regular presence. There had been raised voices at times and hushed voices at others and I found myself in my father’s library, where I had developed further my grasp of language. I had gone there to look up the word ‘divorce’ in Chambers’ dictionary. My surprise at finding many of the books gone from the shelves was lessened by the definition I found in the dictionary, which remained.

My mother did not seek to explain the events that had led to this change but did take me aside one morning to tell me that I was now ‘the man of the house’ and my behaviour must change, at which I laughed in her face.

‘I am a child,’ I told her. ‘If you seek a man of the house, look elsewhere.’

And so she did, though not for some time. She and her sister had, by this time, given up holding their conversations about me outwith my hearing and would ceaselessly analyse and debate my deeds and words amongst themselves whilst I sat and read. It became clear from this that there had been a dispute between my parents over who would have custody of me on their parting, neither wishing to take me.

I did not feel alienated at all by this. I felt no belonging to anything they could offer, so from what could I feel rejected? I was by now occupied with the arrival in my life of two more quasi-siblings. I had been conversing with my sister and discovered that she too had been witness to her parents, that is my parents but to her, separating. She had remained with her mother and at the same house as had I. As we discussed this we were joined first by another girl and then by a boy, who made themselves known to us. Our enquiries revealed that she was my sister but as if she had gone with my father; he was myself as if I had also gone with father. Both of them were much taken aback to converse with us as this was all very new to them but we realised quickly the significance of this and calmed their fears. After that we all got on very well.

There was more to come, of course. The time came for all four of us to go to school. I had been looking forward to this as I was beginning to exhaust the supply of books left behind by my father and believed from my studies that schools contained valuable reading matter. It was a disappointment then to discover that the reading matter provided at the village school was most unstimulating and that few, if any, of the other children could even read on arrival at the school, let alone enter into discussion with me on the matters raised by my reading. No doubt the teachers did their best for me but it was inadequate.

I sought out the head teacher who, contrary to my expectation, was a good-natured young woman. All of the head teachers in my reading had been rather older stern men. She listened tentatively to my petition and asked me to return to class for a week or two whilst she sought some remedy. I learned a number of things from this; that my enquiries into the nature of the world required empirical researches as well as reading, that much of my reading was somewhat out of date, being books collected by my father over his own youth and young manhood, and that I should have no fear of representing my wishes and opinions to the adult world.

In due course she visited my mother and arrangements were made for me to go to a new school where I would board. Having demanded to see this place before consenting to go, I was happy to find it well supplied with books and staffed by liberal and tolerant adults who looked benignly on my habits.

 

One evening, shortly after arrival there, I experienced a long absence and found our company of four now doubled as some of us had stayed at local schools while others had been sent to a variety of special, boarding and day schools. We were growing into quite a crowd and it was becoming difficult to identify and establish communication with all of my quasi-siblings before I returned to the quotidian environment. I was also finding it harder to disguise my absences under the scrutiny of other boys and of staff and on one occasion was the subject of attempted medication, which I rebuffed by lying about what had been happening.

And so it went on. As major events, choices and divergences occurred, new members thronged to us. My mother remarried in due course and as our various parents met, lived with and parted from other partners so the group of my quasi-siblings grew exponentially, reflecting these choices, though it seemed noteworthy that the parents whose charges had remained with them found more success in romance than those who had packed us off to school. Not all of my siblings I got to know well or equally, but strange as their choices and behaviour were I understood all of them and made myself available if they wanted talk. The girl who went with father became a particular friend, almost the north to my south. I have found it convenient to think of myself as the original but of course that is not true; their reality is every bit as real to them as mine is to me. None of us is the original. We are options of each other.

Later as the chemical rushes of puberty overwhelmed my body the episodes of absence grew less and less frequent, and our conversations more snatched and impressionistic. I was sad at this but accepting. I knew what I had learned as an infant, that one does not need to see or hear or touch to know someone else is there.

 

Even now, many years later, walking near high-power lines I shall hear voices in the wind. As I make choices in establishing, sustaining and ending relationships I know they are out there, an army of me, and that we are manifold. I am alone on this planet as we all are but within the universe not alone at all, not alone whatsoever in the empty vastness of eternity.