The tin trunk…
I have lived a pretty full life – heck, I am over forty years old, have lived in almost 30 different locations, been around the world, and had a pretty good career to boot. It makes it tricky sometimes when I decide to share something (other than the latest pics) because I think:
‘Oh, if I mention that I will need to explain this, and by the time I get back to the point of the story, everyone will be snoring’
…and it all gets too complex, and big and I get a headache and just leave it.
And take another photo.
That’s just the way I swing.
I distract easily.
…
But today I am going to start.
Not quite at the beginning, but at one of my earliest memories.
An extremely formative memory of an extremely formative day.
This memory is so much part of who I am that it kind of scares me.
Shall I begin?
…
Okay. I am four years old. My sister Jeanie is two.
Our little brother (the imminent Piglet) was just a few weeks from being born into our family. My uncle lived with us at the time – his name is Tex (nicknamed by my 12-years-older father, a label which stuck and stayed). Tex was in his teens at the time and a bit of a cowboy – in his 20s he would play fast and hard at pretty much anything: rodeo and utes mainly. But in his teens he was learning polocrosse. A sport for which he was born, and is in fact still playing at top level. (Do you see how I am getting side-tracked already! Hang on while I swing back on course!)
…
Anyway, Tex had a tin trunk which housed his polocrosse paraphernalia – netted racquets, pitted soft white balls, knee pads with buckles, leather bits and pieces and colourful embroidered saddle blankets. Interesting stuff. Especially to two little girls, sent outside to play by their heavily pregnant, vacuuming Mother. Jeanie and I wandered in our quest for entertainment, down to the carport, some 15 metres from the house, to investigate this big, heavy treasure chest.
…
We had the loveliest time.
Ransacking the trunk, casting each item aside after thorough investigation, burying our little heads in it’s cool recesses until the smooth floor of the chest was bare. And inviting. I cannot recall how the next game began. I suspect it was my idea (after all I was older and quite the little bossy-boots). I think Jeanie might have crawled in first, while I shut the lid over her, blanketing out the sun and giggling at her muffled protestations. I let her out. We giggled some more, feeling the slight hint of naughtiness of the game.
…
I climbed in next and asked her to do the same to me.
She shut the lid down heavy, then strained to lift it up, letting shafts of sunlight into my cool tin cave. Those shafts fascinated me, dancing beneath the lid, and we did it over.
Shut, lift, see Jeanie, shut lift.
Oh, can’t you see it?
Climb in with me then…
See? Shut, lift.
Streaming light hitting our faces, delighting us both.
Beaming through the dust particles floating up from our tin plaything.
Shut, lift.
Shut.
Click.
Push, silence.
No light.
Push again.
Harder.
Darkness.
We giggled a little, that edge of naughtiness growing, niggling at our ribs.
We talked for a brief moment of being in a cave.
Then pushed again.
The tin lid stayed still and heavy over our heads.
No longer fanciful plaything, but dark, angry, unmoving.
And I remember the next bit very clearly.
Like it was 5 minutes ago instead of almost four decades. That moment when the edge of naughtiness morphed suddenly, enormously, into dread.
Heavy, suffocating, oppressive dread.
I tried hard to swallow it, and called out in a trembling voice.
To our mother, heavily pregnant and vacuuming, 20 metres and 20 million miles from our little tin prison. Silence.
We kicked, we pushed, we panted, we yelled.
We huddled quiet in the hot, sweating, waiting.
Then burst into frantic panic once more.
I have no idea how long we were there.
Ten minutes. Ten hours. Ten years.
Finally, the lid lifted and our mother’s terrified blue eyes filled the white light space she had created. Something had made her stop the vacuum. Something had made her call and chase the silence to find her girls. Something had made her look in that still shut tin trunk surrounded my little mountains of polocrosse debris. And she hauled her two terrified, wet-with-sweat daughters from the trunk and hugged them hard.
…
I recall nothing more of this day.
Perhaps there was relief. And lecturing. I’m not sure.
But that moment when thrill-turns-to-dread? I live it daily.
Less here than in the city where impossibly tall buildings loom over me, or in crowded airports, or in lifts or office cubicles.
But it’s with me always.
There was even the time some girls – in squealing fun – shut me in a cupboard at boarding school. I kicked the door clean off the cupboard.
And they never really looked at me the same again.
I have since learned to breathe and slow my heart rate and hide it from the outside world.
…
I hate it – I am a logical person and this bit of me is not logical.
It’s crazy, and refuses to listen to that other part of me that reasons and calms.
I like reason and I like calm. I like healthy and clear and clean.
This is none of those things.
I would like to cut it out. But I cannot.
It’s my darkness. My devil.
…
My name is Bush Babe.
And I am Claustrophobic.
19 Comments
Gem
Good Lord – you wrote that very well – I was right there in the trunk with you. I have the same terror feelings when ever anything is over my mouth and nose – that suffocating dread that reaches from within the depths of your insides. I am gem and I also am claustrophobic!!!!
Gem
PS I love, love, love your new banner!
Carol
Wow…great post. Those little dark spaces exist in my soul as well, where your breath catches until logic makes you exhale and inhale on command, until the dark is forced away from the light. So great to see that you have joined Blogher… I saw you appear while awaiting my blog’s listing as well! I hope it helps us both…
Pencil Writer
As I held my breath . . . waiting for your Mum–SOMEONE–to open the chest . . . I felt tears in my eyes. All I can say, partially understanding the awful, clawing fear you described because I’ve had a moment here and there of serious fear–I feel certain that One who loves you and watches all that takes place whispered in your Mother’s ear to seek her “naughty” curious little girls. He knew where you were and what He yet needed you to do. I’m grateful He watches over us all. I’ll bet your Mum and Dad, Mr. I, Dash, Violet, Jeanie and family, etc., etc. are all grateful that you two escaped the frightening near-tragic confines of that chest so many years ago. I’m glad, too!
And now, you’ve conjured up the uneasy, sickening fear I felt one night in a very realistic dream I had some months ago. I thought I’d forgotten it.
But, I’ll think of happier thoughts–like two little girls that survived to become my friends through the medium of blogging. Grateful to know you and your sister. Thanks, BB.
Reddunappy
I never knew I was Claustophobic until I went through all this medical stuff. I get extreme anxiety now at the thought of my MRI, among other things, I tell them to knock me out with drugs now, and I dont have to deal with it. I had to wear a mask for radiation treatment, to keep my head still, a mesh mask that they form to your face, it took 20 min to form it and I was in tears by the time they were done, the radiation treatments themselves took less than 5 min, but the mask I dont want to ever do again.
I am claustrophobic!
Bush Babe
I should add here, after re-reading this post, how shocking this whole thing must have been for my mother. And for my sister. Not sure I have ever said ‘sorry’ to them. I know I was only four – same age as Violet now – but it could have been catastrophic. So sorry.
BB
Debby
ooooh. Scared me, too, and I’m not claustrophobic…
jeanie
I only know the stories of that one – I can’t remember it.
I do, however, remember the next yarn. Shall I spin it?
jeanie
Actually, I just did.
Oh Cisco!
steviewren
I think most of us would be claustrophobic if that had happened to us at 4. I don’t like having something covering my face and I’m not claustrophobic.
I’ve recently started having to deal with irrational panic attack type thoughts. It’s not fun to feel out of control…know that you are okay when you don’t feel okay.
A Novel Woman
I almost drowned when I was five. So I get it.
Rather than ending up with a fear of water (I still swim in our lake every day of the summer) I have a fear of driving over bridges, or more to the point, plunging OFF the bridge into the water and being trapped in the car underwater. Oh, and clowns. I have a morbid fear of clowns. Seriously. They creep me out. I told someone that at my camera club meeting the other day, and the woman took offense. Turns out her sister is a professional clown. What are the odds?!
Reading your account of your time in the trunk made my chest go tight and my palms all clammy. I guess I have a ways to go, too.
Leenie
I think we all probably have ghosts in the pit of our soul left by traumatic childhood events—almost never to be exorcized. Your story is a good one!
JAN'S PLACE
I can just imagine how your mother felt… what a story. You kept me hooked the whole way through! You and your sister are so fortunate, the end of this story could of certainly gone a different direction!
jrosey
Oh my goodness…I, too, can imagine that I was right there in the trunk with you. The feeling in the pit of my stomach reading this…wow. A similar(ish) story for you – when my mom was about 6 years old she and a friend were playing in a cardboard box in her friend’s driveway. Well, the friend’s parents came home and thinking the cardboard box was empty, ran right over it…and my mom’s hand! Thankfully, they were both ok…the kinds of trouble kiddos can get into!
Woman in a Window
What a story! You and your sister are up to all sorts of unlayering and tale telling and both in my favorites side by side. How fitting. I swear I’ll not keep the lid closed!
Jayne
I have a few foibles and phobias, one being people who insist on driving with their knees at 120 kms in the pitch dark on unmade country roads with dodgy headlights.
Pony Girl
Very scary story… do you think you became claustrophobic because of this incident in your childhood? I ask because some people have this phobia but perhaps have never actually experienced something like this. For me, it’s heights. I never realized it until last spring, while being faced with exiting down a really scary set of steep, high up, and narrow scaffolding stairs. Now, anything that resembles them, panics me.
Well written story BB, and I love what you did with your photos to make the new banner, yea!
Anonymous
No, there were no lectures, only thankfulness that I stopped the vac and found you both. Love Mxx
Bush Babe
Hello Anonymous (aka Mum!)… we are very thankful too. As a Mum myself, I cannot imagine the sickening relief of opening that lid. Poor you!!
PG – yes I do. Perhaps part of me would have always hated enclosed spaces, but my reaction is always an echo of that one. I am much better at talking myself through it now, but it doesn’t ever seem to fade. I’m the opposite with heghts – mad for them!!
Jayne – you crack me up. And I promise to stop doing that, OK??
WiaW – can you handle a double dose of us? She’s such a team player my little sis!! There could be a veritable flood of stories now the Pandora’s box has had its lid lifted (pun mightily intended!).
jrosey – that’s a shocking story! Gads… could have been tragic!
JAN – see last commenter. And yes, the best stories are always true…
Leenie – I could have probably done without this particular ghost… but at least I didn’t up one I guess!!
ANW – remind me not to take you on the high bridge over our river then, when you visit. And clowns – spookiest damned things ever. NOT funny…
steviewren – I’m not sure what a panic attack is exactly. I can feel this coming and kinda prepare myself to deal with it. I try hard not to let it end up where it wants to go!!
Jeanie – OK. Now I am totally outed as the troublemaker!!! Let’s keep the worst of these tales under wraps for a bit, shall we?? A little mystery never goes astray!! Heh…
Debby – sorry. Just had to spread the dread!! 🙂
RedDunAppy – I hear you. I have had lots of MRIs (another story another time) and had to learn to cope. Music is a great thing!
PW – something or someone was watching over us that day for sure. Sorry to remind you of a bad night…
Carol – glad you liked. Wish I was able to attend the BlogHer conference, but a little too far afield!!!
Gem – thanks my dear… a bit of fun!! And welcome to my claustrophobia club – we meet outdoors (boom, boom).