“What is it?”
“It’s an apple,” my friend replied.
“Are you sure?”
“Yes – I don’t like their taste but I am drawn to them, their shape, what’s under the skin, how our juices meet the fruit and what happens to it then.
“I like the colors too – greens, reds, yellows shimmer and swim inside its skin – just not the taste,” he added. “There’s more though – I see the haze of something behind it.”
“Yes, it’s a baby. She is writhing. Can you make it out? he asked.”
“Not quite – it looks as if her image is held away, maybe pulled by time.”
“It is – rather, she is.”
“What happened? Do you know her?”
“Not any longer but I know her story. Shall I tell it to you?” “Yes.” I said with interest.
“The child in the painting is my mother. Her birth was normal but her young life was not. Some torment held her and caused her legs to seize and her arms to flail. I was told she was inconsolable. Neither milk nor warmth nor motion helped.
“My mother met her grandfather the second day of her life. He was an osteopath. They see the body as a set of marvelous systems that are constantly interacting with the elements and with one another, all supported by some force much greater than medicine or even poetry.
“His name was Ben. He died when I was ten. A few times, I got to watch him when he worked.
“He would wait rather than talk, letting whatever was facing him approach. He told me he waited until he was shown either an image or a word and after that, a way to begin. Even at that point, he would remain still until he felt he was given permission to interact with the person or condition.”
“How would he know?” I asked.
“He explained that in his journals. He wrote that he didn’t know how he would know. His only task was to agree to be led, to follow, and to not own the outcome of his work.
“My grandmother asked her father to come quickly – sooner than either of them had planned. She wanted his understanding before anything else.
“When he arrived, Ben stood by the nursery door and gazed in.
“He wrote that he did the hardest thing first. He waited. He let himself settle amid what felt like a great wash of time and generations awakening inside him, his arms, his legs, his belly. It gradually ebbed and brought him to a freshened, open space. Here, as if of its own accord, the image of an apple appeared.
“He told his daughter to bring him an apple, a sour one. It was early summer and my grandmother knew where they grew. My grandfather ran to the tree for his newborn daughter.
“When the apple arrived, Ben had a knife in hand. He peeled the apple and began to scrape its fruit onto a dish in the slowest, most tender of ways. He was in some kind of union with the the fruit, as if whatever it held was coming forward.
“When he had scraped enough, he washed his hands and piled a tiny bit onto his smallest finger and gently tilted the fruit into my mother’s mouth. The baby’s focus charged toward what was new inside her.
“Her mouth puckered and rolled, guided by some organizing collection of instinct. Waiting for her to swallow, Ben then fed her more, just a bit more. This continued for about 10 long minutes and then something happened. My mother’s left knee began to relax from her chest. Her arms slowed their thrashing. She still cried out but her tone was less arched. Her eyes began to come into view, if only for moments.
“My great grandfather stood up and gave the knife, the apple and the small china dish to my mother’s mother and suggested she continue feeding her newborn daughter in this way about every 30 minutes. ‘I will,’ she said.
“My great grandfather left the room quietly. He told my mother’s father that a section of the child’s intestine was likely twisted and that the tasting, the swallowing, the digesting of the fruit would help it unkink. ‘Once the child sleeps deeply you will know her insides have relaxed and she’ll soon be ready for her mother’s milk,’ he noted. “ ‘Her mother will know this too.’ ”
“How did he know the apple would help?”
“He wrote that he didn’t. He knew only to follow what he was shown.
“My mother lived until I was 30. She was taken by an illness no one could diagnose yet was peaceful when she died. When I went through her things I found Ben’s journals and my grandmother’s written memory of that day.
“I began painting after my mother died. She reaches me.”
Excerpted from Earth as our Ground.