And now, if you'll take my hand, we can go wandering together through my own little memory lane, it's the early nineties and I'm in my heavy metal bimbo turns earth mother fashion phase. The cow shed is gone, and I've moved back to Sydney, flicking light switches on and off, and marveling at televisions and taps that either miraculously or magically produce hot water.
The Prussian arrives, unexpectedly and certainly unannounced, and he has baggage in quite gob smacking quantities. Both kinds of baggage. He unplugs the phone and gives me the news that the Engineer, whilst spending time in the bush, misplaced his mind and seemed to be having an extreme amount of difficulty relocating it.
The tale he told of my beloved, quick witted friend left me boggled. The Engineer had commenced a relationship, which for some reason necessitated a visit to a counsellor, who recommended a psychologist, who recommended a psychiatrist, who prescribed him something. The Engineer changed, not for the better.
He left his home, and slept in a tent in the bush, he didn't wash or eat regularly. He developed rages. The Prussian and the Smuggler became afraid of the man who was wearing the Engineers face, but whom they could not recognize as their friend. The Engineer deteriorated further. He heard voices in his head, and his speech began to slur. His doctor added more drugs, dulling and addling a brilliant and unique mind.
Then came the rampage. Beserker. The Engineer went on a destructive rampage, physically attacking his friends, destroying their possessions. He drove one car into another until they were both twisted steel, then got into his own car and drove away. They didn't see him again.
The Prussian, wearing his paranoia like an old and favored pair of comfortable slippers, hesitated not in declaring the breakdown of the Engineer to be the handy work of a conspiracy by huge pharmaceutical companies, who use people as guinea pigs.
I was doubtful. Drugs, alcohol and isolation seemed like things that could send anyone a bit nutty. The Smuggler departed for overseas. I thought, perhaps, that this may have been one of those moments when life changes for all, but no one is aware at the time, and my new big city friends didn't find the Prussians idiosyncratic views to be as endearing as I did, and to my great shame, I began to pull away from my friend.
We crossed paths and kept in touch as I got on with the business of being a mother to, now, two young children. My second born son was possessed of radiant beauty and a quick and inquisitive mind. I delighted in his development, in his enormous vocabulary and his almost perfect pitch when he sang Old McDonald.
Motherhood kept me busy, as any mother will know, so I spent less time keeping up with the .adventures of the Smuggler and the Prussian, although I did have a covert meeting with the Prussian to say goodbye when he told me he was going into hiding. We met in a dark corner of an a dingy, old mans pub, having first ascertained that we weren't being followed. I never minded indulging him. He thought an up and coming crime syndicate was after him, as he was a loose end in the Juanita Neilsen case, that regularly sends shivers through the collective spine of Kings Cross crime. Truth or fiction? Who knows......
My children grew, happy and healthy. Suddenly, that all changed. The day my second son received his routine vaccinations, he became ill. He regressed. He lost all speech over a fortnight. It was inconceivable. Impossible.
Doctors visits, frustration, and an inexpressible sorrow now made the previous business of motherhood seem carefree. It was autism. At that time, the internet didn't have a lot more than star trek and porn, but it put the chances of this happening to us at 1 in 10,000. Today the figure is much, much lower, around 1 in 160.
His regression was brutally fast. The possibility of a vaccine reaction was raised early on, then dismissed, so I was stunned to discover that thousands of other parents were reporting the same thing.
The Prussians words started to ring in my head, ominously. I, unwittingly, while trying to find a way to help my son, had spoken against conventional wisdom, and was labelled "anti-vaccination". I had become a crackpot.
To be continued....................
Sent from my iPad, which, by the way is fantastic.
