Excerpt from my journal:
9th December 1989

It is 5.00 in the morning and I can’t sleep. I should be grabbing what sleep I can because I’m going to need all my energy today but I am beside myself! This afternoon and evening, as understudy, I am taking over from Kate Normington who is ill, and playing the lead role of Guinevere in Camelot at the State Theatre in Pretoria. Yes, yes, I know that I haven’t been given a dress or a technical rehearsal but I will be incredible, I know it. Please, dear Lord, could You watch over me today? Let me throw my nerves to one side and sing and act like a dream!
I am getting up to make myself some coffee now.  At 6.00 am I must phone my baby sister, Megs, and wish her a Happy 18th Birthday! Glory, how can my little Megs already be 18? And then this day truly begins! I cannot let myself down. I will not let myself down! I know all the songs and dances. I must remember to enjoy myself!
Tomorrow morning, I will write all about today’s performances. WHOOPEEEEEEE!!!!!!!!!

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Excerpt from my journal:
9th December 2021

It has been 32 years since that life changing appearance onstage.
Thirty-two years since that young understudy stood in the wings awaiting her entrance. Her heart must have been beating madly. The music reached a certain point and she ran onto the stage.
“Saint Genevieve, Saint Genevieve, it’s Guinevere, remember me?….’ she sang.
How I wish I could remember that performance. Unfortunately my whole Camelot experience is wiped from my memory. But I believe that on 9th December 1989, I was FAN-bloody-TASTIC!!!

I am amazed at how many people remember hearing about my fall. I fell 18 metres down an unguarded lift shaft. Apart from broken limbs, ribs, a punctured lung, broke bones in my face, I suffered terrific brain damage. This resulted in me being deaf, having 40% eyesight and being spastic down my right hand side.

I am astonished at how quickly life can alter. I was a fairly good actress. I hoped that with time, I could mature into a superb one. I planned to get married, have children and continue acting. Indeed, the future beckoned. With one incorrect step, all of that changed.

But today I am not wanting to dwell on everything that went wrong all those years ago. There is too much that is going right at present. Too much to be grateful for!

My heart softens in appreciation when I think of my parents and family. I knew the one thing I need never doubt was their love and support. I put them all through so much and there was never a complaint. After my fall, I used to have these red faced tantrums because I wished to go back to Johannesburg and act. Can you believe it? I was obviously refusing to look at what I had become. 

And yet, four years after my fall, I made it back onstage in my one woman show My Plunge to Fame. This was all due to Maralin Vanrenen. She had directed me as an actress and knew what I was capable of achieving. She now directed me in my show My Plunge to Fame. In it, I was not acting. Those days were over. I was performing as Gaynor Young telling my story. My fall affected me in so many ways. I was now unable to memorise lines but I knew what I needed to say. And say it I did but in a different way each performance. It must have been heart stopping for M. I am so grateful for her belief in me. Her trust and love!

Since my fall, even after receiving my Cochlear Implants, watching television is still difficult for me. It is incredibly awkward to lip read, and accents are a real challenge. And so I have subtitles on everything I watch. On DSTV there are only about seven channels that have subbies. As a result I find myself enjoying Netflix. Recently I had to phone my audiologist, Jenny Perold with an issue with my CI’s. My problem sorted out, Jen said to me: “How is your TV Streamer going?”
This is a small black speaker which I’d placed next to my television.
“It doesn’t work for me, Jen. I have put it next to my TV and it makes no difference whatsoever.”
In exasperation, Jenny explained that there was more to it than that. So my friend, B and I dragged out my Cochlear Implant haversack from under my bed. We read through the TV Streamer manual. There certainly was much more to it than I had anticipated. We had to pair both Cochlear Implants to the Streamer. I loved doing this because of the bright blue sparkle that appeared on the Cochlear Implant’s control panel. B then took my phone which has the Nucleus Cochlear Implant Smart App on it. She fiddled around some more and then said to me: “Okay, switch the television on now.”
I did and sat down in shock. I could hear every word that was spoken. Every single word! The sound rolled deliciously around in my head.
“I can hear it!” I said to myself watching a re-play of Survivors.
“Switch it off, B”, I said to this beaming, magical elf. (She is very small!)
She touched my cell phone again and instantly the sound in my head was gone. The picture still remained on the television but the sound was off.
“So there’s no way that I can come and watch TV with you. You take all the sound into your head with you,” B joked.
A couple of months ago, my neighbour upstairs sent me an SMS asking me if I would mind turning my television down. I was mortified and since then have been incredibly careful with my volume. Now there is no need. I can have the television blaring LOUDLY in my head. I am the only one that can hear it.  And I can hear it like never before! 

Recently my friends and I were walking in the forest. I stopped to catch my breath. Leah and I sat on the trunk of one of my favourite trees, a Belhambra. Around us the stunning trees gazed regally down. I looked far up at their leafy boughs and beyond to the bits of blue sky poking inquisitively through. Then I closed my eyes and listened. I listened to the silence of the silence….which was cacophonous in it’s sounds. Leah seemed to be listening too. Having been embedded in silence for eighteen years and then re-granted my hearing through my Cochlear Implants, listening is now a vital part of living for me. I heard so many different birds all trying to outcall each other. The sound of the wind rustling the differing leaves together. Our surroundings were murmuring and softly playing a gentle hymn all their own. I have not been going to church because of Covid. But church is wherever you find God. I was so aware of His presence that morning in the forest. My heart smiled. Thank You, thank You for giving me this!

Today, my sister, Megs turns 50! That’s a long way from the 18 she turned 32 years ago.  May your fifties bring you so much jubilance, excitement, contentment and happiness, my special ‘young one’!!!

Recently my friend, Andre Hattingh, made a list of all the performers and creators who have died over the past two years. Presently it numbers 139. So many of them were dear, cherished friends. It has made me aware that I must grab each moment of this wonderful life I live and shout: Yes! Yes, I love the experience of living!
And I intend to do it with vigour, tenderness, awareness, joy and most of all, love!

Art Garfunkel says it so perfectly in his song: Grateful 

I’ve got a roof over my head
I‘ve got a warm place to sleep
Some nights I lie awake counting gifts
Instead of counting sheep
I’ve got a heart that can hold love
I’ve got a mind that can think
There may be times when I lose the light
And let my spirits sink
But I can’t stay depressed
When I remember how I’m blessed
Grateful, grateful
Truly grateful I am
Grateful, grateful
Truly blessed
And duly grateful

In a city of strangers
I got a family of friends
No matter what rocks and brambles fill the way
I know that they will stay until the end
I feel a hand holding my hand
It’s not a hand you can see
But on the road to the promised land
This hand will shepherd me
Through delight and despair
Holding tight and always there
Grateful, grateful
Truly grateful I am
Grateful, grateful
Truly blessed
And duly grateful

It’s not that I don’t want a lot
Or hope for more, or dream of more
But giving thanks for what I’ve got
Makes me happier than keeping score
In a world that can bring pain
I will still take each chance
For I believe that whatever the terrain
Our feet can learn to dance
Whatever stone life may sling
We can moan or we can sing
Grateful, grateful
Truly grateful I am
Grateful, grateful
Truly blessed
And duly grateful
Truly blessed
And duly grateful.

The post Grateful!!! appeared first on 'ear 'ear! by Gaynor Young.

After my fall, I didn’t wear shoes for a while. Then when I began wearing takkies, I was unable to tie the laces because of my spastic right hand. So Mums used to do them up for me. Can you imagine the frustration I felt as a  28 year old having my mother do up my shoes? Learning to tie my laces was one of my first Occupational Therapy tasks! Now I have this enchanting brace that enables me to walk straight and relatively normally. My days of ‘loemp doemp, loemp doemp’ are over!

However, I discovered that there was a problem with my shoes. I now had a right foot which with my brace was so much bigger than my left. Franette, my Orthotist, removed the insoles from my takkies and I just managed to squeeze in my braced right foot using a shoe horn. I could take Leah, my dog for an outing to the Botanical Gardens. But, at the end of our walk, my foot was tremendously swollen and I gratefully removed my brace and put on comfy vellies. 

I was useless in a pair of slip-ons because my right foot just flung the shoe off with a debilitating WHIZZZZ. People quickly learned not to stand in front of me when I was wearing slip-ons because the WHIZZZZZ WHACK practically beheaded them! Not  allowing a pair of shoes to get the better of me, I found that by slipping a piece of elastic around my shoe, there was no way that it could go WHIZZZZING anywhere! Fortunately while overseas I found this incredible pair of slip-ons that believed that WHIZZZZING was totally undignified. These shoes fit me like a dream. All my shoes did until…the brace. 

Enter totally bewitching friends that have just given, given and given to me – Ynor and Alan Fleetwood. Ynor phoned me and said: “Gaynor, Alan and I have seen your new brace on Facebook and we noticed that you are no longer wearing your different coloured vellies.”
My trademark was to wear purple, red, green, blue and black vellies on different feet. Admit, a unique look!
“Ynor, my vellies won’t fit with my brace. So when I go for walks I am having to rely on my takkies. Even then, it’s a problem, because my right foot becomes really uncomfortable.
“Gaynor, Alan is the CEO of Bolton Footwear which has a factory in Great Brak. It’s where Grasshoppers are made.”
“Grasshoppers!!!! Glory, Ynor, those are what I used to wear to school. I had forgotten about Grasshoppers.”
“They make school shoes but so much more. Alan says that he will be up there on Wednesday and would love to see you to try and solve your problem.”

Alan has a face with grinning eyes. I missed not being enfolded in his engulfing hug but we did the COVID ‘elbow’ greeting and I looked into his eyes and my heart grinned back. Alan led me through to a conference room and introduced two members of his team, Grant van Aswegen and Sherwin Maharaj who smiled warmly at me.
“Right, Gaynor, won’t you please explain what your situation is with your vellies.” Alan said. 

I had worn my takkies over my brace but I had also bought with me all of my different coloured vellies. 
“As you can see, I adore my ‘vellies’. And I used to wear a different coloured one on each foot until I got this brace. The brace works fantastically, but I no longer have shoes that fit. I wear these takkies whenever I take my dog for a walk but my foot ends up sore and swollen horribly. I wonder if you chaps can perhaps find a solution to my problem?”
“Well, Grasshoppers manufactured the original Veldtschoen back in the late 1800’s and so I am sure we will be able to help” said Alan.
“Could you please remove the brace and just let us fiddle with it and your vellie?” Grant asked.
I did so and they discussed my shoes and brace in terms I did not understand, throwing out words like ‘vamp’ and ‘top-line’.
“Please could you leave one of your right Veldtschoen with us and we’ll see what we can do?” Sherwin enquired.
“Sure and thank you”, I said. “You have no idea how much I appreciate your help.”
“I’m off to Cape Town this afternoon. I am leaving you in very capable hands. I miss seeing you in your mixed vellies but I know I am not going to miss them for long,” Alan laughingly promised. 

A week later, Sherwin asked me to come and try on my modified vellie. Grant and he had lowered the back and had widened and stretched the front of the shoe. And, using a shoe horn, my braced foot finally managed to fit into my beautiful blue vellie. I looked up at their two faces with grins shining down at my Veldtschoened foot and cried out: “You did it. It fits. Cinderella had nothing on me!!! How incredible the two of you are.”
“Wait, wait,” cautioned Grant. “The most important thing is how they feel. Walk around in them.”
I walked and they felt exactly like my takkies – walkable but so uncomfortable. They saw my face.
“Not good, huh?”, Sherwin asked. I shook my head. “Okay, Plan B goes into action.
Tim Vermeulen is involved in the design and development of our shoes.”
He picked up his phone. “Hi, Tim, Gaynor has tried on the Veldtschoen and it is as we feared. Okay…okay, fine. See you in a moment.”

As we were all wearing masks, I couldn’t see Tim’s full face. But the eyes are what truly reveal a person. His were warm and friendly. He measured my foot in my brace.
“I will use these measurements to make a ‘last’ or in layman’s terms a mould over which your new vellies can be built. I have bought one to show you.”
He drew out a green mould. I looked at it and laughed.
“I have an old wooden one of those that I use as an ornament in my lounge.”
“Visually pleasing”, Tim chuckled, “and now you will have one that is practically pleasing. Using this, we will be able to make terrific shoes for your braced foot.”
He then bought out swatches of differing coloured suedes and nubuck.
“Alan has said we must make you three pairs of Veldtschoen. I think it would be great to choose two colours for each shoe. Then we can mix and match the different elements of the shoes so you end up with contrasting pairs.”
What delicious fun I had choosing my shoe colours! 

Two weeks later, with a laugh, I asked my friend, B: “Are you available to take Cinderella down to Bolton’s in Great Brak? Her slippers are ready and waiting?”
We walked into the conference room to be met by a beaming Sherwin and Grant and a table full of the most amazingly jewel coloured vellies. What a sight!
‘But will the right one fit over my brace?’ I thought.
As if reading my mind, Grant said: “Look at the size of the right ones, they are quite a bit bigger than the left.”
With my heart in my mouth, I picked up the right one and lowered my braced foot tentatively towards it. My foot slipped Cinderella-like into the shoe, smooth and easily. I insisted on trying on all three pairs. Tim had done a superb job of mixing the colours. I stood there admiring my newly clad feet amidst a roomful of smiles. 

So now, I am able to walk normally once more. I don’t mind wearing my brace which is so incredibly noticeable. When people see my brace, their gaze is instantly diverted by my stunning Veldtskoen. They are definitely ‘one of a kind’! They truly live up to the Grasshopper motto: “The most comfortable shoes ever made!”
Thanks to four incredibly kind, generous men at Boltons, I am now able to walk with great panache! I leave my apartment and literally promenade along the street in my beautiful shoes. As I go this song often plays in my head:
These boots are made for walkin’
And that’s just what they’ll do
One of these days these boots are gonna Grasshop over you!!!

The post My Cinderella Vellies! appeared first on 'ear 'ear! by Gaynor Young.

‘Spring iz sprung, da grass iz riz,
I wonder where dem boidies iz?
Da little boids is on da wing.
Ain’t dat absoid?
Da little wings iz on da boid.’

The American poet, Ogden Nash, gets the blame for this wonderful poem about spring.
Spring!
September 1st marked the beginning of spring. I sleep with my curtains open and wake each morning at 5.30. With a cup of coffee in my hand, my iPad on my lap, I watch the brilliant scene of the rising sun play out before me. It’s gentle rays almost tentatively seem to peer over the Outeniqua Mountains and then more boldly the rest of the sun follows. It embraces the world in it’s sublime pinks, purples, and oranges as the early morning casts away it’s mantle of the night. During winter, I have normally finished two cups of coffee before greeting the day. On the opening of spring, I finished one and smiled at daybreak.

Jasmine to me, is the scent of spring. The rich, heady perfume seems to fill my heart as I acknowledge that spring has finally arrived. Unfortunately I don’t have a jasmine bush in my small garden, but every time I enter or leave Mums’s house, I am assailed by the smell of spring. Her jasmine bush grows at the front door. I stand in my own garden and I look at the beautiful pink shoots of my rose. It has realised that winter is over and new little sprouts taste the air in anticipation of the life to come.

I can see very definite seasonal changes taking place in life. Everyone’s life has a spring, summer, autumn and winter before finally encountering death. Yet within life, there are different sorts of changes that can definitely be looked upon as seasonal. 

After the deep, dark winter of my fall, spring began slowly as I began to beat and crack the ice that had formed around me. It had frozen in such a way that this was not ice that simply melted in the sun. It had dehumanised me and required a slow thaw by means of love and therapy. I took heart when I beat off it’s icy grip and was able to stand once more. Gradually I was able to shake free of the last icy tentacles as I learnt to walk, move my body and talk again. Spring had definitely taken hold as I slowly but surely moved towards summer.

Four years after my fall, Maralin Vanrenen directed me in my one woman show, My Plunge to Fame. I was performing as Gaynor telling the story of my life. I entered into this summer of my existence with awe and an unbelievable joy. In rehearsal, realising that I was no longer able to learn words, M threw away my script and said: “Now tell me about your life.”
How utterly terrifying! Having no script, each time I performed it was a different show, all contained within a set framework.

On opening night, I remember waiting in the wings for my signal from the stage manager to move on stage and praying: “Please Lord, give me the words tonight.”
Afterwards I stood taking my curtain call to a standing ovation. I revelled in the summer breeze of people standing, applauding my show for the next eight months. 

All summers come to an end. I had forgotten this and the autumn hit me like a slap in the face. I was unprepared for the winter that followed.

After performing all over the country and twice in London, I returned to my flat in Durban. When you are alone, you look at yourself – critically. Suddenly, since my fall, I didn’t care how far I had progressed. I looked at myself in the mirror and how I hated the image that greeted me. All my deformities, everything that was wrong with me caused tears to seep from my eyes. I couldn’t hear people so conversation was difficult. I walked with a dreadful limp. I was so evidently spastic down my right hand side that I cringed inside. Where had all my dreams gone: I was going to be an admired actor with a husband and possibly two children. The actor had disappeared in Camelot that day. As for a husband? Who would ever marry me now? And children? I gave a mirthless laugh.
Slowly the winter ice began to stealthily freeze around my heart once more.

Suicide.
I planned it carefully.
I bought 2 bottles of red wine and a pile of sleeping tablets. I ran a lovely hot bath with a little jasmine essence poured in. Spring in a bath, I liked that. I planned to take my life by drinking the wine together with the sleeping tablets. I would fall asleep in the bath. What better way than going with expensive bottles of red wine in a beautifully scented spring bath? I climbed into the hot bath and poured myself some wine. This was the most expensive wine I had ever bought. I placed the sleeping tablets neatly along the edge of the bath.
‘Mums would approve of my neatness,’ I thought. And that finished me. I remembered everything that Dad and Mums had done for me since my fall. How they had stood by me, coaxing me back to living once more. And now, here was yours truly literally throwing it in their faces and saying: ‘I don’t care. Living is too difficult. I want out!’
It would destroy them. How could I do that? But what about me? Life was a bitter pill to swallow. Life or the blessing of no more struggles – oblivion! I sat in the bath, my mind in turmoil. It was then I realised I needed help. I needed hope back in my life once more.

Enter my clinical psychologist, Shirley Tollman.
The bliss of being able to talk about the dark things inside to someone who didn’t know me. She helped me understand myself and deal with my various problems.
Think of a beautiful tree in a storm. It is struck by lightning and different parts are burnt and singed. Indeed the whole tree is affected. But in spring new shoots begin to grow amongst this blackened mass. Only these grow in a totally different way making the tree look strange yet wonderfully weird.
This was me. Yes, I might look different with my spasticity, my squonk eye, my limp but in a rather wonderful way, I have grown new branches that I have discovered are invaluable to me. These are the branches of empathy, of knowing what a bad situation is like and being able to relate to people in ways that were unknown to me before my fall.
I had forgotten that after every winter there is a spring. Shirley helped me discover spring once more.

Throughout our lives there are many hard crushing winters, but there is always the spring that arrives. At this time of year, the days bristle with renewed signs of life everywhere. The spirit of starting anew takes hold. I laugh at myself! Today fresh with the fever of spring, I set off with my friends for a walk in the forest. My eyes were not on the beautiful scenery we were passing through but on the ground to see where to step. Every now and again, I would shout: “Please may we stop?”
Then I would gaze around me with awe at the soaring trees, the waterfall…and the beginning of spring.
Afterwards my friend said to me that it was the most difficult walk she had taken me on. I discovered that with my gorgeously helpful leg brace, on that beautiful spring morning, I had walked the furthest I had ever walked – nine kilometres!

I love spring!

The post Spring has Sprung! appeared first on 'ear 'ear! by Gaynor Young.

The “old Gaynor” could sing, juggle, dance and do cartwheels. She was an energetic, free wheeling spirit. She loved people and enjoyed being loved in return. Onstage it took one step in the wrong direction and that Gaynor vanished forever.

Picture a photograph being developed in a dark room. The photographer has a blank piece of paper which he swirls around in a watery chemical solution. Then he hangs the paper up to dry. As it dries, so shapes begin to emerge out of the blankness. Eventually a photograph shines back at him.

After my fall, I was like that blank piece of paper lying submerged. I needed to be gently swirled in a ‘watery solution’. My family, my friends, my therapists twirled, spun and whirled me gently to and fro. And then I was delicately hung out to dry. And gradually the new Gaynor began to take shape and form. 

This Gaynor is in love with life. She appreciates life in a totally new way.
Isn’t it strange how when something is taken away, and then given back in a new form, it becomes so incredibly valuable.

I lost 60% of my eyesight.
What I now see is so precious to me. In the morning, coffee in hand, I cast my eyes up towards the mountains in George. Every day they say good morning to me in a different form. This morning they rose up majestically into this amazing blue sky. All around grey rocks broke the blue skyline in craggy peaks. They reminded me of great, gentle dinosaurs that had been solidified into rock. I imagined them opening their eyes, stretching out and lumbering to their feet. But that would not happen today, I smiled, as I made my way back towards my coffee pot.
I remember the specialist showing me a scan of my brain. He pointed out the brain cells that controlled my sight.
“Why they weren’t all killed off is anyone’s guess!” he mused.
The sky, the little old woman crossing the road, the new bud on my rose, a babies eyes focusing on the world, my dog and cockatiel gazing at each other in a lovehate relationship, the stars at night…….
I can see!

For 18 years after my fall, I was deaf. Now with my Cochlear Implants the world has opened itself up to me once more. I adore the sound of birds twittering amongst themselves. I will never treat bird song as I used to, taking it for granted. Children laughing and shouting together. The sound of Mums’ voice. Perdita, my dog’s little snores. The wind blowing the leaves on a tree.
Isn’t sound an awe-inspiring thing? And just think, when the neighbours are being unbelievably raucous, I am able to take my Cochlear Implants off – total silence.
Laugh – what bliss!!!
Isn’t it amazing that Cochlear Implants were invented 35 years ago. I went deaf 30 years ago. How lucky can you get?

I now walk with a brace on my spastic right leg. This prevents me from over extending. It makes walking that much easier because it stops me swaying sideways. Perdita, the dog that shares a home with me and I often walk a kilometre up to Ground Control, the best coffee house in the world! I sit there, Perdita contentedly sitting beside me, sipping a cafe latte and work on my blog. An hour later we will stroll home again. No pain in my back because at long last I am walking upright! 

I am laughing at myself. In my thirties, there would have been no way that I ever would have considered putting this brace onto my body. Why is it that at 58 years of age, it doesn’t bother me? Have I given up on attempting to look beautiful or have I gained a little wisdom over the years?

Wasn’t I fortunate to have been born into a family such as mine? Their unending love and support has played a large part towards making me what I am today.  Mums is an incredible person. I am so grateful for her determination, sheer stubbornness and unending love. She raised her daughter twice! Thank you to all my friends. When I first got out of hospital, I remember lying in bed and thinking to myself: There is NO WAY that people will want to remain friends with a deaf, spastic person who can’t even walk!
Wasn’t I wrong! Not only do I have all my friends of old, I also have a whole host of others.
I couldn’t survive without my family.
I couldn’t survive without my friends.

Why did God allowed my fall to happen? I have realised that while I am on this earth I am never going to get an answer to that question. Make no mistake, one day when I am sitting having a G and T with God in Heaven, He is going to have a lot of explaining to do!
Seriously though, my fall happened through the stupidity of man. God had nothing to do with it. I am so very aware that I wouldn’t be as I am today if it wasn’t for this incredible God who has been holding my hand and steering me through life. The good and the bad, God is always there.

Starting over can be one of the scariest things in the world.
With the one step off stage, I began that process. A new Gaynor was born. I often long for the old Gaynor. But thirty years on, the new Gaynor looks at this wonderful, treacherous, generous, unreliable, beautiful, unpredictable world of ours and says:
“Isn’t Life great?”

The post 30 Years! appeared first on 'ear 'ear! by Gaynor Young.

I remember walking into our sweet shop, with my birthday money clutched in my hand. I was going to spend ten cents and get myself twenty Chappies. I loved Chappies. I had learned how to blow enormous bubbles. As I reached into the Chappies jar, my eyes were caught by the most amazingly beautiful piece of rock candy. It had green, red and blue swirls that lovingly embraced it. I had never seen such a wonder of enchantment. It was expensive but ohhhhh, I imagined taking a lick of that magic! I paid my thirty cents and walked out of the shop like a wizard  brandishing my enchanted wand. I envisaged taking off the paper at home and smelling the sweetness. My steps quickened.

Fifty years later, I have just had a similar experience.

My walking has been getting worse and worse. I learnt, however, that by keeping my right leg slightly bent, this helped me walk in a far less jarring manner. Recently this manoeuvre no longer seemed to be working. It was a case of step-draaaaaag, step-draaaaaag, step-draaaaag. Not the most elegant manner in which to walk into a room and look sophisticated! Mums said to me:

“Try this prosthesis of mine that fits in my shoe. See if it improves your walking at all.”

Mums is size 8 and I am size 5! I was unable to see if this was the solution to my problem. I needed to find out about these prostheses.

“I will make an appointment for you to see Franette Botha. She is a Medical Orthotist Prosthetist and may be able to help you.” 

“Glory be, Mums, what is a Medical Orthodontist Prosthetist?” I exclaimed. “It’s my leg not my teeth that need attention!” 

“I said Orthotist Prosthetist,” my mother very patiently corrected. And before you ask, look it up on Google.”

 Medical Orthotist Prosthetists design and make artificial limbs (prosthetics) and surgical appliances such as splints, braces and surgical shoes (orthotics). I have written a blog about Caleb Swanepoel who was attacked by a shark. His leg was replaced by a prosthetic one. The orthotics would deal with me, I thought, making special surgical inserts for my shoes. 

Mums and I went to see Franette Botha. We sat down in her room and I explained what I needed. 

“I used to wear these inserts in my shoes. In fact, I have two old, very worn ones here with me in my bag,” I said. 

“I would like to see you walk first, Gaynor,”  Fran replied.

“Sure”, I said and began my step-draaaaags around the room. I knew my legs were not performing to the best of their ability, so I planted this very assured, dazzling smile on my face.

“Okay, Gaynor, here is what you need”, Franette announced turning away.

She turned back to me not holding two little shoe inserts as I was expecting, but instead this enormous black brace. 

“You can’t be serious,” I gasped.

“If you carry on walking as you are walking now, in about a years time you will need surgery on your leg and your lower back will be in tatters.”

That quietened me down.

“I only have a brace for a left leg in stock. I will order one for your right leg and see you in a few days.”

I walked out of her rooms in total despair. Before I could say a thing, Mums wisely said:

“Don’t get into a state about this now. Let’s wait and see what the brace feels like.”

Naturally I told my best friend, B, about this sudden turn of events. She was incredibly interested and joined Mums and I, when four days later, Fran fitted me with the brace. It was black and reached from mid-thigh to mid-calf. It had six straps which Fran did up for me.

“Now, Gaynor, let me see you walk,” she said.

I duly walked across the room. There was a gasp from Mums.

“Oh, you are walking beautifully!”

Then Fran showed me how to do up the six straps. The order in which they had to be done up, was not easy for me to grasp. And, it was incredibly difficult to physically do the straps up with only one hand that works. I was so relieved that Mums and B were both watching intensely. They would help if I needed it.

“I’m going to give you this on trial for five days. Just see how you get on.”

Two days later, I stopped in to see her.

“Could you tell me if I’ve got it on correctly?”

Fran took me to a mirror and showed me where I had gone wrong. The brace was not high enough on my thigh. 

“Make an appointment to see me tomorrow. There are some adjustments that I would like to make.”

The following day, Fran took the brace from me and said: “I am going to remove the sixth strap going over your thigh. I don’t think it’s necessary. I am also going to make all the straps wider so that they are more comfortable and do some adjustments so they are easier to do up. Come back in three quarters of an hour.”

Three quarters of an hour later, the brace felt great! And I was walking beautifully. This brace wouldn’t allow me to overextend. My days of overextension were over.

But, I am a very vain person!

Since my fall, I have always tried to hide my disabilities. Before I received my Cochlear Implants, very rarely did I admit I couldn’t hear a person who was talking to me. “Really” became my stock phrase. 

“Tell me, Gaynor, what do you think of where you’re living in Durban?”

“Really!”

Hopeless!!! Now that I have Cochlear Implants, one is hidden under my hair and the other tucked neatly behind my ear. I try to hide the spasticity in my arm by keeping it in a pocket, resting on a hip or else clasped behind my back.

Suddenly I am wearing a black brace from thigh to calf on my right leg. Most of the time I wear jeans and the brace doesn’t fit underneath. So there is my disability for all to see. Mums and  B were amazed at how distraught I was about wearing this brace.

“In all the years since your fall, very rarely have I seen you crying over your disabilities. The last time was when you were told that you wouldn’t be allowed to drive. And here you are weeping over a brace. I don’t understand why,” Mums said.

“It’s because I can’t hide it unless I’m wearing a long-ish dress.”

“No, you can’t hide it,” interrupted B, “But, before you wore your brace, everybody noticed you because of the terrible way you walked. Now, they might see the brace but you are walking practically normally.”

“Am I?”

“Yes,” Mums and B both cried out in exasperation.

I know that you should never judge people from the outside. So why do I do this to myself? Franette has provided me with this incredible brace that enables me to walk without that terrible jerking leg extension. As a result, I have been walking in a far more normal manner. I also have a lot less back pain.

So, I have devised a plan.

When people, look at my brace, and say in consternation: “Gaynor , what have you done to yourself?”

With a sigh, I’ll answer: “My damn skateboard! I’ve been doing double flips going downhill really fast for the past year. Recently I tried doing a triple flip backwards. And, well, need I say more?”

Recently, all braced up,  I was walking with a close friend of mine, Ingrid. Suddenly she stopped and faced me. “You have got no idea the pleasure I get walking with you now,” she said, “ you don’t actually walk. You glide!”

When I was seven years old, I went into a shop intending to buy Chappies bubble gum. I walked out with something more expensive but infinitely better. The most beautiful stick of rock candy I had ever seen. I didn’t eat it all at once. No, this rock candy was selfishly cherished with a few licks a day. In the same way, I went to see Franette Botha intending to buy shoe inserts to improve my walking. I ended up with a far more expensive but incredible leg brace that has improved my walking dramatically.

Yes, you might now see me with a black brace on my right leg, but I hope you will barely notice it. You will be struck by this elegant, gliding woman with a smile on her face! 

The post Bracefully Gliding! appeared first on 'ear 'ear! by Gaynor Young.

I was sitting in my favourite coffee shop, Ground Control in George drinking a superb cafe latte, and talking to two incredibly interesting women, Di and Tegan Phillips. Tegan was telling me about the triathlon that she had recently completed around New Zealand. This adventure raised money to fund bicycles for school children in Africa.  I subsequently wrote a blog about this mind blowing feat. Di, Tegan’s mum, caught my interest when she mentioned opening a craft cafe in the near future. This cafe would employ people with special needs.

“Do you mean, that the customers will be served by people with disabilities?” I asked.

“Yes,” Di answered. “It will be called Lucy G in memory of Lucy Geel (née Garaghty). Lucy tragically died of complications soon after having a baby. She had a sister with special needs and she loved her dearly. Lucy was always incredibly supportive of people with any kind of disability.”

I thought back to those years following my fall, when I battled with myself – inside and out. I came home from hospital a babe in arms. Finally, after years of every kind of therapy, I was able to walk but with a very humbling, noticeable limp, and my spastic right hand would still fly off into it’s own delicious contusions. People could finally understand what I said. And thankfully, I had learnt to read again.

But inside I wept. 

Who was this ‘creature’? I didn’t like the term ‘disabled’ or being a person with ‘special needs’! For goodness sakes, I was still – ME! Only this ‘me’ had changed drastically. I tossed and turned in bed at night, my sleep disjointed and broken. What was this ex-actress now meant to do? What could I do? Who would ever employ someone like me, someone ‘disabled’, someone with ‘special needs’? I spat out to myself.

I hated what I had become.

Fortunately, my ‘Di’ took the form of two old friends, Maralin Vanrenen and Janice Honeyman. They donned their Fairy Godmother robes, stepped in and changed my life. I received this fax from Maralin, four years after my fall.

I told you six months after your accident that you would never act again. I still stand by that, G. But there is no reason why you shouldn’t perform as yourself telling your story. Janice Honeyman, the artistic director at The Civic Theatre agrees with me and has offered to put on your show. You open in April!

The person who had considered herself unemployable, worked flat out with Maralin to create my first one woman show, My Plunge to Fame. I could no longer remember words yet Maralin devised a way for me to tell my story differently each night. My show sold out during it’s first run at The Civic with me returning later in the year to another sold out season. I performed My Plunge to Fame throughout South Africa for a year. In 2000, I wrote my book, My Plunge to Fame and I then became a motivational speaker and a blog writer. This ‘unemployable’ person was once more employed!

It was through Maralin and Janice’s belief in me, that I came to believe in myself once more. I regained my self esteem. I thought about this whilst considering Di wonderful craft cafe plan.

“Let me know when your cafe opens, Di. I will be a very enthusiastic customer.”

A couple of weeks ago, I walked into Lucy G, Di’s craft cafe in Kirstenhof, Cape Town. What a hive of activity met my eyes! It was Friday and on Fridays, Di gives a workshop to special needs young adults regardless of their disabilities. I smiled to myself. There were people in wheelchairs, who couldn’t move their arms to make the planter box that Di was showing the class how to devise. That didn’t matter. These young adults sat with a smile on their faces, merely enjoying being a part of the good natured hullabaloo that was taking place around them. I watched a young man determinedly screwing screws into his box. He was taking a long time but he was doing it with so much care. On one side of the box, he had painted two red guinea fowls. On the longer side were flowers in gold and yellows.

I loved that planter box.

I asked Di what had motivated her to start the craft cafe?

“As an Occupational Therapist, I worked specifically with young disabled people. I used craft activities and life skill programs to build up their confidence and knowledge. Think of what happens to them after they leave school – if they ever went?”

That notion had never crossed my mind.

“The idea of them spending the next forty years of their lives staying at home or else in a protective workshop is an utterly dour and depressing thought for me. Trying to find a  meaningful and productive workspace for them is a massive challenge. Their parents and I racked our brains and then we hit upon the idea of a craft cafe. There was no place in the southern suburbs of Cape Town that offered a space where people can make a personalised item for themselves or a friend. Or a place where they can simply come in for a coffee, light meal and chat. And best of all, it can offer work to disabled poeple. And that was how Lucy G came into being. These young people are perfectly capable of working. We have simply adopted a different approach when it comes to showing them how to do things”.

“Yes, I saw how you put instructions on making sandwiches on a board in the kitchen. You didn’t write them. The instructions were done through pictures. So creative.”

“A lot of our staff have difficulty reading but by illustrating what needs to be done via pictures, the sandwiches that they make are totally delicious!”

I had a cup of coffee that was made for me by the sweetest man, Mark. He took such delight in presenting it to me. Whilst taking my first sip, I was tapped on the shoulder and turned to a young woman’s enormous smile.

“Didn’t you write that book?” she asked.

“Yes, My Plunge to Fame. Have you read it?”

“Mum has. I recognised you from the photos in the book. Please,” she suddenly appeared shy, “won’t you give me your autograph? Here is a paper and pen.”

Finding out that her name was Leigh, I duly wrote: “With a big smile, sweet Leigh, I kiss your eyes – X!”

Ten minutes before I left, Leigh presented me with a beautiful drawing. With pride, she pointed out her name in the left hand corner. I was tremendously moved. 

“This will go up on my fridge door at home. Every day, Leigh, I will be reminded of you!”

Lucy G is currently employing fourteen disabled people and training three others. There is a waiting list. Staff get paid standard wages according to the Labour Laws and they have a work contract. It is not a day care centre. It is a business that happens to employ disabled young adults. At the moment, the management team work voluntarily and there are about twelve other volunteers who help out in Lucy G but having more support would be lovely. They attend for a few hours a week to provide supervision for the disabled staff and as back up either in the kitchen, cafe or craft section. I was delighted to meet a volunteer, Lynette, whose sister was going out with an old acting friend of mine. She also knew Shirley Johnston, the editor of my book. Small world, isn’t it?

This delightful craft cafe is providing employment for people with disabilities, delicious coffee, healthy refreshments and innovative crafting activities for everyone. It is offering so much to so many and changing perceptions of abilities in a natural way. It’s fulfilling its vision to enhance the lives of people with disabilities through being able to work, earn a salary and live as independently as possible. But it is early days and would really benefit from some additional outside financial assistance.

It was through Maralin and Janice’s belief in me, that I came to believe in myself. Yes, I was disabled but that didn’t mean that life had passed me by. Life shouldn’t be defined by how society deems you should look or behave. I have discovered that the more you put into life, the more life showers upon you. Di, her brilliant staff and volunteers are putting a tremendous amount of effort into making a success of Lucy G. So, the ‘showers’ should start. I know that with Christmas approaching, they are receiving bookings for end of year functions. This is terrific but what they really need is a regular enthusiastic clientelle! 

Lucy G, that wonderful craft cafe in Kirstenhof, needs it to shower, pour and deliciously flood. 

Noah bring it on!!!!

***

If you or your company would like to get involved with this life changing initiative, please contact: Di Phillips 

              hello@lucyg.co.za or dianaphill@gmail.com

              www.lucyg.co.za

              29 Silverwater Street

              Kirstenhof 7945

The post Lucy G & I! appeared first on 'ear 'ear! by Gaynor Young.

Code: a system of words, letters, figures, or symbols used to represent others, especially for the purposes of secrecy.

It is strange how codes have played a part throughout my life.

I think back to my childhood gang and I smile in remembrance.
T rest ugs!!! Bggt js yehrmdio!!!
(Translation: I have a news!!! Meet me urgently!!!)
I sent this secretly coded message to the rest of my eight year old gang. We would meet at our fort at four o’clock, once homework was finished. There were six of us in our gang. Simon, our gang leader, had devised the code. It was masterful and we used it all the time. This was our code. Only we knew how it worked. That knowledge made me want to hug myself in glee!

I had my fall and the world as I knew it, had to be put into a different order. I often felt that I had become a ‘code’! Strangers looked at me and saw one thing. I knew that this representation was totally misleading and false. In order to break the code, you had to really search beneath the brain damage, deafness and spasticity. Underneath all the outside paraphernalia beat the true Gaynor. The real Gaynor was waiting impatiently for people to break her code!

My Aunt has always been a scrabble fanatic. Before my fall, I used to love sitting and playing scrabble with her. Placing down words like zoology for a ‘triple word score’ put a grin on my face! My accident did away with that type of grinning. Words now ‘scrabbled’ around my brain, refusing to be decoded. My book My Plunge to Fame took an inordinate amount of time to write. I would know which word I wanted to use but it would refuse to venture out onto my keyboard. I would go for my afternoon rest, and in the evening that word would spill out of my brain and onto the keyboard with ease and joy.

After my fall, I was ashamed of my deafness. I was desperate to appear ‘normal’. Perish the thought, that I ever admitted to anyone that I couldn’t hear them. ‘Really!’ became my stock phrase.
“So, Gaynor, tell me have you ever read Pat Conroy’s book Prince of Tides?”
I smiled warmly: “Really?”
I mean, really???
One day I read an advertisement for a sign language class. I imagined the joy of being able to communicate without any ‘really’s. The elation of understanding once more! Before I could change my mind, I signed up to join the class. The sign language class was being taught by a deaf woman but the group would include both deaf and non-deaf students. I would fit in perfectly I thought to myself. I would learn a different coded language!

My problem in class lay in my spasticity and my eye sight. I couldn’t see both hands of the ‘speaker’ at once. Never mind having to sign with one hand that refused to cooperate and insisted on doing it’s own thing! And yet, those six months were a break through for me. Our teacher, Alison, was zany, intelligent and…completely deaf. And I really liked her. That class accomplished far more than merely attempting to teach me sign language. My fear of being deaf was done away with. I realised that deaf people were the same as everyone else. They just couldn’t hear. My shame at being deaf evaporated like an early morning mist. This particular code within myself had been broken.

I used to get a little annoyed with my parents in the early years of my recuperation. They devised a new code to speak between themselves. I was totally reliant on lip reading to understand what was going on. So, when they wished to discuss something privately and I was in the room, they would talk through their teeth without moving their lips. I was stymied. I knew they were talking about something, probably me, but this lip reading creature had no idea what they were saying. It wasn’t until I had my brilliant Cochlear Implants that I was able to crack their code!

As part of my brains healing process, my occupational therapist used to try and persuade me to do puzzles, particularly crossword puzzles. How I hated them! Recently however I found my two best friends poring over a newspaper.
“I think it’s pounced,” muttered B.
“ I’m just worried about cauliflower,” replied Jans.
“Mmmmmmmm,” they murmured in unison.
‘Oh, glory, they’re working on a crossword puzzle,’ I thought. I am totally useless at crossword puzzles. The three of us do things together. I would never cope with crossword puzzles!
“What are you up to?”
“We’re doing a Codeword puzzle,” B answered. “No, stop scowling! I’ll show you how it works.”
She pointed out a crossword puzzle type frame. In it three letters of the alphabet were strewn at odd places around the puzzle. These are the ‘clues’ to the rest of the puzzle!
“Down here you have the alphabet with the three letters crossed out. Now you have to fill in the rest to make up words.”
Hesitantly I made a suggestion.
“Yeah, Gaye, I think that could work,” said B with a smile. I joined in solving the puzzle and found to my delight that I could do it. To my relief, I discovered that over the years my brain had improved.
I am now able to do Codewords. It takes me a long time and, unlike B and Jans, I do the easy ones. But their feelings on completion, are nothing compared to mine. The satisfaction when I complete a puzzle is insurmountable. I look at all the painstakingly filled in words with utter delight and joy!

I now have a Codeword App on my iPad. I try and get this brain of mine to battle with a puzzle daily. It is good for my damaged brain. It is good for every brain! Medical gurus now tell us that puzzles stave off brain ‘old age’! I wish to have a vitally working brain in my eighty year old body!

With a smile, I think back to my childhood code, the sign language code, my parents code and I now look at the Codeword puzzle that tries to baffle me. It won’t though. I won’t let it.
I have always had a desire to crack life’s codes. There are those that I solve and those that I learn from.

That is the wonder of this code of life!

The post Dot, Dot, Dot – Dash, Dash, Dash! appeared first on 'ear 'ear! by Gaynor Young.

No, I don’t now have full, rounded Julia Roberts-like luscious lips. There are actually no changes to my face. I am using Botox as it is meant to be used – medically!

When I stand in front of a mirror, I look okay. Nothing special. Nothing horrendous. It is when I move that despair engulfs me. I look at my hand, pulled up cobra-like into it’s awkward posture and my leg with it’s awful limp and feel an intense aversion. How I abhor this spasticity. And yet there is nothing I can do to hide it. Or so I thought.
Then a neurologist entered my life!

I was having a serious problem with my knee over-extending due to my spasticity. My physiotherapist had been giving me great exercises to strengthen my leg. But, I still couldn’t seem to stop my knee from misbehaving. Finally he suggested that I visit a neurologist. I needed to check that the daily pills I take to minimise my spasticity, were still doing their job. I had been taking them for thirteen years. Who knows what medical advances had been made?

My neurologist is a lovely person with a smile that lights up her room. She listened to my story and remarked: “No, you must stay on Bio-Baclofen. Without it, people in your situation find their legs suddenly breaking into trembles whilst lying in bed.”
“Yes,” I cried, “that’s exactly what happened to me when I thought I could do without them.”
“Let me see you walk.”
I did so without trying to control my spasticity in any way. My knee ‘backfired’ in it’s usual manner. I normally hang onto my shoulder bag with my right hand and in this way disguise it’s spasticity. Now I had no bag to clasp. As a result my arm was raised cobra-like at the elbow with my hand turned inwards and the fingers splayed in their normal spastic mould. I reached the end of the room and turned back to her sheepishly.
“Sorry,” I muttered.
That was the thing. There was no need to apologise. Due to my fall off stage, I was spastic. And yet, I was ashamed of it.

“I think that I can help you,” my neurologist said. “You have heard of Botox, haven’t you?”
Botox? What was she talking about? My leg and arm needed help, not my face! She saw my reaction and continued.
“Botox is short for botulinum toxin type A. The effects of Botox have been known since the early 1900s, but the toxin has only just been discovered to help patients with spasticity.”
“Help us? What do you mean?”
“Botox is a nerve impulse ‘‘blocker,” my neurologist explained. “It attaches to nerve endings and prevents the release of chemical transmitters, which activate muscles. These carry the ‘message’ from the brain that tells a muscle to contract. If the message is blocked, the muscle doesn’t spasm.”
“It doesn’t…well…spasticise!” She smiled, nodding her head. “How long does this miracle last?”
“About three months. Then if you are happy with the process, we can do it again.”
This whole thing was magical music to my ears.

I went home this delirious wreck! No more spasticity. I would be normal once more, wouldn’t I?
“Imagine, Mums, no more spasticity. Will I be able to do things I used to?”
“We’ll have to wait and see,” said Mums cautiously.
“Maybe I’ll be able to play the guitar again!” I said, all caution happily thrown to the winds. “I won’t be able to sing but I see no reason why I won’t be able to strum and pluck as I used to. Do you think I’ll be able to play tennis once more? Maybe I’ll be able to serve, do backhand and forehand,” I babbled on. “With my knee working properly, I’ll probably be able to run once again!”
Mums put her arms around this literally hyperventilating daughter.
“Sshhhh, Gaye, sshhhhh! We don’t know what will happen. Don’t build your hopes sky high. It makes the fall all the more painful.”

My neurologist decided to inject my knee, my two first fingers and thumb, my wrist and lower arm. I hate injections but with these the needle slipped in and out smoothly. I was told that in about two weeks I would begin to see the effects.
Okay, I’m going to keep an open mind and see what this mystical Botox transforms, I thought. But…please oh, Lord, I prayed, let this transformation be magnificent!!!

About two and a half weeks later I was making myself my six o’clock cup of coffee and gave a yawn as I reached across for the coffee pot with my right hand. I attempted to pick it up a and gave a horrified cry. My hand would not move at all and the arm had no strength in it whatsoever. Glory be, my neurologist had not mentioned this happening. Perhaps it was just the start of the whole process. The spasticity would die out as she had said it would and the function in my hand would return. Unfortunately this didn’t happen. Instead things degenerated drastically. I felt as if I had this lump of useless flesh attached to my elbow. I didn’t seem to have much control over my knee either. My physiotherapist had taught me the best way to walk in order to reduce my over extension and also back pain. Now I didn’t seem to be overextending as much. That was the whole purpose of this exercise, wasn’t it? But I didn’t like my loss of control, my walking style seemed to have gone to pot!

I beat a hasty retreat back to my neurologist rooms!
“I didn’t realise how sensitive you are,” she commented. “This is the thing about Botox. The dosage in each person differs. With you, I have obviously used too much. There is nothing I can do about that. Just know that you will improve as time moves on and it begins to wear off.”
My dreams of playing the guitar and tennis were blown back to where they had originated – the world of dreams.

I was left worse off than I had originally been. I was unable to use my spastic side at all and because of this, it was made all the more evident. I was self conscious about my spasticity as it was. You cannot imagine how I felt about that imbecillically useless appendage that hung on my right hand side.

Fast forward eight weeks and a different Gaynor emerged. This Gaynor had a right hand that worked once more. And gone were the ‘cobra’ days of it constantly rearing up for all to see. I was walking in the Botanical Gardens and my friend, Jans, commented: “Gaynor, your arm is moving really well.”

And so despite my original reservations, I decided to continue the treatment!
The second time I was injected with Botox, my neurologist used far less. She only injected my wrist and lower arm in several places. She left my fingers and thumb.
“You need those to grip your coffee pot,” she laughed.
Because of my spasticity, I have a big toe that often refuses to lie flat. Like my hand it often rears cobra-like into the air. I told my neurologist about this and the Botox needle went to work. As the needle went into my toe, I thought: Die, Cobra, die!!!
And indeed it has. My pilates teacher remarked on the fact that my toe was now down.

Nowadays I don’t need to walk clutching my bag or with my hand in my pocket. I am able to walk with both hands swinging at my side. Yes, I know that it is not what is on the outside that counts. It is one’s spirit that is important. I know all of that! Yet to be aware that the first impression I give is not one of spastic disablement but one of limping normality is marvellous!

So, no, I do not play the guitar, as I had hoped. I do not race around a tennis court, serving, doing backhands and forehands. I do something which to me is infinitely better.

I simply walk with my arms swinging easily at my sides!

The post The Rearing Cobra & Me! appeared first on 'ear 'ear! by Gaynor Young.

Dear Gaynor

I am a friend of the director, Janice Honeyman and Denise Goldin.
I am a professional actress, born in Cape Town but now living in California.

The way I came to know of you is this:
I was in Cape Town staying with Janice. I am working on a play about a tragedy that has also brought me to know Denise. I was talking to Janice about the trials of having been an understudy – specifically for Angels in America, Parts I and 2. I told her that I had not been rehearsed on the stage and had to go on for two three hour length parts of that play. In one instance, I was a few seconds late in coming down a revolving platform and got stuck. Who knows what would have happened, if not for an alert stage hand who reached in to pull me out?

Janice got quite upset and told me about what had happened to you, about your horrendous fall offstage. A few days later, at the Naledi Theatre Award ceremony in Johannesburg, I was blown away when you came on the stage. I realised you were the actress Janice had told me about. I immediately bought your book on Kindle and read it all the way from Johannesburg to London, to San Francisco.

I am so profoundly impacted, so deeply touched by your story but also by your light and power which I was fortunate to actually experience from the stage that night. I asked Denise for your email.

I would very much like to be in touch with you. Because of my own tragedy – an avoidable accident that killed my gorgeous 21 year old daughter, Annais in July 2013. I was introduced to Denise Goldin online. I met her at the Theatre awards for the first time. Stayed with her. Did the first reading of my play at her house and then boarded the plane back to California…and of course devoured your book.

I have many things I would like to ask you about. There are many similarities although both cases are different in their specifics. But still, there are elements that screamed out at me.

So, if you would be open, I would love to be in touch.

Very warm regards
Penny Kreitzer

I immediately read about Annais on: www.JusticeforAnnais.com and was horrified.
Several dozen members of staff were happily eating breakfast under a large oak tree in Camp Taiwonga, California in 2013. Disaster struck. A thirty foot branch cracked and hurtled downwards, killing Annais and severely injuring several others.

It would appear that six months previously, Camp Taiwonga had been warned about the instability of that oak tree. Nothing was done! The oak tree with it’s overloaded precarious boughs remained untouched. Why had that tree not been looked after and pruned? For goodness sakes, it was a disaster waiting to happen. The entire catastrophe could have been avoided.

Instead a dark haired young woman with dancing eyes is now dead.

Three years later, Penny has written a play about her daughter. That disaster and the resulting anger gave birth to Penny’s writing talents.
“I do know that without that anger, I would never have begun to write the play. It was anger that drove me to the computer and that rage punched word after word onto my keyboard. And yet, suddenly in the midst of that raw anguish, beautiful tender pieces of poetry began to emerge. I have no idea where some of the characters in my play appeared from. They are funny, poignant, honest and compelling. And gradually the story took over. I found I was able to handle it with a gentler spirit. I believe the discovery, tears, anger, shock, awareness and love will affect the audience in different ways. I am hoping that the story will speak for itself.”

Anger is a painful, powerful and complex emotion. Not dealing with it effectively, increases its potential to be destructive. After my fall, how I longed to lash out with my fists or my tongue and deliver ‘felling’ blows. The problem was: my fists and tongue would no longer ‘work’ as they used to!!! I was given a computer and the light began to dawn. My darkness eased as, like Penny, I discovered how through writing I could expel my anger.

With the computer in front of me, I was able to ‘write’. My creativity was given free reign. My anger was the gelignite. Explosively, I wrote about the ‘me’ I had been forced to become due to my fall. The frustration of my deafness, my memory loss, my fury about my spasticity and no longer being able to use my right hand for writing. It all exploded forth onto the computer screen. Those pieces were fuelled by my rage at the way my life had changed so drastically. I had lost control of so many areas of my life. Yet I was lord of that keyboard. That was where I could shout and weep and ‘vent my spleen!’.

Like Penny, I had to turn the pain of my anger and loss into energy for change. It was from those early ‘gnashing of teeth’ that I eventually calmed myself and finally my book My Plunge to Fame was born.

Anger is a useless emotion. The only person it affects is YOU. One has to rise above the anger; to get beyond it. I did this while writing my book. It was a cathartic experience and hopefully the reader can learn something about our wonderful, tragic, amusing, devastating, beautiful and horrific human existence.

Anger has been the fuse for so many works of art – paintings, music, plays, books and poems. Through his monstrous anger at the futility of World War 1, Wilfred Owen created so much powerful poetry. There is a kind of macabre beauty to his poems that contain such a dreadful waste and horror.

Bent double, like old beggars under sacks,
Knock-kneed, coughing like hags, we cursed through sludge,
Till on the haunting flares we turned out backs,
And towards our distant rest began to trudge.
Men marched asleep. Many had lost their boots,
But limped on, blood-shod. All went lame, all blind;
Drunk with fatigue; deaf even to the hoots
Of gas-shells dropping softly behind.

Gas! GAS! Quick, boys! – An ecstasy of fumbling
Fitting the clumsy helmets just in time,
But someone still was yelling out and stumbling
And flound’ring like a man in fire or lime.-
Dim through the misty panes and thick green light,
As under a green sea, I saw him drowning.

In all my dreams before my helpless sight
He plunges at me, guttering, choking, drowning.

If in some smothering dreams, you too could pace
Behind the wagon that we flung him in,
And watch the white eyes writhing in his face,
His hanging face, like a devil’s sick of sin,
If you could hear, at every jolt, the blood
Come gargling from the froth-corrupted lungs
Obscene as cancer, bitter as the cud
Of vile, incurable sores on innocent tongues,-
My friend, you would not tell with such high zest
To children ardent for some desperate glory,
The old Lie: Dulce et decorum est
Pro patria mori.

Wilfred Owen

If you are unfortunate enough to endure some horrifying trauma, I hope that the resulting anger is constructively channelled and transformed into something beautiful. Penny discovered that in the midst of the destruction and horror that surrounded her, there was a chink of light.
Creativity beckoned.
And where there is creativity, there is always hope.

The post Scream! appeared first on 'ear 'ear! by Gaynor Young.

I was staying with my sister, Liz. Every afternoon I go for my afternoon nap. I was feeling pretty gruck that afternoon with flu and was stuffed full of paracetamol. Strangely enough I couldn’t sleep, so I was lying in bed reading. Isabel Allende’s book, Paula, had me totally captivated with it’s heart wrenching prose and story. Suddenly the door burst open. My hearing aid was out but it wasn’t difficult to lip read what my sister was saying: “Fire, Gaynor, fire!”
“Where?” I cried sitting up, instantly ready to go and saturate the fire that was obviously raging in the kitchen.
“Your pillowcase is touching the bedside light and burning! I smelled it from the kitchen.”
Sure enough, the pillowcase, previously a lovely sky blue in colour, was now quietly smouldering to a magnificent scorched brown. I hadn’t seen it because it was on my right and my 40% eyesight misses out on so much. And I hadn’t smelled a thing because of my flu!

Blip!

“Gaynor, I love the dress you’re wearing. You look great!”
I performed a rather strange dance. I did a remarkably ungraceful and un-ballerina type pirouette whilst shouting at the top of my voice: “Thank you! Where are you? I can hear you perfectly but WHERE ARE YOU?”
With my Cochlear Implants on, my hearing is now fabulous. However they don’t give me a sense of direction. A person can shout at me from their flat three stories up and I will now hear them clearly but I have got no idea where they are. To my left, to my right, under a bush, hanging from an oak tree!!! Having only 40% eyesight, I am well aware that my vision is limited. Hence the pirouette as I scan the horizon searching for that clear voice telling me how good I look!

Blip!

I have short term memory loss due to frontal lobe brain damage. As a result, I battle remembering names. Recently I was speaking to my sister on the phone and I was telling her of a wonderful lunch I had been to.
“It was at that lovely restaurant…oh, what is it called?….It begins with a B. You know, Liz, it’s in that road that begins with a C. ”
Liz was flummoxed and didn’t have the faintest clue. My mother filled her in. It was the Bayleaf restaurant situated in Cathedral street!

Blip!

The woman greeted me with a warm smile. I returned her greeting thinking to myself: Glory be, I have clean forgotten your name! I see you three times a week in gym and for the life of me, I can’t remember your name. It begins with an S, doesn’t it? Sue, Sharon, Simone, Stacey…..Oh, flip!
“I am so, so sorry, but I have forgotten your name. It’s my brain damage,” I explained. “I know it begins with an S.”
She laughed. “The next one down. It begins with a T – Trish.” I looked at her blankly. “The next one down,” she explained, “R,S and…T!”
Glory be, I was even getting the first letter wrong too!

Blip!

In gym there is this man that has the most incredibly coloured sport shoes. They are turquoise, red, purple, and green with dynamic yellow laces. His name is Gary but he is quite used to me forgetting it. He met Mum today and was amazed to discover that she was my mother. He said to Mum: “She often forgets my name so tell Gaynor that the guy with the fancy footwear says he’ll see her at gym on Monday!”
“Oh,” I said with delight when Mum told me, “that’s…that’s…Graham…no, that’s…that’s…
GARY!” I exclaimed with delight!
That was almost a Blip! but thank the Pope it wasn’t. I will see the guy with the fancy footwear at gym on Monday!

I have gone from being an Honours student, Cum Lauder, to this person battling to remember names. Prior to my fall, my thought processes would happily weave themselves along the intricate pathways of the brain. This was revealed in the way I laughed, moved, spoke, related to people. This movement through my brain enabled me to show who I was to the world. After my fall, I would happily weave my way along the normal pathways of my brain, only to find them barred with huge signs saying: NO ENTRY!
Shytenhauzen, I had to discover new pathways in my brain to enable me to do things that used to come so easily to me.

How did this make me feel?

Initially, I was ashamed and furious. I cried bitterly at this new “stupidity” that had bowled me over. “Rage, rage against the dying of the light, ” Dylan Thomas said to his father. I was angry and I raged against the death of my light. But rage and cry as I did, it made no difference. You can either hide yourself away from the world or you can try and make sense of it in this body governed by this new, strangely working brain.

I have learned that there are things in this life that one has to learn to accept. I had to accept and learn to like this new Gaynor. I thank God for my sense of humour. Laughter is the most releasing thing and it is far more freeing than tears. I am now able to look at all my Blips! with a wry chuckle. Some of them even cause me to laugh out loud!

In this life of ours, acceptance plays a large part. It is something that challenges me constantly. My friends go for lovely, long bike rides. They go for a two hour hikes in the gorgeous forests of George. I know what it is like to ride a bike. I have felt the wind in my face as I swoop down a hilly gorge. I have been so fast that tears have run from my eyes. I know what it’s like to go for an invigorating walk over veld, down rocky slopes, to push your way through trees and bushes. I am no stranger to cycling or to hiking.
Now I am not able to enter these ‘hallowed’ grounds. Just recently, those DO NOT ENTER signs have caused me to retreat with a whimper.

Sigh – acceptance!

Blip!

So, my life is made up of Blips! It is also made up of joy, frustration, excitement, boredom, peace and contentment. Robert Frost seems to sum up my life in his poem: The Road Not Taken. When I had my fall, I could have lain in that bed and declined to enter this wonderful Blip! infested life. Instead I have entered life, Blips! and all, and oh, what a delicious, ride it is proving to be.

Two roads diverged in a yellow wood,
And sorry I could not travel both
And be one traveler, long I stood
And looked down one as far as I could
To where it bent in the undergrowth;

Then took the other, as just as fair,
And having perhaps the better claim,
Because it was grassy and wanted wear;
Though as for that the passing there
Had worn them really about the same,

And both that morning equally lay
In leaves no step had trodden black.
Oh, I kept the first for another day!
Yet knowing how way leads on to way,
I doubted if I should ever come back.

I shall be telling this with a sigh
Somewhere ages and ages hence:
Two roads diverged in a wood, and I—
I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference.

The post Blips! appeared first on 'ear 'ear! by Gaynor Young.