TRYING TO LIVE THE SYMBOLIC LIFE

or, The Hag and the Bully at 4 Wood Road¹

PATRICIA C. FLEMING²

 

The innocent plea, “Please help me with the bed, dear,” has been flame to tinder at 4 Wood Road for longer than I care to remember. It is the immediate signal for feathers to fly, fur to get ruffled, and tears to flow! The day which began tranquilly enough watching the sun come up over the Delaware River, is torn asunder, and the smell of fire and brimstone begins to issue from the bedroom closet! In fact our small version of an intimate Heaven becomes a mini Hades in the twinkling of an eye.

We have “handled” this small domestic “ugly” in a variety of ways through the years. The first “solution” (when we were young, totally unconscious and dedicated to the conventional division of labor between the sexes) was for the male member of the family to read the morning paper in the living room. He tapped his foot impatiently while the female threw linens around in a manic frenzy, emerging pale and worn.

A second, mid-life “solution” was not much more successful: we tried not making the bed at all, but this bred cold anger on both sides of the electric blanket. A third “solution,” arrived at in our “golden years, ” must have seemed simple and obvious to the uninitiated: we made the bed together!

Simple? Holy Kusnacht! There’s nothing simple when two complex-ridden mortals attack two sheets, three pillows, and an electric blanket with two controls. The early morning scenario went like this:

He (convinced that the whole demeaning chore is a gratuitous imposition, gritting his teeth and muttering): “I can give you exactly two minutes for this ridiculous ritual!”

She (defensive, hurt): “Why can’t you ever help me? You never seem to think of me! I guess you really don’t love me, do you?…”

As we try to move together temperature builds, tension mounts. We pull, we heave, we yank. With a snarl in her voice the hag hisses, “Careful there, you idiot, you’ve forgotten to fold!” That’s when the stuff really hits the fan! Dear reader, I draw the veil.

But now we have Polly Young-Eisendrath’s clue to our morning paranoia. She writes: “Embracing the repressed feminine is the process of revaluing the ordinary tasks of life.…When men and women unconsciously devalue these ordinary activities (i.e., bed-making) they tend to fall into identifications with complexes that interfere with personal relationships.”³

Interfere with? Holy Bollingen! In our case the relationship has been cut off! Torn apart! Destroyed! We may not speak again till noon when we are compelled to share a sandwich in the lunch room.

But now, at last, we have a clue, a gleam of hope, a new “solution. ” The female member of the team can call out sweetly with some hope for understanding from the male: “Are you ready to embrace the repressed feminine, darling?”

Grrrr.…!

But at 4 Wood Road we are committed to GROWTH! And we try to live the Symbolic Life! Having seen the Light and heard the Word, which one of us dares to stand in the way of this service to the Goddess! Heads bent and breathing hard, we silently make the bed together contemplating our new truth.

Does anyone dare to smile?

 

NOTES

1. Reprinted from Round Table Newsletter, February 1984, p. 5.

2. Patricia C. Fleming and her husband (Mac) make beds and chair Round Table Associates, a Philadelphia area Jung group. Other furniture meriting her attention is at Winterthur, where she serves as a museum guide.

3. Young-Eisendrath, Polly, Round Table Lecture, November, 1983.