Autumn Stringam - A Promise of Hope: The Astonishing True Story of a Woman Afflicted With Bipolar Disorder and the Miraculous Treatment That Cured Her

W hen I look back now, through little-girl eyes, I see my mother moving in slow motion. At times my view is misty, like the view through a steamy window or a fine rain. She is young and tanned and heavenly. The breeze at her back pushes her thick dark ponytail to her cheeks in shiny, smooth wisps and waves. Her slim legs, full breasts, and rounded tummy speak of motherhood and Gods gracethe kind of beauty you find only in a woman about to give life to another soul. Her face is flawless and radiant. Her wide eyes are separated by a low flat bridge, a small noseDad calls it a button nose. Her lips are soft; everything about her is soft.

Like the points of light that dance on her skin, light filters through the caragana bushes and fertile cottonwood trees that surround the garden. These branches, dressed in a playful throw of fresh green dewy leaves, filter the everyday from life, affording her the privacy and serenity that she loves to wrap around our home on the old acreage in southern Alberta.

Its Picture Butte, but Mom says it as Pitcher Beaut. I wonder why the place we live is named after a jug. And whats a beaut? I decide beaut is short for beauty, which is what this place is to me. And in my little-girl dreams, Mom is the centre of everything beautiful. I would do anything to stay near her side, near enough to touch any time I want to. She is the most beautiful thing in my life.

I sit on the edge of the garden, hunch-backed and cross-legged. My corduroy-covered bum is damp and cool in the grass, and my bare toes dig into the sponge of tossed soil. I am watching her as the sunlight plays over her body in flickers and flutters, highlighting her shoulders and knees, glinting off her hair and the round of her back when she stoops to bless the plants with her touch. Her mysterious hazel eyes shimmer in the shade of her face as she turns to speak.

Now you be my little helper and pull out all the weeds.

Yeah! I hop up from my perch and tiptoe across the rows of fresh baby plants to rest at her side. I crouch, she kneels, and I watch as she shows me which small green living things to tear up by their roots. I am happy to be her helper. I know it makes her smile when I am doing something right. And her smile is a reward worth any price in my world. I work near her for a few moments, eager to do it right, like her. Mom leaves me to my job and wanders off down the row to tend to some other vegetable.

I crawl through the warm black soil to reach her and hold up my prize weeds. Like this, Mom?

Autumn Dawn, those are pea plants, not weeds. She only calls me Autumn Dawn when I am in troubleany other time, I am Dawnyyet her voice is still soft on the edges, and I like the sound of my full name on her lips.

She takes me by my empty hand and leads me back to the end of the row. I kneel next to her and watch her try to repair the damage. One by one she takes each plant from my fist, and with the hands of an artist, she tucks each broken stem and torn root back into the earth. Her fingers are long, a fine olive colour. The soft dirt is pressed under the bitten-down nails at the end of each fingertip as she gives the peas a second chance at life and us a second chance at a sweet fall salad.

I remember the first time I learned the merits of nail-biting.

I have to bite them, she said to my daddy. Clippers leave them too sharp, and I might hurt my little babies with them. Biting her nails was a habit she would not break. For the sake of the children, Tony, for heavens sake, the children. Blessed by heaven, the right thing to do. So I bit mine, too.

She was excusing a habit, but who could argue with her? Not Dad. She had a knowing glint, a silent laugh in her eyes, a flirtation, a mystery, a part of her that left me and him wanting more, wanting to be closer to her, wanting to give in to her, even when she didnt make sense. Dad knew better than to argue most times. Sometimes, when he did argue, it was just to let her win, just to watch her in victory. When Mom was winning, she was glorious.

I was born several weeks early because of the glory of Moms winning, so the family story goes. She and Dad spent a rainy day playing cards in their tiny apartment. Mom kept winning. She was cheating, refusing to give up a card when it was called for. Game after game, Dad acted bewildered by her sudden luck in Go Fish. When she was finally caught, she laughed so hard that her water broke. Her memory of a card-playing triumph and a baffled and frustrated husband kept her giggling aloud for years afterward as she told the story I never got tired of hearing.

Once each of the pea plants is restored to its place in the ground, she relaxes. Okay, so Dawny, she says with a breathtaking smile, white and smooth, how about you and Angie go into the potato patch and work on your worm collections. I skip off to join Angie in the potatoes, with a glass Mason jar in one hand and a plastic sand shovel in the other. Weeds might look like peas and peas like weeds but worms are worms, and I know my worms.

Moms baby belly stretched beyond her narrow hips, getting in the way of everyday things. It knocked against door frames and the backs of chairs, sopped water from the countertop at the kitchen sink, blocked our view when she stood near the television. It served as a plate rest for her and an oversized pillow for tired girls heads. Especially for Sunnis.

Fluffy blonde Sunni truly was sunny as a two-year-old, but also quiet, thoughtful, and stubborn. She was the youngest of the three of us who loved to sit on the end of Moms lap, each in turn gripping her belly as if we were starfish, holding on tight and pressing our faces into the top of it. The living thing inside would kick and thrash, making me shriek when the knots in her belly knocked against my hands.

One morning we came down the stairs to find a lady from church in our kitchen.

Wheres my mom? Angie was the bold one among us.

She went to hospital to have the baby, the lady said.

We danced and tore through the house, whooping and yelping. Another baby, another playmate, another sister. But no. When Mom came back there was no sister, just a tightly wrapped wiggly bundle. Fat and red with tufts of dark hair that would soon turn to the lightest blond, a stubby creature packed with endless energy, tight fists, and a bright toothless round grin. And a boy at that, our first brother.

Babies arent supposed to smile this early, Tony. Mom held her bundle snugly against her soft, flabby tummy.

Well, thats my boy, said Dad. Dad, so young and fresh-faced, twenty-four years old. Married at eighteen and already a father to three daughters and a son.

Daniel was a lightning bolt, a supercharged battery mascot, packed full of mischief and masculinityhe was all-day entertainment on an acreage once dominated by girls.

The bathwater is fuzzy with bubblespink and blue oil slicks and tiny rainbows on fragile globes that dance on the water, foaming around the edges of our bent-up knees and arched backs and beach-ball bellies. With Angie behind me and Sunni nested in front, there is barely room in the tub for baby Daniel. He is always placed at the front of our bubble train, where Mom can reach him easily in case he slips on his soft bum and disappears beneath the foam. When the next baby is born, we will have to split the bathers into two groups. Four in a tub is already one too many.