have found a way to do something, not just for my own lonely and searching soul, but also for those around me, and especially for the ones who lost so much on this tumultuous day.
“I found, yes I found. I found, oh I found. I found, yes I found. I finally found the Lord . . . ”
Swan Sister
Yolande Elise Brener
M y elder brother, Adam, was the most constant person in my life. In our earliest years, we changed homes often, and our father left when I was three and Adam was five. But Adam was always there. I could always lean on him or hold his hand, and I loved him fiercely.
I held tight to Adam for comfort and because I longed to find out what he meant when he teased me, saying “I know something you don’t know.” Adam knew how to make people happy just by smiling and letting the world roll over him. I have always been more serious than he, even as a little girl. I wanted to do something great, to sacrifice my life for something bigger than myself—like Joan of Arc did, or like the sister in the Six Swans fairy tale, who spent six years silently sewing stinging nettle suits to turn her swan brothers back into men. In morning sermons at my Church of Englandschool I learned about Jesus and wished I could love unconditionally with such passion that I could heal the sick and raise the dead. My greatest childhood desire was to meet Jesus someday.
By the time I was sixteen I got accepted to art school and moved to London to live on my own. As Jesus had not turned up yet, I continued to follow my eighteen-year-old brother in his search for the truth, which had turned serious by this time. I accompanied Adam when he ate vegan food with Hare Krishnas and took wafers and wine with Catholics; I stopped short of following him only when he began fasting with Franciscans. Finding no religion adequate, and aided by hallucinogenic drugs, Adam concluded that he was Christ himself.
Shortly after Adam realized his divine mission, he turned up in my London flat and announced there was a global conspiracy against him. Even as he stood at my door I noticed there was something different about him. His clothes hung loosely off his bony limbs and his eyes searched above my head as if he were being hunted. “Listen to the radio,” he said. “It’s talking to us. They’re in the television too. Nothing is an accident.”
I turned the radio off while Adam looked suspiciously at my window.
“They’re in the walls,” he said. “They know where we are.”
By his shaking, nicotine-stained fingers, the small scratches on his arms and face, and his unsettled eyes, I could see that Adam was in trouble. I had never seen mental illness before and it shocked me. He was the same person on the outside but so changed inside that I was frightened for him.
As befitted the self-proclaimed Son of God, Adam took up residence at our local Church of England chapel. He curled up in the wooden apse, the stained-glass windows casting blue shadowsof saints across his face. The vicar, switch-thin and pale in his dog collar, spoke with my mother about exorcism but decided on eviction instead. Several pink-cheeked police officers removed Adam to Heatherwood, a shrubbery-bound hospital in Ascot, twenty-five miles outside of London. But soon, Adam was discharged back to my mother’s house only to begin his cycle again. Sometimes he would disappear for months at a time and then reappear with mysterious bruises and cuts. Several times he turned up in jail or in hospital, and I was always relieved when he finally came home.
Not long after one of his releases, I took the forty-minute ride to visit Adam at our mother’s house. We went for an afternoon stroll into the nearby Runnymede Forest, and by twilight we had walked deep into the woods. We didn’t talk much but occasionally stopped to look at an interesting plant or to identify what kind of animal or bird was scurrying away. We both loved nature and I savored this time together, relaxing and sharing,
“I found, yes I found. I found, oh I found. I found, yes I found. I finally found the Lord . . . ”
Swan Sister
Yolande Elise Brener
M y elder brother, Adam, was the most constant person in my life. In our earliest years, we changed homes often, and our father left when I was three and Adam was five. But Adam was always there. I could always lean on him or hold his hand, and I loved him fiercely.
I held tight to Adam for comfort and because I longed to find out what he meant when he teased me, saying “I know something you don’t know.” Adam knew how to make people happy just by smiling and letting the world roll over him. I have always been more serious than he, even as a little girl. I wanted to do something great, to sacrifice my life for something bigger than myself—like Joan of Arc did, or like the sister in the Six Swans fairy tale, who spent six years silently sewing stinging nettle suits to turn her swan brothers back into men. In morning sermons at my Church of Englandschool I learned about Jesus and wished I could love unconditionally with such passion that I could heal the sick and raise the dead. My greatest childhood desire was to meet Jesus someday.
By the time I was sixteen I got accepted to art school and moved to London to live on my own. As Jesus had not turned up yet, I continued to follow my eighteen-year-old brother in his search for the truth, which had turned serious by this time. I accompanied Adam when he ate vegan food with Hare Krishnas and took wafers and wine with Catholics; I stopped short of following him only when he began fasting with Franciscans. Finding no religion adequate, and aided by hallucinogenic drugs, Adam concluded that he was Christ himself.
Shortly after Adam realized his divine mission, he turned up in my London flat and announced there was a global conspiracy against him. Even as he stood at my door I noticed there was something different about him. His clothes hung loosely off his bony limbs and his eyes searched above my head as if he were being hunted. “Listen to the radio,” he said. “It’s talking to us. They’re in the television too. Nothing is an accident.”
I turned the radio off while Adam looked suspiciously at my window.
“They’re in the walls,” he said. “They know where we are.”
By his shaking, nicotine-stained fingers, the small scratches on his arms and face, and his unsettled eyes, I could see that Adam was in trouble. I had never seen mental illness before and it shocked me. He was the same person on the outside but so changed inside that I was frightened for him.
As befitted the self-proclaimed Son of God, Adam took up residence at our local Church of England chapel. He curled up in the wooden apse, the stained-glass windows casting blue shadowsof saints across his face. The vicar, switch-thin and pale in his dog collar, spoke with my mother about exorcism but decided on eviction instead. Several pink-cheeked police officers removed Adam to Heatherwood, a shrubbery-bound hospital in Ascot, twenty-five miles outside of London. But soon, Adam was discharged back to my mother’s house only to begin his cycle again. Sometimes he would disappear for months at a time and then reappear with mysterious bruises and cuts. Several times he turned up in jail or in hospital, and I was always relieved when he finally came home.
Not long after one of his releases, I took the forty-minute ride to visit Adam at our mother’s house. We went for an afternoon stroll into the nearby Runnymede Forest, and by twilight we had walked deep into the woods. We didn’t talk much but occasionally stopped to look at an interesting plant or to identify what kind of animal or bird was scurrying away. We both loved nature and I savored this time together, relaxing and sharing,
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