 |
Shape of Things to Come
Part 1:In the Fullness of Time Chapter 6
Justice with favour have I always done;
..........(Henry VI Part II William Shakespeare ) |
On the Friday following her sister’s Piper’s musings, Phoebe Halliwell Turner drove home from the university where she did some part time work lecturing to graduate students, her mood perplexed. There was a time in her, getting more distant, youth when she would not have been perplexed. She would have been angry, furious in fact. Now, older, and more mature she was just regretful that in the space of maybe half an hour her feelings of security and confidence had been totally destroyed. Both her sense of security and confidence had been hard won over the years and she swallowed down a bitter taste of having lost something of great value to her.
Since Phoebe had become something of a legend to the magic community in the Burvjarian war, her life had been both satisfactory and as she woefully said to Piper who rolled her eyes, learning about growing old and growing up, through hard experience. She was happy in her marriage, happy as a mother and aunt and mostly happy as a witch. Phoebe’s general happiness did not mean however that her life had been without its own problems. She still loved magic but she had found that the role assigned to her by other witches since the Burvjarian war, that of heroic witch Phoebe, left her uncomfortably shrinking away from interaction with many of them.
She did her duty as a Charmed One but found herself hiding behind her sisters when they met new magic creatures. She still treasured her friendship with the guardian’s whitelighter Francesca but she hid from any contact with other whitelighters except the girls own guide, Mark, because she felt judged that she did not meet the expectations of a legend. She truly hated any face-to-face contact with upper-level demons, shrinking away if they hissed the word’s Belthezor’s witch because she knew they were sprouting legends and myths that had very little to do with her own perspectives of herself. In truth only her family knew how fragile she really was.
Phoebe, had come to terms with herself. Unlike Piper she was not given to musing about how she looked in mirrors. After all the ex-demon of the century loved her and had walked away from evil, to commence a hard and dangerous journey as a guardian of the realms, just to be with her. He had never lost his passion for her so she had confidence in her attractions.
She presented to the world, and more importantly to herself, a portrait of a confident woman, her hair still long and straight, still changing colour and style depending on her moods. She would never be described as waif like but that was okay because the fashion was for fit shaped women, and she was that.
Unlike her sister Piper she did not spend her time worrying about the children. She just enjoyed them, took credit for their achievements, and comforted them in their woes. She was supportive and non-judgmental about their problems and failures, but did not dwell on them, because lord knows Phoebe had failed many times herself. Her refusal to acknowledge that her family’s individuality could be a problem for the rest of the world, made all four Halliwell children still too young to understand her hard won acceptance of who she was, dread her having any contact with teachers and other adults that had some dominion over them.
Phoebe simply refused to take any concerns about the children’s progress seriously so as they passed the early years “of mom (Aunt Phoebe) is perfect” and realised that she was not, the younger members of the family were inclined to be embarrassed about her when they observed how other adults reacted to Phoebe being Phoebe.
She was the parent who jumped up for games at parent/child events, sang and danced loudly in public and laughed out loud while other parents stood around quietly. Melinda loved her but at fifteen, she positively shuddered when Phoebe met her friends and began telling not always suitable stories, or when Phoebe stated her very clear opinions on the world at large or blurted out what the family knew were truths but made other people very uncomfortable. Phoebe knew that sometimes the younger family members were embarrassed by her determination to be true to Phoebe but felt to try and be someone else was something she could not do. They would accept her for who she was as they matured, she hoped as they grew older they would accept there were some things she had done that she remembered without any true pleasure.
Memories of some of her actions when she and Cole first fell in love, left her shuddering with regret. She still had trouble coming to terms with her sister’ Prue’s death. She felt it would always haunt her. She dearly loved her daughter Amanda but her birth was a memory she really wished she did not have because it reminded her that she could be both mortally vulnerable and incredibly stupid.
Phoebe had faced death regularly since the day she found the Book of Shadows and became an active witch but all those times had not prepared her for the horror of Mandy’s birth. When she was eight months pregnant with Mandy, and feeling a little like superwitch after the heroics of Buvjara, Phoebe had chosen to ignore both her sisters and her husband’s concerns about being an active witch despite how pregnant she was. Medical practitioners had insisted that because she had had a caesarian birth with Patsy, she would not have a natural birth the second time either. She had resisted considering this, until her sisters and husband had not very tactfully, forced her to face reality, when she was nearly eight months pregnant. Being Phoebe, she then embraced the idea planning a date and preparing to continue working at her newspaper column and care for Patsy and the new baby.
Then Charmed Ones had received a call to visit the realm of the Cornucopia where many of the magic animals of myth and legend roamed, those creatures were generally protected by an atmosphere that blocked any magic creature outside the realm recognizing the magic that existed there. Paige was supposed to orb the sisters into the realm just to say a Power of Three spell to vanquish a demon who had discovered how to circumvent the blocks and was trying to entrap the magic creatures. Her sisters and Mark their whitelighter were concerned about her going but Phoebe had been very scornful, insisting she was pregnant not ill, and even eight-month pregnant women could recite a short rhyme.
However, the whole thing had gone horribly wrong. After a nasty fight, where Phoebe levitated and jumped off high rocks to dispatch several of the demon’s minions, Paige had been abducted and removed to one of its lairs, leaving Phoebe and Piper trapped in a part Cornucopia outside whitelighter senses.
Phoebe had then gone into premature labour, in a magic realm with no means of getting medical help. Before the whitelighter Mark eventually found them, somehow Mandy was delivered by an inexpert and terrified Piper but Phoebe, weak and hurting retained the afterbirth and she had a dire infection.
Mark orbed Phoebe and the baby straight to hospital, and then took Piper to rescue Paige, leaving a weak and very ill Phoebe to try and explain to medics who did not understand the magic world why she had not been able to get medical help. She was very ill, whilst premature Amanda also had some issues, making it touch and go for mother and child for a time.
She took a long time to recover, all the while terrified to leave Mandy. As she languished at home resting after Mandy’s birth, it became clear to her, especially when Piper in quite a brutal way insisted, that she could not be mother to two children, a witch and maintain her newspaper column. Phoebe had known that the column’s days were numbered because the newspaper business was changing and mostly columns such as hers were being replaced by internet influencers. Her husband Cole, dealing with a very unwell wife, two children including a sickly baby, his expanding business and maintaining the balance between good and evil bluntly told her she was a witch not a superhero and to quit. She thought about starting up as an Internet influencer using her reputation as Ask Phoebe but her lawyer husband said words to the effect of no way in hell, considering the real risks of unhappy people suing her, and she would not have the legal protections that a newspaper provided, and Piper and Leo agreed, strongly.
Giving up on her work was both easy and hard. Because she had placed so much of herself into Ask Phoebe, it was hard not being that person but her public persona was also having vast implications for her witch life after her heroics in Burvjara. In some ways staying home, being a mother helped her deal with those implications, or more particularly as Piper said, hide from them.
Amanda’s birth had led to another trauma for Phoebe. The medical opinion was very strong that she should not have another child. Another one was dangerous for her and the baby. Not to say anything about the dangers for magic, Paige told her with a sigh.
Phoebe badly wanted another baby but this time Cole was adamant. She told him that glimpses of the future suggested she did not die having another child. Cole reluctantly but desperately consulted the demon guardian Therold who collected the prophecies of the future, the records of what was already written in the magic world. Therold worshiped Phoebe but fortunately was inclined to see her as delicate flower who could not always make responsible or wise decisions. He ummed and fussed and told Cole, implying it was Cole’s fault Phoebe had unrealistic dreams, the written future was most likely because the Phoebe in the visions had listened to common sense and peevishly insisted convincing her was Cole’s responsibility. When, swallowing his anger at Therold’s prissy insistence, Cole did this Phoebe angrily informed him that a future Phoebe had talked about girls-plural. Cole in his best dry voice suggested that other interpretations were an option. Somehow or other, after a long and wearying battle with Phoebe, she finally accepted that there would be no more babies.
Not that she connected those thoughts at the time but the night she reluctantly and painfully agreed to no more children was the very night that a frightened and distraught Leslie Simpson landed on the Halliwell doorstep. As a consequence, there were girls aplenty as over time the Halliwell adopted to varying levels all five children of Leslie’s mother, the lost witch Jade Simpson.
Whilst she was confined to rest for a very long period after Mandy’s birth, perhaps as a result of her deep unhappiness at losing a dream of a large family that had always seemed such a part of her soul, Phoebe began writing the book she had always planned and never had time as Ask Phoebe. Maybe she started to write the words to explain her confusion, trying to understand the fear and the intense soul deep loss she felt even though she had two wonderful children.
Or maybe she had needed to find words to explain how John Simpson in his pain from her death, could abandon his beloved wife’s children. Or maybe she needed to understand how much Cole loved her and supported her through her long, long recovery. Or maybe she needed to find other words that could clarify the pain of the Simpson girls' witch heritage as they mourned their mother, and lost to all intents and purposes their father. Or maybe it was to appreciate the choices her sister Paige made to follow her witch heritage whilst being in a forbidden relationship with the whitelighter Mark. Or maybe she needed to account for Piper’s dream of normal, when her world could never be that.
Though Phoebe would not admit it, the book was influenced by her own magic calling as she acknowledged the consequences of premonition and truth-telling. Maybe it was recognising the foundation of her power even when she claimed not to, except hidden deeply in her soul she was frightened that she did. Certainly, she daily witnessed the fear of it when others heard her truth-telling. At one stage she wanted to dedicate the book to her sisters and title it ‘Shut up Phoebe’.
She wrote her book during her long bedrest, followed by long nights waiting for her sisters to return from magic excursions that were forbidden to her, so Leslie helped them and in the long nights, when Cole was not home and she could not sleep. She wrote not exactly a novel and not exactly a psychology guide and not exactly a philosophical analysis of life. Published nearly 18 months later, the book resurrected her fame and certainly contributed to some family wealth. It became something of a feminist bible, a book that critics described as shining a light on the female experience, except that it was not just about female experience. Deep inside, she felt guilty about its success, because she knew it was written from insecurity and lack of confidence.
The book’s success inspired Phoebe to continue writing. However, the second book, although very successful left Phoebe mortified by some quite brutal critiques that questioned the validity of her qualifications to write what she did when she only had a run of the mill bachelor’s degree in psychology as one critic called her qualifications.
When Mandy went to school, after much soul-searching, Phoebe returned to college to undertake her doctorate, researching her journey into the female experience which was really about researching her journey as a witch, although she never used the word. Phoebe felt she vanquished the critics when she received her doctorate and then converted it into another bestselling book.
The self-belief she gained from her writing, the proof that she did have some wisdom, enabled Phoebe to spend her time between guest-lecturing in academia and at conferences, as well as continue writing, both of which she loved. She did not love the round of publicity she had to do for her books but she had to admit that being able to be home with the children, work as a witch and satisfy her inner need to self-explain, left her in a very secure place.
“Why did you go to college and get your Ph.D?” a witch once asked Phoebe.
Phoebe smiled superiorly “I got tired of critics suggesting my books were not based on true understanding or learning. I got annoyed that they said I wasn’t wise or even smart enough write what I write and they implied I never could be.”
“What did you find out when you did your Ph.D?” the witch asked.
Phoebe smiled ruefully. “I discovered that I was not very wise,” she admitted “and even if I was smart enough do a PH.D, I needed to understand more, to learn more before I could be wise. I still do” she added.
Nevertheless, until now Phoebe believed she had words of some wisdom for her post-graduate students. However, as she drove home after the disaster of today, through her tears Phoebe, because she really was older and wiser could admit to herself that the truth was she had never been really safe in her work, which meant her confidence was misplaced, because if she had been, today would not have happened.
Because of the book sales, Phoebe did not have to work full-time but her employment as a special lecturer was very satisfying whilst, as she acknowledged, the work bolstered her ego. Because she had a certain level of fame from her publications, generally students recorded that they were privileged to hear her talk and she often had feedback about how her discussions and ability to engage with them never left students feeling disappointed. Something Phoebe, a little smugly, knew happened to other colleagues who were unable to live up to their reputations and writings when intermingling with real people.
Today’s discussion was one which she had undertaken several times in the last few years and it had seemed to go well. Her intent was to offer graduate students studying psychology an insight into dealing with complex and controversial topics, particularly when clients and patients held very diverse and sometime confronting opinions.
Her session with the students had commenced with stressing the importance of academic integrity, such as citing sources and providing evidence for conclusions and statements so others could follow and disagree with, or support what they said. Then, the discussion had drifted toward recognition of truth and whether one person’s truth was as valid as another’s. The discussion, as Phoebe well knew it would, did verge onto racism and religion and sexism.
These days however Phoebe being older and wiser, knew that she was living in times where people were intolerant or easily triggered by controversial and diverse opinions. Therefore, she was very careful not to let the conversation or her responses even remotely drift toward subjective views. She discussed how the meanings of words changed over time. She suggested to the students that some of the books and films that had most influenced the changing of ideas, used words that were nowadays totally unacceptable. She carefully asked the students to consider whether ideas and words should be contextualised against the times they were recorded. The students took her ideas on board but as she hoped began expressing their own views. Some argued that right and wrong on some subjects was absolute and not a matter of changing times. Some argued about culture and its influence on controversial ideas, some argued that complex ideas could not be expressed in a few words.
At the end of the discussion, Phoebe felt that that she had once again been successful in exposing ideas and supporting her students to engage in some very important critical thinking on the subject. She thought that she had sent the students off to consider and ponder its complexity. She even discussed the session with her colleagues who had rather flattered her that she was very good at engaging students without causing offence and conflict.
Therefore, not two hours after the session finished, Phoebe was a very surprised woman when she was called into the department head’s office to be confronted by the department head, two senior colleagues and a woman from Human Resources. The woman who was small and in Phoebe’s stressed-out view weasily-faced had a rather peculiar, almost inhuman lack of empathy. In a disconnected manner, the HR woman told Phoebe in no uncertain terms that she had caused unmitigated offence to several students as well as triggering some quite fearful responses. Phoebe was told that universities were no place for offensive, out-of-date and totally unjustified opinions, and that the argument that students needed to learn to discern and deal with controversial and difficult views did not justify the offence she had caused. Phoebe was told clearly that this would be her only warning and she must offer a profuse and heartfelt apology both to her students and other staff who had heard about what happened in the lecture. She was also told should another complaint occur, she would be terminated.
 |
  |