Round the bend

I am learning to lean into the curves. This does not come naturally to me at all, as I usually strive for balance, which often means leaning the other way.  I am specifically talking about  being a passenger on Verdi, the Vespa.  When rounding a corner,  I have learnt to follow Andrew's lead, and relax into the direction of the bend, instead of my instinctive first thought to lean the other way.  Which is dangerous, of course.  I enjoy - no, love!- this new-to-us mode of transport.  Andrew has been telling me forever about his dream of getting a scooter for us to tottle around on in our advanced age, and finally after lock down, I made him an offer he couldn't refuse.  We had the Vespa within a week. 

As always, there have been some funny tales to tell along the way.  Standing in the traffic department queue to book a learner's licence test, the kind security officer offered to escort me to the front of the line in honour of my age.  (Sigh.  I am really  NOT THAT OLD).  I declined, but when I finally reached the desk and told the clerk why I was there, he told me that people older than 65 are not allowed to book learner's licences. (You are, btw, with a certificate of good health.  And I am NOT THAT OLD.)  It was a relief to pass the test, and not have to go through that ordeal again.  I have yet to get my motorcycle driver's licence though, which is why I am the passenger.....

One of the things I enjoy about Vesparating, is the immediacy of the senses.  For example, I could smell the horses when we rode through rural Constantia.  I can feel the wind over Ou Kaapse Weg.  Hearing kids laughter on the beach front at Kalk Bay. I think the helmet and leather jacket create an alter ego for me, and that makes me smile too.

I am learning to lean into the metaphorical curves too.  Sometimes it is counterproductive (even dangerous) to always try to balance things by leaning outwards.  Sometimes it is better to go round the corner without resisting, to relax into the issue instead of fighting it.  (Not always, of course)  And it helps to be travelling with someone I can hold onto and trust to navigate safely.  And, always to put safety first so that when we fall off the metaphorical bike, our heads and hands are protected with helmets and gloves of common sense and practical work. It has been an interesting lesson for me to learn.

Last weekend we went for a trip around the Atlantic Seaboard.  This is near Llandudno

 

There are other curves I am learning to live with too, the ones that come with eating too many slices of chocolate cake, or scones in this case :)

Tea at the Twelve Apostles Hotel

 

 

 

 

 

Verdi theVespa is green (rather obviously.)  A classical motor racing green, which was part of Andrew's vision.  We are safe, middle of the road riders and the fuel consumption is very low.  I am just telling you this in case any of you have an unfulfilled dream that needs to be re examined.  Sometimes we just need to Carpe Diem. Even if others think we are round the bend.

 

 

Picture Perfect

 Since we know each each a bit better now - you have seen the contents of my pantry, and had a look at other bits and pieces in the dining room - I thought I would invite you into the bedroom. I have thought long and hard about this, as some things are Pretty Personal, and this is, obviously, one of those spaces.  But here we go:  This is the painting that hangs on my bedroom wall:

I love everything about this water colour:  the tumbling water, the moody sky, the feeling of remoteness and tranquility of the countryside mixed with the chimneyed warmth of home. And a few stray sheep to add a sense of the space being inhabited.  We found this painting in the early 1990s, wandering around Art in the Avenue in central Cape Town. ( A space where artists would set up their work out in the open in the tree lined avenue next to the Company gardens, near St Georges Cathedral.  A wonderful wander on a Sunday afternoon, with squirrels to feed, and surrounded by heritage.) The art -and the artist- spoke to us and told us to buy it and enjoy it forever.  We listened, and over 30 years later, it still brings me an enormous sense of peace.

Fast track to 2004, about 10 years after our Sunday meander.  Something unbelievable happened.

We were purposefully lost, driving  an unplanned route somewhere in Yorkshire. The four of us were in the UK, travelling in a hired car off the beaten track because we were in no hurry, and wanted to absorb as much of the beautiful countryside as we could.  On reflection, kudos to our kids, who were 10 and 1 years old at the time, and quite happy to go on gentle adventures with us without traumas and tantrums. They were the easiest of travel companions. Anyway.   The road was narrow and winding, connecting hills with dales and only a squiggly thin line on the big paper map.  Not a major route or tourist path. Andrew slowed down, and then reversed the car a little, and we sat and stared, mouths open, in a mixture of wonder and disbelief.  This is what we saw:

I don't understand how that could be.  How had we managed to find the same river and the same house out of the millions and millions of possible places to travel?  It felt as though we had stepped through the picture frame in our home in Cape Town to a surreal reality.

It is hard for me to describe how much this experience means to me, or why. I just know that I felt a cosmic connection, a sort of bridge between imagination and reality, space and time, brush strokes and bricks and mortar.  It remains a deeply personal part of my life, a part that does not have to be understood, just enjoyed.

Art plays a role in the shared consciousness of us all.  It is a language that crosses continents and cultures, an expression of our interpretation of the world we live in and the lives we lead.  Every morning, I awake to see that the real and imaginary worlds have collided and it is possible to inhabit both simultaneously.   That is the gift of this painting that hangs on my bedroom wall.

 

 

 

The Great Easter Hunt

 When our two were little, Easter Sunday started with a treasure hunt : sometimes marshmallow eggs led them to a chocolate bunny,  or when they were a bit older, we drew maps or wrote cryptic clues. And when when one of them was diagnosed with type1 diabetes, the Easter bunny cannily switched to sugar free treats for a while. The process of finding was, I think, more enjoyable to them than the actual eating. As is often the case in life.

 I have studied the art of "finding things out".  The course module wasn't exactly labelled that, but part of my training to be a librarian, back in the dark days before online searches, was to learn how to ask the right questions, and find appropriate content of information to answer the queries from all types of people asking all sorts of questions.  Matching the right book to the right reader is a satisfying art and a skill worth having. ( I worked mainly as a reference librarian in the central branch of City Libraries). Some borrowers are more memorable than others, of course.  One particularly obnoxious woman begged me to get permission for her to borrow a reference book, which normally was not allowed out of the library.  She promised to bring it back the next day, and assured me, that as a minister's wife, she was particularly trustworthy.  Obviously, after I got permission from the head librarian, she disappeared with the precious book, and it took me weeks of phoning her and asking, pleading, reminding her, before she returned it without an apology. 

Librarians get twitchy about missing books, so I can only imagine the horror experienced by the staff at Cambridge University library in January 2001. The irreplaceable Charles Darwin  notebooks were nowhere to be found. These books dated from 1837 and contained Darwin's drawings and ideas about evolution by natural selection. It was an enormous loss to our civilization records. Twenty years is a long time for something to be missing, and hope of ever getting the books back must have been dwindling. It's is hard to keep believing that the books even still exist, let alone will be returned.

So the pink gift bag on the floor outside the Head Librarian's office a couple of weeks ago must have been an unexpected mystery. The message attached wished the librarian a Happy Easter ( maybe a nod to the concept of resurrection of the dead, and redemption through faith!)  The notebooks were returned in excellent condition, in the same blue box they had been stored in.  A good news story indeed.

While on the topic of Cambridge libraries, one of the privileged moments in my life was a visit to the Wren Library, Trinity. It is a restricted access place, so I could savor the books and manuscripts without crowds and noise.  Imagine gazing at an 8th century copy of St Paul's letters to the Galatians and Ephesians.  The  calligraphy and illustrations were breathtaking.

  A few meters away were Isaac Newton's handwritten notes.  A step to the right and Milne's original Winnie the Pooh manuscript and some unused illustrations by Shepard.  Some Shakespeare.  Some Milton.  Ramanujan's so called "lost notebook" (The Man who knew Infinity is a wonderful movie about this remarkable man - well worth seeking out and watching.) Such a collection of creativity and brilliance.  Just being in the presence of these great works enriched my life enormously.

So Easter can be a time of finding lost or new treasures.  Some treasure hunts are looking for happiness, some are looking for steps to lead us on to new beginning.  Sometimes we are just looking for chocolate.  

 

Creating safe spaces

 We all need a place of refuge.  That space that allows us to drop all defences, all other people's expectations of us, all their judgements and Just Be.  If you have crawled high up Maslow's Need hierachy*, that space is probably internal, and thus accompanies you wherever you go.  Some of us haven't got that far in the self actualisation pyramid yet:  I am one of those who needs physical places to retreat to while the world is at war.

Parenting is (or should be) the process of creating that safe environment for a child to test boundaries, explore, fall, jump, fail, learn and get up and dust themselves off.  Home should be a safety net for freedom. (This is what I hope Andrew and I have at least partially achieved these past three decades.)

But I am sorry to tell you that I created an unsafe environment for one of our baby tortoises at the end of last year.  I meant well.  I wanted the two littlies to have a larger garden to explore with more rocks and plants to discover : a bigger playpen.  So I bricked off a substantially larger space than they were used to.  And then we went away for four days.  Nano must have decided to explore the rocks, and he, I assume, got stuck on the top of a ridge in the sweltering heat.  I found his paper thin shell - that was all that was left- on a Friday evening.  Poor Nano.  I had failed him through incompetence and ignorance and being blase.  Kind people have consoled me that this is nature - everything and everyone dies - and in the wild many baby tortoises don't make it to adulthood.  But I feel guilty, and sad, and the heaviness can drag me down. Pico - the remaining baby tortoise - now lives in a crate:  a safe, contained environment.  But it must be boring, so everyday, I walk the tortoise, so she can eat the fynbos, and build leg muscles. I watch her carefully, mindful of the fragility of life.

Globally, safe spaces are becoming harder and harder to find.  There are so many people who have been displaced by the greed and atrocities of a few. We watch with horror as people are killed, houses are bombed, threats of escalation of hostilities echo around the media.  And yet this never ends.  There has never been a time in history without conflict.  

Leadership is (or should be) the process of creating that safe environment for citizens to thrive socially, economically, and personally. World leaders are doing a dismal job.  Which leaves it up to you and me to create peace, internally and externally.  This is not an easy task in these volatile times, but it is a brave choice we can make.  Peace (and a safe environment) requires hard work, careful thought, tolerance, patience and the strength of self to be able to admit we all fail, all make mistakes, all have things that we need to apologise for. 

I was mulling over safe spaces yesterday and landed right back in my childhood home, in a cupboard I used to crawl into when I wanted to retreat from the world or have a bit of peace and quiet. 

I was never lonely in there though, because it was crowded with a kitten, a wolf, a frog, a young girl, an old man and various other friends.  I collected Pelham** puppets. 

It was a wonderful obsession.  I still have all of them, and when our kids were little, we hung them on our dining room wall for fun. 

 

  I have since found more spacious, brighter places with real people ( and no strings attached) to go to when I need a break from expectations, judgements and the craziness of the world.  I get grumpy and lose perspective without these islands of centering. 

Imagine if everyone in the world felt safe.  I imagine there would be far less conflict.

 

 

* Google, of course, can offer introductions if you haven't met Maslow yet.  A simplified version  of the theory can be found at https://www.thoughtco.com/maslows-hierarchy-of-needs-4582571

 

** Pelham puppets were first manufactured by Bob Pelham in 1947.  Every puppet is handmade and hand painted so each has an unique appearance.  The clothing was also cut by hand.  They are true pieces of art. (imho)

 

 

Beloved Nano - RIP

Happy New Year?

This year, for many people, Happy New Year was more of a hesitant question than the bold exuberant greeting.  For the buoyantly optimistic, it is the start of what has to be better times, but for many jaded people it is a whispered sigh of disbelief.  There is just too much sadness, confusion and tiredness going round to believe that this will, indeed, be a happier new start to the previous years.    

In decades past, Andrew's parents were part of the street party generation.  On old year's eve, the neighbourhood would gather with their filled tupperwares and bottles of wine and party the night away.  At midnight, they cranked up an old siren and welcomed the new year in loudly and enthusiastically.  My family of origin were often in Sedgefield and as there was no electricity (or water - we pumped our water supply by hand from ground water....), it was a quieter affair. I liked that we rolled with the rhythm of nature - sunrise and sunset being our clocks.  (The Fiddler on the Roof song comes to mind.....one year following another..........)

The turn of the century was probably one of my most memorable New Year's Eves.  We (Andrew, R and me - K was an unborn treasure at that point) went to Milnerton beach, and watched the fireworks across the bay.  Do you remember the underground panic that was doing the rounds at that time? The Y2K phenomenon was seen as a Clear and Present danger. The threat was all/most/some technology would stop working because of the date change. (Here's a wiki link for you Young People who haven't heard of this: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Year_2000_problem ) January 1 2000 came and went and the Y2K worry faded into obscurity.  The scientists handled the problem, and the conspiracy theorists found themselves without a cause. If only 1 January 2022 could have been as unremarkable...

This year, we were roadtripping over New Year.  Andrew's sense of adventure (and direction) leads us on some offbeat paths.  We were cruising the dust roads in the mountains behind Barrydale when we came across 2 farm gates stacked one on top of the other.  Tall cattle we assumed.  Or giraffes, we laughed.  But no....rather unbelievably, we saw elephants. We had stumbled across a private nature reserve (in case you are thinking elephants roam the streets in South Africa....).  What a treat to observe these magnificent creatures. It felt like a gift.  Barrydale was lovely too, and we saw the new year in after playing board games with friends, clinking our sparkling wine just after 11.30 (I decided we had waited long enough!) 

But I am ever mindful of the time of loss we are in.  I think one of the greatest losses is our ability to have the confidence to be happy and care free.  We are all too aware how everything can be snatched away in the blink of an eye.  Life is fragile. 

Happy New Year?  Let's wait and see.

Magnificent animal

 

View from the stoep in Barrydale

The bougainvillea in a pot

 It's over! As of a couple of hours ago, school days are a thing of the past for this family.  It feels like a major achievement to have weathered the school leaving exams in a pandemic with a child who has type 1 diabetes. (If you are wondering why that makes a difference, there is a whole blog about my experiences mothering diabetes: time4t1.blogspot.com).  Freedom beckons!  The future is a gold-paved path stretching out in front of Daughter!  Celebrations and relaxation are the order of the day!

Except, that is not really true.....

Celebrations are muted.  The future is a little uncertain.  Freedom wears a mask these days.  Covid round 4 for us in South Africa. (Please do not get me started on the UK's response to SA identifying the Omicron variant - my anger will ruin your day.) We  South Africans are resilient people, but we are also tired.

I find nature restores my soul, or at least stops me from wanting to kick a proverbial cat.  So the bougainvillea in the pot in the corner of my garden was an excellent focus point when stress levels were rising last week.  The burst of colour was just so lovely.  But being busy, I  enjoyed it from afar, admiring it every time I went to my car or looked out the upstairs window. 

And, I told myself, how marvellous that it was putting on such a gorgeous show after I had (to be honest) neglected it spectacularly these past few months.  So good that it could flourish without being nurtured.  Or even watered.

Bougainvilleas are strange plants.  They flower best when not watered much.  It seems counterintuitive, but I checked on a gardening site.   A few days ago, I finally made it to the corner of the garden.  And guess what?  The bougainvillea is not flourishing at all.  There are a few dried leaves hanging on for dear life, a touch of green on otherwise woody, droopy stems.  The flowers are beautiful, but the plant is putting all it's energy into the blooms, and the roots and branches are not thriving.  All of a sudden the blooms seemed more of a cry for help than a gift of gardening.  

It felt familiar.  Our outward appearances, smiley and dressed up, may not be so much a sign that we are flourishing, but rather a Look At Me in the corner - I could do with some support and soul -watering. We need to take care of ourselves during this exhausting pandemic.  We need to put our energy in maintaining good roots, supporting our selfs (not a typo!), and nurturing our relationships with the people who matter to us.  If we manage to bloom that will be a bonus, but it should not be at the expense of deep grounding and keeping strong.

You will be pleased to know I did water the bougainvillea, and all the other pot plants.  I am planning on taking some time off from being stressed too - I may as well listen to my own inner ramblings.  Be kind to yourself too.  It's been a long year.

 

 

The X Factor

It was excellent queuing weather.  We waited for the downpour to pass, had a lazy morning with tea in bed, and after breakfast, joined the line of people waiting to vote in the local government elections. Our allocated venue was the Blue School ( it has another name, but Pinelanders have forever named the primary schools in the area according to the colour of the uniforms.)  It was Daughter's first time voting, so there was an extra zing in the air. She had done her prep work - finding out who was standing on which policy platforms, deciding where to put her X.  Andrew found a friend (well, our lovely neighbour) to chat to to, Daughter had brought a book, and I was content to just pass the time watching people and thinking.

My thoughts drifted off in two directions.  Firstly, I was fairly familiar with the Blue school, as my mother taught there when I was a youngster.  At the age of about 7 or so, I would catch a school bus from my primary school in Rondebosch and walk to meet her there and wait until she had finished teaching.  It was a bit of an adventure for a 7 year old, and I could feel my thoughts shrinking into small girl mode, feeling important that I was so independent. I pictured Little Me, blue dress, straw hat, t-bar black regulation shoes and a book bag of learning.

Secondly, I was remembering the very wonderful 1994 elections and that voting queue. We were living in a different part of Cape Town then, and the queue was very, very long.  As the first democratic elections in South Africa, it represented a birth of some kind for the country.  There was joy, relief and excitement in the air, and such a feeling of community and good will.  It is also the first - and only- time I have ever fainted.  

It was a bit of a surprise to find myself on the ground, surrounded by concerned people and a kindly stranger holding my green umbrella.  It took me a moment to figure out what had happened. It turns out that I too was at the beginning of a new era.  I was urged to go to the front of the queue along with all the other people who were ill, old or pregnant.  But there was no way I wanted to miss out on this historic occasion,  so the three of us - Andrew, me and the Being who turned out to be our auspicious Son, resumed our wait.

Making our mark in the world is a way of owning our right to be an individual and to engage with community.  That X in the block is so much more than a vote for a political party.  It is a sign that my opinion matters, my decision counts.  I am here, World, and what I think matters just as much as (and no more than) the next person.

Mother Daughter bonding moment.  The zany nail is hers,obviously!