a day

Today I did the school run for the last time this year. Then I collected a loaned pram, for my poor youngest with a massive roastie on her knee.

A quick lunch and then to the train (her first time!), with my parents and friends, to town for a final Madiba send off.

We didn't get tickets for the stadium event alas, but we walked through town and talked, and thought and remembered, and educated.

They are so young, but I hope they remember. 

And even if they don't, one day they will understand and be able to say, 'I was there.'

sad and sticky

I'm not ready to talk about Mandela.

Friday was a big day, and I've spoken about my sorrow here before. When I remember that he's gone my heart feels like a balloon, hollow and tight, a feeling I thought was reserved for losing someone closer to me.
Turns out he was that close, to us all.

It was a weekend of comforting things, I'm glad for that.

Husband has a fantastic relationship with food. He loves to eat it, but more especially (as Stella's nanny used to say), he loves to make it.
He cooks, or bakes, to relax. To experiment, to learn, to laugh. To eat.

He grew up in a house in which home-made was a matter of fiscal and domestic pride, his parents were great canners and preservers. They were into food too.
One of my favourite stories from his childhood is how my in-laws used to make their own stash of individual pies. A towering stack of silver foil pie dishes were procured, and a great pie-making project begun - everything from the crust to the filling made from scratch, the completed products stacked in the freezer with pride.
Mostly made from the foods they grew, reared, or ... caught.
Apparently tortoise pie is not to be recommended.

But home-steading's in the genes and over the years he's perfected his bread-making skills, researched and made exotic things, and 'put by' a fair amount of goodies - from pies (pork and fennel for us thank you), to jams and relishes and currently, ginger and buchu beer.

After brewing it all weekend, we bottled it up a couple of hours ago. A couple of hours later, and we've just finished mopping up our sticky kitchen and releasing the pressure on the remaining bottles.
It's fiery stuff this ginger beer.

Making stuff, using our hands, filling our bellies - this is how we find comfort.

facing extinction with a muffin and a cup of tea

My eldest daughter (and so, by association, my youngest daughter), are all into dinosaurs at the moment. Their drawings are of diplodocus, their games about T-rex's and triceratops. When swimming, they are not dolphins but plesiosaurs and nothosaurs.
We talk about extinction. How the dinosaurs world radically changed, but also how (besides for that last big meteorite - bam!), it took hundreds of years to do so, and in fact the age of the dinosaur was just one in a series of prehistoric developmental stages of earth.

I believe in Earth. I have faith in the forces of nature and the slow and continuous progress of evolution. I believe that Earth has the bigger picture, that it teaches us lessons in transience and perspective and scale.

Climate change. The end of antibiotics. Anti-vaxxers. Avian flu. War. Super power ridiculousness. Civilian revolt. The death of the oceans.

Human beings are just one more developmental stage in the glorious story that is Earth. Our time will come to an end, to make way for another species or manifestation of ourselves, they will learn from our mistakes and benefit from our successes.
Just as we've learned from the dinosaurs not to be so ... big.

And when we're gone, the tides will keep on turning, the winds blowing and the earth shifting. Creatures will evolve and breed and die and mutate, and we're damn arrogant to think we've been the greatest of them all.

But right now I've got applesauce muffins in the oven, a lovely cup of tea, a weekend ahead with my beloveds, a party tonight to celebrate the current clean bill of health of this friend.
And all that is pretty damn great.

gone too soon

Last Thursday I celebrated 22 years with my husband. On that same afternoon a friend lost hers in a light plane crash.

Devastating. A word I've thought, said, typed more often since then I probably ever have. 

Devastating.

I've been struggling so much with this one. We don’t know them that well, but the time we've spent with them my husband and I felt such a connection, a meeting of like-minded souls which has become very rare as we've gotten older. I know they felt it too.

If we’d lived closer I've no doubt we would be close friends. When we have seen each it’s always been warm and empathetic. We laugh at the same things.

They have two young children. We have two young children. The horror of having to guide your children through the loss of a parent as you suffer your own inconsolable grief is terrifying.

They were soul mates. We are soul mates. We both think they were one of very few couples we've met whose relationship seemed to operate similar to ours. They were partners. We are partners. They loved each other dearly. We love each other dearly. The reality that such a treasured person can be taken from you is sobering and horrific.

Devastating.

And also, what the actual FUCK?

I will never understand how a man – a warm, compassionate, loved, positive, energetic man, a father and a husband – gets whipped away on a sunny afternoon while hundreds of wife-beating, double-crossing scum live long into old age.

If I was religious I could put it down to ‘God’s plan’, which I should not question, just ‘trust’. This may be why I’m not religious.

But I am spiritual (it’s possible, really it is), and I have been thinking a lot these last few days about destiny and fate.

Was it always his destiny, while building a life, a marriage, fathering and parenting two children, making plans, hoping, dreaming, that he would leave it all too soon, too soon for anyone?

Was it always her fate to be a young widow?

And while I’m at it, was it coincidence that two of their dearest friends were planning to visit them this last weekend, so that they were the first to arrive after she got the news? There to guide her through that first surreal, unimaginable 48 hours?

I don’t know the answers to any of this. All I know is there is a patch on my heart rubbed raw for her, for her children. My tears are but a drop in the ocean of their grief.

Devastating.

happy birthday grand dad!

7 years ago today my Dad turned 60.

My parents invited all their friends and family to join us for a big lamb braai at a public picnic spot in a Nature Reserve near their home.
It was one of those very wonderful collaborative events, lots of people making salads and breads and desserts and some dear friends of my parents driving through from the Karoo with two sheep's worth of cutlets to feed the crowd.

My husband and brothers were on braai duty, and we hired in plates, glasses, big dishes for the meat, we placed an order for a ton of wood, arranged pop-up gazebos and chairs, made sure everyone had directions etc.

The evening before I was round at my Mum's helping prep salads with some friends. We chopped and diced and cling-wrapped, endlessly rearranging the fridge to fit it all in.

Quite early on I was flagging, suddenly exhausted and barely able to stand. So much so that Mum was concerned for me driving home. But I had a cup of tea, felt stronger and left, staggering into bed as soon as I got there.

The next day was beautiful and very warm. We all worked hard, cooking and arranging and hosting and feeding and chatting and laughing and celebrating my dear Dad and how precious he is to us all.

That evening, weary and happy, back at my parents place, we divided up the remaining uncooked meat into manageable portions to freeze.
The sight of all that raw meat suddenly became too much for me - the blood and the smell and the very rawness of it all. I was overcome with queasiness and had to leave the kitchen to lie down for a bit.

That week I found out I was, of course, pregnant.

And so every year since as we celebrate my Dad's birthday, always with the non-negotiable lemon meringue pie, and the bottle of good brandy and the family gathering to mark the occasion - I also mark the moment as the beginning of my parenthood.
The very first time I had to adjust my pace to meet the demands of a small person, the first family gathering she shared with us.

I love this gentle overlap, the dual celebration I've observed since then. I love that my Dad and Frieda's celestial paths crossed somehow, in some small funny way.

It was his 60th birthday and the beginning of his Grandfatherdom. Today it's his 67th and what an absolutely wonderful Grandfather he is.
Happy birthday Dad.

pinterest

Sometimes I love Pinterest for reasons not even Pinterest could have predicted ...

I'd call it 'subtweet' but the person I'm referring to isn't reading.

Man sits down at a bar. Small voice says, 'Nice shirt.'
Man looks around confused, catches the barman's eye who indicates with his head, 'It's the nuts,' he says, 'They're complimentary.'

Drum roll ...

The ability to take a compliment has become one of my measures of a person. The manner in which one receives a reasonable compliment speaks to your confidence, how comfortable you are in your skin or your stage of life - take it well and you're my kind of person.

I'm no gusher. If I tell you I like your laugh, your house, your hair or your mind, if I compliment your kids, your style, your ass or your driving skills, I'm being really sincere.

So it bugs me when people - adults - are too self-deprecating to take a compliment. Specifically people who have beautiful homes, good jobs, healthy families and the wherewithal to serve bloody good champagne.
I know that everyone has shit, I know that seemingly perfect lives can be deeply flawed, I know that people are not always who they seem.
But acknowledge your privilege. Count your blessings. Have the grace to take a good compliment on the chin.

Your hair looks amazing!

the first night

Tonight is the first one. The first soft, still, warm summers evening. It makes me so happy, but in a calm, almost nostalgic way.

It feels like Sunday night, this last night of September. It feels like a Sunday night at the end of a 2 week weekend. Not just because it's the last night before the 4th term starts tomorrow (back to school is very fucking cool when you're a work-from-home parent), but because the last few weeks have been so full.

I've spent the month writing for a blog project which goes live tomorrow. A blog site dedicated to breast cancer issues for the month of October. It's writing work which has come directly from blogging, and ironically from this one, not C is for Cape Town.

It's been incredibly stimulating and I've enjoyed the process immensely, although the subject matter is hugely sobering.

I was a bit side-tracked a week or so ago by getting sick though. A real nasty flu bug which wiped me out. I'm still coughing, and have just been googling all the kids meds we have in the house seeing if I can self-medicate this one. I do not feel like a GP visit (especially as I'm paying for psychoanalysis right now!) but I must be well by the weekend - I've a rock festival to attend! (I know!)

Then the school holidays hit, just 10 days long and jam packed full of action. We had 4 birthday parties in 4 days - two kiddies and two grown-up (perfect!). I baked and dressed up and sorted out gifts and meals and baby-sitters and schedules and it was all such fun, but how quickly these events recede into the distance in these crazy busy lives of ours.

Maybe it's all receded particularly quickly as I've just spent the weekend with FOUR smalls in tow (fact: being outnumbered by small children will cause brain cells to flee in indignation). My bestie's been here, with her 2.3 yr old and new 4 month old delight.

Charl was away on a bike rally so we borrowed my parent's 7 seater car and played Mormon wives for the weekend. It was completely wonderful, in a totally chaotic, nonsensical, relentless and extremely loud way.

My dear friend is right on the front line of toddler + baby craziness, a state I still remember so very well. It is incomprehensibly intense for anyone who's not been there, and such an eye-opener for me on how far I've come.

In some ways my days with the girls now are a complete walk in the park in comparison to then, although I do remind myself that it's just a new set of challenges really. But there's no doubt the physical demands on me are less, the personal space is broader and the reminder of this has left me feeling so free and, of course - because us parents are always such suckers - a little sad.

To be reminded of the exquisite purity of that moment when your hungry baby latches on to your breast. The happy grunt, the tiny hand patting you appreciatively, the eyes staring at you in gratitude, satisfaction and a little bit of what-the-hell-took-you-so-long.

I'll never feel that again, which is more than okay on every level except the deep thrum of nostalgia.

I lay next to Stella as she fell asleep tonight, my baby who seemed (and acted) like such a big girl these last few days. The night outside was soft and still, the first night, and also one of the last.

Such is life.

Hello summer.

these cats

These cats don't get photographed as much as they once did. Our black Khoki is increasingly wary of the children. This house is big enough for her to stay out of sight most of the day, until the girls are in bed and she slinks out to demand the attention she is due as our first baby. It's impossible to photograph a black cat at night.

And this little girl is very much getting on in years. Fritta, though nowadays mostly just called Ginger, is completely nonplussed by children, visiting dogs, vacuum cleaners or thunder claps. But rattle a plastic bag within a 3 room radius and she streaks off in an orange flash.

She spends more and more time in bed. As an elderly lady should be allowed to do.

I don't photograph them as much as I once did. But they are here.

f**king with my brain

I saw a clinic psychologist this morning. Someone who specializes in cognitive psych. It was somewhat reassuring to hear him say he's not really interested in my childhood, my history, my inter-personal relationships.
What interests him, is the neuron reactors in my brain. Specifically the ones which link toads to my adrenal glands.

Like Pavlov's dog, learnt behaviour links parts of your brain which weren't original joined. Bell = saliva. Toad = freak the fuck out.

And apparently, according to my guy Larry with his slow speech and his bright intense eyes and the somewhat off-putting wet corners of his mouth and completely refreshing ability (especially for a man of his years in front of a 'young-ish' woman) to use fuck in a sentence within the first 15 minutes (he was quoting someone but still I loved it), we can trick my brain into releasing that link.

We're on a 6 session strategy (after that, if I'm not 'cured', he carries on treating me for free), it seems a bizarre thing to spend money on. But we spent a whole lot more than that on this magnificent house on the lake, and I'm damned if I'm going to cloud my summers with fear and anxiety.
It's just not practical to have to drink 2 glasses of wine before I'll go out on the lawn after dark. It's time-consuming to have to send the dog out to sniff around the stoep before I'll step outside at night. It's just plain ridiculous to leave our outside workroom standing open all night because I forgot to go out and lock it up before dusk.

Larry and me, we're going to fix this thing.

Completely unrelated picture of a completely different creature. These ones I love.