adornment

Oh look, another post all about me.

I had ankle surgery 3 weeks ago (yes, again, this time the other foot - what the actual....?), and the evening before I took off all my jewelry and marveled at the amount of hardware I carry around on a daily basis.

Bangles (all on my right arm), earrings, finger rings, toe rings.

The toe rings I've been wearing since 1998 and in all that time they've only come off for surgeries and late pregnancies.

And I have one solid silver bangle I've been wearing for decades which won't come off. I left it on with instructions to cut it off me if necessary.

The point is, I like to decorate myself. And in recent years that has extended to tattoos.

Have I been teased about having a midlife crisis, just like if a man my age brought a vintage red convertible sports car? Yes, yes I have. 

And you know what, while an overly dramatic term (a 'crisis' for gods sake), the concept is pretty sound. Yes, one hits a stage in one's life when one realises that if there are things you want to do you should actually do them now. Because yes, life is short and you never know what's around the next corner (so burn the fancy candle, use the good dishes, eat the imported chocolate etc etc), but also because the longer I stay on board this earthly ship the more I realise that what's important are very, very few things - love, family, friendship, happiness - and what's not important is really just for fun.

Painting a picture on my calf is for fun.

Which leads me to my next point. 

I have so many marks upon this 48 year old body that I have not chosen. Scars from childhood, child birth and more recently TWO (seriously, what the actual....) ankle surgeries. Eczema, acne, weird moles, insect bites, cat claws, that one time the nail which scratched me was rusty... let's not even talk about wrinkles.

Choosing some art to live alongside these feels like quite an empowering thing to do.

This is my modernist take on the fynbos I have lived amongst my whole life. A homage in part to the delicate ink dot cartography I watched my father do by hand when I was a child. A Miro inspired floral bouquet with a small nod to Orla Kiely.

This is my leg and this is the art I have chosen to adorn it with in this, my mid life.

fortyfuckin'four

This whole week I've been nagging myself - you can't let May go by without a post!
May is your month, May is important.
Once a month is bad enough for the ol' blog - don't skip one!

I did this thing back in Feb. On the anniversary of Zahida's death. My favourite punctuation tattooed on my forearm ...

... for endings and beginnings, and the never-ending cycle of both, for things left unsaid ... for room to imagine ... to trail off and pick up another thread ... to pause and think ... to leave a space for someone else to occupy, or leave ... to assert yourself subtly ... or show doubt, vulnerability ... for life and whatever comes after ...

My 101 year old Granny slipped off in March.

In April we said goodbye to our beloved Khoki cat - our first baby, our friend for 19 years.

But still the sun rose every morning, some times more magnificently than others, and the world turned around the sun and, despite everything, it was my birthday.

And I decided that of all the lessons I'd like to impart on my daughters - this said in the knowledge that one never knows what will stick and what will not - I'd like one of them to be that you make your own fun, you have agency in your own happiness, and that birthdays deserve a party, no matter your age.

I spent my birthday surrounded by my bests. We hosted a lunch and that weekend, for the first time since mid March, I could walk. I could faff around the house making nice for my friends, I could prep a meal and lay a table, I could do a 'food board' ala Instagram, I could host and fetch another bottle of wine and more ice and a sharp knife and juice for a child ... I could WALK.

Even at the ripe old age of 4fuckin'4 my body can still heal. In the midst of my 40's I can do a highly responsible job for an international client and still know the value in taking a day off for illicit mid-week treats - this time an indulgent meal and a massage at the wondrous Babylonstoren ...

  

 

I am of that age where you realise it doesn't last forever. And as cliched as that sounds it's a real thing, and a natural thing. It's great that we live our 20's thinking it'll last forever, it's natural that we spend our 30's too busy to think of anything else much, and then the 40's come and with it comes loss, if you've been lucky enough to avoid it until then, and the reality of aging and the inkling that it will all end, it really will, and in that, the freedom to think 'fuck it, let's do it'.

I loved being young and feckless and living in the moment without even realising it. I love living in the moment and realising it, even more.
Best life, it's the only one worth living.

international social justice day

Apparently sometime last week was International Social Justice Day (who decides these I do not know), but reading that made me so grateful, again, for the work I've been able to do (for an astounding 17 years now!) assisting and supporting some of the most dedicated and hardworking social justice activists in our country.

I'm still not really sure how I managed to fall into this.

As a pre-teen the running joke in our family was my allergy to the word 'responsibility'. Being the oldest of 3 I guess it was a natural backlash against having to be older and wiser, more responsible than my seemingly carefree younger brothers.

But responsible I have become - for giant budgets, complicated international travel arrangements, hordes of delegates, deadlines and deliverables - I am often the hinge upon which it all swings, the stick upon which the plates are spinning, handling the immense stress of logistical success so that my clients don't have to, so that the participants - the social justice activists - can concentrate on the WORK.
The work of listening, of speaking for the voiceless, of finding the platform for their voices, and making them heard.

Recently I got in touch with an old lefty friend of my parents, and chatting to him brought back memories of sleepily listening in on their rigorous debate, around dinner tables and braai fires, often wine-fueled, always fascinating.

I learned so much from those evenings - not just great swear words - but how to agree to disagree, what injustice looked like, how to fight it, intersectionality (before that was even a concept probably), how to protest without getting arrested, what to do if you were arrested, how many people it took to build a movement (not just the big names), how to put your ego aside and do work for a greater good.

It was when bringing up these memories that I realised this was the foundation of the work I do now. A logistical mind is one thing - that's some weird shit I got born with (from my Granny Molly I think) and eventually made peace with, but the ability to use that in a social justice space (see, I can even speak the lingo) with empathy and an innate understanding of those specific challenges is a learned skill, learned in part by the example of my parents - social activists themselves in many ways - and in part from those long weekend evenings of being exposed to highly inappropriate discussions and arguments. 

Many of the activists I work with say that the key to social justice is for everyone at the table (more lingo see, I'm fluent) to work to their strengths. To find their skills, be acknowledged for them and be given the chance to use them for the greater good.

I think I might have found mine, and I'm so grateful to have found the perfect niche in which to flex them.

una

That birthday post was very delayed.

We came home that Sunday evening in a (very clean) glow of love and family to the news that my dear mother-in-law had gone into hospital.
Four evenings later on the 24th of May she quietly slipped away.

It's the way we'd all like to go I think - fit as a fiddle until 85, then a quick decline and a relatively comfortable passing - it was the right way, although there is never a right time, especially not for those left behind.

The numb feeling of loss is horribly familiar.

For my dear Charl especially - losing his mum so soon after his brother last year. Becoming an orphan. Feeling the family become smaller, more disjointed. His closest brother, and now his mum.

The following weekend we had a farewell tea for her at the retirement village she's been living at for the last 18 years or so, for the family but also for her friends.
As a recently bereft friend my heart ached for this sweet group of little old ladies. Walking frames, sensible shoes, stout winter coats smelling faintly of mothballs - they embraced us all and told us what a wonderful woman she was, a 'proper lady', and how much they'd miss her.
We will too.

Cake, tea, all her family and a slideshow of photos spanning 80+ years - she would have enjoyed it all so much.

I love this picture of her and Charl's Dad, who I never met. The dress and the 5th Avenue Cold Dark imply it was Christmas, or a party of some sort. The dessert in his hand ubiquitous, the giggle and squeeze so very sweet. The safari suit!

She was always an older granny for our girls, but she loved them dearly and they were so fond of Ouma.

The last time we saw her, on Mother's Day a few weeks before she passed, we lined her and Frieda up back to back - and had a laugh that Frieda had overtaken her. We teased her as to how she'd created this family of giants. 

She was a little lady, but with a big heart, and she gave us our husband and dad - and for that we will always honour her.

8

In the midst of all of that, my baby turned 8!

Stella is an oddball, we know this, so I wasn't so surprised when this was her requested birthday theme ... [insert hysterical laughing emoji]

She built the character from various Lego minifigs and we added the blood and bats etc in Pic Monkey - all under her strict direction.
She handed the invites out at school one morning, a few to kids whose parents I've not met before, and I waited to see how they'd be received. Happily well, by most, with just one little friend being 'unfortunately unable to attend' according to her mother and 'I can't come because I'm not allowed to go to parties were there is evil' according to the little friend herself [insert eye rolling emoji]. Cackle.

It was a much smaller affair than usual. Last year's Pandamonium almost killed us, and in the present circumstances I just couldn't muster the requisite energy for a repeat performance, or even anything close.
With our youngest's just 2 days apart Zahida and I would always plan their parties in consultation - firstly on the date so as not to clash, and then always on ideas and details. We did them very differently, but we both enjoyed party-planning and flexing our creative muscles together, I missed her so much while planning this one.

We did a couple of themed foods ...

Vampire bunny cupcakes - you decide whether those are bloody fang bites or bleeding eyeballs.

And vampire bunny jam sandwiches ... 

And then the cake, which in our history of birthday cakes pulled the biggest stunt on us - the idea was half cutesy bunny / half vampire terror but the intricate fondant face we'd tirelessly built the night before melted off overnight, necessitating husband perform emergency facial reconstruction surgery with the last bit of icing and whatever tools he had to hand just minutes before singing Happy Birthday. I think he did a pretty good job considering.

The beautiful birthday girl plus clean-up crew in the aftermath. She did feel the loss of the huge fiesta we usually pull off, 'I missed that there was no running around in the dark Mum', but had a good time regardless and I hope one day will look back and realise what a tough time it was for us.

Stella is 8 and from here on out it feels like we're officially in the Next Stage. No more smalls in this family. It really, really does happen so fast.

into the wild

I really have no idea what to expect from 2018. I probably feel like this every year, I don't recall - but this year I feel it stronger than most.

2017 was so full of blindsides, left field curve balls and side swipes. 2017 shook my default optimism, and taught my heart to be cautious. It ripped me open and it left scar tissue - some still raw and wary, some hardened and tough. In places the wounds are still open.

This seems like overly-dramatic, symbolic, talk - but it has been an intensely physical experience for me, managing grief and stress in a way I've never had to before. I have felt it, in my heart, in my body, as present as an actual bruise or graze - it hurt.

I am mistrustful of 2018.

I am expecting some career flux too. Parameters may be changing and I might need to tackle that at some stage this year.

I'm feeling okay about that. Calm. Not quite unfuckablewith (sometimes, if I'm lucky, I feel like that when I'm hell-for-leather working), but good.

And there will also be home.
For this part, I am excited.

The last couple of years I've managed to tackle sizeable home projects (usually in a big rush at the end of the year ...) and am looking forward to maintaining the momentum. We have so many huge projects we'd like to get to, but there are plenty of baby steps to be taken in the interim, I'm planning to take more.

But most importantly, of course, is that home is where my people are.
The girls are just getting more interesting every day - this holiday there's been snorkeling and piano-playing and a milkshake date with a boy (and mother and younger sister, oh and bestie for good measure), and discovering Keeping up with the Kardashians (how crap is that title actually, besides everything else), and game playing and long chats and cuddles ... Before Christmas we were at a friends and for a few hours it was just the 4 of us on our mate's deck, in the pool, in the sun - we joked and laughed like old friends, friends who knew each other well but still enjoyed being surprised. It was a golden moment, with so much promise for moments to come.

2018 can be full of those please.
Here we go ...

reasons I am not blogging ...

... in no particular order.

1. Game of Thrones. I started re-watching from the very beginning a couple of months back and am, to date, all caught up until S7E5 which drops tonight. 

Yeah, I know, it's not for everyone. But it is so very much for me. I'm already panicking about how empty life will be without it.

2. I am doing a 3000 piece puzzle. Lame right? But it so very much for me too.

There is something so calming, therapeutic for me about puzzles. Pieces fall into place, my brain relaxes into it and focuses. There is chaos, and then order - so unlike my life.

My only problem is that I don't have a table top big enough! I'm working on the bottom two-thirds and will have to ignore the top.

My completion problem tendency is deeply satisfied.

3. This.

Our long awaited and now much beloved wood-burning stove. I swore I wouldn't do another winter without one.

I swore that a couple of winters back actually, but this time I made it happen.

4. Life.

I'm finding life quite full-on a the moment. There is work, and there is home/kids/pets/school and in between all of that there is very little me.

I know to know that this is a season, a patch we're in. This is an inordinately busy work month, and I've not had one this full on for a while. The girls are busy and growing and living large. 

The pets are time-consuming. There is a puppy to watch and train and manage and a boy who is adjusting to a puppy and recovering from surgery - as we recover from the shock of his own brush with skin cancer (he's all clear thank dog). There's an elderly lady cat who needs assistance more than she used to, is adjusting to a puppy and is, we realised recently, stone deaf.

And there's still a Lego to mourn. I miss her every day.

Sometimes I can ride the hurdy-gurdy of our very full days. And sometimes I feel discombobulated and unbalanced by their pace.

5. Death.

Of relationships, of innocence. The very concept.

It's been hitting close to home of late, and it's almost impossible to put into words. Feelings of loss are the hardest to describe. What do you say about something which creates a gaping vacuum in your heart? A space which feels both empty and full to the brim.

This August is nothing like last year.

Lego

I've postponed writing this, because I honestly don't need any prompting to blubber like a baby over the loss of my magnificent furry friend - I've shed enough tears over the last few weeks without having to look at pictures and write stirring words.

But she deserves her own special mention - she deserves to be cried over every day. And I need to get back to this space which I didn't feel I could without noting this moment first.

Lego is gone. Her cancer progressed faster than we'd believed it could - but right on schedule for these canine diseases it seems. The vet gave her 6 - 8 weeks from diagnosis, she made it to 7.

She came to us in January 2009, by air from Johannesburg. We'd seen pics of her with the torso and arms of a man in the background, and based on our assumption of her size we picked out a collar and lead, a couple of feeding bowls and some toys and went to the airport to fetch her from cargo.

A big wooden box came trundling out on the conveyor with a teeny-weeny little pup inside. Turns out the arms who had held her in the pictures belonged to a boy and she was much smaller than we'd expected, the collar we had for her much too large!

She and Frieda were firm friends from day one, up to all kinds of mischief.
Lego would nibble Frieda with her sharp puppy teeth until I felt a bit self conscious of all her scratches - Frieda didn't mind - and Frieda used to try and protect Lego from trouble by kindly covering up her illicit puppy poos with whatever was handy - even kitchen cloths and her own clothes!

She was a handful at times, raising her was challenging in places - she was our first dog you see, and firstborns are firstborns really. But she fit with us so well, she was so loyal and so stoically and devotedly there. I trusted her implicitly.

And she trusted us. Which is why, after her diagnosis, I promised her we would never take her to the vet again (she hated trips to the vet) and why, when she was so lumpy you couldn't touch her without her flinching - gently and apologetically 'til the end, we made the decision to call the vet and when he came, we held her in our arms, in her bed, and whispered love and reassurance to her as she slipped away.

The neighbour played violin in the background. I kid you not, that really happened. [Edited for clarity : at her house, next door, completely unaware of how bizarre sad violin was for us at that moment.]

I miss her. I miss her grunts of communication which were as clear (if not clearer) than most of my children's communications with me.
I miss her watchfulness, I always felt safe with her around. I miss her companionship, she slept at my feet for most of her last few weeks. I miss her love.

I've got some people in my life going through some hard shit. Cancer, divorce - massively disruptive and sad life events - and I've felt badly, in the midst of all this, grieving for my dog. But as one of my wisest friends said, 'Family is family, no matter the species'.

Lego was part of our family. She is gone and we miss her.

42

I'm in Joburg, working, and it's hard to talk about home. I'm halfway through a 6 day stint here and missing my people, but the late afternoon slump is hitting hard and I can't let my birthday go by with recording it (and looking busy is preferable to pinching myself to stay awake right now!).

I have exactly two photos from my birthday weekend available to me here ...

... pretty much sums it up.

The weekend was full of all my favourite things: gin, (nice) surprises, love, girlfriends, cackling.

Celebrations kicked off with my, now annual, birthday lunch with my lovely parents on Friday. I do love those guys.

On Saturday (my actual birthday) a friend's kid who I share a birthday with had a 'disco party' - conveniently situating lots of my favourite people in one place with no effort required from me. I took a couple of bottles of fizz in exchange for a fun evening - a surprise birthday cake, a wildly generous spa voucher to cash in when I'm home, a personalised set from my favourite DJ-mate and a chance to shake my booty to it with my daughters and friends, and lots of cackling.

Sunday was tea gin and cake with more girlfriends - my specials, my hearts.

So many lovely gifties and messages - most of which were packed away again in a hurry on my departure and are waiting to please and delight me all over again when I get home - and this ...

... not that boy, I've had him for a while and he pleases and delights me every day, but that magnificent Nguni cow skin he's lying on.

My friend, my magnificent friend, back in March acquired this skin and as much as she loves it, she just can't with a dead cow on her floor. I, luckily, don't have the same sensibilities and OH MY GOD she gifted it to me! I've always wanted an Nguni skin. I've always wanted an Nguni too, but a skin - and such a beautiful one! 

What a gift.

Apparently 42 is the answer to everything ... let's see!

right now

It's hard to blog when all the big things happening around me at present aren't my stories to tell.

Big things happening to people who are big in my life - filling me with sympathy, sadness, fear and fragile feelings of maternal tenderness.
There's a lot of them - people I love at whom life is throwing some big curve-balls.

WTF life??

The things I can write about are a mixed bag ...

... my Lego is failing fast. When the vet said 6 - 8 weeks, 6 weeks ago, I kind of scoffed. How could he be so sure when we've no idea how long she's had the cancer for? Turns out he knew (being a vet and all I guess). In 10 days time I go to Joburg for a week ...

... Joburg for a week to run logistics on a fab project. It'll be a week of hard work and hard play - my favourite kind. Johannesburg is interesting this time of year - icy cold nights (way colder than CT ever gets) and still, warm days. Good people, some of whom were with me in Durban last year, and interesting work. I'm looking forward to it, were it not for my ailing furbaby.

But in other news - we finished our bath renovation!

Well, besides for a small snag list ...

But it's lovely, very 'executive' as my brother called it (i.e. black and white and sleek), and now of course - totally different to the rest of our house.

It's been about 6 months in the making - the old bathroom was ripped out in November - and we've had the work done slowly as we've had the cash, or inspiration. We're 'hashtag blessed' to have had other loo's to use in this silly big house of ours. It's been fun, and we're hoping to keep up the momentum. We've been reminded that we love doing this, and I think we're quite good at it.
Photographing a bathroom is hard though - thank goodness for that massive reflective shower screen!

Life is hard, life is beautiful, life is relentless. What would we do without it?

control

I crafted myself the perfect weekend, this weekend past.

Broken and exhausted after my big annual February conference and a busy week wrapping that up and catching life up and working hard to remain sitting up, I planned a whole weekend of ... nothing.

Nothing except life-restoring wine with girlfriends on Friday evening, and some somewhat drunken (me) half-light shenanigans with my eldest, re-positioning the new neighbour's garden art so that we don't have to look straight at ceramic vulva when parking our cars (we angled it so that they'd get that view when coming out of their front door instead).

Saturday morning I slept in, I went out on my SUP, made EPIC morning smoothies - weekend edition - and nurtured. Nurtured my home, my family, myself. I had a nap. We played UNO and read books and hung out and chatted. We cooked and cycled and watched Planet Earth 2.

It was the weekend I'd been planning for weeks, and it played out just the way I wanted it to. I felt in control.

I have 3 events in the pipeline over the next few months. I've made terms and planned the most efficient way to execute them. I've drafted my contracts to work within the parameters I need. I've quoted accordingly and made some plans on how to channel those funds into our ongoing home renovations.
I feel in control.

But this morning as I watched a red line snaking up my friends arm during her chemo treatment, as the 'Red Devil' was pumped into her system to kill the tumour she'd had no idea was there - she my friend who's always been most in control of her life, her environment, her plans - I reminded myself that there is no control really.

The best laid plans, the purest intentions, the most optimistic of mindsets - these are all nothing in the face of life and its mysterious paths.

There is no control. There is only the madness of wine and love and the delicious giddiness of giggling with friends - whether it be in Cancer Care or on a dark lawn in the wind with one's daughter.
There are only moments of peace, weekends of quiet, interspersed among the many moments of baffled busyness and daily chaos. There is only this moment, and then the next, and then the next.
Take them as they come.

won't ever happen

We found a video clip on an old phone of Frieda, soft-faced and blonde curls, age 6, her voice so different, thicker - pre-tonsillectomy -  'I pinkie swear I'll never twerk.'

Stella, regularly, 'I'll never leave home, I'll live with you until I die Mummy. Or until you die, whichever happens first.' Her eyes become solemn.
She thinks a lot about death this one.

Overheard today: 'I will never, ever drink coffee.'

We've thought for months: 'Trump will never become president.'

the ups and downs of October

This post is to filed under 'diary'. I need to record this last crazy month for myself, for the record.

I've come here so often with an opening line, a thought or an observation, but the back story has always been so enormous - October's stories have been enormous - that I've either shied away or the next thing has happened before I could finish writing/processing about the last.

Emotional ro-la-co-stah. I'm tired just thinking about writing about it.

October is a beautiful month (which month isn't really right?), but this one has brought some pain.

On the 1st of the month one of my very best friends was admitted to hospital after weeks of what we all then thought was 'flu.

That weekend, beloved English cousins currently living in the States woke to the news that their 23 year old son had died in his sleep.
Shock rippled around the world as we gathered in small digital huddles - on FB messenger, Whatsapp and eventually a Tribute Page - trying to cradle a family in unimaginable pain with words and images shared on these platforms, knowing that none of it worked as well as a hug, but that all the hugs in the world wouldn't heal their hearts.
When a healthy 23 year old guy dies in his sleep on a Saturday night there is one conclusion that everyone jumps to, and from the talk it does seem he lived a colourful life - partying and living it up in the film industry in which he worked.
But louder then that were the reams of words testifying to his gentle care of those he loved, his sense of humour, his intelligence, his diligence to his work, his magic touch with animals - all these words proven by the multitude of photos of him shared on the page, in each one of them he has his arms around someone.

I recalled so vividly the boys like him I knew at that age. Young, gorgeous, healthy young men who worked, had plans, took their jobs and their lives seriously, earned well, and partied hard. Those boys were the best friends a girl could have, watchful and caring, they were the most fun to have at a party, loud and gregarious and hilarious, they were generous with their love, their time and their drugs - and after a heavy night out they would go home to Sunday lunch and be the most attentive, genuinely devoted sons and brothers. They thought they were invincible.

So many are lost in grief at his passing.

On the 4th we celebrated our 13 year wedding anniversary.

It was a magic evening, warm and golden and still. We'd made no plans, but that afternoon I remembered two bags of prawns in the freezer, a bottle of very fine wine we'd been saving, a box of creme brulee magnum ice-creams I'd seen at our local store ... I lit the fire and watched the girls play wildly on the lawn as we waited for the sound of his motorbike arriving home.
We ate grilled prawns 'til the butter ran down our arms, washed down with sublime wine, and grinned stupidly at each other over our daughter's heads. 13 years.

A couple of nights later we ditched the girls and went out for a proper grown-up dinner in our beautiful 'hood.

But still my friend was in hospital, and the news was not good. An inflammation of the spinal cord, a rare auto-immune condition, crippling pain and uncertainty about the path ahead.
Sobering updates as we rallied around her family, setting up an online meal roster to cook for them, a Whatsapp group to keep all those concerned in the loop.

I traveled to Pretoria for work. Twice.
Pretoria was hot, and dry, but magnificently purple.

Jacaranda trees were introduced a hundred years ago, blatant invaders from South America, for their beauty and their shade. They kind of hung around and once a year transform Pretoria from a fairly drab and run-down city to a psychedelic wonderland. Well played invaders.

The work was good, the people I met inspirational and fun.

Our country has had a hard month too. Our Minister of Finance is facing trumped-up charges of misconduct, leveled at him by a President fueled only by his greed. Our students are rising up to demand the education promised to them 20 years ago, and getting beaten in the streets by our dysfunctional police force. Our academics and universities are reeling from the damage - to their campuses and their careers. Our general public are split down the middle on a topic so complex that you can only see it in black and white if you're at the heart of a the struggle or being a total asshole. Their are a select few who are both.
It's a fucking mess.

The activists I was in Pretoria with were for the most part much younger than me, black and very active in education. We spoke at length about the current situation and it was so reassuring to me, a white, middle-class, (cough) middle-aged lady, to check in with them and find that we shared many opinions on these issues. It's easy when you live among your peers to believe that you're right. It's a gift to step out of that circle and find others, very different to you, who feel the same. I love my work for the worlds it opens up for me.

Back home and straight into a very special celebration. My Dad turned 70.

Which necessitated a party, with some of our dearest family friends, and a rainbow cake for the birthday boy, with ants on it - because he's all about the ants, about the ants, no spiders - according to one of his silly granddaughters.

And then another anniversary - a really BIG one.

On the 24th my man and I marked 25 years together - a silver anniversary - from bumbling high school sweethearts to married-up parents.
We celebrated with an enormous bunch of chinkerinchees, a bottle of bubbly and the gift of a vintage silver dollar from my parents. How exactly did I get this lucky?

And still ... my friend is in hospital. Still battling pain and an uncertain future, but still smiling when she can, still strong, still her.

This growing up thing is not for sissies, the realities of life and aging are hard and painful. But the love, the love just gets stronger and sweeter - and the knowledge that that is all that is important gets clearer every day.

This year has worn us out already - is it holidays yet?

a cat in the dark

Back in the 80's, our family leased a bit of land from a local farmer to use for camping and holidays.

'The Vlei' was in fact a good few acres of wild waterside property - a long debris-strewn beach, various shady camping spots up under the invasive Port Jackson trees, a clay quarry, and a sandy track up on the hill linking them all and bordering shabby fields filled with shabby sheep.
The vlei itself was a tidal lagoon miles from the ocean - brack, murky, full of weed and half submerged trees waiting to ambush watercraft and unsuspecting shins.

All sounds a bit rough doesn't it? It was. And it was heaven.

Every summer, straight after Christmas, we'd pack up and head down there for 2 or 3 weeks - until school started again really. Only 15 minute drive from our house (yup, best holiday destination ever), my Dad would pop back into town almost daily for the newspaper, fresh milk and to pick up 'a couple more things' from home.
The rest of us wouldn't leave once, getting dirtier and wilder and more feral by the day, as the amount of 'gear' we had down there accumulated and the desire to ever leave dwindled at an equal rate.

Over the years we put in more infrastructure. My Dad built open wooden platforms for kitchen areas, with rough worktops and sheet roofs, wooden benches for around the fire, a few windbreaks in strategic places. A water tank to collect rain - we had to schlep all our fresh water down there in barrels - boardwalks down to the water and every year, a fresh new long-drop loo!

There were flamingos - one evening a visitor 'spoke' to them with her flute, the flamingos falling uncharacteristically silent as she played, only to burble up again with their clucking when she paused - wild horses (can there be anything more mystical to a child than wild horses?), fish eagles, millions of mice - all our books came home with nibbled corners - and one night, there was a big cat.

Family friends were camped a little way down the beach from us, my younger brother and I had been playing in the clay quarry with their kids until after sundown, when their Mum came to find us all and pack us off to our respective home fires.
Our camp was along the beach, but to walk there down the road would be quicker. And, it turns out, darker.

I was a terrible scaredy-cat as a child but, as I've now discovered as a parent too, there's nothing more emboldening than being with someone more scared than you. My brother was scared.
We marched along, fast, keeping our eyes glued to the white sandy tracks leading us homeward, trying not to look at, or think about, the high dark bush on either side.
But it was around a corner when out of that bush, a caracal stepped.

Not my pic. Obvs.

It stood in the road in front of us and stared.

My memory tells me we reached for each other, my brother and I. But it would right, nurtured as it has been by fairy stories of babes in the woods and lost siblings. But more visceral than that is a recollection of his hand - cold, grimy, sweaty - in mine, our fingers so tightly entwined they could have fused.

The cat slipped silently into the bush on the other side of the road, and in one fluid movement, we ran.
I think we were yelling for my parents as we came to the camp, because I remember them meeting us on the road. Maybe, concerned that we were out so late they'd come walking along to find us, but I recall falling into their arms, finally releasing my little brother's hand.

And I'll remember always the first thing my Mum said to us as we garbled out the story, she said: 'Oh you lucky, lucky children, hardly anyone gets to see a caracal in the wild like that.'

Just like that she changed our terror to pride - we felt not threatened and afraid, but special and favoured - and in the same instant taught us fundamental life lessons to carry along always: seek the positive, be empowered by your experiences, relish every single contact you are granted with the natural world and turn every incident into a hell of a good story.

We were lucky, lucky children.

adrenalin junkies

Two blonde ladies in their 40's, sharing a pot of Earl Grey in a Durban beachfront hotel restaurant.

Adrenalin junkies.

It's not often that I meet other people in my profession. Why fraternise with the competition right? But as the woman opposite me talked about how stressed she was - scribbling furiously in her notebook - how difficult it was balancing all her clients, how when she finally closed her eyes at night she had lists swirling over the inside of her eyelids, I began to suspect I'd met a kindred spirit.

And when she looked up and I saw the sparkle in her eye, I knew it.

'But you love it right?' I said.
'Wouldn't do anything else in the world' she answered with a big grin.

Adrenalin junkies.

The common ground between us sprouted flowers as we spoke.
How many people tell us they'd never be able to do what we do. Clients who get concerned at how calm we are. How inside we're screaming. Wearing so many different hats you can put your neck out whipping them on and off. The terror of the error, the thrill of the win. Behind the scenes and in front of the client.

The inevitable crash. The juggle. The struggle. The love of the game.

We spent 20 minutes together and I felt more debriefed than I had in years. More energised too, inspired and affirmed.

.........

Yesterday a friend reminded me how a few short years ago I was still angst'ing about what I was going to be when I grew up, and meanwhile I was there already. Life is what happens while you're making plans or something like that.

..........

To be an adrenalin junkie I reckon you have to either be over-confident or totally reckless. Maybe the 40's are the perfect combination of both. It's certainly working for me.

9

This girl turned 9 and I can't comprehend it.

Babyhood, the delights of 1, the terrible 2's, the fuck-you 3's, the peace of 5 - these are all well-documented stages that one reads about as your child grows. One anticipates, prepares, lives through them when they happen like that, fret if they don't because why is yours doing it differently?
Then there's tweens and teenagers and in fact, tweenagers these days apparently - all of which seem some part of a murky undefinable future.

But right now it feels like we've wandered off the map, into uncharted territory where anything is possible - and it's kind of lovely.

She's still a kid, very much, still playful and innocent and prone to flights of fantasy. But she's also reading 700+ page Harry Potter books and asking big questions about the world and occasionally falling victim to hormone-charged outbursts and irrationality. She's a growing, learning, questioning human being, and she's divine.

Frieda's birthday wish was to take a small group of friends to Eagle Encounters.

It was really fun hanging out with her buddies - entertaining and kind, this age is good for that too -  no one needed their bum wiped, no disputes needed parental arbitration - just sweet kids full of chat and laughs and opinions.

We had a great time roaming the grounds in the winter chill, having a picnic in the car park (because we're too stingy to pay for the over-priced picnic baskets full of things the kids won't eat) and dodging the intermittent showers. During one of them we sheltered under some (luckily not-whomping) willows while Frieda's friend Seth serenaded us - A Wonderful World sung by a completely un-self-conscious 9 year old boy. It felt like a magic moment in time.

And of course, the birds! The birds were magnificent.

An enormous collection of rescued and rehabilitated birds - some of whom will be released into the wild, some of whom are too damaged or tame to make it on their own. It was such a privilege to see these magnificent fowl up close, many of which live among us but we hardly ever see. We learnt so much and ALL enjoyed it thoroughly.

Then home for owl and eagle cupcakes, a romp around the garden and the now traditional G'nT's and snacks for the parents long into the evening. A different kind of party from the ones we've thrown in the past - but just as lovely. Uncharted territory is fun!