books: 2013

For the first time in years I kept a list of everything I read this year. Read to myself that is.

Not only did I keep a list but I got it updated in time to start again on Wednesday! Amazing.

Also amazing is that I read 36 books. Me, the person who never thinks I've enough time to read. 36 of my own books plus about 600 kiddie's books - they count right?

According to this article one's brain function is boosted for up to 5 days after reading a novel. If I count mine, and generously amalgamate all the children's books into, say, 100 novels ... then I had 680 days of super-intellect this year!

That sounds about right. Right?

Happy New Year everyone!

sentimental old fart

So we've been sickly, husband and I, and the girls have been amazing (I know I've mentioned all this), and now we're on the mend and re-emerging back into the world. And, as always when I've been ill, feeling a little tender and fragile in the harsh public eye.

In retrospect (always right?), there was something very special about 4 days, at home, with my beloveds, especially at this mad time of year.
My girls are doing such a giant leap forward at the moment, their little downy chick feathers starting to hold them aloft for short spans of time.
Frieda is off for her first sleepover tonight. At the home of a friend she's had since toddlerdom, good people, a safe comfortable home. She left with enthusiasm, excitement and that slight tightening round the mouth that I know as apprehension. A little delicious nervousness like listening to a scary story - enjoying the thrill in the knowledge that it's all going to be okay.

I, of course, felt completely sentimental. Had to keep my sunglasses on while hugging her goodbye, felt like moping a bit when I passed her empty room earlier.
She's been sleeping over at Granny's since she was 2, she's just a few suburbs over for goodness sake. I've a friend who's just dropped her teenage daughter off for her first wild summer holiday in the same stomping badlands of our youth, Julie's daughter is off skiing in the Alps, but I'm feeling miz that Frieda's spending one night in the home of her good friend just down the line.

Get a grip.

I didn't really think we could spend the rest of their lives here, altogether, them near naked and innocent, the sun shining, watching and reading things we'd chosen, talking and listening to each other, having cuddles and giggles and arguments and games - just the 4 of us (and a squillion snotty tissues).
But for a little while it seemed maybe we could ...

they can have it

In So Much for That, a Lionel Shriver novel I recently read, there's a wonderful paragraph towards the end where the main character - his wife is dying, he's lost his job, his life's ambition is slipping away from him - makes a list (I love a list).

'Thank-you notes and surreptitious sponging of gravy stains; heat-crimped packaging that only opened with pruning shears, and incompatible software. Ramadan, Columbus Day, and picnics. National self-determination, recipes for banana bread, and Amazon.com. Bungee-cord jumping, suicide bombing, and falling in love. Space stations, purdah, and male pattern baldness. Right-to-life protests, self-defrosting refrigerators, and hemlines; Christmas-tree air-fresheners, presidential assassinations, and ten-year retrospectives on the fall of apartheid. Micro-lending, woodworm treatments, and anti-vivisection leagues. West Bank settlements and genetically modified cron; nuclear antoproliferation states, National Salt Awareness Week, and fluoridated water. Narco states, dust ruffles, and bus shelter vandalism; lucky numbers, favourite colours, and button collections. Tribal scarring and Polka Album of the Year Awards, tea ceremonies, buzz cuts, and alternative energy. Feature films, the Fifth Amendment, and weather forecasts; Arctic exploration, affirmative action, and cell phone contracts. The South Beach Diet, elder abuse, and the Battle of Waterloo; burkhas, bedsteads, and the designated hitter rule; heirlooms, insoles, and the European Union. From IEDs, GDPs, and MP3s to Gore-Tex, gas shortages, and gardening tips; he was sick of it, man. Of people and their shit.'

What I wouldn't give to be able to write like that.

my guide to a non-religious christmas

~ embrace the magic

~ be very proud when your youngest is chosen to be Mary in the (very secular I might add) school play

~ put up a tree

~ do a homemade advent calendar

~ sing Christmas carols

~ express gratitude

~ make Christmas Crack (aka English Toffee)

~ give freely to those less fortunate

~ watch Love Actually

~ be spontaneous, silly and generous, all because it's Christmas

~ make it mermaid themed

~ really look at the first picture, see the wonder and awe with which they're all looking at the baby.

Remember that Christmas is about rebirth, new beginnings, children, family, love, respect and admiration, celebration.

Well, that's how I do it anyway. Hope you've all had a good one.

bleuurgh

A mid-summer, mid-season, mid-holiday head cold. Oh fucking joy.

Husband and I both.

On Boxing Day, after a gentle, lovely, but busy Christmas, we were only too pleased to be lounging around - reading books and eating chocolate and playing with new toys and suchlike.
Today, the novelty has severely worn off.

I get why some friends deactivate their Facebook accounts this time of year. If you're not having the Best Holiday Ever then the endless feed of Plett/Llandudno/sundowners/poolside/cocktails/roadtrips/bikinis can really get you down.

What's not getting me down however, are my children. My god they've been amazing. For sure there's a bit of cabin fever ... and I feel badly that we're not on the beach or up the mountain or on the water or making meaningful family memories besides reading Little House on the Prairie and watching The Long Way Down (wait, I think those are family memories actually) ... but they seem completely happy to play with each other. New paddling pool, mermaid Barbies, bows and arrows, Lego, camping on the lawn and gathering 'winter stores', feeding ducks, and mainly - playing with each other.

We may be sniffling and sneezing and feeling sorry for ourselves, but they're having a summer holiday. The old-fashioned way.

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.