Ma Wa Gray

  As a teacher one hopes to create that one iconic moment for students where academia becomes magic. My moment as a student happened when my ethereal English teacher, Moira Lovell, began reading 'To Kill A Mockingbird' to our Grade 10 class. If one is familiar with the book one knows that the opening pages are somewhat long in the tooth. Lots of sociopolitical context. The introduction is one which will make a 16 year old fresh from having eaten lunch a little heavy lidded.  Enter Scout. The moment Mrs Lovell changed her perfect elocution and adult tone to the gritty, fiesty accent of a little girl from Maycomb County, Alabama I believed that anything was possible in a classroom. The entire class was transfixed. Similar to how I'm sure the generation of radio listeners felt at the lead up to the next Goon Show, or War of the Worlds, our English lessons became much anticipated events. We would sit enraptured for an entire lesson as the voice of Moira Lovell, an English teach...

The picture above documents a pretty standard event in our household. It's actually a daily event. It's my 'reboot' nap.  As many of you will know I suffer from congenital hearing loss that is ultimately going to lead to me having to have cochlear implants.  Many of you will also know that I'm a Drama teacher.  Being half deaf and a Drama teacher isn't one of my favourite combinations.  I have only ever identified with a Miss South Africa once and that's when our current Miss South Africa, Mia Le Roux, pulled out of the Miss Universe pageant due to health issues related to her ears. She was suffering from vertigo and 'deaf fatigue'. Never has a fatigue more accurately described my daily struggle to have enough capacity for everything required of me.  And I'm going to be honest - it's has, of late, really been getting me down. It's my Achilles heal, or Achilles ear if you will, and I can't help but wonder how much easier everything wou...

My first experience of ever really loving children inside and out was when my legendary high school English teacher, Moira Lovell, read 'To Kill A Mockingbird' to the class and introduced us to Scout and Jem.  I can still hear her commanding voice change into that of six year old Scout, making that fiesty little creature come to life in a hot Maritzburg classroom. It's a skill I was to later share in life with my Westville girls in our oven of a prefab classroom. Those lessons reading Mockingbird are still some of my most treasured.  And now, its several years later and an English colleague got me thinking about my favourite novel again.  Our conversation began with me explaining that this holiday Eva taught herself to read and write. She's a January baby and let's just say that she's whizzed through all her milestones. Being a second born, a girl and having a brother four years older than her helps. As a teacher I'm well aware of the burden literate kids ca...

Last night as Stephen and I were getting ready for bed we got a message from our security company, Ensure, to say that there was a porcupine at the bottom of our garden. The message came with the above picture. While we scrambled to put shoes and coats on we watched the elusive creature rummaging around with the help of our camera monitor. By the time we got to the bottom of our garden it was gone.  We then got a message from our security company (who obviously watched us trying to view the porcupine) saying that we must be careful because they are dangerous creatures. They were also worried about our dogs. We assured them that the dogs were locked inside.  Two nights ago our dogs went berserk in the middle of the night and I immediately contacted our Ensure team who did a quick reconnaissance of the footage and confirmed that it might have been the security guard walking across the Kearsney field who kick started their response.  Our Ensure team also warn us when it's go...

Goodness me, and like that I'm nearly done. One more blog to go tomorrow and I have honoured my Lent commitment.  I've just read over my 42 blogs. That's over a month of thoughts. Thoughts that I would normally keep to myself, or thoughts that are so fleeting that they barely cross my consciousness.  It amazing what can happen in 42 days - I started at the end of a very torid term (aren't they all?) and I ended with a huge adventure. In between there has been loss and difficulty, and rashes and recipes and RnRs.   When one starts to document one's life day by day one starts to notice that, if we take the time to stop and reflect, God has designed moments for us in everything we do, even the hard stuff. And sometimes the moments are glaringly obvious, and sometimes they only shyly sneak out as we write a sentence.  I suppose that's actually the best way to describe a relationship with God - sometimes He's so obvious that He is physically tangible and sometime...

Today Eva and I set off to fulfill Gray's request for a Squishamellow for his birthday. Eva's outfit was made up of various layers of clothing, all with varying prints, colours and patterns. She looked like a rainbow's vomit. I love her sense of style.  We ran in to various friends on our quest. I've given them nom de plumes... 1. The first friend we bumped into was Claire. She was shopping with her little girl who is the same age as Eva. Her girl was wearing bright new white shoes and looked very pleased with herself. Claire rolled her eyes and explained that her daughter 'accidentally' left her shoes at home and so had to get a new pair for her morning of shopping. I then asked after Claire's mom who is very ill and who is in organ failure. It's been a really difficult journey for Claire as she has faced several family tragedies during this time making it one obstacle after another. She explained that her mom is now starting to lose the plot and is tal...