Ma Wa Gray

 He doesnt know it but one of my past matrics sent me a message completely out of the blue yesterday on a very auspicious date. Two years ago today, when he was in matric, this boy made some very bad choices. Choices that got him expelled. It was a deeply traumatic time for all involved.  He left in a dark cloud and I was very worried that that cloud would stay on him, infiltrate him and become him.  But a few of us never gave up on him. And I walked his final exam journey alongside him, if remotely. He went on to get an A for Drama and is now studying at one of the top theatre schools in the country.  Yesterday he sent me poster for the two productions he is currently rehearsing for under the direction of undoubtedly two of South Africa's most talented and renowned directors.  My boy even snuck me a little glimpse of a rehearsal. And he is doing magnificently.  And he doesnt know that yesterday, two years ago, his world looked very very different.  Th...

 Creatures and Critters fills a small plastic container with a multitude of tiny little black worms. For three days your enraptured daughter lovingly feeds them mulberry leaves. You go on holiday. The worms come along. The holiday delights completely distract your daughter. You feed the silkworms.  In a week the tiny black things grow 20 times their original size. Your realise Creatures and Critters did you a solid disservice. A head count is taken. Over 150 silkworms. They now eat breakfast, lunch and supper. Their living quarters consist of two massive plastic containers.  In your regular feeding sessions you will them to start spinning their cocoons. So does the lone exhausted mulberry tree at the bottom of your garden.  How often does something seem like a good idea, grow into something exponentially overwhelming and then generally gets abandoned by the bright spark who had the idea in the first place? 

 I'm lying in a single bed between Gray and Eva in 'the girls room'. The girls I'm referring to are my three aunts, all over seventy years of age, some even older.  We are in the original family home for the week. I write about it often, because I write about home often. Eva asked me this evening if I have more memories of being on the farm or of the homes I've lived in with my little family of Stockil-Smiths.  It was a good question. I suppose the significance of my memories on the farm is that they are almost all painted with the brush of a brain that wasn't fully formed yet. The frontal lobe is only fully formed in one's mid twenties. The time I met Stephen. It comes as no surprise that the time when I was finally ready to commit to fully adult relationship was when I fully became an adult myself And so everything I have shared with Stephen has been through the lens of a person who literally knows her mind.  But before then, my goodness, the lenses change...

 This morning as Eva and I ran errands she asked me, 'Mom, what is the meaning of life?' She's 7. But not the norm. Most of my teenagers don't hit that question until I teach them Godot. And even then for some the existential search for meaning isn't as important as the staring line up for the first rugby team. But here we are, parked outside the gluten free bakery, pondering the meaning of life.  Needless to say all my answers were, to quote Eva, 'the K word'. Kak. My children must never use this abbreviation out of context. Lots of things are 'the k word'. Like Eva's bike that she's grown out of, that doesnt even have gears. And last night our Springboks were 'the k word.' Playing our B team against the Aussies led Gray to seek me out in the kitchen multiple times during the game, in tears, because our team was 'K'.  I digress. I didn't have a suitable answer for Eva. She did throw in reincarnation and atheism and the so...

 Heritage Day. Public holiday. Day 1 of Michaelmas holidays.  A number of mothers have arrived and let their children loose onto the trampolines. Despite their attempts at makeup dark rings highlight a long term. Fathers stare off vacantly into the mid distance, focus entirely somewhere else. Children's screams are ignored.  A toddler begs her mother to jump with her, she replies tersely, 'If I jump I'll wet myself.' The irony of the name, Jump 4 Joy, is not lost on some. 

 Our kitchen has just had a full renovation. Three weeks ago I manically packed up my entire kitchen on a Sunday afternoon. Things just got chucked into boxes because I didnt have time to be all feng shui and zen.  Now that it's almost done and I'm one lick of paint away from a brand new kitchen I've decided I'm over washing plates in my bath and preparing salads on my late father in laws writing desk so I'm moving back in.  But I didnt think it would be this emotional. Almost everything we own is either a hand me down or a kitchen tea or wedding present. And I still remember who gave us what.  And some of those people aren't alive anymore, or our friendship has drifted apart, or they live on the other side of the world and sometimes they are still second on my WhatsApp messages.  And 14 years into our marriage lots of the things are a little the worse for wear. They might have the odd chip, or now be an incomplete collection, Uncle Rick's hand made wooden e...