Ma Wa Gray

I’ve said this on Facebook before and I’m going to say it again here because this feeling won’t leave my heart. It comes from the vantage of a Christian mother. I’m not shoving my opinion down anyone’s throat. Read it if you want to. Comment how you want to. Nothing, however, will change my mind on the matter. Halloween - When you dress yourselves and your children up to celebrate a festival that acknowledges the spirits of the dead mingling with the living, despite your ignorance about the festival, you are buying into it completely.  Just as you wouldn’t (as a South African) dress your child in an All Black rugby jersey because you wouldn’t be caught dead supporting a team who is the enemy why are you dressing your child up in the very symbols of our enemy? Why are you practicing the rituals that on any other day of the year would be completely frowned upon.  If anyone comments that it’s just harmless fun and the kids have a jol please spare me. It is not. Do your homework. ...

The mediocre ballerinas of Winterton Primary School drift uncoordinatedly across the stage. I am one of them. And I am sure that I’ve just laddered my stockings after forcing my very long legs into Lisa Bolt’s borrowed tights. My pink skirt too is looking more like a hair scrunchie around my waist rather than a billowing petal. No doubt yet another detrimental wardrobe side effect after another growth spurt.  This particular shambles of a dance is to the Sleeping Beauty Suite. Our wistful dance teacher no doubt hoping that the grandeur of the music would elicit some grandiose dancing. She was mistaken. Whether puppy fatted, long of limb or awkward of movement we are a fairly peculiar little bunch of farm girl ballerinas waving hula hoops which have been cut in half and covered in paper flowers. But we have a secret.  We know that our sloppy pirouettes are just preparing the stage to show the audience what a real dancer looks like. We exchange gleeful glances and Meg Irons prac...

  Not the hottest picture of me - ironically. The kind of picture you send to the family Whatsapp chat group for a laugh. I was actually feeling very hot when this picture was taken and I am responsible for the massive blaze behind me.  I call it ‘My 2020 - a very short photoessay.’ I have pyromaniac blood in my genes which is fortunate because Stockils get to legally burn huge swathes of land every year at the end of winter in the name of fire breaking. It is the season we most look forward to and a great deal of latent military planning comes to the fore in preparation for a big burn. It’s a pity there are laws that stop fire breaking from taking place over weekends because it literally is a family hobby.  Fortunately we are home for the long weekend and so last night in the twilight I stood on the hill overlooking the span of the Drakensberg mountains and listened to the cries of jackals and fiery necked nightjars and watched as my firebreak got rid of the last spiky b...

If you’ve just had your 20th school reunion or, like me, are about to have yours I don’t need to explain my reference to this classic 90s film. In short it tells the tale of all of us in our mid thirties having to confront the horror of a high school reunion, in many cases desperate to show that we have changed.  We know that 20 years have changed us in ways we just can not comprehend. We have suffered, we have lost, we have confronted demons, we have dealt with trauma, we have grown, we have matured, we have married, divorced, had children, lost children, lost marriages... life has happened. We are inexplicably not remotely like that bolshy eighteen year old leaving the gates of high school proudly proclaiming Destiny’s Child’s ‘I’m a survivor’. Survived what? But for many of us those teenage years were to be survived. I remember leaving school thinking that one could draw a very definitive line in the sand between those leaving school who had gone through the dreaded existential ...

Stephen and I have a TV watching schedule every evening that follows a similar pattern - Masterchef Australia, Queer Eye and The Big Bang Theory. In short these three shows (out of a plethora of choices) tick the boxes of what we need in the evenings - good looking food, feel good endings and familiarity. Based on our viewing choices I think we all need the above, and many of us are not getting them at present. Queer Eye gets me every time. If you haven’t watched it it’s about five of the most flamboyantly incredible homosexual men who are specialists in fields like fashion, home design, grooming etc who take on a person in great need of a makeover - both inside and out and in a week they transform their lives - inside and out. I think what I love most is the scope of people who are volunteered by family and friends to undergo these transformations. Sometimes I wonder how our Queer Guys are going to manage the sometimes reticent participants. I have come to the conclusion that t...

We have managed to escape the confines of our home during all this chaos of masks and hand sanitizers and are spending two weeks in our family farmhouse. The house that my dad was raised in. It is amazing how a house with cracks and squeaky floorboards and an idiosyncratic water supply can be so much more than that. In a rare moment I am sitting in the sun on the verandah by myself while Eva naps and Gray has some time with his Gran up in my own childhood home up the road. From my vantage I am looking across to the spot on the verandah where my Granny used to serve tea at 10 o’clock every morning. And without fail that tea would be accompanied by home made bread tomato sandwiches and scones with homemade strawberry jam. My Gran would top and tail fresh green beans on this verandah in the sun and always had a warm welcome lap for rouge grandchildren who came ambling into her yard. I only ever felt love in this home. Because I only ever felt love from my Granny. Heartbreakingl...

I recently read a novel based on the historic facts of the Siege of Malta. In it a small group of knights and native Maltese people held at bay the might of the Turkish empire. Many chapters revolved around desperate peasants and slaves rebuilding walls which were blown up by the relentless cannon fire of the Turks. No sooner was a wall rebuilt (with a couple of slaves being blown up in the process) then it was demolished again by cannon fire, and rebuilt again, and so on. This continued for several months. It totally perplexed the Turks who assumed victory would be a done deal in a matter of days. Eventually those feisty knights managed to outfox the Turks and they turned their galleys around and headed back East. They were triumphant but they also had to fix a helleva lot of walls in the process. Many accounts of sieges are similar. We had our own in Ladysmith over a century ago. They don’t sound that kiff. It’s not easy manning the stations when there are no reinforcements. ...

Tonight approximately 2020 years ago an anxious man went for a walk in a garden. If you have a garden maybe you too  just took yourself out for some reflection time to make sense of the announcement that the South African lockdown has been extended for a further two weeks. The man was facing the unknown. He was facing something he knew he had to do, something he knew would change the entire destiny of humanity. He knew that he was going to make the hugest sacrifice of all to save the lives of mankind. You too know that this has to be done, you do not have a choice in this and your sacrifice of personal freedom will potentially save the lives of thousands. The man was so anguished at what he was about to face, at the burden he was about to take upon himself that he wept blood. And tonight the bills you have to pay, the mouths you have to feed, the salaries you have to somehow find, the employment that you have lost, the debt you will never be able to repay seem to be so i...

This evening I watched a jogger go through a certain kind of grief. He was saying goodbye to the open road. There was a poignancy in his fevered gallop. Like some kind of passionate love affair ending. As chance would have it Gray came down with tonsillitis overnight forcing me to break several days of isolation to brave it in the tense last minute shop of far too many South Africans. In my quest to get antibiotics  in a crowded shopping centre I felt the very real collective pulse of this nation. And there is a spirit amongst our people, and indeed in the world, that I can’t quite put my finger on. It reminds me of my jogger - we know that something is coming to an end, that a huge shift is underway, that the things that have been as certain as the ground beneath our feet are going to change. And we don’t know if we’re going to be able to run anymore. We are approaching the holiest times for two faiths - Passover or Pesach. For the Jewish faith Pesach marks the time when...

A Prayer For Families In this liminal time between the known world and a rapidly changing universe - May your marriages be saved, May love return to your home and remind you why this union is worth fighting for. May you find passion in your shared spaces. May you always have enough food on your table. No matter how humble, no matter how bland, May the mouths in all homes find something to fill them. May your walls swell, may they stretch to accommodate the hours, the games, the laughter, the homework, the house work, the anxiety. May they become big with memories although small in boundaries. May there be moments of respite where those within your walls can be alone, can retreat, can be still, can know. May your children always remember this as a time of love, of resilience,  of gentle routine, of growth, of family. May their memories be painted in the joy associated with kindred. May they thrive, may they learn through boredom, may they separate from screen a...

At the beginning of every year it is policy for the teachers at my school to set goals for themselves. And then at the end of year when it comes to our appraisal with our head we reflect on how we have faired over the year.  This year I have set myself some goals which I hope are realistic but will also push me, but in the quiet recesses of my soul my real goal is a simple one, ‘Survive’.  I have no doubt that there are countless people who, for their own particular reasons, have a goal similar to mine. Maybe it’s because, like me, you are a mother of small children with a very stimulating yet demanding career. And you just don’t know how you are going to function at a level that is a reflection of your capabilities while at the same time leaving you with enough reserves to be the mother you promised God you would be.  Or you are staring down the barrel of illness - your own or that of a loved one. Or financial distress. Or marital trauma. It really could be...