Home Lent Day 4

Something happens to my mom when she steps onto the sand of Umzumbe beach. It happens at a cellular level. It’s like jump starting a car. She slowly starts rolling and the moment her body hits the sea water she springs back to life. It is almost as if every part of her gets rebooted and renewed and balanced in that baptism of water. I watch as her body shoots out from under that first wave. Her arms reach upward, her fists clenched, every muscle pulsing, her joy complete. And then she will look back onto the beach to find one of our faces and share a knowing exclamation - her ritual is complete.

It is one of my favourite things to watch. And the intensity of the moment is even more so if she has endured a long separation from the ocean, specially if it has been due to some kind of illness. I think my mom measures her recoveries with the final moment of healing - when she is strong enough to face the waves. When she can wash the final notes of weakness off into the swirling biome of water. 

My mom grew up on this beach. She has memories of body surfing in these waves with dolphins. And doing gymnastics on the sand with her favourite cousin whom she lost tragically in a car accident when she was in her early twenties. This beach is holiday romances, and loneliness. It is her coming of age and the pudgy footsteps of her babies. And now it is a horde of arm bands and sunblock and peanut butter sarmies and grandchildren. And sometimes it is a slow day with my dad peppered with long unencumbered swims and restful naps that can extend for hours if they need to. This is her place. 

My place is on the back of a rattling farm bakkie.  The backdrop is always my beloved mountain range. These mountains are always represented in my dreams as silent ancestors. They are the witnesses to my life and they hold within their sloping walls the secrets of the generations of humans who have found shelter in their shadows. 

It is twilight. A time when the vegetation breathes out the heat of a summer day and with it a perfume of botany fills the air. With every turn on the winding rutted road the perfume changes ever so slightly - sometimes it is the khaki bos, sometime the grasses and when we reach the river it is the poplar trees that make up the highest notes in the aroma. 

Because I have issues with both my sight and my hearing it is truly smell that brings me home. Nothing in the world exhilarates me more than that first sniff. I tumble into a reverie of sensation at the first peaky whiff of wet soil combined with the ripening sunshine of maize. This is summer to me. 

And every season on the farm welcomes me home with its particular smell. I will never forget many years ago I was seeing (on and off) a boy from the area. It was winter I was studying in wet Cape Town at the time and he happened to be driving home to the Berg for the weekend. He was describing where he was driving and then he opened his window and said, ‘Em I can smell the firebreaks.’ In the years of our connection that was the most romantic thing he ever said to me. I can still literally picture where I was when he said it. He took me home with him for a brief moment. 

Home is so important. And it comes in so many different forms. Some of us are lucky - we get to return there often and immerse ourselves in that deep sense of belonging. For some it is a yearly ritual that starts when the fire is lit in a Kruger campsite. Or the tent is pitched. Or the onions start frying. Or that song is played. Ultimately we all pace our lives around the moment when we can go home again. When the airports will be opened. When the relationships can be healed. When we can get the time off. We count the minutes til the moment when all can, fleetingly, feel right again. 

If only we knew that we are all seeing out a stint being separated from home. And that at the end of this period of longing Home will be available to all. And the feeling of all being right again will be eternal.