Ma Wa Gray

For the next ten days we are going to be in places with very little, if no signal. And part of that time we're going to be out the country.  I should have thought this through when I devoted my lent season to blogging everyday.  I am going to endeavour to write every day and then do a wild upload in ten days time. I must say, the thought of no signal is a glorious one even if it makes logistics a little tricky.  Let's see how I manage.  Until then Emily is not available. Please leave a message at the tone... BEEP

This morning I spent too much money on all the food required for our upcoming holiday. It's the only time I don't begrudge spending money on groceries because I keep imagining where and who we are going to be sharing meals with and it gives me a real surge of joy.  To be honest one of my best feelings is the feeling before an adventure. I love the planning and the anticipation. I love sitting with Stephen and the kids day dreaming about how it's all going to be. Sometimes the anticipation is actually more enjoyable for me than the actual holiday.  So, having loaded all my groceries into the car I was preparing to reverse my pajero out of its parking. A wiry, bald man a few years older than me (sound familiar?)  walked up and inspected the back of my car. I then opened my window and the stranger explained to me that my tow hitch was incorrectly attached to the car. He said, 'My wife... my late wife, had a car like this...' And then he described some complicated thing...

I'm sitting on my couch between two jack russels. Somewhere on the other side of the house Stephen is bathing the children. We've started packing bags for our big holiday.  Eva's art litters the floor and Gray's ghastly crocs are poking out from under the couch.  Gray arrives on the scene, fresh from his bath, refusing to put a tshirt on. Stephen follows him. Gray just read the sentence about his crocs and is offended. Stephen suggests 'betrayed' as an apt description. Then he monologues about Gray's love for long socks. Gray agrees, with his arms slung over Stephen's shoulder.  There's another long conversation about socks. Stephen calls Gray a half wit.  Gray wrestles Stephen, inciting the dogs who then jump onto my stomach to get to the action. Eva shouts for Stephen from the bath and they all disappear again leaving me alone. The dogs settle back in their vigil on either side of me. One takes moments of domesticity for granted. The normal everyda...

Yesterday after my previously mentioned weeding experience in the garden I took the kids to the Kearsney swimming pool for a swim. My doctor has told me that the only way to get rid of my frozen shoulder is to swim. Since he told me this at least two months ago I've been to the pool for the sum total of one session. This was to be my second. I stripped down to my costume, popped in my ear plugs to protect my rapidly failing ears and professionally slipped my cap on. Whenever I do this I am reminded of the days when I was a lithe high school swimmer who used to swim galas in this very pool. I was long, sleek and very fit. Gray is now the swimmer in the family and he he too is long, sleek and very fit.  Now, the Kearsney pool borders on our Sports Zone and a span of windows run the length of the pool as a result. They also double up unofficially as mirrors. I have witnessed many a school boy flex in front of these window/mirrors. Unfortunately as I strode towards the edge if the pool...

  My family and I like to watch a TV programme called 'Homestead Rescue' where the hard core Rainey family (homesteaders from Alaska) rescue homesteads. I'm sure you could have probably worked that out by yourself.  Having watched a fair number of episodes it looks like that if you want to qualify to be in the show your homestead needs to look like a low key squatter camp. A number of your rooves must be plastic. You must have a critter problem. Your vegetable garden must be a couple of old poles stuck into the ground with one dying cabbage in the middle. And you must be in constant war against mother nature - floods, fires, drought, possibly some inbreeding somewhere in your past.  I'm generalizing here but most of the homesteaders look like they need a good bath and a solid meal. Their kids are mainly feral but charming and a lot of them have given up careers as musicians, lawyers and postmen to live the way of their ancestors. It hasn't worked and their generator...

I've only ever watched 'City of Angels' once, but, like Braveheart, I would still say it's one of my favourite films. I will never look at pears in the same way again, and neither will I listen to 'Iris' by Goo Goo Dolls in the same way. Meg Ryan needs to take her bicycle safety more seriously. That movie ripped my heart apart, and the song still does.  'Iris' is in fact my favourite song. It's also the song I promised one of my best friends from high school that I would sing at her funeral. We were 17 at the time. I wonder if her funeral plans are still the same because those high notes aren't actually in my range. When I made the promise we were invincible, I feel less invincible now. Floey please don't shuffle.  This evening rather a lot of middle aged Durban people, who are no longer invincible, are sitting having unexpected date nights because our long anticipated Goo Goo Dolls concert has been rained out.  It's pretty bleak. The pla...

There are two sleeping bunnies in my bed.  They are soft and furry and mine. Outside the rain drips against the window pain And a fluff tail sings it's sad sing in the mist.  My bunnies sigh deeply in their sleep, Two auburn haired things cuddled together. I still can't believe they are mine.

Hey Hugh remember when Maryna handed you a calculator and you happily thought it was a remote control and you surfed the channels while she smugly watched her programme? And do you remember when you told an awkward eleven year old aspiring dramatist that her performance of the now socially very unacceptable, 'My boomerang won't come back',  was the funniest thing you've ever seen? Do you know that she's now 41 and still goes to that moment when she needs a lift.  Do you remember when you and Ross spent an entire day fighting the demonic runaway fires on our farm? I remember standing with you guys in the yard of my grandfather's home after we had removed burning floor boards from his dining room. The wind was still howling and we were all covered in soot. You and Ross could no longer see anything and no longer had eye lashes or eyebrows. Your eyes were blood shot and your bodies were totally stuffed. But you helped to save our farm that day when the community was...

  This morning Stephen and I attended Eva's first morning chapel service that Grade R parents were allowed to attend.  Maybe it's fatigue, or recognition of the tight coil of anxiety in my gut after a very hectic term, but I battled to hold back the tears in that beautiful, spirit filled space.  This happens whenever I'm in the presence of God. I can't help it. When I become aware of His presence I am just completely overwhelmed. And it spills out from my eyes. And when I've tried to do everything on my own steam for too long then the tears flow even harder because He was actually there all along.  I suppose it's what some people now call 'plugged in'. I like the metaphor. To be plugged in is to have a surge of energy from an infinite source. It's being able to operate the way something was designed to operate. It's when something works at full capacity.  It's the difference between light and dark.  And this all happened even before the actua...

I don't know if Polly Shorts is somewhere near half way in the Comrades Marathon. You should know me well enough by now to know that I'll never know where Polly Shorts makes it's appearance on the route.  The fact of the matter is I've hit my Polly Shorts today. I have 130 reports to edit by 8:00 am, I'm half way through my blogging marathon, I'm I'm desperate need of a holiday and there isn't a water table in sight.  

If you are a regular reader of my blog you will know that I'm pretty passionate about rugby. Particularly school boy rugby. Firstly I love the sport, and secondly half the first rugby team are in my Drama class. And they are generally phenomenal Drama students too, not that most people care.  It also means that every Monday, of every second term, either some wild high fives, or some post traumatic stress counseling happens in my classroom. Which is fair. Winning and losing graciously is all part of the game. To me it's actually the most important part of the game. Being gracious in defeat speaks volumes about the character of the boy, and the school he comes from.  But with school boy rugby I have to draw the line in the whole gracious losers thing.  This weekend the team I support were totally annihilated. I watched as flanks were literally rivitted into the air, their legs flailing at least a metre off the ground. It was a blood bath. And the team they were playing agai...

    The original  Tonight I'm going to let a picture speak a thousand words...                                   Nailed it!

An unexpected play date finds us at a braai with acquaintances. We sit in the balmy glow of one of the final days of summer and shoot the breeze. We don't know each other that well, we spectate at the same galas, wait for the same parent teacher meetings, dream the same dreams for our kids, but it's still an effort to remember names. The usual topics get covered - bullies, holidays, careers, chicken on special at Woolies.  And then somewhere in the conversation a realness creeps in.  We are told the story of infertility, of a prayer, of a miracle baby.  The couple look at each other and say, 'there is more'.  They take a deep breath and tell the story the loss of their second child, an unborn six month old son.  Complications to the placenta meant that his life was not viable and the damage had already been done to his brain.  I let out a minor sob and can't stop the weep from happening.  I look to the mother and ask, 'Did you see him?' Her eyes stream...

I've had a macabre hour. My colleague and I were comparing the very long drawn out end to this term to the breaths of someone dying. She then very graphically gave a live performance of the 'death rattle'. We're Drama teachers so it was quite a compelling performance.  I then went straight from our death rattle chat to print my Funeral Benefit form. While I was filling in Stephen's details it struck me as a bit crap that, should he benefit from this insurance, I wont be there to enjoy it with him. The same pang happens when my banking app informs me that the payment for my life insurance has come off my account. Yet another payment I will ultimately not be enjoying. I then went up to admin to drop off my Funeral Benefit form and we had further macabre and irreverent chats about the weirdness of paying for something that literally is of no benefit to one whatsoever. We giggled at the thought of upgrading a funeral based on ones funeral policy - savory or sweet snacks...

This one is going to ruffle some feathers. And I'm still very undecided on it but I think some of the views I'm about to express need to at least be considered by my current generation of parents.  The other day I arrived 15 minutes early to fetch Gray from rugby practice. I parked on the side of the field and did some work. Five minutes before the end of their practice I got out the car to chat to another mom.  It was then that I noticed a very long throng of parents (mainly dads) watching the rugby practice. To be honest it looked more like the crowd for an actual game. I wondered how that many dads could afford to be there at that time of day. I also wondered how I could maybe get a job like that too.  I'm going to throw my first little curve ball out there. I get that my generation of parents are determined to not be the kind of parents their parents were. I'm generalizing here because my Dad was great at showing up but the stereotypical dad in the 80s wasn't ex...

When I was little I was totally obsessed with bunny holes.  Emily's Childhood Dictionary describes a bunny hole as :  Bunny hole Noun 1. A cozy safe place to snuggle. 2. Generally where all her favourite stories take place.  Bunny holes are the start of all my favourite stories. Peter Rabbit, Watership Down, Dunton Wood (although this one is technically about moles but there are even more bunny holes in a mole's world than there are in an actual rabbit's world). I think my obsession with small cozy places started from my favourite feeling as a child  Sadly it's a feeling generally lost on the latest generations, mainly because the lost art of car sleeping is no longer socially acceptable. But allow me some nostalgia tonight... Remember going out with your parents to a party. Probably a 30th (because our generation of parents had already pushed out three kids by the time they were 30). Your monolithic Peugeot station wagon gets parked in someone's garden alongside th...

  Dedicated to Pippa Walker In my first year of university I fancied myself a journalist and registered for a coveted BJourn degree at Rhodes. I studied with some of the greats in journalism. I wasn't, however, one of the greats myself.  What I did do, however, was get myself a slot on Rhodes Music Radio. My friend Manuella (name changed to protect highly successful international PR company) and I pitched the idea for a radio show and the management wisely relegated us a graveyard shift once a week on a nebulous school night. Not that Rhodes ever really had school nights. I like to think that at any given moment, at any given time of the day, there was a cheese and wine happening somewhere.  Anyway, once a week Manuella and I would go to the RMR library. We'd select the same ten cds every week and we'd play the same love sings every Tuesday from 2:00 to 4:00 am. I'm using the royal 'we' here because I seldom presented the actual show with Manuella. She spent mor...

  I went to watch my niece and nephew in their school musical last night. I'm not going to lie - having worked all weekend bringing the pizzaz for my school's Open Weekend I was a bit pizzazless on Sunday night. Nevertheless, my dear niece and nephew have cheered Gray on at various sporting events and it was time to watch them shine. And that's the thing about high school musicals - those babies shine.  There is something deeply satisfying when the chaos of bad harmonies, teens with two left feet and an orchestra that sounds like a whale dying suddenly comes together in a moment of pure magic on stage. And even if you don't know the personal backstories of every child you know that statistically speaking at least two of your leads were seriously hard work, one got a deadly virus the day before opening night and three of them fell in and out of love during the rehearsal process. There is no greater emotional roller-coaster than a high school production. One of my besties...

  This week a great theatrical light went off. Athol Fugard had a very good innings. 92 years at the crease, and I have no idea how he feels about cricket, but I would say he's 92 not out.  Most Drama teachers can probably recite a Fugard backwards - 'Master Harold', 'Road to Mecca', 'The Island', 'Victory'... his repertoire spans decades and reflects intimately the lives of every day people surviving in both the Apartheid and post-Apartheid world. Any Drama student who has been around since the 1960s will be familiar with the quote synonymous with Fugard - 'he gave a voice to the voiceless'. And, as a Drama student, if that quote didn't end up somewhere in your final examination paper in your essay on Fugard did you even study? There is something deeply humble about someone who devoted their lives to the plight of everyman. About someone who processed, through theatre, his own victories and betrayals in life, something that must happen w...

Ok so it's been a very long week for me. Friday night does not find be brimming with writing ideas. So I have decided to close my eyes and pick a random picture from my photo reel and regardless of what picture I chose I have to use it as inspiration for today's blog post. Obviously it would be a screen shot of a recipe. No rad pictures of me being a poster woman for motherhood, or pictures of my kids living their best lives 1672km away from the nearest screen or a candid photo taken of me by my doting husband as I gaze out across some exotic landscape.  It's not even a whole recipe. It's just the recipe for the dressing that goes on that 90s classic of cabbage, roasted 2 minute noodles and seeds. But it's a great salad. I remember the first time I ever had the salad. Kingspark Stadium sometime in the late 90s. My cool townie cousins had season tickets. They were at rugby basically every weekend and we probably watched a sum total of three games in that stadium for ...

Today we went to watch Eva's little class show us what they've been doing in their swimming lessons. There was lots of smiling and waving, not that much swimming.  The little poppets have been divided into two groups. The 'dolphin' group were girls who have a little skill in the water and who can thrash their way from one side of the pool to another in a mild resemblance of free style. The 'turtle' group are still learning some confidence in the pool and need a little more assistance from their teachers. It was flippen cute. And we all clapped as each little person did whatever it was that they have learnt to do - whether it was some back stroke kicks with a kick board or doing bunny hops across the pool.  At one point I heard the most delightful squeal from the turtle group. It came from the beaming face of a little person who I've known since she was two.  For most parents there she was, just a little girl having fun in a pool. But I know her story and I k...

  I'm so sorry you're in such terrible pain. Teenage boys should feel the pain of fatigue after a hard rugby session, not the kind of pain you feel. I'm so sorry you're back in hospital far away from home. The smell of hospital is never a welcome one, specially on an unexpected return. Kaylan you don't know me very well. I'm your neighbour's daughter, Aunty Ren's girl. We probably don't have that much in common, me being a forty year old mom and you being a teenage boy. But we do share a farm boundary. When you're home maybe my kids and I can walk over the hill and meet you for waffles at the Waffle Hut? I do love a waffle from the Waffle Hut, or a 'Tribe Deal' of six pancakes. And Eva, my daughter,  loves the Watermelon Crush. they're the best in the world, she says.  That's the thing about home - everything about it is so much better when you have time to miss it. We would know hey? We're both boarding school kids - you don...

  I delivered the following message in chapel this week: When I was a Grade 8 in high school I decided to try out rhythmic gymnastics. My mom had been a gymnast and in all my homesickness at boarding school I thought that attempting to do a sport she loved so much, and was so good at, might help me to connect with her while counting down the hours before I could actually go home and be reunited with her. As I have told many of you I could write a book on homesickness and the punch in the gut feeling of having to return to boarding school on a Sunday night. So I threw myself into new challenges to try and combat my intense loneliness and one of those was attempting rhythmic gym. I can still picture the moment in the school hall, the sunlight streaming in through the glass windows onto the warm wooden floor. All the other girls who had done gymnastics from basically the moment they were born were all ‘warming up’ by sitting in the splits and contorting themselves into circles o...

  I find reason to sit alone in the chapel this morning. A chilly wind wraps itself around the building whispering the promise of winter. Inside it is still, calm and warm. A gentle morning light shifts it's fingers through the stained glass windows refracting scenes of life and death.  And yet here nothing moves, This space is a solace to the outside world, to the life and death, But it also prepares us for it. 

I'm going to paraphrase some comments I've heard from friends in the past three days in respect of what they're going though in their day to day lives. These friends have various occupations and live in various geographical locations. The details have been changed but the information remains the same... 'It's my son's gala at school today but I'm not going to go because my Dad is in organ failure and I know I'll need leave for his funeral so I'll just miss the gala.' 'I've had to work flat out this week despite having a dreadfully ill daughter who has been in and out of hospital for the past five days.' 'I have a family funeral that my husband has had to organise but I can only afford to leave my job for half the day so I'll work the morning shift and then go.' 'I have cancer but am really grateful that my employer is so supportive because I'm only technically allowed (...) time off but they're stretching it an...

  Last night Stephen and I went to our tenth matric dance together. Let it never be said that the romance is dead. Being a high school teacher puts one in an interestingly privileged position of reliving some of the most iconic high school moments, but with a fully developed frontal lobe. And the matric dance is certainly one of those moments. And the bonus is I get to experience all the build up from the perspective of a teenage boy. A perspective I was painfully not party to when I was younger because I was awkward, didn't get the zeal and immaturity of teenage boys and was patiently waiting for Tristan Ludlow (Legends of the Fall) to come and rescue me. Now I ironically spend most of my waking hours with a cohort who were once so unfamiliar to me but who now are my favourite things.  Parents will know the following moment from the early days of parenting. Its the moment your kid wears a super special outfit for the first time. It might be a flower girl dress, or their first...

  Dear Leo, You don't know me but you probably know my type. I'm one of those aunties who will come up to you and squeeze your little foot, and talk in a high pitched voice telling you that I've known your mom since she was a little girl. I would probably also tell you that you're handsome like your dad and have the cutest little face. I would also be a clown to try to make you laugh. Lets be honest, I would probably be a bit awkward, like most aunties are, but that's because I know how loved you are and I want you to know how much I love you. Even if I'm just some random auntie.  The thing is Leo, I've known your mom for almost all my life. We grew up together, farm girls from the mountains and we also went to high school together. And even though your mom is a completely sophisticated belter today I remember the days when she was so little that eating a peanut butter sandwich would result in most of the peanut butter ending up all over her cheeks. I also r...

  Last night as I lay in bed waiting for my new natural sleeping drugs to do whatever they were supposed to do Stephen asked me what I was going to blog about today. I looked up at him blearily from reading the contents of the bottle of Natra Sleep I had purchased earlier on in the day and said, 'I have no idea'. Rewind a few hours yesterday and after my fairly 'medium' day (as Eva would call it) I found myself in Clicks with my kids buying shampoo, as one does. A bottle of something caught my eye as I went down the supplement aisle. Well, to be honest, the red 50% off sticker caught my eye. Few things catch my eye like a 50% off sticker does. It was the only bottle of these pills on the shelf and they were cheaper than they had been before and that is all I really need to know when purchasing something on sale. On further examination of the bottle I discovered that its a natural remedy to help with sleep. I was ready to shout, 'shut up and take my money!... and the...