…It is not measured by how tall it could be, but by how deep the roots have grown.
Life is cruel sometimes, sucker-punching you in the gut and heart. I refrain from saying ‘when you least expect it’ because nobody expects to have their heart broken. This past Friday, as has become custom, I went to visit my friends Sharon and Pete, for a weekly catch-up over supper, after which we’d watch Survivor Australia (debating who we think should go – both Pete and I were rooting for George), followed by Voetspore. Throughout, we’d chat about all sorts of things, laughing and joking, delighting in the wonderful joy of friendship.
This is a somewhat disjointed post, but an update of current events in my life.
I love this time of the year, even on gloomy grey days like today. I embrace the cooler temperatures with joy because my internal thermostat has been faulty ever since Granny fell of the bus.
I’ve been relieving in reception since March 6th, due to the regular lady being off sick. I’m enjoying it, because I get to see the trees dancing in the wind and the birdsong is glorious. There was one calling earlier this week that had me mesmerised, but sadly, I couldn’t spot it. I’m a lot of things – an ornithologist is not one of them.
Today this rings extra true for me. I try to find something good in every day, and most days, I am successful. Moving has been stressful. Seriously, if it is ever within my ability to do so, the next place I move to is going to be a place of my own (even if it means paying a bond for 23-30 years). Parting with many of my things made my heart ache because as much as I understand it not being practical to hold on to the shirt half the school signed on my last day of Matric in 1997 (yes, I’m that old!), but I have happy memories of that day, and many others of my high school career. For the record, I ended up keeping the shirt, even though I don’t remember half the people who signed it. It’s the only example I could think of.
I must vacate The Cave by the 31st, which is still a week and some days away, but this moving in installments has me at my wits’ end, so two angels from my day job are going to come and help me pack the last ‘kaggel kakkies’, and then we’re going to hunker down and give the place a good clean. If all goes according to plan, maybe I can finalize the move by the end of the weekend – here’s hoping!
Being a sentimental person by nature, it is incredibly difficult to part with the possessions that friends have given me, but I’ve had to be ruthless in getting rid of the excess. I’ve donated clothes and some small appliances to a family that lost their home in a fire, and I’ve put a lot of stuff in the trash, and still, I have too much stuff. I am learning the lesson now, at the ripe age of forty-something, that it isn’t necessary to have five pairs of black pants or a wristwatch to match almost every outfit or two and a half dozen champagne flutes – although granted, if I do live the life I’m destined to, I will be sipping Mimosas with my besties for breakfast, lunch and supper dahling.
As many of you will know from my previous post, I am packing up The Cave after living there for almost ten years to move back to my folks because Dad is ill, although coping very well – something for which we’re all very grateful.
In the clean-up, I came across a postcard that Charlie sent me for my birthday one year, while he was sailing in Alaska. It read “Hello there, from the other side of the planet. Happy birthday. I hope you get a jam-filled cake.” I read it, smiled, reminisced for a moment, and then placed it in a bag with other papers for recycling. After all, it’d been years since our paths split. He got married last year on October 8th Shannon, the blonde American who swept him off his feet in just three days of meeting him. He felt bad, but ‘the heart wants what the heart wants’. When I happened upon the wedding photos on her Insta (it wasn’t difficult to track her down), I finally summoned the will to delete our entire chat history of almost two years, along with his number. I felt an inexplicable numbness, a tiny tinge of horror, and a pinch of relief. I don’t know what I was expecting, but the feelings I was having, weren’t ‘it’.
What. A. Year! Looking back, 2022 wasn’t a bad year – when compared with its two Covid-lockdown predecessors – but it wasn’t one that I will remember with insatiable amounts of fondness because it was a hard and often unforgiving, relentless with its onslaught of car troubles, illness, and teary goodbyes.
I should have known that things didn’t bode well when I had to get The Toppie to the doctor in January because he was too weak to even stand. He was diagnosed with an intestinal bleed, which later required hospitalization. His iron levels were very low and combined with hyperglycemia, his symptoms mimicked those of a stroke. It was a scary time for our little family, with me driving home from the hospital in the wee hours of the morning, crying into a voice note to a friend in Cape Town who was still awake to offer words of wisdom and comfort. Visiting The Toppie was tough because Covid infections were still high. The security guards at the provincial hospital see themselves as gods, which only exacerbated our already-high stress levels. The Toppie had scopes and what-not to find the source of the bleed but to no avail. With meds, the symptoms cleared up, but for every action, there is an equal and opposite reaction. More about that later…
The Bean and I went to a coffee shop in April called Axara. They serve pink lattes! Needless to say, I had to have one.
It was also the month I took myself out to dinner – something which I seldom do because it seems pitiful to dine alone. I went all out, three courses, and a tall G&T.
I also got to don a pretty dress because I was asked by my boss to attend the launch of the Garden Route Fashion Council.
June brought with it the end of mandatory mask-wearing. Three cheers for no more fogged-up glasses and maskne on my chin and cheeks. Finally, life was starting to feel pre-coronavirus normal. During the last week, our factory had its annual winter maintenance shutdown, so I had some time off. My friend, Shireen treated me to Elvis. Shireen is a real aficionado on the King of Rock ‘n Roll, so watching it with her made it even better!
Elizabeth and I also took a drive up to the St. Blaize lighthouse one morning for coffee and breakfast, mine being delicious carrot cake.
I had a few petsitting gigs too – I looked after a colleague’s two cats and three dogs in mid-August. Few things beat kitty snuggles and wagging tails.
For the first time in two years, I celebrated my birthday in September. Pre-2020, I would always have some kind of get-together, but this year, I didn’t have any kind of zeal to organize anything. The night before my birthday I went to watch little Nic’s school concert, a rendition of one of my best-loved stories, Alice in Wonderland. It was delightful.
On my actual birthday, my folks and I went to my favourite coffee roastery for a flat white, and the unveiling of a surprise for my folks – I had booked a cruise for them and me for April 2023.
Afterwards we had fish and chips at The Point and the weekend after, Eliza, Nathan, the kids and I ate ice cream sandwiches and then went for a meal. While it wasn’t a ‘regular’ birthday for me, it was one of the most memorable I have had in a long time.
The week after, I took ill. I contracted bronchitis, but thanks to Covid nine months earlier, it was the worst bout I have ever had; I eventually relented and went to the doctor when I started coughing blood. The GP prescribed meds and a chest cavity x-ray, but I could only afford the former. I petsat for Corine and another friend of hers – two brilliantly lovable Bassets Hounds.
Had life worked out differently, and had I also had a stronger stomach to deal with the dark side of what humans are capable of, I would have loved to have studied journalism. One of my biggest aspirations was to have my work published in a newspaper. The dream eventually came true, when my good friend, Corine, put in a good word for me with the local community rag, securing me a regular column. The brief was that it has to incorporate something about the town, without being advertorial. I would have loved to have called it Reflections of a Misfit as I do here, but ‘misfit’ has a negative connotation to some, so I went with Roots ‘n Reflections instead, because my roots run deep in this Sleepy Hollow (well, it’s not so sleepy anymore!) and because of the mandate, I like the idea of the posts being somewhat reflective. My first column was published in October. I was beaming with pride.
The Bean makes The Toppie buy the paper whenever a column of mine is inside, because she cuts them out and keeps them in a scrapbook. My friend, Ray, In East London also asked me to send hard copies to him so he can keep them with his late Mom’s stuff. She wanted me to ghostwrite her life story, but pancreatic cancer took her before we ever had the chance to sit down and make notes.
Another highlight was a visit with Michelle, Len, their two lovely kids, Michelle’s friend, Val, and Michelle’s folks at De Vette Mossel. Sand, sun, superb company and unlimited seafood – what more could a girl ask for? As always, visits with special friends are just never long enough though.
In November, on the eighteenth, Elizabeth turned 50 – she didn’t want a big shindig, so her family and some of her friends had a light bite to eat with her at her parents’ home. To many, fifty is a dreadful milestone to reach, but Elizabeth says she’s worked hard to be so old. Mind you, she doesn’t look it – not a single wrinkle, just like her mom who’s already in her late 70’s. Three cheers for good genes! Sadly, the day before, The Toppie got bad news – the meds he was on for the bleed, along with his other chronic prescriptions for diabetes and high BP damaged his kidneys. He now has stage 3B chronic disease, the likelihood of which means that his kidneys will eventually fail. I took the decision to move back to The Toppie and The Bean to be there for both of them. It wasn’t a decision I took lightly, but it is one I have peace about. The Bean is not going to cope on her own when things really take a turn for the worse with The Toppie. Some of my friends think I’m making a grave mistake; others understand that my parents are my priority because they are my immediate family. I often say there is a reason God didn’t give me a husband or kids – He had already laid this path out for me.
December finally arrived, which meant time hadn’t stopped as I had hoped it would. I had to bid farewell to Eliza, Nathan, and their boys on the 12th, because they were embarking on the next chapter of their lives in Australia. Generally, I’m quite stoic when it comes to saying goodbye, but as I got up to get my keys, uttering the words, “there’s no point in delaying the inevitable”, my voice broke, and my vision blurred. We stood in the thick fog, all trying not to cry, failing hopelessly!
A week later Facebook reminded me that a year to the day, I had tested positive for Covid. It did a number on my lungs, which came to light when I got bronchitis earlier this year. I’m prone to chest infections, which I’ve often been able to shake off with OTC meds. Not this time… I eventually admitted defeat in the doctor’s surgery after I started coughing blood. He ordered a chest cavity X-ray and a list of meds including antibiotics. I couldn’t afford both, so to this day, as I write this, we still don’t know the extent of the damage to my lungs.
I shed more tears a few days before Christmas as I spoke to my landlord and his wife about having to move. They were the first ‘landpeople’ I’ve ever had, and I can honestly say I couldn’t have asked for better people to let me a part of their home. Nine years I’ve lived in The Cave, and to think, in less than thirty days it will be as it was when I first set foot in it back in 2014. I can only hope that the person/people that rent it in the future have as wonderful a time living there as I did and realize how lucky they are to have Uncle H and Aunty J as their lessors. They really are good people.
And here I am, winding down the first day of 2023 – unsure about what the year holds, but earnestly praying that it brings fewer trials, because 2022, despite all the happy moments here, left me physically and emotionally exhausted. I chose not to make any New Year’s Resolutions this year – instead, I am just going to take each day as it comes and try to find something good in it. I may as well start here – the good thing about today was that I finished a book a friend lent me titled Mr Wrong Number by Lynn Painter. It was relatable and ridiculously funny. Not a bad way to kick off the year…
Happy New Year to you all!
PS. The months of which I’ve made no mention in this post, don’t mean that nothing happened, it’s just that I don’t have any ‘happy snaps’ (as Elizabeth calls them) to share with the written content.
This is what my friend, Trevor, said to me on Saturday when I told him about having to bid Eliza, Nathan, and their two boys farewell as they leave for the land of kangaroos ‘n koalas.
There’d been talk of emigration two years back already, but the wheels were only greased into motion earlier this year – the motivation being that their youngest child would be starting primary school in 2023. Paperwork was submitted, IELTS tests were done, prayers were prayed, and sooner than anyone would have imagined, visas – with permanent residence attached – were approved at the beginning of August! It was surreal.
For the most part, I was genuinely over the moon for them. After all, this is an amazing opportunity for them which will almost certainly assure their children a brighter future than what they are likely to have here in SA. A tiny part of my heart ached though – because at some stage, I knew they would really be leaving. It was no longer a dream, something of which we all talked, it was a foregone conclusion, a dinkum reality.
They fly out on the 26th, but because they are going to have one last family holiday, their last day here in Sleepy Hollow is this Thursday. We went to church last night to sing Christmas carols. The service kicked off with Little Drummer Boy – cue snot factory. Thank goodness for waterproof make-up. Afterwards we went for pizza at a local seaside haunt and collapsed into bed when we got home. I struggled to sleep, despite the joyful chorus of frogs enjoying the weather, which has been oddly rainy and humid the past few days. It’s our last visit for who knows how long kept milling through my mind.
I found myself grateful for writing them a letter to read when they arrive in Sydney. It was tough to write, not because it is sad, but because summing up almost a decade of memories and the value of a friendship so special into a few lines is no easy feat.
So, in mist as thick as pea soup this morning, we said our teary goodbyes. We hugged just a little longer, and a little tighter, as if not letting go would delay the inevitable. In Eliza and Nathan, I have not only found friends, but kin.
Will we miss each other? Of course – insanely! Will we stay in touch? Absolutely! Will we cope with the distance? You betcha!
I know that this chapter is going to be challenging (and quite possibly, tough) for them, but what a story they are going to write! With the love, determination, strength of character, and the faith they have as a family, it can only be a huge success.
Reflections of a Misfit 