Day 107 - Crunching the numbers

Day 107? What is happening to time?

In between days 95 and 107 there has been quite a lot of rain, I tried to empty the pool a bit and REALLY emptied it, some homework, school, assessments, movie nights, a scrabble game, online quiz, meaningful conversations with friends, one social distancing breakdown (we had friends over today - eek), a zillion class WhatsApp messages, lots of "I'm bored" by the kid stuck at home until the 13th and I am not sure what else.

Trying to crunch the numbers and remember what has been happening has been getting harder. And I am not the only who feels like the days are shortening and speeding past.

Time to stop the bus and step off.

Day 95 - Coin and carpet tossing

I've just been reminded of seeing both sides. The frustrated child tantrumming over school work this morning (does tantrumming have one m or two?) and the bright, enthusiastic boy who loves his friends, sports and his cat. The girl-child who tossed her clean school shirts on an unwashed kitchen floor storming off shouting "No one thinks about ME!" and the resilient girl who, despite physical limitations, climbs mountains and swims in the swim squad.

Top side of carpet or bottom side? Patterns vs threads. Heads vs tails. Or, if I can be daring, colour 1 vs colour 2. Nation vs nation and kingdom vs kingdom.

It's time we learnt to stop and look more closely. And realise that the messy side is a part of the beautiful side. If we can accept both sides, perhaps the messy will seem less messy? Isn't that what three weeks of quiet was meant to give us? Time to reflect and reset.

I quite long for those three weeks which were not very quiet. Maybe I'll get to that kitchen floor today.

Day 93: Counting the months

Today is exactly 3 months since lockdown. It seems hard to comprehend. Like why water runs off a duck's back or why silver trees become more silver in the rain. Or perhaps like rainbows. If you shift, they vanish. Or become bigger.

I was part of an imbizo in KZN in November and one of the in-house jokes which always brought gales of laughter was someone shouting "Change the position!" whenever we took photos. I feel a bit like there is something in me shouting that same thing.

"Change the position!"

So yesterday I did. My weekly outing (other than school runs) had me hauling the youngest along just to get him out of his sister's space. And along the way I concocted Sunday "lunch up a mountain". Anywhere where we could change the position. DLH (dearly loved hubby) has been hunched in front of screens all week. The tween no less so. How I love Microsoft's family setting where I can turn him off remotely!  The teen is back at school so she at least has minimal reason to be glued to that ^&*%%%$$:( machine in the study.

Beautiful views over the Constantia Valley with soft rains sweeping across the hills then vanishing, silver trees gleaming bright, Constantiaberg being coy and playing with mist. Gosh, the moaning and groaning. When the next big cloud came over towards us it got properly wet, but we found an overhang and huddled with our backs the sweeping curtains and dug out our sarmies. The teen sat on a thorny bush which tried to come home with her - I had to liberate her jeans and jacket - and the tween was freezy weezy. Hot tea makes most things feel better and by the time we started back down, they were hopping and skipping and swishing raindrop-laden branches at each other with giggles of glee.

Changing the position changes something in me each time I do it.

Maybe I should do it more often.

Still Day 86: Climbing the roof

Today our youngest spent quite a lot of time on the roof. Fortunately the cat likes the roof too, so the two kept each other company and commiserated about "History books" and "sticking things in" and "mean parents who won't let me play computer games" and "I thought I had done all my work but I haven't" and more.

The cat was infinitely more sympathetic than the parents.

I really hope I don't crack a tooth in this process of unlockdown. It's come close several times. And then some kind soul sends me a meme about some fruit that is being born in me right now, and I must admit, I'd like to take aim and send that fruit back at the sender with some oomph.

Faith and fruit and life. Darn messy, trampled, picked up again, examined, real. I simply LOVE my friends who are real too in the clutter and chaos and holy moments of being alive with children in this time and this age, navigating this minute, this day and this life.

You know who you are.

Thanks for throwing a life preserver of sanity and a smile to me today!

Day 86: Contemplating breathing in Africa

This morning I am borrowing a poem from a dear friend. It kind of hits that intersection between "I can't breathe" and "I don't know how to respond without offence". Because, I don't. Black lives do matter. Apartheid is still alive. White privilege is real. And I am in the sticky gum of it all with my own heart untrustable and my own prejudices ingrained because of where I was born, who I was born to, the times that I live in. Social media and not-so-social media storm fronts on every side.

I have a peach skin. I'm officially classified as white in my country. I had a safe and loving childhood. I am so grateful. My children reap the fruit of my grandparents, parents and my/our hard work. My  love of my Africa is deep and profound. My experience is so different from that of others. Different sides of a mirror that for me seems clear and hope-filled and for my neighbours and colleagues is tarnished.

I love Deborah's words penned several years ago, but so real and vibrant and my heart cry again today.

WHITE WOMAN AFRICAN

Deborah Hancox

Father, you could have ordained

That I be born

Anywhere….

A busy European city

A Himalayan hamlet

A desert camp in North Africa

A mansion in Hollywood

Or on the streets of Calcutta.

I might have been

An Inuit in the snow

A San on a cerise sand dune

A farmer working paddy fields in China

Or a cowboy in Mexico.

But you ordained

That I be born

White

Woman

South African

and therefore African.

Lord, I do not question your wisdom.

Father, you could have ordained

That,

Within my white woman South African African-ness

I be born

Anytime…

When Dutch businessmen saw their need for the abundance of our land,

When refugees from France found freedom from religious tyranny,

Or when the poor, duped fortune seekers arrived from England.

I could have been born in the back of an ossewa moving relentlessly into land not ours,

I could have been born, like my grandmother, the daughter of a Kimberley miner who scratched the earth for riches.

I could have been born and even died, a baby in a concentration camp.

Or like my mother, born on the eve of a foreign war from which her father returned, a stranger.

But you ordained

That I be born

At a time of apart-ness.

At a time of South Africa turned in upon herself.

At a time of South Africa needing to know and love deeply.

Lord, I do not question your wisdom.

So, in my white woman African-ness

I ask 

What Lord,

What do you want me

To be and to not be

To do and to not do.

For you know the plans you have for me.

Plans to prosper not to harm.

Plans to give hope and a future.

And you have waiting, waiting, waiting, good works prepared in advance.

So in this intersection of time and place

A fleeting moment –

My moment that you chose for me -

I ask only

That I may marry your eternal purposes

With my actions in this moment.

Lord, be it unto me according to your will.