On not reading

I've felt strangely paralysed over the last couple of weeks - unable to pick up a book, sit down and just read. All over the world people have been (and continue to be) locked down in their homes, cut off and isolated from their normally busy lives. I kept reading about "the big pause", of finding stillness, of learning new skills, baking, meditating, following-through on projects and of course, reading that pile of books one doesn't usually get to. 

During pretty much every other crisis in my life, I've read. I've managed to find even just a few stolen moments to get lost in a book. So, I had to ask myself, what was wrong with me? Why was I not getting it together? I've tried to tell myself how privileged I am - I have a nice home to be stuck inside, I have an income, while many, many had it so much worse. 

And yet, still nothing. Still this paralysis on reading and creativity.

Going into lockdown I expected (rather unrealistically) to be able to make a big dent in my TBR pile. I guess the reality was a bit more jarring and unexpected. Firstly, just the practicalities of being thrown into multiple roles so suddenly - full-time mom to two young girls, homeschooler, housekeeper, carer for unwell parents (my mom's cancer returned and my dad needed a triple bypass in the middle of it all), while still working full time - eroded the hours of my day. 

I was (am) exhausted.

Secondly, I underestimated the psychological strain of lockdown and the impact that has on my mental space (and my ability to read as usual, or even write and create). Anxiety and worries (from the personal to the national to the global) sit like big rocks in my mind, displacing everything else. Coupled with compulsive scrolling through coronoavirus-related news feeds on my phone, this has all had a negative impact on my reading. Sadly, reluctantly, I have to admit failure as a reader (Coronavirus - 1; me - 0).

Of late I have been reading poetry, which has somewhat filled that need for words a little. I've particularly enjoyed William Sieghart's anthology, "The Poetry Pharmacy" and "The Poetry Pharmacy Returns", which Stephen Fry so aptly described as "a balm for the soul, fire for the belly, an arm around the lonely shoulder... matchless compound of hug, tonic and kiss." 

It has done that for me. While I don't have any answers and I can't say it's all going to be okay, here's to reading just a little bit of poetry.

What is more generous than a window? Some rainy afternoon reflections

Sometimes it's the simplest things that matter the most:

• The aural pattern of rain against the paving, dripping through the leaves. 
• Two little girls keeping themselves busy, enveloped in imaginary worlds.
• The folded-up comfort of a cat snoozing.
• A drink, good company, conversation that digs up memories.
• A stack of books found in an odd second-hand store with someone special.
• Soup bubbling on the stove.
• A good book turned over on the table, paused, but just for a moment.
• The gleam of clean dishes on the sink, an ordinary task completed.
• The unbreakable beams of support offered by friends.
• The greeting of a pink hibiscus flower when I open my bedroom curtain in the morning.

These are the things that stand out against a busy world and which mean everything. I have a lot to be grateful for at the moment. Despite the difficult months. Despite everything.

And in celebration of that sentiment, a poem that has always spoken to me:

The Patience of Ordinary Things

Pat Schneider

It is a kind of love, is it not?

How the cup holds the tea,

How the chair stands sturdy and foursquare,

How the floor receives the bottoms of shoes

Or toes. How soles of feet know

Where they’re supposed to be.

I’ve been thinking about the patience

Of ordinary things, how clothes

Wait respectfully in closets

And soap dries quietly in the dish,

And towels drink the wet

From the skin of the back.

And the lovely repetition of stairs.

And what is more generous than a window?

Hello new year

Well, here it is. 2017. 

I always become pensive in the space between the end of a year and the beginning of a new one. I feel the build-up of days and years more acutely then. I suppose in a way it's a natural place for a pause, to take a moment to wonder: have I done enough? What have I made with this length of time called a year? What will I make of the next?

I look at my two girls and at the growing that has taken place, the many things learned and done. The kid: beautiful, wispy and suddenly so big, but still fragile, standing bravely at the precipice of formal schooling, the preschool chapter closed and left behind in the last year. My baby, with her halo of curls, bursting into toddlerhood with a fierce determination and yet still so soft and small when her outstretched arms reach for me.

I look at these two girls and think about that year that trails away behind me, how my path has determined theirs, what the marks and prints are that I've left behind on them. How I shape them.

And sometimes it overwhelms me because a childhood is a very precious thing to hold in your hand.

Christmas in summer

It's noticing the sweaty discomfort of Father Christmas in his woolly suit suffering through the humidity, the fake snow spray-painted on windows and the foreign irrelevance of sleighs and reindeer and holly, that makes me think just how Christmas in South Africa is a season of contradictions and incongruity. The holiday doesn't seem to fit right, like some hand-me-down item of clothing. The cracks show easily: in the heat that makes all the cosy Christmas cheer a bit unpleasant to carry out in real life, in the pictures of snowmen hastily coloured-in before children have another splash in the pool, in the wild greenness of a Durban summer paling the evergreen of the Christmas tree.

But I also kind of love that no one cares about the details, that the incongruity doesn't matter. I love the enthusiasm in a Hindu colleague's talk about how she is so excited to celebrate Christmas with her new little son. I love the chaos and colour and contradiction of hybrid-Christmas narratives springing up around me. The point being that it doesn't have to make sense.

While I did spend most of my formative years enjoying a cold Christmas, where the hot food and candles and Glühwein and Christmas decor made sense, I've come to love what a subtropical holiday season feels like too, but it's largely underrepresented in all things Christmas. So in the interests of celebrating the holiday season in a local way, here's my list of things I like about this time of year:

• heat-soaked, lazy days after a busy year of work

• the merciful whir of air-conditioners

• the chaotic green everywhere and the carpet of Frangiapani blossoms on the patio

• mangoes and paw-paws and litchis 

• outside dinners when the day starts to cool down slightly

• the feel of cold water on hot skin

• being barefoot 

• the clink of ice-cubes in white wine shared with friends

• having an excuse to bake something delicious despite the heat and having a cold shower afterwards

• (literally) cool desserts 

• cutting off a bunch of bananas from my little cluster of banana trees in the garden

• the ingenuity of beaded wire Christmas decorations made by industrious street vendors

• finding local substitutes for ridiculously priced nuts and berries

• and like everywhere: time with my people ☺

Time

It's so scarce. It slips away too easily. Before I know it, it has disappeared. I feel drained of it when all the chores are done, the needs met. I watch the day's dust settle, wondering what impressions remain that I can hold on to. Wondering if the only measurement is in well-worn routines that dig their trenches into our days. What routes has time left on me?

I wonder where it goes. What's happened to it. How we got to now, from then. How the little one suddenly turned into a running-about toddler, how the kid slipped into this wispy, wise girl with laughs and such earnest eyes. How I became a mother to them. And always, always how it is that I deserve their laughter, their outstretched arms and squeezes, their love. 

I know that years from now that taut rope of time will slacken again. I'll feel it ease up. I'll catch my breath. And I'll look back at this time of chaos, of exhaustion, of work, of never-ending demands and I'll smile because there, etched into me, will be the sounds of two giggling half-undressed girls running around the house avoiding bath-time, their joy and exuberance infectious despite my desperation to make bed-time happen. I'll still feel chubby little arms and legs wrapped tightly around me when there are tears and sobs or feel the kid's hand slipping quietly into mine as we go about errands. I'll see them when they're sleeping as I go and check on them before bed, all soft cheeks and gentle breath, their smallness and vulnerability so present in the glow of bedside lamps.

Scenes of everyday ordinariness

Weather that can't quite make up its mind. A chilly wind. Patches of sunlight. One kid crafting colourful paper garlands with buttons. A dusting of paper snippets and glitter under the table where she works. One basket of freshly-brought in laundry. One old dog lying on the mat, paws twitching. Some forgotten bits of stolen fruit left scattered on the back lawn after a visit from a troupe of vervet monkeys. A pot of soup prepared early, cooking on the stove. One little one asleep in her cot. Some half-forgotten games left scattered around the house. One laptop accusingly open and unattended. 

This is how the hours of the day are tallied up. 

How one more day slips by.

Another Monday morning

I climb out of bed, senses blunted by the winter darkness. There's just a hint of day in the pale cut-outs of the windows but it still feels like night. I pick the little one up out of her cot and we stumble through to the kitchen. Automatically I switch on the kettle for tea, still trying to regain my senses. I give her her milk while I sit down for a moment with my warm mug. Just a brief pause before another day fully claims us.

I can't believe we're in the middle of June already. When did that happen?

It's February

It's February. Days clamoring hot, sitting too close and intimate in the week; one day melting into the next. The whirring of aircons is a constant, like some mechanical breath. A temporary coolness. Beyond its reach the air, moist and soupy, condenses on your skin. Slippery. Damp. It's the month of moisture, where nothing ever feels really dry. We prevail, as everyone must, with daily tasks, punctuating them by dipping in and out the cool circle of our plastic pool:  after breakfast, before school, after grocery shopping, before work, after cooking, before sleep. On hot afternoons, we watch from the veranda the air thickening with the promise of a storm. All too frequently clouds of clenched fists hold spitefully onto the rain. Thunder grumbles, no relief comes. We wait...

Over the last couple of weeks, I've had to acknowledge a dip in my productivity. This blog has become a somewhat silent place. I'd like to blame February (my accusation is that it's too hot to think). Writing, like most end-of-the-day tasks, gets neglected, and finally ignored.

But of course it's not really February. It's not the heat or the sapped energy.

It's the reality of living and working and mothering. It's a finite amount of time sliced thin. It's the lived modality of the "musts" before the "would like to's". So, instead of feeling constantly defeated by it, I have decided to post less often here. I'm sure I will get to the "would like to's" again soon, but for now there'll have to be a pause.

Dear readers, thank you for your support and kind words so far. I hope that you do stick around for posts that emerge sporadically, spontaneously, as and when there's a moment to spare!

Don't forget to make some art

So, as the final days of 2015 melt away into the South African summer, I thought I'd just pop in to leave you with these thoughts from Neil Gaiman:

"May your coming year be filled with magic and dreams and good madness. I hope you read some fine books and kiss someone who thinks you're wonderful, and don't forget to make some art - write or draw or build or sing or live as only you can. And I hope, somewhere in the next year, you surprise yourself!"

Summer

Summer is here. The air is so moist you can almost wear it on your skin like a tangible, physical thing. The house is thrown open to any passing breeze, the veranda becomes its heart. The kid reports daily on the approach of Christmas according to her advents calendar; the little one steals baubles off the tree, their sparkles too irresistible for her little reaching fingers as she toddles about. We bake on a mercifully cooler day, with friends, stars and moons and hearts with floury hands. A few days are spent in a rustic beach cottage on the South Coast overlooking the ocean. Salt, sand mingling, our constant companions. Rock pools are explored. The Indian ocean dragging at our feet, leaving sea life treasures in the coarse sand as it recedes momentarily. Time for reflection, for appreciating the year gone by, for a pause before casting eyes forward.  Words wind down lazily. Thoughts slowly disintegrate into the now.

Rush

Days that feel like a hundred things all grabbed together; a cup of coffee, my bag and theirs, keys, notes, last minute-thinking, a mind of scattered thoughts, the day's intentions. Days of rushing, hands full, always heavy. Always on the way to somewhere else; another task, another goal, another item on a list. From a Monday to a Friday, a morning to an evening. I have to remind myself to not be impatient with every moment, to not hasten all of them along. Not to think 'enough of this, now on to that'. So when a pause comes, glittering, shimmering in the quiet afternoon light, I force myself to appreciate how time hangs suspended in its brilliance.

Back to normal

Things are quiet; there's much to do. We're finding our feet again. There's the click-clack of the typewriter as the kid indulges her imagination and finds fun in the world of alphabets. There's the fresh smell of coffee as I write the usual lists of things to-do. There's a little backpack packed and ready, small and cheerful, but somehow heavy with the weight of first separations. She laughs and smiles her usual squishy baby-smiles; little fat fingers reaching and exploring the world. I don't want to let her go, but work and life and the way of things must be.

Flux and stasis

Returning home to familiar things in stasis, hung still in time, as if I'd never been away... their familiarity offers a quiet welcome back. Travel-tired, little ones napping, I sip at a cup of tea before I start unpacking, before I start undoing weeks of flux, of almost constant change, of daily adventures. I contemplate returning to a state of rest, of everyday normality, regular bedtimes and routines, returning to work, being fixed once again. And in the back of my mind the flux of night trains, and solitary stations, and echoing museums and little, accidentally-discovered cafes and walks through old towns and fairy-tale forests, and the bitter-sweet hellos and goodbyes of family and friends recede slowly into memory.

Bon Voyage

Source

Plans have been plotted, family and dear friends notified, favours called in, last minute arrangements made, patience brewed, suitcases carefully packed, a strong sense of adventure summoned... and so, with two little ones in tow, the adventure begins.

A dose of book club

An evening of chatting to my favourite ladies, indulging in a glass of wine, perusing a lovely selection of books and having a good excuse to cook up something delicious was just what was needed after this last week. The kid helped me get ready (I'm proud to say we have a very enthusiastic junior member in the making here). She picked the flowers, set the table and got to stay up a bit late, eating chocolate mousse and listening to the conversation.

Afterwards, in the quiet of guests gone home, sleeping little ones and the twinkling harbour lights watched from the couch on the veranda, I took a moment to consider this idea, put so well by E.B. White:

"A library is a good place to go when you feel unhappy, for there, in a book, you may find encouragement and comfort. A library is a good place to go when you feel bewildered or undecided, for there, in a book, you may have your question answered. Books are good company, in sad times and happy times, for books are people - people who have managed to stay alive by hiding between the covers of a book."

Rainy days

Rain finally breaks the heat, releasing it out of a ground that simmers and steams under those first heavy drops. I watch from the veranda as shrouds over the harbour bring the downpour closer, closing the view like a grey curtain. The whipped-wet greenery and the scent of earth mingled with summer hint at changing seasons. Is the heat finally over?

The weight of tiredness

There are those days when demands push up against a drenched-to-the-bone tiredness. Ideas, needs, wants, responsibilities, goals; they all make their mark. A notch in the bone. A weight that drops right through the body. It can sink a person.

I carry, I rock, I sing. Time blurs these into a never-ending rhythm. I fall asleep sitting, leaning against the wall, nursing her. The house, empty and silent, recedes momentarily. As if reality has taken a step back. Then I wake with a start, with a sudden rush of awareness. 

She's still nursing; her mouth moving dreamily, eyes closed with their delicate lace of lashes. Gently, I put her down on the bed, small limbs soft and droopy.

Outside, the sun continues to stream down with its heat that sticks to skin. The pool is plastic, half a meter deep and tucked away behind the washing line. I submerge myself in its ever-changing reflections of blue. I lie back and look up at the trees and see the world from the bottom up. The water, although shallow, is cool and refreshing, and somehow, magically, buoyant.

A new year, a new page

Hello 2015! 

The beach is quiet enough to go down for a quick dip again. The crowds are thinning out, leaving behind space like low tide at the beach. The last of our holiday visitors are sadly packing their bags to bid us goodbye. The house is becoming a bit more ordered after a holiday season full to bursting point with shared meals and cooking for many. As things go back to normal routines and old habits, I'm left examining my dreams and plans for this new year, trying to balance expectations and reality.

And so the year ahead looks more and more like a blank page. Awaiting something. Expecting something. 

We'll have to see...

Roads

So... once again, the year is winding down with the usual sighs of relief. Plans are tucked away for next year. Spaces open up, time is taken, There are winding mountain tracks leading up the soft undulating green of the summer mountains. The Drakensberg sky is moody and fickle, rolling weather up and down the Escarpment like some toy. Lesotho feels like the rooftop of Africa. Two tired girls sleeping in the car awaken at the top, eyes glimmering with interest at this mountain kingdom. Sheep are discovered grazing the wind-swept roof of the mountain,  a rainbow graces us after a storm. There's a freedom that comes with the beautiful sense of emptiness that the mountains offer. I wonder what roads lie ahead...

It's been busy...

Time flies. The new little one is growing and changing almost on a daily basis. Nights and days take on a different rhythm. Sleep slips away elusively. Moving house means not much rest and constantly being on the go, tucking the little one into the sling and getting on with life. Lots of changes and adjustments, finding your footing again. That's life at the moment...