best reads
January 1st, 2012
A close friend of mine recently told me that I would end up a lonely old cow if I continued to dabble with love in forbidden places. She cursed me and told me no good would come of what I was doing. “What does she know anyway”, I asked myself, before dismissing her wrath in the knowledge that I was in a different space; balanced again and sure of what I want. But she is a friend whose judgement I shouldn’t question. Another friend had something quite different to say about love and breakups. “You wake up one day and it’s over and every morning you wake up with that pain and that longing”, she lamented, “… until one morning you wake up and there’s someone else in your bed.” And apparently, according to her, you’re over the heartbreak hurdle … just like that! Someone else hinted at the metaphorical pissing on trees that guys tend to do. And then there’s the friend who won’t rest until she’s found me a sponsor with Love Addicts Anonymous. Anonymous? yeah, right.
Everyone has an opinion and I’ve listened to them all … ‘yawn’ … but lately I have been very selective about who I go to for advice because what I am told hasn’t suited the idealist in me even though I can’t deny the validity in what they have to say.
‘So what is it they have to say?’ you want to know. They tell me that the clandestine nature of a relationship deprives me of my ability to live life with the full breadth of who I am. They say that I am incapable of being in love with one man while playing the field with others. They tell me they still see my vulnerability despite my protestations that I’m fine. But mainly they assert that I don’t know how to do these things in half-measures. My friends know that I can’t open my heart just a crack without leaking my love all over the pavement, but they also know that I want to believe in love above all things and that I would sacrifice my soul for the chance of just a taste of its sweet nectar.
‘So where does that leave me now?’ you ask. Well, going nowhere … and slowly. But in a good way.
I sit here with the foetal scan of a new year, on the cusp of my practical and my most idealistic selves, breathing possibility into the promise of new life. I used to feel ashamed of the idealist side of my nature until I realized we all have a bit of the optimist and the romantic in us; we all strive for a future that is an improvement of our past and whenever we do that, we gloss over the practicalities that threaten to get in the way. Memories become a gossamer haze and we tend to move forward with a view of a future that often contains a fantasy that has wiped clean the slate of past experience. Why else would people give birth again, why else would children climb trees after falling out and adults get back on the motorbike once the metal plates have been removed? Pain fades. And that’s the truth.
2011 saw love rip holes in my chest and my old adage, ‘what doesn’t kill you makes you want to die’ seemed always more appropriate than the one ending in ‘stronger’ … although they do say a break heals stronger than the bone. This is encouraging. But I’m prepared to get back on the horse in 2012. I’m willing to take my RDA of pessimism and settle for something a little more normal for now. We live in an era of questioning the institution of marriage, monogamy and heterosexual couplings and a time when polyamory and commitment phobe feature in regular conversation. But I’m going to stop thinking so much this year. Instead I am just going to feel. I’m going to give up the battle of head vs heart and focus on my body. It’s doable, right?
Trust was my word for last year – it still is – but for 2012 I have chosen the symbol of the snake, Ouroboros, for its representation of the perpetual cyclic renewal of life. I’m going to leave things be for a while and let life take care of itself. I’m tired of metaphorical challenges and I’m done climbing mountains unless they’re made of solid rock. I say it every year and I’ll say it again … hell, why not … ‘This year’s going to be different.’
Own it. Love it. Live it. Here’s to 2012.
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November 27th, 2011
So I survived Buddha’s Bootcamp! The twelve days felt like over a month and, although I didn’t leopard crawl under fences or scale the walls, I did find myself resolutely marching beyond the course boundary to my car a couple of times – day 2 and day 7 I think … although I’m not quite sure what I was planning on doing once I reached it. My key was locked away in an undisclosed location – together with my wallet, my pen, my iPod and my phone – and I’ve never hot-wired a car before.
Noble Silence began at 7pm on the day of arrival and lasted a full ten days. Apart from the obvious No Talking, Noble Silence also means No Gesturing and No Eye Contact, as well as nothing that distracts fellow meditators, like Yoga and Jogging … protesting that I was in fact a Runner and not a Jogger left them unmoved and I was forced to be late for sittings just so I could gently disguise my brief cardio as a slightly flustered rushing. And all the banned activities (and then some …) mentioned in my previous post were clearly pointed out during orientation and written on boards that indicated the days schedule; the glaring 4am start the most obvious sign that we had clearly all lost the plot.
The things I missed most out of all the banned activities? you wonder. Probably reading … followed closely by the sexual misconduct – ten days without words is Easy compared to ten days without touch. There is perhaps good reason, therefore, that there are separate male and female dining halls, separate male and female entrances to the meditation hall and the walking paths used were separated into male and female areas by a ‘no-man’s-land’, making the long country grasses completely redundant.
Pain is now my friend! After over 120 hours of sitting in postures for up to two hours at a time, determinedly not moving while observing and working through the agony, it’s no surprise that for the first two days during sittings and instruction, I heard “With a clear and calm mind, focus on your desperation” rather than “your respiration“. And as soon as one session ended, we were told to “Take break 5 minutes then come back to dhamma hall for further instruction”, 5 minutes, approximately the amount of time it took to get just one foot working again before the next sitting … they may as well have hacked through my joints with a blunt saw. That’s when the one-legged man said, “Who’s sorry now?”
So … would I do it again? you just have to know. Hell yeah! I’ve learned Buddha’s technique of Vipassana meditation, learned to smile through torturous pain and learned not to speak … the latter, the most commendable by far. My nickname changed rapidly from Lady Penelope to Lady No Words since, according to the volunteers doing seva, I was the single soul who did not ask for anything or in fact utter a word the entire course. I kid you not! Perhaps I take things too seriously or perhaps I really did need word rehab.
So I’ve done the love. I’ve SO done the prayer. And now all I can think about is pizza. Overflowing with knowledge and understanding and a torrent of unspoken words, however, I can’t help but wonder if that makes me a good dinner date or not. I have come out of these long and mostly agonising days with real hunger – not just for pizza but for wisdom – and the thing with walking this path is that there is such a vast pool of it – wisdom, not pizza – and no end to the number of wise and intelligent gurus; from freak to straight; imparting their very own interpretation of the essence of it. Even the longest journey starts with only one step and each one doesn’t represent a different path but rather a different pair of shoes to walk it in.
With the year I’ve had so far, when I grow up I think I’m gonna be a Buddhist nun. But only if I get to keep the shhhoes …
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November 16th, 2011
I joined the gym two weeks ago and have been going for two hours a day ever since. I clearly look like the new psycho-nutter gym bunny and there’s a man who quizzes me every time I go on why I’m working so hard. “Two Oceans?” he wants to know. “Comrades?”
“No,” I said, “Vipassana.”
It’s the name of my latest challenge – my metaphorical mountain – and I leave today. I’ve had a large beer, a couple of ouzos, a chocolate binge, greasy food and my final gym session … not all of them this morning … and I’m now as ready as I’ll ever be to go into silence and meditation for a long ten days. No music, no reading, no writing, no mind-altering substances of any kind, no sexual misconduct, practically no food and definitely – absolutely! – NO talking … which obviously means no mobile phones either which, in fact, get confiscated on arrival. The discipline for the duration of the course follows a strict routine of morning bell at 4am followed by mediation sessions and lessons throughout the day, ending with compulsory lights out at 9.30pm – no objection considering the list of banned activities. People have been known to jump the fence to escape. But, like a friend of mine said, fence jumping is ok, it’s the fence sitting that’s intolerable. Another friend’s great advice was to make sure I didn’t leave anything on the fence when I jump it. Such faith.
“So what’s the point?” the man at the gym wants to know. “What do you hope to achieve?” “What’s your desired outcome?” “Nothing,” I respond, “absolutely nothing.” He’s not happy with this answer but it’s the truth; I can’t make something up just so he can make sense of it … as tempting as it is to stem his flow of questions. I choose instead to reposition the headphones in my ears and turn the volume up, shrugging when I see his lips move.
Expectation, after all, always taints the outcome. It sets you up for disappointment. There’s no success or failure on this course and just the process of doing it is an opportunity to be with a personal process that will evolve over time. If you were to press me, however, I would probably say it’s like rehab for talking. And, like everything I intuitively plan to do, it couldn’t have come at a better time. I have come to a crossroads of self-expression … I have seen with my third eye what I desire and I have opened my throat chakra and allowed my heart to flow out. The expectation gene made an appearance though and the gremlins shut me down. Yes, perfect timing. I have a chance now to contemplate what it means. Or maybe I have a chance now to just let it all go. A chance to disconnect from my words and reconnect with my body.
I tend to find passages in books at appropriate times and this morning’s reading brought the following to my attention:
“In silence, inner listening forms the bonding of heart and mind. Listening is an essential part of communication. In taking the time to be quiet, we are able to truly listen to ourselves. The chatter of the mind eventually dies down and the song of the heart pours forth. In this opening into silence, the upper and lower chakras can enter into resonance with each other, connecting mind and body.”
As I pack, I realise how little I will miss the phone, the email, the talking … but! as a grazer, it’s the lack of food that makes me most nervous. I’m sneaking a bag of almonds into my bag … think the sniffer dogs will find it? I might find the discipline when I get there not to eat them but they’re my safety blanket. Often you just want something because you can’t have it but if you can just satisfy your mind that your needs are being met, you often realise you don’t need them anymore.
If you hear from me before the 28th of November chances are I needed to jump the fence …
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September 23rd, 2011
As far as watersheds go, today was a biggie. I closed the doors on both the men in my life … for good.
I went on a silent retreat at the beginning of the year and was told – not for the first time! – that I need to walk away from both my (soon-to-be-ex-) husband and my (then) lover and be true to myself so I could lead the life I’m meant to. Today, after a traumatic year of having listened neither to outside advise nor inner wisdom, I finally presented a divorce agreement to my husband and I broke off all contact with the man I subsequently fell in love with … the timing of these two cataclysmic events falling on the same day, a total coincidence.
Still waiting for the thunderbolt response to the first event, I concluded the second in a fittingly rushed Skype call to the other side of the world. But as soon as the guillotine came down with the click of the red button, I fell in a heap with a spike of adrenalin coursing through my veins … it felt like my heart was the only organ in my body and it was about to blow a hole in my chest. It wanted out! and who can blame it in such a hostile environment. But I lacked inertia for either fight or flight. Although tears finally failed me, it felt like I might be stuck in that position until someone found me there days later.
And then I smiled … like only I can when it looks like the sky might fall down. I saw in an instant that all is exactly as it is meant to be. I remembered something I vowed many months ago … to myself and to whoever was listening at the time. I swore that I would not stay with my married lover once I was divorced, not even knowing then why I had said it … whether I had hoped he would leave his wife or whether I was afraid of ‘officially’ becoming the mistress, thinking that perhaps I couldn’t take that label while I was ‘officially’ still married. So in terms of fate, the day went rather well.
Perhaps it’s because he has broken my heart and made me cry so many times in one year that the end of our final contact caused neither breakage nor spillage … not even the ‘I love you’ penetrated my new shell now that I know the love was never real and a true depth of feeling simply non-existent. I turned off my projector and I was met with a blank screen. I have fallen out of love with someone I thought would make me whole and, ironically, it is the first time I have begun to feel complete.
Being stronger and wiser this time around the circle won’t by any means ensure my heart stays intact for always, but it will make my choices wiser and my intuition more fine-tuned to act according to my best interests and my greater good. The next time I turn on the projector, I’ll choose a different plot and a happier ending and characters that are more compatible with the roles they need to play. For now, I will listen to one of the songs that didn’t make it onto any of his mixed CDs; something I have kept just for me … a little something by Gloria Gaynor because, just like she says, “At first I was afraid, I was petrified, kept thinking I could never live without you by my side, but then I spent so many nights thinking how you did me wrong and I grew strong and I learnt how to get along … ”, I (too) Will Survive!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZBR2G-iI3-I
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September 5th, 2011
I’m not sure if it was the title, Keeping the Love you Find, or the cover picture of a single blue egg in a heart-shaped nest that taunted me until I had no choice but to hand it back to its owner, my soul sister. She promptly replaced it with another, Women who Love too Much. “Just read the back cover and tell me it’s not the book for you”, she said. The sight of me confirmed the accuracy of her choice. Hand clamped over my mouth, wide-eyed and dumbstruck, I delved right in … recognizing in an instant how emotionally unwell I was when I came out of my 18-year relationship, now becoming all too aware of where I went wrong in that relationship, the ones before, and the one way too soon afterwards … grateful now for the sheltering of such a long relationship but equally irked that it deprived me of the opportunity for the discovery sooner.
As a Woman Who Loves Too Much, I don’t understand love that comes without a knot in my stomach, a low self-esteem and a need to try really hard to gain the love of something unattainable; attempting to control the outcome and blaming myself when things go bad or people leave. I am a Love Addict and just because the affliction contains a beautiful word doesn’t, unfortunately, make it any better than your common or garden variety substance addiction.
Reeling from the end of my marriage, I jumped headfirst into a relationship with a man I thought would nurture and love me while allowing me to be me. I pushed him away at first – I didn’t want to get attached – and then I let him help me heal. He held my hand through my fears around letting go, being vulnerable and allowing myself to be loved for who I am, inadvertently feeding my addiction and, therefore, masking my true pathology. Attracted at first to his unavailability and later confused by the paradox that required my exclusivity – but willing to give anything to get his love – he left anyway and I was unable to prevent my emotional well-being from spiralling out of control. I had bonded; I had become obsessed … I had formed an addiction. And the withdrawals from love for a Love Addict are as hard as withdrawals from drugs for a drug addict.
I keep threatening myself with solitude – a state where I hope to gain all I need from the love I have within. I thought at first it was my psychological whip to get me out there to find an Adonis to ravish me … but knowing now how destructive my pathology can be, I’m terrified of jumping into another relationship that distorts my reality and blinds me to the damage I’m doing to myself. I need solitude to research and recover and I need solitude to gain self-acceptance and I need solitude to figure out how I can define love in a way that doesn’t require me to feel like I need to be medicated … because let’s face it, when you’re so addicted to someone that you’ll medicate yourself rather than give him up, it’s not the kind of relationship you should be in.
But of course, without rehab, the touching, smelling and tasting will always lead to indulging even when aware of the damage it’s causing. So I’m going into rehab for love … not to learn how to abstain from love, but from the triggers that turn it into a drug. Romeo and Juliet was a story of love addiction … and look how that turned out. Too much love certainly can kill you.
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September 2nd, 2011
Since gardening has always been an exercise in grounding, I was focusing on the seasons, their relevance to me, and the metaphors I could use when gardening in tune with the universe. But, when I focus on one thing too long, I get bored and … well, I find something else to do. I checked into Facebook – my biggest procrastination tool … from studying, writing, mothering and general maintenance – and saw this apt quote from my other procrastination tool, Sex and the City:
“After all, seasons change. So do cities. People come into your life and people go. But it’s comforting to know that the ones you love are always in your heart. And if you’re very lucky, a plane ride away.”
Apt on many levels but, for the purpose of this post, simply because even when I am looking for other things to take my attention off the task at hand, my procrastination tools send me right back to where I was originally … in this case, the changing seasons.
When I had a new baby in the house, I had no idea what to do with him. I read all the books, I followed formulas, I had a strict routine and if he cried when he was meant to be sleeping, I often just went out into the garden to sink my hands deep into the soil and dig, plant and weed … knowing he might well still be crying but not knowing what to do about it. In fact I pretty much avoided the maternal side of motherhood for the first couple of years, choosing – in-between consulting jobs and studies – to rather garden or dig drains or lay stones and stumps – anything in fact! – to avoid having to deal with it from anything apart from the theoretical sense. I thought I would appear self-indulgent if I did the ‘normal’ mumsy things with my baby. I thought it would look like I’d gone soft.
That’s all changed – Obviously – but when I go back there in my mind, it stings. Real Bad. The upside is he fell into a sleep routine pretty quickly and my not knowing what to do with him when he was awake meant he got to hear the Economist Magazine read out loud to him daily – there’s possibly good reason his first coherent mutterings were ‘buggerbuggerbugger’. The downside is I now regard the garden as my ‘guilty place’ and I just don’t work in it anymore.
Still having a need for grounding when going through watersheds, my attention goes instead to the metaphorical garden of the universe. When processing anything, I shrug off the burden of self-indulgent guilt and I sink my hands deep into the fertile soil of my very own self-awareness where I dig and I plant and I weed. I metaphorically garden now in the way that I should have practically mothered then – free of guilt and boundaries. It’s damn hard work sometimes but the seeds must go in before the seasons change … and the seasons, they do always change.
A more appropriate quote for this post would surely be the one by Robert Louis Stevenson:
“Don’t judge each day by the harvest you reap, but by the seeds you plant.”
I can now see this most recent season for what it was. It was a season for tilling and planting when all the while I was trying to harvest. I have now had the space to really turn the soil. I see the work that needs to be done and I know what crops need to be planted. Seasons change and change can often be brutal. But we only know the spring through its contrast to the winter.
My hands feel good where they are – warm and deep in the compost. The sun has pressed its kiss to my cheek and my labour has made me strong. But there’s plenty of planting still to be done. Where the flowers grow, so too will there be weeds … but both will know their purpose in their contrast to the other and all will be magnificent. And when the garden is grown and tended just right, I can just sit there a while and appreciate the beauty of my labour.
I can’t help but end with a final quote, one of my favourites by the Buddha, which sums up what’s sure to come:
“When you realize how perfect everything is, you will tilt your head back and laugh at the sky.”
Indeed. I have no doubt I will.
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August 31st, 2011
A friend of mine got divorced after giving up the booze and told me he only realized how boring his marriage was once he was sober. It was funny … in a tragic kind of way. More so when I realized the same thing quite possibly happened to me. Sure, the problems were already finding the cracks … like dust and water, they search them out … and once a crack is found, its permanence is solidified. I cleansed my life through the Art of Living, a course in breathing and meditation that partners of my friends steered them away from on suspicions that some of the lesser-known side-effects included a freezer devoid of meat products, a liquor cabinet full of sparkling water, way too much energy at 4am and … well, in my case … separation. I sobered up, scraped out the cracks, and my marriage was over in less than a year.
“You’re staying in a dysfunctional relationship, so you can use the problems you have with your husband as a layer to prevent you from dealing with the real issues within yourself that you are too afraid to confront.” I was talking yesterday to my ‘twin’ … my spirit friend and soul mate. I see her visibly cloud over when her husband enters the room and she shrinks from catwalk model to hobbit. “You can only truly unmask the magnificence of the person you’re meant to be once you’re free of him.” But no sooner were the words out of my mouth than I realized that perhaps this was purely a very valid projection of something I had come out of and that, due to our uncanny synchronicity, she was just entering into. One can also not completely overlook my new obsession with freedom.
It took me thirteen years of marriage to figure out that marriage was quite possibly the worst thing for me … a sentiment condemned in couples counselling, yet confirmed last week by a palm reading (yes, yes, ok, I also take guidance from the planets and my cycle is linked to the moon …). Apparently, I’ll Do Anything For Love. It’s written in the way my thumb bends right back. My little finger stands out from the others, claiming I push attachment away. But my love (index) finger stands stuck to my middle finger, defiantly standing up for the fact that I am just better with a mate. “Sigh.” I’m apparently incredibly creative, see beauty in everything, and am ruled by fate … But I digress.
The interesting part – and where I’m really going with this – is that, according to a little padded area, I have a sense that I will never get all I want from just one man. “You need several at one time?” an astonished friend proclaimed. Oh yeah! Apparently … and interesting considering I have recently been marketing the idea that every woman needs to find her own Holy Trinity – Three Men who jointly satisfy all her Needs, Dreams and Desires. I kinda had it figured out at the beginning of the year when I was embracing my freedom, satisfied that I had made no commitments to any one person and I was, therefore, free to play. I had found my pretty young thing who made me feel like a teenager … having a Sandra Dee holiday romance. I had an intellectual attraction to an awesome mind who also inspired in me a kind of spiritual awakening. And I had this magnificent big man who sent electric shocks through my body just by sending me an sms … and fifteen a day was something like electric shock therapy.
When I get a picture of my husband in my mind, what I see is hundreds of hands trying to box me in, constrain me and gag me … and not in a good way. But my pathology at the time demanded it be that way … for reasons that are only now becoming clear. So, unlike my ‘twin’, I bailed out of the marriage that was hindering the path to my own recovery and I am still now unwrapping the layers of my pathology. With unveiled beauty, I continue to embrace the freedom from my marriage. But another Holy Trinity? Not so sure … as tempting as it sounds, it kinda goes against the Single and unComplicated bliss that somehow sounds even more so.
Perhaps, if I concentrate really hard, I can get the swelling on my palm to go down and prise my love finger and my middle fingers apart. And then maybe – just maybe – my thumb will even stand up straight.
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August 10th, 2011
I met a woman at a bar – The Bombay Bicycle Club in Cape Town. I was wearing a big red bow on my head – I found it weaving my way back from the bathroom; a friend was speaking Swedish to anyone who would listen; her boyfriend was inhaling his Fettucini Fantasia, and this new friend and I were playing a divorce ditty on the bell above the bar.
Somehow surrounded by people who have all been going through divorce – one guy as young as twenty-eight! – it was polled that the grief and heartbreak you experience when getting divorced or splitting from your significant long-term partner is nowhere near the broken-hearted mess you become after the person directly afterwards leaves you. And my new friend decided, after talking to me, that she just might want to avoid falling in love again altogether … and with my manic grieving process who the hell can blame her!
It ultimately all boils down to those choices. I had choices when breaking up my marriage. I could have let go immediately but I chose to fight for years before realizing I was never going to be chosen and my stubborn side refused to believe it for so long that I delayed the inevitable and caused myself (and probably my whole family) a hell of a lot of unnecessary trauma in the process. We’d been together since god was a child; he was my best friend, and I kinda thought it would look bad if I had a failed marriage on top of having recently thrown in my career towel when I couldn’t come to grips with how depressed I was being a mother. I was attached and, yes, maybe the attachment was to several too many of the wrong things. The relationship had, after all, been fizzling out for a few years when it became all too clear that the power had shifted and I was not as significant an Other as I desired.
In an attempt to let him go, I wrote, I partied, I ran (and then some), I rang the bell and I slept out at friends more often than at home.
I have come full circle, except this time the heartache is more acute, having broken up at the explosion of love rather than in the smoky aftermath. It took a friend of mine recently to point out that I just don’t do things in half measures – all or nothing – and a little retrospective look revealed how I had been trying to squeeze myself into little spaces he had created for me in his life. My life, in contrast, was wide open to him and he chose not to fill any of the space.
So I have just repeated the pattern: I chose a new man to love who had tiny spaces in his life which I just never fit into … You think maybe it’s because my wings just got too big? 
Maybe I just want to be picked for the team or maybe the reason I run is because I don’t want to not be picked.
And, having come full circle, I repeat my process with the exact same coping mechanisms: again I write, I party, I run (and then some), I ring the bell and I sleep out at friends as often as possible in an attempt to wrap myself in the love I am perhaps recognizing finally as the more sustainable and worthwhile reflection of love there is. My coping mechanisms may have stayed the same but the grieving process is happening far quicker … no doubt because my lover is halfway across the world with his family and Absence does not, in my case, make the Heart Fonder … especially under the circumstances.
A friend said it was time to fall in love with myself and the rest would follow. It’s all about practice. You learn what you can handle, you learn what’s in your best interests and you just ‘lite’n up. Am I learning to let go easier or am I simply recognizing that when others let go, I need to accept defeat and walk away. It hurts to walk away from bliss … but when the split happens, it’s time to acknowledge that the bliss is now simply living in yesterdays that no longer exist. There is a time when all romance has to make way for reality.
The journey is all I have now to remember … it’s all I have and it will have to be enough. The destination may not be the one I chose but it’s the place I’m meant to be.
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July 27th, 2011
I was leant a book, Keeping the Love you Find, but it remains untouched … the title taunts me as I go through the grieving process of having just lost a great love; my One. It feels like dying. It tears excruciatingly at every fibre of my being, drains the colour from my face and occasionally saps from me the desire to stand, causing me to sink to the floor where I stay immobilised for an indefinable length of time, contorted with sobbing.
But already I am beginning to question the quote in my previous post … I’m wondering if it really is the love that does this or whether we blame it on the love purely because the heart is the first organ to fail when someone chooses to no longer be in your life.
A friend of mine once told me that you don’t fall in love with a person but with love itself. Supposing then, when we are left alone, we have lost the person and not the love. Perhaps we fall in love with the things that person awakens in us … not the person we are with but the person we become when we are with that person. If that is the case, why do we still fear the loss of love so much?
Love awakens and expands until you look different and you feel different … and then you realise it’s because you’ve turned into that butterfly. And every time you fall in and out of love you go through a whole new metamorphosis until you find all the beauty you have wrapped up in yourself. And you realise it’s Yours To Keep. So we grieve … and then some … the loss of the person who stood like a mirror reflecting all that beauty and love, and then, hopefully, we manage one day to stand alone and hold onto all that they helped us find.
But my theory doesn’t account for the loss of the moments of exquisite bliss when you hold that person in your arms; when you engage with that person on levels beyond consciousness where nothing else matters but the feeling you have in every cell of your body that this could go on forever. And, unfortunately, past grieving doesn’t make present grieving one iota easier. What it does do, however, is help stay focused on the Other Side. It helps you realise that Grieving Will Eventually End and that Love Does Always Find A Way and that The Choices You Make Can Change.
I’d like to say I’m done with grabbing at ankles on the kitchen floor and I’d like to say I’m done with choosing people who don’t choose me. But I’ve learnt that things are never that simple with love. I’m going to go back into my cocoon now and when I emerge one day, transformed again, I will choose me. And that love will hopefully be enough.
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July 8th, 2011
‘Lying on the kitchen floor, grabbing at ankles’, is the way a friend of mine puts it. It’s why she no longer wants to love again. And, as I simultaneously close the doors on my two greatest loves, I am getting a glimpse of what she means. I don’t want to do this again; I never again want to be blinded by love … no matter how sweet it sometimes tastes.
Some people believe that reaching 21 marks your rights of passage into adulthood. I disagree. It is only at 40 that one can claim to be all grown up. It is only at 40 that you truly shift gears. And my gears have been grinding their resistance to learning how to drive vintage. I haven’t come close to learning what I need to know … I have, however, come close to learning what I need to learn.
For starters, if I can’t live an ideal life without attachment, I need to learn to let go a little easier. It took me three years of agony before I could let go of my husband and if my new love wasn’t moving country, I might have made the same mistakes all over again. My life with my husband wasn’t a bad life; it just wasn’t my life. And through this torrid love affair, I have learnt how easy it is for me to slip out of my self. I love too much. I feel too much. I emote too much and, lately, I have been grabbing at ankles.
As I teeter on the edge of my emotional abyss, I try to be mindful of where I stand, of how far I look into the spiralling darkness, and of how I truly feel. I stand firmly in my present, assess my past and, with as little unrealistic hope as possible, plan for a future that brings a new me. And I fight it out with trust! … learning to take responsibility for the things I choose and the things I choose to believe. I have shed my cloaks but, as I stand here naked with just a gossamer overlay of cynicism, I recognise that I love with an often-frightening intensity and it’s not something easily matched. I no longer want to lie on the kitchen floor, feeding on scraps. I want the full meal. And I now want to cook it alone.
I know and I learn and, in doing so, I learn how little I know.
As Paulo Coelho says, “Live fully, love deeply and let go without bitterness.” Once the bitter bile stops rising, I may be able to master the art of letting go … if my heart doesn’t kill me first.
40 and all grown up? I doubt it. But I’m still growing.
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May 23rd, 2011
Out with the old and … so it seems … out with the new too.
And as I emotionally prepare for the coming void, I sit with the unstable feeling that always emerges when I recite my age-old mantra. ‘I am not enough.’ With each new heartbreak, it plays in a loop, reminding me that I am responsible for my own disappointments.
But the more I sit with it, the more I wonder. And the more I wonder, the more I talk.
And, talking yesterday to my fellow emotionally unstable friend, who is going through the same thing, and joking about our previous fighting talk about being airlifted and doing things differently … and never, ever getting emotionally attached to rebound guy … I vocalised something from deep within my consciousness, something that popped up like a bubble from the bottom of a bottle of Oddbins Rose Brut, causing us both to freeze before heading off in opposite directions to process the paradox. I said to her, ‘You know, Trace, I think I’m just too much!’
Too much. Yeah. Weird.
So, I figure, in my attempt to always try harder, be better and never fail, I have set myself up for the ultimate failure. In my eternal enthusiasm and optimism I appear invincible, I give too much and end up vomiting my vulnerability all over the place and haemorrhaging my heart. I am porous. I am too much and it is no surprise then that people retreat and expect me to carry the spaces. I am told to ask for help, to be more needy, to show that I need more than I am willing to take. But that would make me a person I’m not and, well, I kinda like the person I am.
So, now as I prepare for more heartache, I recite a new mantra, ‘I am too much.’ It’s only temporary but, with a little practice, it will swing the balance and help me live to love another day.
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May 15th, 2011
“What the caterpillar calls the end of the world, the Master calls the butterfly.”
- Richard Bach
Just over six years ago I found out I was growing a son. And, in an instant, it was as though the personality slate was wiped clean … my life split in two – I went one way and the person I was before that moment, went another.
Parents say their lives change, they gush about motherhood and how they wouldn’t want it any other way, and they give childless people a tough time when they make a conscious choice not to go that route. They sever themselves from the people they were and blindly take on a new role and a new personality. A brave choice? The only way to survive? Who can say? … we all have our self-preservation tactics. But I have never been able to sever myself from the knowledge – and, yes, occasional envy – of that parallel dweller who took my life at the crossroads and left me with a stranger in the shape of my baby; my husband in the shape of a stranger, and no manual on how to deal with either.
And that diversion led me to the next intersection.
Divorce Ahead, the sign read. But no one was paying attention. Usual story – one person is texting and the other is changing the channel on the radio … you lose concentration and before you even look up, the ten-ton truck has mowed down the SUV and no one knows what’s hit them until they’re in ICU figuring out who’s going to pay for the mess.
But then you start the rehabilitation part … and you get a chance to nip and tuck. You get rid of pieces and you find bits to fix, and you discover all the parts you were always told you had to fix … well, they actually weren’t broken at all.
I have been to so much therapy in the post-baby years – I’ve been to counsellors who have told me to guard myself by donning cloaks of protection, I’ve seen healers who have told me to shed said cloaks and live with truth, I have been to therapists who have told me to live with authenticity and those who have encouraged me to compromise myself for the sake of my relationships. And at the end of that road, the only real choice I had was to just shed it all and emerge openhearted … and with a lot of raw nerves. Not fragile, just exposed.
So who is this parallel dweller I wonder and would I even like her, now that I see her from this perspective? I can tell you she is obsessive, controlling, fixated on money, job and investing for the future. She works hard and long, trains to the point of obsession and never compromises on her desires. She gets what she wants, when she wants and is incredibly lucky because she gets away with it all. She is so guarded that she takes life’s knocks like spandex and is unaffected by the attitudes and opinions of others. She doesn’t take compliments because they make her weak and she needs no one … ever. She is a stand-alone deal and she is invincible. She’s got a huge bitch button and it’s dangerously close to the one that sends her out of control. I’m not sure I like her but I miss her sometimes because she’s so much stronger than the person she left behind, a person I recognise so vaguely since it is all so new.
You can’t stay a caterpillar forever. You have to trap yourself in a cocoon for a while in order to emerge one day as a butterfly. I have stripped away the parts that were there for others, I have exposed the parts that were locked away because others couldn’t handle them and I have taken off the protective cloaks that shielded me from the parts in others that threatened to damage me. All the shielding, guarding and pleasing has been replaced with authenticity and trust that the people who love me are the ones that can handle this bare truth that lies within. The relationships I keep are those that allow me to expose the parts of myself that scare even me.
I’m just waiting now for my wings to unfurl and then I will see if I can fly.
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April 5th, 2011
I have been working on several blog posts lately, working and reworking but never quite completing them. It wasn’t difficult before … before people actually read my blog or before they de-friended me on Facebook or just de-friended me in general.
And then I read http://networkedblogs.com/enz7C by Cath Duncan and pulled out this line:
“Grief needs to be expressed in some way – either privately or with witnesses, in order to heal.”
I grew up in an environment of repression and hidden secrets, a home where sweeping was obligatory and the carpet was lumpy with unexpressed emotion. Food was always the blanket that smothered the fire. And I married a man who held the same sentiment … for the obvious reason that that was my comfort zone. But as I evolved into the free-spirited writer, traveler and mother my perspective changed.
I became isolated and part of my means to break through to the other side involved sending out these messages into the ether – I didn’t know where they were going, I just wrote and posted and in a sense that was the release my issues needed … a public airing with seemingly no consequences and no obvious recourse that usually comes with discussing things face-to-face with someone who could quite easily instantly judge me.
The more isolated I became, the more I worked on finding my voice and in the midst of paradox, my blog was born, anonymous at first … and then not so. I broke free from fear of embarrassment and in a sense I embraced the inevitable judgement, fearless of the repercussions that would come from my admission that the thought of throwing my baby against the wall crossed my mind … and more than just the one time.
You ask what place grief has on a baby blog? I believe that every time you walk through the fire of transformation, be it willingly or at the hand of the universe, there is a fair amount of healthy grieving that needs to be done in order to heal. Not everything can be fixed with a roast chicken and a chocolate bar. When I got married I had to grieve my singledom. When I had my child, I had to grieve the life I had lost to motherhood. Sure, many women continue as they were, employ nannies or harness the help of family and friends to support their existing lives. But I had changed too much. And when I left my husband, I had to grieve … well, I had to grieve and grieve and grieve for all that was lost.
I remember blurting out how crap it was that I had fallen pregnant, only to fall prey to a barrage of criticism for my insensitivity considering one of the women in the group had been suffering with fertility problems. “But I didn’t know!” I claimed. It didn’t help. Another friend had a miscarriage and told no one so issues to do with abortions, for example, became a taboo subject … impossible if you were not part of her closely guarded secret. I have noticed on so many occasions how easily people have judged me for getting divorced … until I realized it’s not so much the doing as it is the telling. The telling exposes people’s vulnerability around issues. The telling makes them take a closer look at their own fragile situation. And in my case, for 14 years my marriage was perceived as a union of the perfect couple and if such a tragedy could befall the prom royalty, then what chance did others have when their relationships were far more ‘of this world’.
I have had to deal with therapy sessions that paint me as a tough piece of work who is terrified of displaying any vulnerability, hence creating a host of relationship issues around neediness. I took that on and practiced really hard to be vulnerable … when all along my blog is the very proof that I wear my vulnerability on my sleeve and the fact that it doesn’t line up with how my partner is needed has little bearing.
But I digress in my explanation. My laptop screen is littered with a variety of Text and Word documents, all posts waiting to be born but, ironically, as my healing begins to feel like it is close to completion, I struggle to deal with my audience. I lost my voice for months and it only returned recently. The posts on my blog were written by a woman who now forms only a part of me and the fate of the unfinished documents scattered over my desktop lie sealed by the hand of their author who no longer exists.
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November 10th, 2010
I wrote before about lost friendships feeling like severed limbs. Well, I have since read evidence that when two people are together for so long, certain connections form in the brain that attaches those two people in a physical sense. I suppose this is what creates the bond between parents and child and between long-term friends. Like symbiotic plants, this happens so effectively that no one notices … until you have to separate them. With plants you could barely do this without killing either one or both in the process. With people, separating can apparently be the same as amputating a limb. And I can now testify that when you split from a love so deep and so long, it feels as though each of your limbs is being severed … slowly … with a blunt instrument … and no painkillers.
So there’s Archangel Michael standing in his skimpy white shorts, with his long blonde locks and his huge … wings. He is standing with a large sword raised high. I stand in my mind’s eye opposite my husband with all our chakras connected by a spaghetti-junction of fine cords binding us to the point that neither of us knows where one ends and the other begins. My mind prompts the archangel to bring his sword down swiftly, wrapping the cords around the blade and flicking them away. The pain rips at my energy source and makes me want to throw up. I wrap the image of myself and my husband separately in soothing violet light to protect and heal. It is a visualisation that is taught to me, not to obliterate the pain but to speed up the amputation.
When practised over and over again, the process was complete in a month. The amputation was a success but I emerged from the operating theatre a few weeks ago, limbs in tact, heart replaced but bruised and energy restored and contained. But everything comes at a cost and I am still waiting to find out the cost of the amputation … did it come at the cost of a husband, a best friend, a lover …? or perhaps, and more hopefully, just that part of all three that had manifested itself into a tumour-like growth that we can both thrive without?
The joy of my gift will reveal itself over time. And, yes, there is a lot of joy. Just like a person can feel a sense of joy after losing someone they love, this does not mean they are happy about the loss but that there is a part of themselves that has been reawakened … there is a new beginning.
There are no happy endings, only joyful beginnings.
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October 26th, 2010
I have been judged a lot lately for my need to share my personal stories. Although this is human nature and I don’t expect it to be any other way, I have always felt the need to try and justify why I do it and, mostly, I don’t do this particularly well. But, while reading The Dance by Oriah Mountain Dreamer, I came across the perfect line that sums up what it is in my heart that drives me to share what other people find far too personal to put out there:
“I share personal stories because I want to co-create a story of intimacy and cultivate our capacity for compassion in dealing with our human failings. I tell stories because I want to learn how to love well.”
I wrote while I was in India recently how being there brings me that sense of just being, a relaxation about self and an existence totally devoid of branding. As I grow, I define myself by the places my branches are reaching towards rather than by the place my roots are sucking from the earth. And with this comes a sense that, like the branches, my identity is being whipped around by my life’s experiences … and even when there is total calm, there is still a sense of movement within.
In many communities around the world there is a culture of story telling, of passing legends on from one generation to the next. We don’t live in a society like that and so we rely on the people who pass through our lives, imparting wisdom, spreading knowledge, sharing experiences that cultivate the compassion within us. We meet the people we need to and are fed by people who are guided our way. And this of course works in reverse too. We often think the work we do is where we end but every one of us has a part of us that needs to be shared. Every one of us has a story to tell.
I am a storyteller. That is what I do. I don’t write fiction because I am no good at it. My reality, my life, my shared humanity … to me, is enough story to tell. So, as I document whatever transformation happens in my life … and therefore in the lives of those around me who are part of my story by association … know that it is human nature to judge but know too that this is who I am whether you judge me or not. Judging me will not change who I am or what I write. But it may well change you.
I promise to be as honest as possible without hurting anyone. But don’t read my blog if personal issues offend or if you can’t get over my lack of the need for privacy.
Quoting the last stanza of one of my poems, Many mountains. I am:
… I am all the flowers and the trees. They are me
I am unpredictable. I am power. I am many
Penny, you are seen by all.
But you are things no one can see.
I’ll end by saying: Watch this YouTube video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PKbet4RdSo4
I will expand and embellish – as I am only too good at doing – and explain its relevance to this context. In time. But not now.
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August 31st, 2010
At a time when I am learning who my friends are … or rather who my friends aren’t … I am learning other lessons that I would rather not and more and more I am becoming disillusioned with life’s textbook. In the process of discovering the extent that social norms dictate the opinions of others towards what we choose to do, I can’t help but notice how much it scares people when you do something out of the ordinary … it shakes up their ideals and makes them wonder how fallible their own nucleus is.
When we are children we are told over and over how to behave, what not to do, that we are being naughty when we are just being children, what constitutes the overly-important word: polite … and we are smacked or punished when we don’t conform. We are, in a nutshell, controlled until our natural instinct for life is sapped and we become clones of this Borg-like social colony that obsesses over the size of their TV, their bank balance and the latest SUV.
Not surprising then how if you sit still for long enough and listen to your heart’s strongest desires – when you choose to follow a path that doesn’t fit the norm – you are not honoured or revered. It’s just not part of what we have been taught as children. People think you’re a problem; they accuse you of having a midlife crisis if you are remotely close to ‘that age’ … and sometimes your therapist even asks you to check your hormones. You become the person people tut about while they wonder if you’ll ever get a reality check.
But whose reality exactly?
I think about how my child, since he could string a coherent sentence together, spoke maturely about his ‘other family’; the one with the brother called SiscoFranco and the father from Spain and the mother from Paraguay … or was that the grandparents? He will be able to remind me because the story has always been the same, which makes me believe that, at his age when he can’t even remember what he had for breakfast immediately after taking his plate to the kitchen, there has been no embellishing. Children are so close to the spirit world that they need encouragement to find who they are now, while they still know why they came and why they chose you … although my child has always stuck to his story that he chose me because no one else was available!
It is a cruel society that shapes our children to fit a mould rather than encourage them to find their own unique fit.
Sure, I’ve been on the other side, blaming people for either taking too many drugs, being in lala-land or possibly just not getting enough sleep. But now I am here, I realise how profound it is to give up the norm and be quiet enough with myself to access what exactly it was all those years ago that brought me into this world in the first place.
Whether out of compassion or ignorance, people tell me they hope I find out who I am. But I have always known … of course I have. We all have an inner knowledge of who we are; it just isn’t necessarily the person people feel comfortable knowing.
It is not so much about change. It is about finding your way back. It is about ‘un’change.
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August 17th, 2010
One of the reasons I started this blog when I had a baby was because I was amazed at how mothers gossip about each other. Everyone has an opinion on how other mothers are coping, whether they have PND, what they feed their babies, when they wean them, how their mothering effects their child’s behaviour, whether they follow a routine, if smacking is condoned and a range of other general issues including reasons for bedwetting and tantrums. Mothers, in their search to find balance and normality in a mind-blowing situation can become … well, they can become a bunch of bitches.
I was, however, determined to let people know how I was doing and what I was failing at and I wanted to make it public so that people could either empathise or just feel like they weren’t alone. I know most of this generation was brought up with a side of shame and guilt at every family meal and I wanted these to be the only things I was willing to conceal under the gem squash skin.
People have commented over the years about things I have written, they have empathised and they have disagreed but they have always taken this blog at face value. Now that I am being public about other areas of my life, however, people have been coming out of the woodwork like bora that you don’t know is there until it’s done a whole lot of damage … people are now judging me about having been so public about baby.
The purpose of my blog is to create a bit of unease; some tension to provoke debate … it is not about causing damage but alleviating pain, both for myself and for others who may be going through the same thing. Like I said in an earlier post, we are all part of the same humanity and what is happening to each of us is also happening to millions of others … so where is the shame in sharing?
People I have known for years, and some I have never met, have used my frank discussions to finally open up about going through the same thing and close friends have only gone public once they have already been through it. I can’t express the pain involved so I know that those people have been to hell and back before they have even told anyone what they were going through.
Despite judgement and criticism, I will always stand on my soapbox. Other people’s secrets are sacred to me but my own life belongs to the collective. I may be scrappy and I may offend people with my lack of regard for issues that some consider too private to divulge so publicly … but I believe my life should come out of my own mouth, not the mouths of others. And when people try and silence me, I only shout louder … only this time I can shout to a lawyer.
However my soap opera plays out in the end, I think I owe it to myself to explore the world out there for an opportunity to grow and connect to those millions of people with whom I share a part in this tragedy. If nothing else, I owe it to myself to rip the words right out of the mouths of people who would rather discuss my life with others.
Gossip is always easier than confronting any issue. It’s not surprising then that it is the people who devour magazines such at Heat and Hello! who are the ones that choose to base their opinions on the gossip that they hear rather than my truth that I publish.
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July 28th, 2010
I have taken the below passage out of my latest book club read, Mitch Albom’s, tuesdays with Morrie:
“I’ve learned this much about marriage,” he said now. “You get tested. You find out who you are, who the other person is, and how to accommodate or don’t.”
Is there some kind of rule to know if a marriage is going t work?
Morrie smiled. “Things are not that simple, Mitch.”
I know.
“Still,” he said, “there are a few rules I know to be true about love and marriage: If you don’t respect the other person, you’re gonna have a lot of trouble. If you don’t know how to compromise, you’re gonna have a lot of trouble. If you can’t talk openly about what goes on between you, you’re gonna have a lot of trouble. And if you don’t have a common set of values in life, you’re gonna have a lot of trouble. Your values must be alike.
“And the biggest one of those values, Mitch?”
Yes?
“Your belief in the importance of your marriage.”
There has been a minor Facebook war over my going public about my relationship, which, incidentally, has been neutralised. It had to do with balance and blame. But the above passage gave me a kick up the arse. The above passage showed me what I should have seen years ago. It isn’t so much about a lack of belief in the importance of our marriage so much as a total lack of importance. Importance comes from communication and my husband hasn’t spoken to me about anything in months and about very little in years. And that is the truth.
But people find it hard to hear the truth about things they have already formulated an opinion on and especially on something that makes them shine a light on issues in their own relationships. I continue to shine my torch under the carpet revealing what others believe should remain there. (see also: http://www.bhalababy.com/2010/06/28/my-life-as-an-open-book) I want people to see that there is no shame in sharing a very human failing. I won’t be silenced because people find what I say uncomfortable and the only thing I am sorry for is how vague I was previously.
Morrie used an analogy I think is appropriate to share: we are not all individual waves crashing on the shore but part of the same ocean.
I am a work in progress. But I have the courage to recognise my flaws, and the inner strength to erect the scaffolding and do the work. My husband, however, is a derelict building site … absolutely fine if it wasn’t for the fact that he thinks he is a palace.
I was asked recently by a lovely young man to be his life coach. He was sweet, I was flattered … tempted even … until I realised that I have done all the coaching I care to do for a while and the next man I am with will climb the scaffolding with me, chat to me while I work and add value to the renovations. He won’t be afraid of the change.
For almost two decades I have loved a man so much I thought I would die without him so I can tell you all that you can love someone with all the stars in the sky but unless he loves you back with the moon, he has the ability to snuff out every one of those lights. He loves me ‘in his way’ he says … but then so do wife beaters and adulterers have a ’way’ of loving. Love needs to shine for the sole benefit of the person it shines upon.
Love is a gamble – sometimes you put everything you have on the table and all you end up with is change for the car guard.
I am not a victim, just a student on one of life’s very cruel courses on love.
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July 23rd, 2010
“You’re not grumpy about me, you’re grumpy about your car,” he stated when I was short with him moments after failing to push-start my car down the hill, having to abandon it at the bottom of the neighbourhood. I had searched everywhere for my car key so I could get him to school and discovered it – as I often do – in the ignition. Only this time it was different … the key was halfway on. My luck never seems to run out when it comes to my car always waiting there in the morning with the key begging someone to steal it, but this morning I sensed my luck was not going to get the car to start as I remembered how, while I was washing my car, my child had been listening to the radio while imagining he was his favourite new TV personality, The Stig. After pushing it halfway around the neighbourhood, over two very tricky speed humps and down two monstrous hills – I know because I usually run up them – I gave up and marched my child along the road to school.
But he never lets me get away with taking my frustration out on him. He always reminds me how important it is to separate my mood from his behaviour, like the time he sensed my mood and told me, “I don’t want to talk about this now,” knowing the outcome would change if he waited until I was in a better mood.
I think the most tortuous path one takes as a parent must be the undoing of injustices in your own childhood, not knowing if you’re only creating a new path to perpetuate the cycle.
He stands up to me, which is a great start as it is something I am only now learning to do with my own parents. And speaking of my own parents, I have spent a month with them and he stood up to them as well. When my mother told him to eat his food he told her, “I will eat it when I am ready.” When she told him to look at the pretty smoke coming out of a factory chimney he said, “It is not pretty smoke, it is bad for the environment.” When my father was getting impatient he said, “Just calm down poppop, it will be done when it is done.” When my mother threatened to smack him if he did something naughty he told her he’d smack her back if she did. He is called cheeky, he is sometimes called rude, but I let it slide because I always took exactly what was given to me and it seems that’s a hard habit to break.
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July 21st, 2010
My mother asked me what my next move would be. She was referring to the next step in the process of taking myself and my child through a divorce after my husband’s decision to fight for our marriage was followed swiftly by amnesia.
“To go for a run,” I replied.
On the brink of something so huge, I can no longer think in terms of years, months or weeks … sometimes even a day ahead is a stretch … so I think as far as the next few hours, and the only steps I can think of are small … and usually involve running. It ties up quite nicely with my intention to run a full marathon before the age of forty, a milestone that is fast approaching and one that I intend to reach in clichéd fabulousness. It means I can take all these next steps in a positive strength-gaining manner and achieve something solid when everything around me is tumbling down.
Or is it?
There is something to be said about rights of passage, something that begs the question on the outset: Is this really necessary? As it is with climbing mountains, the view from the top always surpasses the obscured view at base camp and the feeling of getting to the other side shifts all previous protestations into cries of, “That was so worth it!” So why are some mountains so damn difficult to climb? Is it because of the baggage we’re dragging … or the people?
Adapt or die. Is that the thing it boils down to? It’s taken me five years to adapt to life back in South Africa; five years to find my way to the life path I was searching for during the money-spinning days of London’s investment world; five years to turn my world on its head and redefine my life and who I am. Adapting to save a marriage would be devolving … it would be like both adapting and dying simultaneously.
I embarked on a spiritual journey just over a year ago. It is not a conventional journey but one that has led me to make choices such as giving up alcohol, caffeine and certain foods. Peer pressure aside, it has been relatively easy because I have come out with a greater sense of clarity, a strong, healthy body and energy I so desperately need to summit the next peak, baggage in tow. The feeling that I have gained from this journey has made my decision relatively simple. Not easy – never easy – just simple. I have realised if someone can choose a house, a bedroom, the TV, a bag of crisps and a pint of beer ahead of a marriage, then not choosing those things to the detriment of the marriage should also be acceptable.
But then in divorce no one is right. I desperately wish it wasn’t over but I am doing what I am being pushed to do – I am forking off down the road less travelled where my pioneering skills will lead me to a place of no mountains for a while. Or perhaps I will just have to go climb a real one.
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June 18th, 2010
We’ve been back for over two weeks already … although I can’t say ‘back home’ as the term ‘home’ requires a fair amount of redefining right now. The old adage, ‘absence makes the heart grow fonder’ does not ring true in my case. Less hostile perhaps but not fonder. What absence has done, however, is give me clarity as a person free from attachment and therefore free of influence from other people, where I am, or what I am doing. I have come back with a stronger sense of being.
All those who accused me of needing to run away to India to find myself were way off. I didn’t need to find myself since I never lost who I am. We never do you know. We always maintain exactly who we are but access different parts of self at different stages of our life, adapting and changing to different circumstances.
As suspected, the memories of India have blurred and faded and even looking at the photographs feels more like looking at someone else’s holiday, bar the gorgeous boy with long blond curls who looks very familiar. I don’t. India was the mountain I had to climb to get to ‘the other side’ and the person in the photographs who looks a bit like me is the person I lost touch with only days after touching down on home ground. The smile has faded too. But the strength and the courage and the feeling that I can do anything that I set my mind to … that’s still there. I may not have climbed the mountain to find myself but I have come down off the mountain with a far greater sense of self. I conquered fears and stereotypes and I created a whole new part of myself.
In a moment of missing his dad while we were in Bahrain, my son insisted on buying a book about a little boy whose dad wasn’t around and he imagined him to be on the moon. In trying to explain the moral of the story, I asked, “If you had to imagine where your dad was right now, where would he be?” “On Mars,” was his quick response. Hmm, just a coincidence? As I grow up … and just grow … I look for some element of change or growth in my partner. But, just because he’s not ready, doesn’t mean I need to wait; we’re all on our own timetables and have to evolve at our own pace. I know we still have stuff to work out but that will have to be in our next life. And what about the child, you ask. Well, he’ll be just fine.
As Darwin once said: “It is not the strongest of the species that survives, nor is it the most intelligent that survives. It is the one that is most adaptable to change.”
Posted in best reads, bhalababy, travel | 3 Comments »
May 28th, 2010
I tear open the freshly-baked croissant and shove two triangles of white Toblerone inside. I eat it as it begins to ooze out the sides. This is my breakfast. I’m trying to find the two kilograms I lost in India and Mills is helping with her sublimely creative cooking; restoring me, body and soul. The Toblerone croissants were all ‘me’ though … who else could come up with something like that?
And so began a week of indulgence. That’s what Bahrain is all about it seems … the part we’ve been exposed to anyway. I wasn’t ready to go back home after Kolkata and it became clear why when, on arrival to total comfort and relaxation, I collapsed for two days, as did Nic. And just over a week later we are exhausted again, but for entirely different reasons to the things that exhausted us in India. We are exhausted because we are on a Milly itinerary – less adventure and way more holiday. There’s the food, someone else doing my washing and making my bed and someone driving us everywhere we want to go … it’s just totally indulgent.
We got kissed by the Middle Eastern sun at the Ritz-Carlton Beach Club where the sea is warm and the people more so. When the wind blows you don’t feel it because it is the same temperature as the sun that sits suspended in its own heat-induced haze and the sound, combined with the hum of the palms and the fountains, serenaded me to sleep on a chaise longue padded with towels brought by employees of the wealthiest man in Bahrain. The Ritz-Carlton makes it easy to settle in and is the trap that keeps people here. Why would you leave? Nic already looks the part in his Hugo Boss-style swim shorts and his new designer sunglasses from Dubai International. He chews gum. He postures. He thinks he’s cool. And, boy, is he just. He’s content. I’m relaxed. We’re happy. The sea is flat, the sand is white, palm trees frame the scene and the water is just cool enough to make the salty sting worthwhile. As if this indulgence isn’t enough we get confirmation of a luxury yacht trip out to an island – Melissa is writing about it for gulf Life magazine. After salivating over the pictures online, Nic declared that the “really huge one” would be just fine for him and he began planning his trips and his guest list. In Kalimpong he asked me if he had to be a monk when he grows up. I said no, he can be whatever he chooses. “But, Mum, I want to be a monk when I grow up.” “Ok, fine.” “Actually, Mum, I want to teach the monks.” “???” “Like the Dalai Lama, Mum.” But children can be fickle. A week in Bahrain and his conversations have taken a turn. He asks Melissa, “How much money have you got in your pile in the bank?” Melissa tries best she can to explain her financial position. He continues quizzing her while she navigates his questions without divulging too much information. Eventually she turns it around, “Why are you so interested in how much money I have?” “Because,” he says, “I want to have a thousand, million hundred in my pile of money when I’m older.” Ah, yes, the yacht he covets is the reason he no longer wants to be a monk. The wind stole the dream away but Nic was as unfazed as I was devastated. He said he didn’t mind because he was going to buy one anyway.
Unfortunately I found out after a marathon shopping spree, which ended only when my card was rejected, that our budget doesn’t stretch terribly far here. My exchange rate guesstimate has clearly been way off. The Bahrain Dinar is very strong; petrol really is cheaper than water … and pretty much everything else too. “I’m not that crazy about that one, Mum,” is what I get when I suggest clothing purchases to Nic. He chooses his clothes because he knows exactly what he wants … right down to the man-about-town straw hat. He’s looking island cool … apart from the Tom and Jerry T-shirt he couldn’t live without. But, after being dragged up and down escalators and into every shop with attractive window dressing for two hours in his swimming shorts with the promise of an outing to Wahooo water park on the shopping centre roof, I ran out of excuses not to take him immediately once Visa could no longer deliver the goods. “I don’t want to hear another word about it,” Nic said waving me away as he ran off to the toddler pool. The sight of the water slides and the noise of the water gushing from a giant-sized metal pail filled him with terror. He stayed well away from me in case I took him down one of the giant tubes that spit people out along with gallons of white water … but only at first. He is, after all, a far more confident child now and half an hour later he was running up the flights of stairs to whizz down the supertubes on his own. The Master Blaster nearly took my hair off … so I went again. But my screams drowned out the sounds of everything else and I discovered once again that I’m a totally different kind of thrill-seeker – speed just isn’t my thing. After 3 hours at Wahooo, Nic was amped for anything and the 1.2 meter height limit was all that kept him off the ‘thrill-seeker’ rides by the end of the day. He slept well.
As he did when I left him with Glenn on Tuesday night. It was the first time in five weeks that we were apart and we all survived … even Glenn who was terrified at the prospect. Dinner was at Bushido, a Japanese restaurant surrounded by a shallow moat lined with pale grey pebbles. We sat outside in the warm dry air and, guarded by models of samurai warriors, watched as the dust and the clouds made way for the stars and the moon and the palm trees were lit up in technicolour. The wind which had been howling all day had dropped just enough … not enough to go on the luxury yacht … but enough. It was a perfect finale to a day that was spent at the museum and fort where Nic relived the battles of generations fighting for the trading wealth of this small island – he was bored until Mills filled his head with soldiers and gun fights, and his audio guide completed the picture for him. We saw the excavation sites that once housed the first human skeleton Nic has ever seen and he lapped it all up. The wind rivalled Cape Town’s black southeaster though – my skirt filled with it like a spinnaker sail and we conjured up images of pirates and conquerors. As I clung to it in order to prevent my bare legs from tainting the minds of onlookers, a woman clutched her abaya close to her as though she wasn’t fully clothed beneath. It doesn’t feel like a conservative country when so much time is spent in a bikini but this was a reminder that those indulgences are well sheltered from the local lifestyle which comes with burkinis … not a typo but a lycra burka-style swimsuit – it’s the upmarket alternative to going in fully clothed.
Needing to leave Nic again for a night out, Nic vetoed the option of using Kamala, the housekeeper as a babysitter when Glenn had to work late. I suggested her son, Kamara, who has driven us around a few times, and Nic, like the Tom & Jerry pose on his new T-shirt, gave him the thumbs-up. Like everywhere we have been, he has craved the company of men, a sure sign that he is more than ready to be with his dad now. Mills and I went to La Fontaine with the promise of a deep meditation session. Seated on the floor amongst tea light candles on timber planks that still smelt of the tree, a heavy night breeze pressed in through Gothic-style doors. We were given a talk on fear. But then the lights were dimmed and the microphone was handed to another woman who began speaking gently in Arabic. Thinking I was still waiting for the English translation, I got up, went to the loo and collected another bottle of water, which I guzzled while glancing around at the peaceful gathering. The woman stopped talking, the lights were turned up and everyone got up to leave. I had totally missed the meditation. Thankfully the talk on fear which dealt primarily with attachment, and resonated with my dependency issues, plunged me back into the cesspool of self-knowledge that I had waded through so often in India and provided me with more benefit that the deep meditation I was initially after.
“Where is all that singing coming from?” Nic got quite frantic the first time he heard it, running around looking out all the shutters that surrounded the rooftop pool back at La Fontaine. We had just had lunch and Mills booked a massage so that Nic and I could lounge at the pool while we waited for her. We had ridden a camel in the morning and in true Bahrain style, it seemed perfectly normal to now end the day on loungers at a spa pool overlooking the city of Manama where towers of glass are strapped together by bridges and boast their own wind turbines in a paradox of eco-friendly and flashy. Perfectly normal since I imagine the camels might very well be getting the same treatment. Mills laughed when I asked if we could go on a camel safari – Bahrain just isn’t like that – but instead she arranged a trip to a camel farm where a Sheikh has built palatial shelters and brought in 400 camels because he thinks Bahrain needs camels – Bahrain is like that. It isn’t a tourist place and the entrance states very clearly that we shouldn’t enter but Mills had arranged a camel ride so we drove in anyway. It felt slightly unsafe at first, wandering around amongst these extraordinary creatures that bob their heads haughtily above you while looking down at you with hooded eyes. Occasionally one dives at you as though the puppeteer has lost control of the head string … but it is only to nuzzle on a sleeve or a beaded necklace and not remotely aggressive. The ride was short. Comfortable though and it gave me a taste of the trip I will one day do across the dunes of Oman, Bedouin-style. But that is for another day. Sitting poolside at La Fontaine, soaking up the dessert heat, the call to prayers begins. Like opera, it is magical and spiritual and wonderful in my lack of understanding what it means. It begins on one side, then becomes stereo and momentarily hits Dolby 5.1 surround sound before fading out as suddenly as it began. Mint sorbet completes the scene. And the end of the day is again marked by utter exhaustion and satisfaction.
We got our boat ride in the end – not the luxury one but the one to Al Dar Island. It may have been quick but it was exhilarating. Just this simple journey gave Nic such total pleasure that it made up for missing out on the luxurious trip – it made no difference to him; it was still a boat and he just couldn’t believe how fast it was going. It was choppy and it almost made me throw up, proving again how Nic’s thrillometre is set way different to mine. Al Dar is a patch of beach just off the main island of Bahrain, where you can hire a Bedouin-style bed and sip cocktails between dips in the flat salty sea. You can sunbath on a floating jetty and hire pedal boats for a jaunt around the island. You can swim until 11pm and dance till dawn at the full moon parties. It’s just another indulgent way to spend a day out in Bahrain. The wind was up so we couldn’t partake in all it had to offer but just a taster was good enough for me.
Bahrain is a quiet oasis of date palms and muted shades. It is a hub of consumerism but not outwardly bling like Dubai. It has a beautiful old town besides its beaches and islands and fabulous restaurants. It has been good to us. It is a wonderful island-style city and my time with my sister has been relaxed and rejuvenating. We have been indulged in all the best that Bahrain has to offer and I now feel restored and ready to go home to whatever awaits. Nic not so much. Apart from desperately wanting to be with his dad, my intrepid little travel companion has slotted right in here. Travelling looks good on him. My experience has expanded me though and I doubt I will slot easily back into my life. These seven weeks that have been just a blip for everyone else, have felt more like seven years for the growth I have experienced and, for Nic, this journey has been epic. I will have to take Nic somewhere else to accumulate his wealth though. My wealth is depleted and my tolerance for unadulterated indulgence is almost maxed out. I washed everything I bought in the bath – not because I had to but because I wanted to. I’m odd … but then no one who embarks on a journey like this in the first place can be anything but. Bahrain is mystical and magical and full of the finest things money can buy. But although I have found lifestyle here, I have found no soul. Definitely no regrets though – soul or no soul, this was essential down time with my sis.
Since people got over my taking Nic on this journey … although some haven’t quite … questions have turned to whether such a small child could possibly benefit or even remember anything from such a journey. All I can say is, “Absolutely!” His focus is so uncluttered that he remembers so much stuff that I think the more appropriate concern is whether I will in fact remember anything. I know the memories will begin to blur and then fade like I expect my eyesight to do one day … but I have one and a half thousand photos to jog my memory when the synapses fail to fire.
I’ve learnt not to try and predict what awaits so I can’t say if I will ever be back here even though I suspect I won’t … actually, I can’t say anything anymore. I am not at a crossroads; I am at a spaghetti junction that looks something like the slides at Wahooo water park. I could go on the Master Blaster or through the Black Hole but I suspect I may just sit in the toddler pool for a while and play in the gentle fountains. I’ll be ready for the thrill-seeker rides again one day but for now I am ready to go home. I feel like I have been breathing in for so long and that I can now finally breathe out. But, besides anything else, Nic has work to do so he can get us that luxury yacht and I’d rather it was this side of geriatric.
We’ll be home tomorrow night. Give me a day and then … run and hide before I subject you to the epic slideshow.
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May 22nd, 2010
There is a loose thread that still connects me to our first night in Bangalore when, lying restless below the air-conditioning unit, my eyes snapped open and I said, “What the f*ck are you doing here?” I was addressing myself of course. But myself didn’t have an answer, only a whimper and a mantra to help her sleep.
I wrote before about sitting on the cusp of my story but now, trapped between the end of one story and the beginning of the next, there is joy in the remembering and heartache in the letting go. I cried a tear in the rickshaw on the way to New Jaipalguri railway station to catch the Darjeeling Mail, an overnight train to Kolkata. India has claimed another small piece of me and, sitting in that rickshaw, I felt it hurt a little. But I have taken a little piece of her too. I somehow doubt she hurts as much but I’m sure she has cried even more than I can imagine. I may be hardcore but she is just that much more hardcore than I am.
“Step aside and wait,” I was told after waiting several minutes with a queue growing audibly restless behind me. After fleeing strikes and mob violence and certain nothing else could go wrong, we were stopped at the check in counter at Kolkata airport and told we were not allowed to board. No explanation … only worried looks and a lot of flicking through the pages of our passports while cross-referencing the computer screen and the scans of our Bahrain visas. With only forty minutes to go to departure, my head spun with scenarios that involved being stranded in Kolkata or having to fly directly back to Cape Town without the head-clearing transitional space that Bahrain was sited to provide. The problem was resolved with no time to relax before boarding the bus to take us all of ten meters to the waiting Emirates airbus. We made it out of India. Just.
Our night in Kolkata was in a gorgeous boutique hotel, the Bodhi Tree, that Mike had organised to help us recuperate. His plan was to get us into a hot bath … I suppose he felt the grime of Madahirat even where he was in Cape Town. And I suppose he also tasted the bile that rose in my throat when I felt my child’s life was in danger. And perhaps he smelt the stench of adrenalin-tainted sweat as we fled the area that caused so much stress. But in India the realities are not always in line with the ideal. The thing is no matter what you spend on a night in an Indian hotel, the plumbing is always the same: the toilet always stinks and the water runs slow and cool. The closest thing to a bath was the bucket which saw our final load of hand washing. But the room was an oasis of eye candy, from the handmade Indian puppets and masks and the original Rajasthani artwork to the silk bedthrows and brocade-covered furniture. Buddha resided over the private dining area and the halls smelt deliciously of ripe fruit and incense. “Is there any chance I can get alu poori and chai for my final breakfast before leaving for the airport?” With breakfast included, I had to ask. With one click of his fingers, his staff stood immediately to attention. I trusted my request would be fulfilled. And it was … moments before our final ride in a Kolkata yellow cab past the South City Mall and the Science City where we had spent the previous day, our final in India.
“Dad was wrong,” Nic said when I asked him how it felt to finally be leaving India, “you didn’t lose me.” He was genuinely amazed and I realised just how much of a burden he had been carrying around all this time.
Arrival in Bahrain was as calm as leaving Kolkata was chaotic. Thobes in slow motion floated across the airport floor and women in abayas made Nic step back in fright. There were so few people in the airport it felt like we were somewhere we weren’t meant to be. It was unnerving. The carousel wasn’t even working anymore when we got through immigration and all the luggage had been taken off by eager porters. Glenn fetched us in a real Jeep and drove us in air-conditioned comfort to our home for the next ten days. “Your bag stinks,” he stated on off-loading it. I declined his offer to help, knowing just where it had been in the last five weeks and I flung all 16.5kg over my shoulder, handing him my daypack, which smelt marginally better.
My sister, Melissa, ever perceptive to my need for therapy, welcomed me with a range of Crabtree and Evelyn bodycare products (she felt the grime too), supplements to my depleted wardrobe (I had been discarding things along the way) and several kettles of boiling water to top up my bubble bath which wasn’t quite optimal temperature. Not only that but I was presented with phyllo-wrapped salmon for dinner. And Kamala did my laundry.
I have done nothing but rest for two days, feeling slightly restless and as though I am late for something all the time. I emptied all my bags and washed the stench and grime from them. It felt like the first normal thing I had done in 48 hours; my definition of normal taking an interesting turn … like the twist in my tales.
I finished the Secret Life of Bees in Goa. And, as always, I found the last chapter so difficult to read, skipping backwards over the final pages in an attempt to prolong the inevitable end. But, with every story, the end always comes and I close the book with a forlorn sigh and a feeling that I will never find another quite the same. And I never do. Sometimes I have to wait a while until my head is clear of the one before I can begin the next. And the next is usually just as rewarding no matter how different. Like everything, it just takes some getting used to. But, regardless, one story has to end for another to begin. I began The White Tiger in Varanasi. I have three books next to the soft king-sized bed where I am propped up against the headboard with two extra soft pillows. There are no geckos, no mice, no peeling paint or ammonia smells wafting from the bathroom. And there are absolutely no roaches. I finished the White Tiger but I can’t yet wade into the next story. I am not quite ready to move on.
Yes, India has taken a piece of me but I am not walking away empty handed. She has showered me in her perfumes and filled me with her hope. She has fed me bravery and sprinkled it with kindness. She has dipped me in the cesspool of self-knowledge until I have choked and gagged and she has pulled me out and resuscitated me with reality. She has been generous and cruel, fiery and calm, spiritual and unforgiving. I love her and I hate her. She is like me. I breathed her in and she spat me out. We can’t get too close without taking a break from each other. But we will always see each other again and we will always love and hope and cry together. No two stories are ever the same. But neither are any two readers.
The Bahrain itinerary begins in earnest tomorrow. Not my itinerary this time. I don’t have to plot and plan. I just have to wake up, stretch, shower and dress. The rest is sorted.
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May 20th, 2010
I could feel eyes boring into me. There was nowhere to hide. I looked down at my lap where I was holding onto Nic’s head, keeping him out of sight, out of harm’s way and trying to ignore the attention. But, as it began to get dark and we were still stuck at the station, the lights inside illuminated me, drawing even more attention from the gathering crowds outside. I felt like I was in Amsterdam on the wrong side of the glass. And as more people gathered, the shouting began. They began banging on the side of the carriage. They were screaming at me to get off the train. But even if I had wanted to comply, my body would not … could not … move. The adrenalin was prickling the back of my neck, working it’s way up behind my ears and turning my heart cold. There was a vacuum where my stomach had been. The crowd had become a mob.
I searched the carriage with my eyes. I needed someone’s help. A poster was stuck to the carriage opposite. It showed a man behind bars with the caption, “Harassing woman passenger is punishable offense.” Reassuring if not entirely helpful in the circumstances. My eyes found another pair. Wrapping my terror in an annoyed attitude, I asked, “What the hell was going on out there?” He sliced his finger across his throat. Before I could take it personally he explained … best he could: “One woman dead. Head off.” A woman had slipped getting onto the train at our first stop outside of Siliguri. Decapitated. “Person under the train” rang in my ears from the London Underground. The difference was that on the London Underground, people stay in their seats looking annoyed and bury themselves deeper in the Evening Standard. Not so here. People leapt from the train, cameras and camcorders at the ready. Even a cow ran with the crowd. But it was after they had filled their heads with gore – once filming conditions were marred by darkness – that they began drifting back up the platform … that they began gathering to stare, became restless, decided they needed to focus their anger on something. That something turned out to be me. A riot started. I was told not to move. There was not enough English in the carriage to know what exactly was going on but there were enough people on my side of the window to keep the riot on the outside and to lock the doors.
“It’s ok my noonoo,” I cooed, “just some angry people, that’s all. Try and get some rest.” I was trying not to rub the hair right off Nic’s head as I stroked it to keep him calm … to keep myself calm. And I tried to breathe. And tried not to look out the window. I was in the middle of nowhere, somewhere between Siliguri and Madahirat, en route to Jaldaphara Wildlife Sanctuary for an elephant safari. It was dark and I was scared. I had to be brave when all my body wanted to do was cling to the window bars and hurl.
The police did eventually arrive – 10 minutes sooner might have been better timing – with their sticks and their mustaches. And the mob just melted away as though it had never been there to begin with. Two policemen shone their big torches into the carriages while others, I presume, removed head and body from the tracks. And we were on our way again, deeper into the jungle, surrounded by people who couldn’t communicate with me but who were clearly intent on my personal safety.
The day had started climbing into a share jeep in Kalimpong at 9am, remarking to Nic that we might have to change jeeps due to the stench. Turns out my bag was smeared with crap which had made its way onto my hand and half way up my arm. It smelt human. Thankful for my hefty supply of wetwipes, antibacterial soap and liters of water, it was a minor hiccup in the day’s journey. On arrival in Siliguri, caked with dust-dried sweat, we were told all hotels were full, it was impossible to get a train ticket anywhere south and there was a strike due to start the next morning … a 12-hour strike that was likely to get violent. We had to get out of town and the only advice we could heed was to go to Jaldaphara (near the village of Madahirat) where we would be safe until the strike was over. With no bank facilities in Madahirat, I had to draw cash but every bank I got to closed or ran out of money as I got to the front of the queue … seems everyone was stocking up. By the time I eventually found one open, the sweat-sodden dye from my red t-shirt was draining into my white shorts, turning them the same colour as Nic’s cheeks … he looked faint. We now had only 15 minutes to get our train. I threw a bundle of notes at a rickshaw driver and told him to pedal fast.
It didn’t take long to wish he hadn’t followed my instruction.
I arrived in Madahirat carrying my backpack on my back, my sleeping child in my arms and two daypacks in my one hand … a multi-limbed Indian god. Still wide-eyed and shaking, we were thankfully met at the station by Mithan Das, proprietor of Hotel Relax, a hole-in-the-wall style hotel with roll-up garage door frontage. Pinched between the main thoroughfare to Assam and the railway line, the bug infestation, lack of windowpanes (hence the bug infestation), a toilet filled with someone else’s crap, the basin that drained onto my feet and the general filth of the place left me stunned and sleepless under the mosquito net that resembled a slice of emmenthaler cheese.
I began to plan my exit strategy … but not for long. On instructing Mithan the following morning to book our elephant safari asap and asking him what time the trains would be running the following afternoon, I was shocked into further silence. The strike had not only spread into the mountain regions, it had closed all forms of transportation east of Siliguri and no one was sure whether it would be over in three days or five. I was stuck. Stuck in a village where Mithan was clearly the only person who could speak any English and seemingly the only person who had seen a white woman before. Going out was like that Amsterdam window feeling again … we were like a freak show that attracted people to gather in groups and just stare. I could have got angry but instead we bought up all the cheese and crackers and Cornflakes we could find, stocked up on soda water and chips and stayed in our room playing cards and watching Tom and Jerry once the TV was fixed. I used the rest of my wetwipes and surgical spirits to disinfect the bathroom and I got used to the bugs … even the crickets that found their way into my sleeping bag liner.
“Drivers charging little extra … maybe double … their windows will get smashed maybe,” said Mithan when I queried why it was so much to go on a jaunt to the zoo. I declined, but not because of the cost. It was clear the level of mob violence in the area was increasing and it looked as though we would be stuck. The news that was filtering through in broken English was that the trains were running but they were just late. I was desperate enough to go to the station and just wait it out. But thanks to Rossy, my well-connected friend, the British High Commission was onto it. I was visited by the police commissioner and advised that trains were being stopped by mobs and cars and buses were being stoned. We were going to need to be smuggled out. Mithan knew someone. We just had to wait for his call. A couple more sleepless nights and we were set to leave at dawn the following morning. But then it became too dangerous and we had to wait again. Just as I had resigned myself to missing our train to Kolkata and our plane to Bahrain, Mithan knocked on my door. “You ready in an hour. My friend has car and you leave at 2.” The travel ban had been lifted for three hours to allow people to get out to get food. We had to be quick. It was a 124km drive on bad roads and we couldn’t risk getting stuck anywhere in traffic. I cried. And then I packed really fast. And then I dug in my bag for my emergency supply of Neals Yard frankincense moisturiser … it’s amazing how these little luxuries can rescue one’s soul …
I put Nic’s cap on his head and covered my own with a scarf. That was so we weren’t immediately conspicuous. I had a plan to say Nic needed medical attention … if we were stopped by a mob, Nic was primed to writhe around holding his stomach. It was a tense 3-hour journey. The driver drove like Schumacher … only his suspension wasn’t quite so good. Out of the highly volatile area, we could stop for a welcome (extra sugar please!) chai … but that only made my mood worse as every person within gawking distance turned up for a cuppa to stare at the foreigners. I should have taken commission.
The lumbering hour-long elephant safari through the jungle was worth it I suppose. Had we been anywhere else in the area, the trouble might have been worse. And although Hotel Relax seemed like hell to begin with, it turned out we would not have been helped quite the same had we been anywhere else …we would have got on that 6am train and we might never have made it out of the jungle. I am so grateful to everyone who helped us both physically and spiritually.
We are still in Siliguri after a night in a hovel with the biggest cockroach I have ever seen … which as far as I know is still trapped under the plastic jug next to the squat toilet, unless someone has freed it … since all hotels are still full. Nepal is shut down, the mountain regions are still suffering under the strike and no one knows when the end will come. We have eaten well, making up for the diet of crackers and Cornflakes for the last four days and nights.
We leave on an overnight train to Kolkata tonight. One night there in a beautiful place Mike has booked to help us recuperate … and then Bahrain for further relaxation.
I am looking forward to leaving India now. I am ready. I will be back again, I know. But this time, the end is most welcome.
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May 17th, 2010
“We won’t rest until we are fre from West Bengal!” “Ghorkaland” is painted on every doorway, car, shop and available piece of concrete wall. The political unrest is the reason I have always avoided this area. The Ghorka Movement clings to liberation here and the tea bushes cling to the vertical mountain slopes. I cling to Nic as he hangs out the window and waves at the army trucks. Houses are propper precarioulsy on the roadside ridge, the mountain beneath them streaked with garbage and sewerage. “Filling of water tanks strictly prohibited” marks a point where fresh water leaps off the mountain and where a truck is pulling away sloshing water from two over-filled water tanks. “Presbyterian Free Church” – free or free of Presbyterians, I wonder. A lone man single-handedly deconstructs a concrete road barrier with a mallet … it’s hard to tell whether out of employment or frustration. On a 53km stretch of hairpin and s-bends, I can’t help but mourn the loss. “No race, no ralley, enjoy the beauty of the valley” – a great sentiment but hard to comply … our driver answers his phone again as I stare, unblinking, at the oncoming jeep travelling towards us on the wrong side of the road, “Oh my Ganesha” in bold across the windscreen. A brave dog drops one in the middle of the road. We somehow miss both. Oh my Ganesha, indeed. “Rat Killer – to kill rats, not pets” shares a hook with some dried meat at a roadside stall midway between Darjeeling and Kalimpong. We have stoppped where water is being piped off the mountain and where every jeep on this route lines up to use it as a carwash. Nic negotiates the squat toilet. He has no choice … his constitution has finally failed him.
Our 3-hour journey to Kalimpong dropped us 1000m in altitude but the air is still cool and the mountain views are still masked by mist that wraps itself like smoke around the chimneys and drifts aimlessly between the floors of unfinished buildings. The rains have come early or the Lonely Planet lies. Mountain walks are marred by the risk of leeches.
But we have found Holumba Haven, tucked in the mist on an orchid farm, away from town. And a haven it is … not just for us but for hens, guinea pigs, rabbits, guinea fowl, squirrels, honey bees, a rooster and several dogs. The Xhosa people believe that your ancestors come to you in the form of dogs and if this is so, we are being visited again in the form of another tan stray that turned up the day we arrived and stays within inches of us at all times. We are also being followed by snorers and plagued by thin walls.
The town is small, the sites are few, but we are walking the streets and feeling the vibe. Nic is staying on the right side of the law by shaking hands with every army officer he sees and waving at soldiers as they drive by in their big trucks. He has told me in detail how they force people to climb in the back of those trucks and then lock them in cages! “But, Mum,” he says, “I’m just so cute that they would never do that to me. Hey, Mum?” I feel I may have been slack on controlling his TV viewing lately.
Kalimpong is again a whole new experience like everything in India so far. We spent an hour on the balcony of the large Buddhist Monastery at the top of the hill overlooking the town on one side and a huge army barracks on the other. The irony. We spent a morning being driven to all the sites … all two of them … One was closed, the other wasn’t exactly a site but it had Himalayan ponies for Nic to ride – he’s totally hooked. The clouds are like thick smoke that hangs on the view and obscures the only reason for being here. We leave town tomorrow. Patience has not helped us here.
But Nic has loved the down time and has spent hours playing cricket at Holumba and more hours watching T20 and Tom and Jerry. He has run out of fingers on which to count the friends he has made in India … and we have had even more sad farewells since we have been in Kalimpong. Perhaps his journeys with me will encourage him to put down the roots I have never been able to sink into any ground anywhere. But out of everywhere I have been, I am most in my zone here in India. I get asked regularly whether I live here – it might just be because people can’t get their heads around a woman travelling through India on her own with a 4-year-old or maybe I do just look comfortable. Like I belong. I’ve already dropped out of normal life back home so this is not too much of a stretch for me.
But I could do with a washing machine and a big Greek salad about now – Melissa, please note! I am counting the remaining days by the number of buckets of laundry I will still have to do. I’m down to one hand. Since we arrived in the mountains it has felt like I have been washing everything in salt water – nothing will dry. Tomorrow we drop to sea level. Life has slowed even more since I last spoke to you and so I have had time to change plans a hundred times a day … but, for now, it looks like Siliguri tomorrow and on to Mirik – either for a night if we get a booking for Jaldapara Wildlife Sanctuary (for which we will have to return to Siliguri) or for four nights if we don’t. I like the fact that things are wide open for our final week.
I may well only speak to you again from Bahrain … it looks like we will make it out of the hills and out of Ghorkaland …
Ganesha willing …
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May 7th, 2010
“I know this bridge, but I don’t know where from,” Nic said, suddenly perky in the 45 degree midday heat. We were heading east over the mother river by autorickshaw on our way to the train station, the curtain drawn across the opening next to Nic in an unsuccessful attempt to block out some of the heat and dust. The driver had clearly misunderstood me. I told him we were in no hurry at all. I had allowed four hours to get to the station and find the right platform and have a relaxed meal. Ganesha deserved a bit of time off. But the driver was negotiating the traffic like we were in a getaway car and it’s the first time I felt really afraid in such a small, and usually slow, vehicle … one of the things about travelling with a child, though, is that you have to be strong and brave even when you’re a bundle of nerves and would rather curl up in a ball and wail. Nic was intrigued by the bridge so I pulled back the curtain to reveal the heat-shrouded banks of the ghats, far away now in a haze of pale pinks, yellows and blues … ever-changing as the sun shifted unhurriedly over the concrete. I could just make out a few tiny paper fighting kites fluttering above the buildings. It was like looking at a dream after waking up. Just out of reach. I closed my eyes to make it last. It felt like my chest might cave in on my heart.
I didn’t say goodbye when I left; we turned west out of Sita Guest House, away from the river, back through the black hole and into the labyrinth of smells, noise and dirt. The holy river of hope just faded away and it felt like it never existed.
By the time we got to Mugal Sarai station, 21km outside of the city, I was an overheated nerve ending. The station is huge and crowded and the waiting area was filled with eyes. And the smell of urine. We retreated. People stared at me with my heavy backpack, carrying both mine and Nic’s daypacks, a bottle of water and a pack of biscuits. I felt like a multi-limbed Indian god. We waited in a restaurant, consuming very little in the hopes that we wouldn’t have to use the public toilets – Nic is still terrified to admit he needs the toilet unless we are really close to our hotel – but three hours is a long time to wait in the heat without drinking and there came a time when I had to hover over a toilet afloat with a day’s worth of turds. Nic at least could keep his distance – it didn’t really matter if his aim was off in the circumstances.
I am proud to claim I have travelled rough in India before, taking unreserved and 2nd-class sleeper trains. But that doesn’t mean I would choose to do it again … the sweaty vinyl bunks, the stares, the mealtimes and social visits when several people make themselves comfy on the bunk you just wanted to fall asleep on, and the notification of a station stop being the wafting stench of urine and faeces as the air changed direction on slowing down. No, not this time. I booked 2AC – two-tier airconditioned. It’s still an open carriage but there are only four bunks, instead of six, there is a curtain you can draw to close off the passageway, you get freshly starched sheets and a pillow and there’s a draft of cool air piped into the carriage. There’s even a western toilet – granted, the seat had footprints on it but there is always a jug of water handy and this time I was carrying lots of disinfecting lotions and wipes.
As we slipped through the darkness, we crossed half the country and again passed into a whole new world. On arrival in Siliguri, I changed my mind about the train to Kurseong and asked the rickshaw driver to drop us at the jeep stand … we were heading up to Darjeeling straight away. Yes, I also thought the Jeep option was the posh route into the mountains … until we were squeezed into the back of a Mahindra between two paan-chewing blokes who had no sense of personal space and who spoke to us intermittently between clenched teeth and spitting. I was tired, I was hot and I didn’t understand a word so I ignored them. Nic had climbed onto my lap and fallen asleep anyway so I just closed my eyes, hung on tight and zoned out to the sweat and the blending of DNA.
We climbed the narrow, pot-holed mountain pass road to just over two thousands meters above sea level where the cool air gradually replaced the fug clinging to the bodies inside the vehicle. I had the usual anxiety about leaving the old and moving onto a new place but I knew it would settle in a day or two. And a few days in a quiet hill station seemed like the perfect antidote.
Arrival in Darjeeling was an assault! Buses, jeeps, crowds, smog, concrete high-rise hotels and market stalls … a reminder that despite the changes in climate, culture, the appearance of people and the language, we were still in India. The roads are narrow … the jeeps, trucks and buses are not. So, in a constant attempt to change the proportions, drivers just honk their horns … and they keep honking their horns until someone either gives in or runs out of time and reverses. I paced up a down the road a few times, trying to take it all in and block it all out all at once … and trying to find my bearings and some element of strength to find a place to stay … or stay at all. I considered climbing back in the jeep and fleeing. But instead, laden down with kilograms of luggage, we found a steep pathway and climbed. Nic just clutched his bear and followed – leaning into his stride with his heavy daypack on his back. He had had his sleep and was, once again, loving the adventure.
As we ascended, away from the bus/jeep stand, Darjeeling changed. The noise faded slightly, the sky became more visible and the feeling of being on top of the world became more apparent … I could hardly breathe from the combination of altitude and fifteen kilograms. We found a green hotel and, being Nic’s favourite colour, took it as a sign and checked in … well, there was also the small issue of being drenched from the afternoon thunder shower. With its wood-panelled interior and diamond-pane windows in the cosy lounge areas, the Dekeling Hotel is the type of place I can imagine elderly colonials sipping black tea, and I felt an instant desire to settle in for a month or two. It’s not exactly budget but our windowless room is the cheapest we could go without compromising on warm bedding and a warm shower … it’s a trickle but it works and you can’t have a shower while taking a dump here. The staff tolerate Nic’s need to wrestle in the mornings and towels, toilet paper and breakfast are included in the price.
We have been to the zoo, the tea plantation and passed the rock where Tenzig Norgay trained for Everest. And speaking of Everest, there are so many steps in this precipitous village that a morning out feels like a mountain trek. It has been impossible to get Nic off the Himalayan ponies and we have used them to get to all the sites around the village. “Faster, faster!” he demands. He bounces up and down in the saddle, giggling so much he could cry. He has conquored so many fears and leapt his hurdles with ease. We have been to the gompa on Observatory Hill, descended through the clouds to the magnificent and sacred Bhutia Busty Gompa, been blessed by monks demanding Rupees, hung prayer flags at the stupa and been harassed my monkeys. And I have found myself some treasures. Nic has made friends with a hundred people. The man at the shawl shop buys him chips and chocolate each time we pass – I probably paid too much for that pashmina – and he continues to get photographed and have his cheeks pinched by thousands of adoring locals. He is like a little god here. He is loving the hero worship and has developed an attitude bigger than West Bengal’s highest mountain peak, Kanchenjunga. I doubt he will ever be contained again … and who can blame him. We have walked beyond the noise and the crowds and found a place where we can watch the clouds writhe and twist around the hills below while watching local tourists, used to 40-degree heat, wander by wrapped up in shawls, blankets and woollen headgear. It’s not that cold. We sit at Chowrasta and sip Darjeeling chai brought by tea wallahs, looking beyond the hills in the hopes that Kanchenjunga will reveal herself. But she has been shy, only peeping out for moments before wrapping herself tightly in her white blanket once more. It doesn’t matter. It’s gorgeous, cool, relaxed. It’s a charmed life here. We’re staying an extra day, skipping Kurseong and Mirik completely and moving on to Kalimpong in a couple of days.
If Nic has just got over his hurdles, I seem to have just reached mine. It may be the caffeine I am consuming in Darjeeling’s chai or the quantities of sugar I am ladling on my morning porridge … but I just can’t sleep. The days are dreamy but, as the mist seeps in to mask the setting sun and the thunder resonates off the surrounding peaks adding the base to the bells from the monastery, I become distracted and skittish. At first I thought I was just overtired so I got some rest; I thought I was hungry so I ate. Nothing changed, I just felt melancholy. It is the pressure as we passed the halfway point of the journey; the pressure to pack more life into this time away. I keep changing the itinerary … sticking to one in India goes against the grain anyway … in an attempt to make the most of the final couple of weeks. I have moments of anxiety about leaving and going back to normality … I get a shiver down my spine just typing the word. Normality: what is that? The thing I love most about travelling in India is perhaps the joy of just ‘being’, and in that ‘being’, being able to be whoever I feel like being at the time. Nic narrows the boundaries of identity somewhat but there is a sense of total relaxation about self. I don’t have to own any labels. No branding. When you have no branding, you don’t have to fit any molds. Nothing to live up or down to; no expectations and no disappointments. It’s easier. So, to answer the question: why don’t I put down roots? When you put down roots you are identified by the very place the roots are sunk into the ground … rather than by the places the branches are reaching towards.
It is midday. The clouds have darkened and the sky is grumbling; not yet angry. The air smells sweet and damp.
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May 2nd, 2010
Nic was totally dumbstruck. He scuttled along beside me … more because he was tethered to me rather than any real need to keep up. “Good security,” the tout kept saying. I smirked. “Where you from?” another tout asked for the third time, to which I snapped back that I had already told him. Keep your distance, keep your cool, you’re almost there … my mantra kept playing in my head. Nic’s eyes doubled in size as I steered him between bikes, rickshaws, people, moving food stalls … and the dreaded touts. I stopped to get him an icecream … to buy time – I didn’t even argue over the inflated price. Nic’s bag was sagging on his back and heavy enough to cause him to walk with a forward tilt. His black bear was tucked into the strap across his chest. Sweat snaked a trail from his temples to his chin and beads of sweat began to form on his nose. His cheeks were rose pink. But he didn’t complain. He was learning to trust me.
A dead puppy lay bleeding a foot away from a food stall, a couple of cows scavenged on scraps nearby, crows filled the air with neck-prickling squawks. And then I saw her. Mother Ganga. Welcoming us with watery arms wearing jewels of midday light. We had successfully run the Varanasi gauntlet and the touts had fallen aside one by one. I had remembered, after 9 years, the way to the river … even through the madness … and just had to turn right and walk a few hundred meters to Sita Guest House.
Stepping onto the ghats is like finding a black hole in space and being transported a million miles away. She opens out in front of you and everything else melts away. You don’t look back, you just slow right down and keep on walking.
The river is low at the moment, waiting for the monsoon rains to replenish her and cleanse her. The locals say you can put anything in her and she will be clean. She is the holy river. I’m not convinced. Once settled into Sita Guest House where the massive ghekos still reside and evidence of the mouse lay around in the form of droppings, Nic ran in from the balcony and asked me if he could go swimming in the Ganges now with all those other children. “No,” I said with a little more force than I intended. When he begged, I did what all mothers do in this situation. “Ask your father,” I said. But when I heard the “Yay” on his end of the phone, I had no more ammo. I had to give in … trying desperately to push aside thoughts of sewerage, dead bodies and general muck. Millions of people swim here, I kept telling myself. It can’t be that bad. I could hardly watch as he waded in through the litter and ooze of the long dry season, clutching his blow-up beach ball and looking so enthusiastic. He was oblivious … or maybe he just didn’t care – he had after all found it hilarious watching the fishermen in Goa washing their bums after their morning constitution on the shoreline, dangerously close to where we were swimming. “Don’t put your face in the water,” I shouted after him. Swimming in the Ganges this far from its source has to come with at least one condition. I don’t care how holy it is.
He lived to watch the cricket tournament on the steps – a daily event. And he lived to watch the string of candles strung along the river like fairy lights floating gently with the current, each one overflowing with hope. We have been on a sunset boat trip and a sunrise boat trip, neither seeing the sun set, nor rise, but trusting that it did anyway. We have seen the washing wallahs beat the crap out of the hotel bed linen on the river’s concrete banks. We have seen bodies burn on the burning ghats and the remaining pieces set afloat on the water, narrowly escaping the scavenging dogs. We have sent our own wishes piggybacking off a candle and a few marigolds down the river. We have seen more prayer rituals than most people see in a lifetime. Yoga happens on mass along the banks. And everyone swims.
It’s magical.
You can’t help but be happy in a place where so many millions of people invest so much in hope.
Travelling with a small child here means you can’t be complacent though. Even the locals tell me to watch him every moment. It doesn’t help to just hope he will be safe. I have him tied to me permanently – dips in the river excluded – and imagine beating certain people to a pulp when they show more than appropriate interest in my child. Yes, holiness does escape me at times. Maternal instincts are on red alert. He got dragged down the alleyways yesterday and out of town to the holy Buddhist temples in Sarnath.
He is tired and overwhelmed and is watching cricket now while I type. We have a room with a TV and airconditioning here and the computers are right outside our room. Sita Guest House is exactly the same as it was 9 years ago and the owner even recognised me and gave me a good price on a room with a balcony. Granted the balcony’s view is obstructed by a lamp post strung with several illegally connected electrical cables … but did I mention the TV and aircon? The TV’s reception is kinda fuzzy. I am beginning to see the real reason for the discount. But the wonderful thing about travelling with a child is that he doesn’t see the flaws. He fell in love with the room instantly – a room where the only thing that brightens the shades of brown and peeling paint is the magnificent polycotton bed linen adorned with bright pink cherry blossom, swans, snow-capped mountains and a periwinkle-blue sky. He also thinks it’s just grand that you can pee, shower, and wash your hands in the basin under a trickle of water that you can’t shut off … all at the same time. He helps to settle me. Just what I need when my instinct is always to run immediately on reaching a place.
“Power cuts” the owner says with a shrug and a shake of his head – not a regular head shake but the sideways one that tends to mean anything and nothing at the same time. But the way the airconditioning unit shudders and jolts before it dies makes me suspect it has more to do with one of the enormous gheckos meeting its fate. I send a virtual candle down the river hoping for its safe passage to better karma in its next life. A brown-headed kingfisher sits on my balcony, an unusual site but one I saw at the ashram too. I can’t help but wonder if it is the same one. I always feel like I am being followed by creatures when I come to India, like I am being visited by old friends … some who have clearly done something bad in a previous life.
Varanasi assaults you on arrival but embraces you immediately afterwards. It is disgusting and holy and beautiful and scary. It steals you away in little pieces and staying here too long would risk total surrender. If my heart belongs to my children in Capricorn then Varanasi has my soul.
We leave tomorrow evening and that is a good thing … any longer and I might never go. I have always believed I am rooted in the air and perhaps I am. I move easily without fuss or any real sense of upheaval. But I hate to stay too long in one place. I have discovered it is because I am terrified of getting attached and sentimental. I don’t want the sad farewells. I don’t want to risk exposure to my soft core.
It is 9am here and time to tether Nic to me and drag him around the old town. I want chai and poori. I want to dodge cows and their shit. I want to be harassed by shop owners. I want to feel the sweat run in rivers between my breasts and settle around my naval where it will drench the Dollar bills tucked discreetly in my money belt. I want to see bright-coloured silks, smell carcasses strung up across hole-in-the-wall butcheries and hear the shouts of wallahs selling their wares as the bells on the ghats ring out for prayers. This isn’t life as I know it. This is sensory overload. And I love it. Hout Bay couldn’t be further away.
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May 1st, 2010
“My husband’s on his way,” I say. “He’s big.” I demonstrate by flexing one of my own puny biceps, unsure it has the right effect. I posture a little and throw in that we do rock climbing and karate together. I choose not to demonstrate, I might give the game away. They move on, slightly resentful.
I hate the fact that my personal safety is dependent on the presence of a man – fantasy or real – but Goa, like everywhere else in the world, comes with its share of creeps. It’s a man’s world.
Goa comes with so much more though and I’m glad I chose to stay and give it a fair chance. You really do need to stay in a place long enough to allow it to seep beneath your skin … and Goa has done just that. I’ll still be ready to leave on Friday but I am beginning to understand why some people never do.
Here the over-population of Indian deities compete with the Holy Trinity. You can have cream teas and bratwurst. and not only are all the languages of the world spoken here but all the languages and dialects of India converge here. It’s a cultural melting pot.
Look beyond the rows of handicraft emporiums and forex bureaus and the same poverty of the rest of India still lurks: the AIDS orphans and polio stricken, the people living under plastic sheeting and palm leaves. Look behind the fringe of palms at dawn and you still see the traditional fisher folk who still own the kilometers of the best beaches some people have ever seen … but only until the tourists arrive. Before the hawkers and the beggars arrive. While the night-shift staff still float, sleeping in their hammocks strung up in beach shack restaurants … restaurants that are gradually being dismantled ahead of the monsoon. The plants are dusty, the earth is parched. It’s hot! The rains must now come.
My body clock has adjusted to the bread wallah’s hooter and we have settled into a routine. For now. It begins with collecting the previous night’s spider webs in my hair en route to the little concrete bench where I wait for breakfast, followed by the beach where we play in the waves while the fishermen count their day’s wealth and a tan dog watches Nic’s every move as though he is a personal guard. At 9am we return to rehydrate and rest. Life’s tough. Then shopping for provisions, pretend shopping for airconditioning and internet cafe for more airconditioning. Home to the villa for play time, lunch time and rest time (I said life was tough). Then we head to a neighbouring resort (considered posh by locals) to swim until 7pm … when it is time to return for dinner or just eat out. I said it was a man’s world and, apart from the usual evidence here, it is only highlighted by the the fact that even in the resort pool men (and even little boys) are allowed no more than a speedo (Nic’s chafe vest had to be discarded) but women and girls get in fully clothed. Even I go in with baggies on (and a t-shirt too in the sea) and most of you know that modesty is not always my strongest trait.
The exception to our routine was when we hired a taxi for a day out sightseeing. And it was my best day out in India. Ever.
It wasn’t what I expected and I pulled away at first before being pushed up along the large folds of soft, lose, suede-like skin covered in pubescent-male-like stubble which got thicker and coarser towards the top of its head. I sat bareback astride its neck, Nic in front. Its ears gently fanned my legs. The dormant animal rights activist was screaming from somewhere deep inside but I shushed her. I had never before been so intimate with an elephant and I was having too much fun. She wasn’t getting out today. Stern shouting came from the keeper and I felt Nic’s body stiffen. The elephant raised its trunk above and over its head and breathed out, spraying us in cool river water. And then the laughter came. Again and again we were showered. But there comes a point when you can take no more of something, even when that something happens to be the most thrilling something ever. It’s often the case. I slid down to the ground, pickled in adrenalin, and looked up at a caramel-coloured eye. It gazed back. Sad. The enjoyment was clearly all mine. I had sacrificed my animal compassion for the sake of a thrill. “Speed kills but thrills.” I remembered the sign. Yes, thrills do sometimes just trump all else.
Because the next stop is Varanasi, I will end by reminding you about the Varanasi mouse that tried to nest in my hair one night last time I was there. Most of you know the story. Well, last night when I felt something scratching in my hair I sat up and looked for a little furry mouse. What I found was nightmarishly worse: a roach the size of a mouse! I moved rooms.
Goa isn’t the India of my dreams but it’s wonderful none-the-less. Like everything it just takes a little getting used to when your expectations are so way off.
Until next time …
xxxxx
P.S. For those of you who asked about the ashram, it is Sri Sri Ravi Shankar’s ashram south of Bangalore. Some ashrams have a philosophy of freedom – they encourage you to walk around half naked and have lots of sex. Guruji’s is nothing like this. I was pleased … but more for Nic’s sake 
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May 1st, 2010
The air is so sticky here, it clings to you like honey and pulling clothes off feels like peeling a banana. We have spent hours under the cool trickle of well water in the shower which falls cold on my head and drips steaming from my fingertips. I have never before wished so hard for airconditioning in a place with fans and only intermittent electrical supply. I wish the rains were closer.
Nightimes bring curried sweat, whining fans, barking dogs, roosters crowing the dawn until they give up when it eventually arrives, and someone trying to extract phlegm on every out breath. But the mornings bring cool air and a silence that is broken only by the hooting of the baker’s horn at 6:30am, when I wrap the sheet around me and run across the clay garden to climb onto the stone bench near the wall. There I wait. Eventually the little bicycle with the large plastic-covered tub on the back squeaks past and the baker stops to take my Rs10. “Rs5, 2 pieces”. The first morning Nic was still asleep when I ran out so I wrapped the rolls in a dishcloth and climbed back into bed with him. He opened his eyes, smiled at me and reached over to touch my arm. I told him about the baker and his rolls. He chuckled. “For real?” he asked. For real! Each morning Nic and I slather butter and Marmite on our large fresh Portuguese rolls and wash them down with Sprite and Soda. Life is simple and slow. You can’t hurry anything here. You can only be still and enjoy the life that drifts past.
We’re staying at a home owned by friends of my parents, Casa Geraldina, tucked away down an alley in Calangute about 5 minutes from the beach. We have only been to the beach once and since Nic was gathered up by the man wanting a photograph with him, he has not wanted to return. Secretly, I am quite pleased. We have spent a day with the villa manager’s family and swimming and playing with other children has helped sustained Nic a while longer. He also got a massive thrill riding on the front of a scooter – I had to remain calm despite my eyes finding every sign about speed and accident-prone zones.
Hot and touristy, there is no great appeal here but staying in a home means space to play, build tents out of bedsheets and laze around reading, drawing, writing and Nic’s favourite: listening to stories read by Mike on his iPod, which induces fits of giggles and occasional singing. Nic has adapted well and is even handling the heat way better than I am.
Besides Citibank deciding to cancel accounts held by non-UK residents and my first knowledge of this being when I tried to draw money to bolster my final Rs10 supply, things are easy, relaxed, fun and stress-free. I’m feeling local. I feel less conspicuous here than I do in Cape Town and I feel comfortable and calm (call to bank excluded!) Nic keeps asking me if I want to live here. Do I? Maybe. We have a long journey ahead of us still and so many more things to do and see.
I’ll keep you posted – Varanasi on Friday and I wish it were sooner. Freedom can get lost in the planning process and the journey can become a little suffocated. I have an urge to immediately leave anywhere I arrive so perhaps this is also just another lesson in patience.
Just know we are healthy and full of joy … loving the experience and sucking the juice out of it.
Nic is chatting to a group of girls – best I go and rescue them from his charms
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May 1st, 2010
Ganesha stares at me from the dashboard. I keep focusing on “Meru, Rely on us”, the taxi company’s logo, lest my eyes search for the time. The airconditioning has just been turned on but it makes no difference. My feet begin to sweat as we hit another traffic jam. I battle to breathe. As the god of removing obstacles it is no wonder Ganesha adorns almost every dashboard in India … but with one main road closed due to construction and the other half blocked with a broken-down cement truck, he was totally incapacitated. Each time I asked the taxi driver, “How long???”, his eyes would drift to the clock, do a quick calculation and give me the exact number of minutes till 11am; the time we had to be at the airport for our flight to Goa. He had done it earlier when I called him from the ashram – he was half an hour late to collect me. He was on his way and would be half an hour he said. I said I had to be at the airport by 11am so he said, ok maybe 10 or 15 minutes. Indians have a habit of telling you what they think you want to hear even if not exactly the truth – kind if not altogether unhelpful. I am learning lessons in patience I would sometimes rather not learn under certain circumstances. “Meru, Rely on us!” But only just!
It was sad saying farewell to our community of new friends at the ashram. Our time there became like Nic’s Indian cricket tour with everyone wanting a turn to play with him.He became like a minor celebrity and people called out his name wherever we went. His shyness has melted away and he looks so proud when he goes back for seconds of roti and rice at mealtimes with his huge stainless steel plate like a little Oliver.
I look over at my child with all his energy and enthusiasm and I wonder sometimes if I am dreaming. He takes everything in his stride and is the perfect travel companion. People seem amazed I am taking him on this journey with me but it just feels so natural. Sure, it would have been peaceful without him but it’s thrilling with him and if it wasn’t for him I wouldn’t be laughing so much. He is both teaching and learning daily.
We had a good send-off from the ashram. The temple elephant sauntered past our makeshift cricket pitch next to the dining hall where we were passing time waiting for breakfast. It is the moment the fruit stall owner longs for and I tossed him a five Rupee coin and grabbed a banana just ahead of the stampede of people buying up every last piece of fruit to feed to the elephant … who didn’t even stop between shovelling bunches of bananas to give any blessings. Nic was so startled that he grabbed his cricket bat and leapt onto the the top shelf of the shoe locker where he watched in quiet appreciation.
He refused the elephant ride at Bannerghatta National Park where the safari was a rushed route around some tired and depressed looking animals in a bus full of local tourists who leapt away from the windows at the site of anything with claws despite the heavy mesh cage that encased the vehicle … that and the fact that all the animals were followed closely by their keepers, apart from the mangy lions and the tigers who were taking turns outside their cages.
Goa reminds me of Thailand. Furniture markets line the roads – cheap plastic or ornate carved with nothing in between – there are rows of ‘emporiums’ where unsuspecting tourists are dragged by commission-seeking rickshaw drivers, liquor stores and restaurants compete for space with the ever-expanding guest villas, the beaches are lined with palmfrond bars and restaurants serving ‘continental’ and everywhere you look there are foreigners zooting around on scooters. I feel like I’m under attack after the ashram.
“Speed thrill’s, but kill’s” shouts out from several lampposts and made me want to shout at the driver to pull over so I could Tippex out the inappropriate apostrophes. “Driving rash causes crash” was marginally better but, along with the numerous other please to heed the rules of the road, it makes absolutely no difference to the Indian driving style. The hooting and swerving again sent Nic into a deep slumber en route to Casa Geraldina, tucked down a little alley, 5 minutes from the beach and our home for the next week. There is a pool in a guesthouse nearby where we are likely to spend a lot of our time to escape the hawkers on the beach. We’ll get into it, we just need to explore a little. For now, we have ordered takeouts from the restaurant up the road and we need to get home before dark where we can get ready to share the second IPL semi-final with the caretaker’s son.
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May 1st, 2010
I was meant to go stealth at least until Goa … but Nic had to come and check the IPL scores since there is no TV on the ashram – I got a disapproving shake of the head when I asked. Facebook is also ‘unavailable’. No TV but plenty of cricket. Nic just walks around with his cricket bat and everyone wants to play from small children to grown men. This morning waiting for breakfast we started a game and before long had an audience, a wicket keeper and a couple of fielders – perhaps Nic’s first moments in the spotlight as a cricket champion.
The ashram is not as I expected – not a green oasis of lawns and people meditating under bohdi trees – but it is perfect all the same. Nothing to do apart from while away the time between meals which are served en mass in the dining hall and taken seated in rows on floor mats. Washing up is in the Montessori way, each person washing their own plate in long wash basins. Nic loves eating with his hands but is still on rice and rotis, supplemented by dried mango, almonds, ice-cream and fennel seeds. He did have his first spicy rice this morning which was impressive – perhaps he was just too hungry to complain. He is constantly busy and there was no need to stress about not having many toys for him as he makes do with what’s available – right now he is thrilled to have a broom and a squeegy and has swept two floors of our residence (he calls it our villa), cleaned our bathroom and our little balcony. At the moment he is playing a cricket tornament in the computer room, playing both teams and whispering the conversations between the players. People think that because he won’t wear a shirt that he just doesn’t own one
No chance of a meditation or yoga session but I’m fine with that. It’s just a privilege being here. And I have the perfect travel companion – can’t believe I even considered leaving him behind at one stage!
Time for lunch.
Jai Gurudev.
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May 1st, 2010
I was standing on one foot as there wasn’t anywhere to put the other one. There was a wave of people crushing me from behind like a brick wall coming down on my back and Nic was clinging to my leg starting to look quite desperate as the surge began to gather us up. I felt a trickle of sweat gather speed down my back and my money belt felt like it was going to stangle me. There was shouting and jostling and people pushing Rupee notes towards the ticket window where a remarkably unhurried gentleman was sitting in front of an ancient machine that was choking out the tickets. It felt like we were fleeing a war zone and there were a limited number of tickets to get out of the country. What we were really doing was buying tickets to get on the toy train that does a 5-minute curcuit of Cubbon Park, past rubbish heaps and mucky canals.
This is India and I love it. It melts and flows and you have no choice but to get caught up in the pace of it. The hooters go 24/7, the cars narrowly miss each other and drivers swear and shout at each other. Yet, it seems so unhurried.
Nic is taking India in his stride. His initiation involved being chased around the airport on arrival by a woman intent on taking his photograph. She lost and in the madness of being mobbed by strangers wanting to meet, greet and shake hands, I fell into the same trap I always do. I was totally aware, I knew where I was going and the cab I needed to get and I was even standing in the right place to get it … but I got conned by a cab driver anyway. Being driven in the dark along unknown roads, I cursed myself for being so naive – I should know better … there was also a moment when I convinced myself there was something more sinister at play and that we were going to be sold to the highest bidder. It was fine though … of course. I know the drill. Hadcore traveller that Nic is, he fell asleep in the swerving hooting madness and an hour later woke up in the centre of the city where we were lost and couldn’t find the guest house. We were dropped on the road, directed to where the driver thought we should be going and I had to summon up all my courage to find Ashley Inn.
Once there, we settled in with take-out rice, dhal and naan in front of the cricket and fell asleep content and peaceful.
A guy at the cricket last night proposed to Katrina with a black marker pen and an A3 sheet of paper. I wonder if he got the TV coverage and I wonder if she said yes. I doubt she knew how many people’s view he blocked trying to get his message to her. The game was delayed by an hour and there was a risk of a riot with news spreading fast that it might be cancelled – perhaps some of you heard, there were some homemade bombs that exploded outside. I mention it only because it was a minor detail compared to the crush of people and guards with sticks we had to fight off to get in. I gathered up my precious cargo and pushed and yelled and squeezed trough a mass of sweaty, smelly bodies crushing one onto the next like a wave. But we got in and the crowds and the cheering and the atmosphere that comes only with 60000 cricket-crazed fans gave me goosebumps and made me want to cry a little. The stand was full by the time we got there but the guy we met in the queue to redeem our e-tickets the day before was there (what are the chances?) and he gave us his seat right near the front. Our team lost but my little cricket fan, dressed in a knee-length Challengers shirt and a Proteas cap, was dancing on the chair, hooting his horn, cheering and clapping and was fully drawn into the hype, lapping up the attention of adoring locals. He was so worked up, he ran the 2kms ‘home’ after the game shouting, ‘Follow me, mum, I know the way!’ Amazingly he did – those are not genes he gets from his mother! Clearly we looked part of the Bangalore vibe because I got asked directions by an Indian couple walking home.
We slept till after 8. Breakfasts have been masala dosa or Idily with coconut chutney – WAY better than continental.
Nic keeps giving me the latest count of how many times his cheeks have been pinched – I think he’s way off as no on lets him by without trying to touch him or take his picture. It’s puzzling at times where to place those boundaries but we are learning together.
Nic keeps asking where all the cows are.
Off to the ashram today. I’m intrigued. All Nic is concerned about is whether they have a TV so he can watch the rest of the IPL games.
My little travel companion may be small but he is huge in wisdom and he is looking out for me as much as I for him. All this talk of him getting lost has made him believe that if we are lost together, it is time to call in the cavalry.
It feels like we have been here forever. Moving on will be hard as he is convinced we are staying with friends of my parents and he was puzzled when I had to pay to stay there – he has been playing cricket and chating incessantly to the women who run the guest house.
He’s playing ball with a local while I type. His laughter is filling this tiny internet cafe and I am smitten. It’s his turn on the computer now – he wants to check out the IPL website to see who’s likely to make it to the semis.
Not sure when the next update will be. Just know that we are doing great and the world here is spinning way slower than it is back home.
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April 14th, 2010
All sorrows can be borne if you put them into a story or tell a story about them.
~ Isak Dinesen
I sit on the cusp of my story. My story is not, like Isak Dinesen’s, of Africa but it does contain heartbreak and sorrow and promises of new beginnings. There are no happy endings like we were all promised in childhood. Nothing ends happily ever after. There are only ever happy beginnings. And sometimes we have to jump between the two in an attempt to minimise the cataclysmic fallout the ending may have.
My cusp sits somewhere between what my child terms as mum and dad splitting apart and an awfully big adventure. My child and I are going backpacking around India.
Now, everyone has an opinion about this. It’s too dangerous, he’ll get lost or stolen; he’ll get dehydrated or get malaria; he’s too young etc., etc., etc. But say I’m going to leave him behind and the opinions change to I am abandoning him.
As his mother – not the one who yells and says f*ck a lot but the one who loves her child so much it hurts right down to her toes – I decided to take him along for the journey. It wasn’t intentional, it just happened. I was chatting to him at bedtime about all the stuff going on in the house at the time and the options that were open to us … and the India adventure thing just popped out. I regretted it instantly and immediately told him what a bad idea it was because of the disease and the poverty and the filth and the sewerage. It was already too late though … I had him on ‘adventure’ and he wasn’t letting me back out.
The planning process ensued and having so much time to organise meant OCD overload with purchasing and decanting and labelling and packing and printing and unpacking and folding and rolling and changing the itinerary so often, I think it has included almost every part of India at various stages of its lifecycle.
I now have such an awesome first aid arsenal it is more like a pharmacy and it takes up half my backpack with just enough space left for two changes of clothing each. I have been frenetic but I’m not sure the output has quite matched the input as I seem to still not have everything done and I leave today! I believe I would be at the same stage had I given myself a week to get ready for this journey.
During this process I have waited daily for a break in the cold war but it has never come. My seventeen-year cycle has run its course and I look to India now for the beginning of my next new cycle. I feel excitement, fear, happiness, gratefulness, anger, privilege, frustration, pain, joy, sorrow and betrayal … as well as emotions that haven’t yet been named.
There was a grim temptation when packing the pharmacy to calculate if there was enough clout there to obliterate the pain of a broken heart. But I didn’t think I could handle a failed suicide on top of a failed marriage.
Darkness makes way for incense, marigolds and kindred souls. I will eat bravery; I will drink inner peace and I will find strength again to travel towards a new me.
So, farewell until we meet again. I’ll be a totally new person, but you’ll recognise me by the smile on my face.
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April 13th, 2010
Is there such a thing as that one perfect soul mate? Our soul mates are those people we teach and who teach us … and once we are done, we move on. Or we try.
We spend so much time and energy finding ‘the one’ – that perfect soul mate to complete us in some way – but do we ever stop to wonder if perhaps we are already complete. Perhaps there is no ‘one’ besides ourselves. Perhaps we make ourselves less complete in order to keep ‘the one’ and fit the mould.
Why do we cling to the stuff that is bad for us and why can’t we leave behind the things that are over? We brood and we analyse when perhaps we should just move forward. I have tried recently, against the odds, to cling to the past, unable to release the hold that the notion of my perfect soul mate has had on me, when that part of my journey is complete. Perhaps there is another soul mate out there for me or perhaps not. Perhaps I have to seek solace in my own soul … at least for now. I need to realise that I am the compete person I was born as and I don’t need to rely on an ‘other’ to make me feel that way.
When you get embroiled in the love triangle that comes with having a child, you change. You can resist it, you can deny it, but it’s there. You just change. For me that change brought growth. And that growth brought courage. And that courage brought inner strength. And that inner strength brought self-confidence. And that self-confidence brought self-love. And before I knew it, I became complete. I no longer fit the mould and there’s nothing I can do but walk away.
Perhaps I will have regrets. I’m sure I will. But those too will bring more growth.
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April 12th, 2010
I was taken as a child. It wasn’t a traumatic experience and I really cared for the kind man who gave me kisses outside the library and lured me across the street with the promise of a sausage. I remember the tug of war in the middle of a four-lane city street; my mum pulling one arm and the kind man, the other. I remember feeling terribly embarrassed about my mother’s behaviour and I remember trying to reassure her that this man was perfectly ok and meant only to give me a treat. I couldn’t understand how my mother could be so rude when she had taught me such good manners.
We teach our children manners, and that’s just fine. But what happens when these so called manners actually start interfering with their boundaries and they begin to bring these walls down, only to be confronted with the dangers that they are not equipped to deal with waiting on the other side. We, as adults, can gauge … usually … who to greet and who to give a wide berth to; we can say hi and walk on by and we can put up walls as quickly as we can break them down. Our children aren’t equipped to do this. They are encouraged to greet and hug perfect strangers just because they happen to be our friends and they are meant to be nice to the man or the woman at the supermarket or the friendly person who finds them cute on the Promenade … all because mummy and daddy want a child who is friendly and polite.
But what about damage control? Do we tell them that they must be polite as long as we are with them but they mustn’t talk to strangers when we aren’t? And isn’t this just confusing them? Shouldn’t we be teaching them to trust their instincts rather and never force them to acknowledge anyone they are not comfortable greeting. Once they know a person as well as we do, surely that is the only time we can expect a little boundary dropping. Manners can prematurely break down the boundaries that really do need to be there. Perhaps practising manners at home ought to be good enough for now.
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April 8th, 2010
I spent the morning yesterday at Kirstenbosch Botanical Gardens with friends and acquaintances … and offspring … and found there was so much to reflect on. Not the beauty of the perfectly manicured lawns and sculptured edges. Not the music from the songbirds or the singing streams. Not the magnificence of the mountain looming overhead. None of those. Just the perfectly damaged trees. The trees the children chose to climb through, up, over and under – the ones that gave them pure joy and hours of play – were the one that was struck by lightening and the one that had blown over. Both were ancient and both were still growing strong, just in a different direction. They were growing horizontal while sending more branches up towards the sun. They were propped with supports and they were thriving.
I couldn’t help but wonder if that is not exactly what the human condition strives for. But can anyone claim to have truly achieved it? Doesn’t the real human condition lend itself more to the picking up and dusting off; the pretence that we can still grow upwards despite the past … when perhaps what we should really do is take life’s thrashing and just grow in a new direction. Find that perfect balance of coping with what’s been dealt us and find a way to keep growing … with just that little bit of support.
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March 23rd, 2010
This is for the benefit of my friend who is about to have six little carbon footprints pit pattering around her house in August. According to estimation, she will be using approximately 10,000 nappies till potty training … that’s a big landfill contribution to have on one’s conscience.
I have a convert: she has decided to go the terry route. Not only will she save the landfills but her children will be potty trained much sooner because the babies will feel when they have wet or soiled their nappies and have a greater tendency to want to use the toilet sooner.
I only began using the terrycloth nappies when my child was about 4 months old but that had more to do with the lack of availability of appropriately sized waterproof liners than it did to do with my desire to use them earlier. I noticed in PEP stores that they have a new great design in small waterproofs – a lot lighter and less bulky too. The fact that so many people are making the change back to cloth has had an impact on the industry making it a lot easier these days to covert.
There are people who claim that the use of chemicals, water and electricity outweighs the environmental benefits of cloth nappies but there is no need to use chemicals (in fact you shouldn’t as this isn’t good for baby’s skin) and there is no need to use hot water to wash them … or for that matter, to use a long washing cycle.
Because there will be three babies, washing will be done more regularly so you can get away with about 10 nappies per baby. Start with a couple of bags of nappy liners – the variety that can be flushed down the toilet – and a couple of bags of bum wipes. You need a nappy bucket – this is a bucket with a small lid within the lid for safety purposes. There is no need to use Steri-nappy, which is chemical, as there is an organic nappy steriliser on the market by Enchantrix. The nappy steriliser goes in the bucket, mixed with water, and the bucket gets tucked under the changing table or out of the way in the bathroom. Nappy liners catch the pooh and get flushed and all nappies just get thrown into the organic solution in the nappy bucket. When the bucket is fill – takes about 10 to 15 nappies – you do a cold, half hour wash in the washing machine with something like Mary-Anne’s concentrated and enviro-friendly washing powder (or the Enchantix or Bloublommetjies equivalent) and hang them to dry in the sun. So simple.
When the babies are very small, you will need to cut the cloth nappies in half but from about 4 months old, they can be whole. For nappy folding instructions, see:
I used the kite fold, which was best for a boy but experiment with the others to see what works for girls.
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March 18th, 2010
Part 3:
There are no guarantees. You can chose to have or chose to not have but either way these things just take their natural course. I still have no idea how my child managed to find his way into my life when I think how one moment in a then 13-year relationship changed my entire life … and then turned it upside down.
A very old friend of mine shared her story of how she spent years choosing to not have a baby. When she got married she decided to try and their precious baby arrived within the year – something that is almost unheard of these days. After being so lucky the first time around, she and her husband faced the enormous decision of whether to have a second. The answer was a resounding YES (YES, YES … !) That was over three years ago.
You can’t control these things; you just have to live your life as best you can without any regrets. This whole vibe is just some kind of surreal journey that takes us down random routes … and without even a GPS.
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March 17th, 2010
Part 2:
There are also those of my friends who are so keen on parenting that they are on IVF for their seconds and those who have turned to adoption after trying that option for so many years and it just not working. Then there is my friend who tried everything for eight years and then went travelling. Travelling is my answer for everything … but it didn’t help her fall pregnant. Or perhaps it did. On her return, she and her husband found a surrogate, put two fertilized eggs in her and put a third one back into my friend … as a last ditch effort.
They all took and she’s expecting triplets in August.
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March 16th, 2010
Part 1:
At the age that most of my remaining single friends are either desperately seeking a man to provide them with a child or considering the option of adopting and single parenting, I have a friend who has a dog. It’s a beautiful sad-eyed retriever who exists on an organic diet of fresh free-range meat and bergie pooh. And it is loved like a child. In fact it is her child … the only child she will consider having. She is at risk of losing her hot Swedish boyfriend because of her decision. And he is at risk of losing his hot Jewish girlfriend because he won’t compromise on having a family.
She takes care of her dog, her sister and her mother – she’s not lacking in the care department – but there is not even one cell in her body that wants a child … there is not even one cell that is curious about it. She just isn’t wired that way.
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March 11th, 2010
Let’s take a break from children and talk about friends …the adult variety. I got all flaky on myself this weekend and threw a copy of Psychologies into my shopping trolley. I read it cover to cover and found it quite disturbing that I have reached the age that I can devour a self-discovery magazine with as much relish as I once poured over Hello. The article that got my attention though, was not the one on saving my relationship but the one on breaking up friendships.
When you have a child, the dynamics of friendship change completely … as does your relationship with your partner and yourself … But that’s not really what I want to talk about here, mainly because I inadvertently brought a child into the article.
I want to talk about a great friend of mine. Well, she used to be a great friend of mine until she discarded me and made me question myself and the reasons she felt I wasn’t ‘good enough’ to be her friend anymore. What I discovered was that it had nothing to do with who I am and everything to do with what I did. I changed the dynamics of our relationship.
Our friendship I thought was based on a strong bond that revolved around common goals, interests and the fact that we had similar aged children (there I go again). We were somehow always there for each other and discussed problems over tea, coffee, sushi, anything going, almost every week. What I only realised once the friendship was over and she claimed she needed to create some space in her life was that all the problems we had discussed were hers.
And the reason the friendship ended? Well, it was my fault entirely. I asked her advice one day about a big problem in my life. I changed the dynamics of the friendship and broke our contract. I made it about me and that wasn’t the deal.
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February 27th, 2010
There are some great innovations going on in the nappy arena:
Nature Babycare, designed by a Swedish mum who can’t even sell them in Sweden; Nature Boy and Girl, based on same; Seventh Generation and gDiaper, to name a few.
These new innovations are all fabulous, trendy and partly nature friendly … Most claim to be compostable although there is a claim by some that the tabs and elastic edges take as long as a regular disposable to biodegrade (500 years!)
But, until you actually try the straight terrycloth variety, you just can’t knock it in terms of cost, fit, comfort, ease of washing and the most important part: recycling. The most green disposable nappy is Nature Babycare and even that is only 60% biodegradable – the best there is but still not perfect and when our landfills are filling up at an alarming rate, we need way closer to perfection than that. And then there is still the issue of wood pulp – all disposables, eco or not, use wood pulp and here lies the obvious issue of sustainability.
The shaped cloth nappies are great for parents who believe folding a terry square is beyond them … but what do you use them for when baby is all grown up? The simple terry squares win the day when baby grows up – they become kitchen rags, DIY clean-up cloths and even gym towels. Now that’s eco savvy, totally waste free and sustainable.
Links for your info:
http://www.naty.com/uk/Products/tabid/55/Main/Nature-Babycare/Sub/Nappies/MainId/3/SubId/21/Default.aspx
http://www.gdiapers.com/gdiapers101/flush-compost-or-toss
http://www.seventhgeneration.com/Diapers
See my link to a previous article for ready-folded terrycloth nappies:
http://www.bhalababy.com/2007/10/14/dispose-or-reuse/
And if you have any questions about how to go about starting down the route of sustainable eco-friendly terrycloth, I am always available to help – the environment means the world to me and my boy.
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February 15th, 2010
A very long time ago I was embarrassed by a child I once looked after. She was four at the time and I was nineteen and we were playing hairdressers in her room … as one does … when she told me that her daddy was in love with me but he couldn’t marry me because he was married to her mum. Guess who was standing behind me? There was a lot of awkward eye shifting and foot shuffling and mutterings before her dad walked away and the incident was never mentioned again.
My child never embarrassed me … until recently. It was my husband’s birthday party and the house was full of people – mostly the short variety. Adults and children were playing in every room of the house. It was a good day.
There are items in the house that have been forgotten about since having a child … items that I often wish weren’t forgotten but circumstances prevail and … well, these things just get forgotten. But not by the child. He had seen something that, when it came to playing cops and robbers, he knew would be a great asset to the game. He walked proudly into the room swinging the pink fur-coated handcuffs. It could have been worse … but not much, I doubt. I might have even blushed and, for once, I couldn’t blame it on champagne.
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January 29th, 2010
While working in London, indulging in the fruits from the capitalist tree, there was always a deep feeling that there was more; that I was meant to be doing something more meaningful. I vowed to juice my capitalist fruit, chop down the tree and plant a new kind of seed one day.
That day never came. What did come was a seed that I didn’t want planted – a child that threw my life upside down and several years of believing my dreams were over because my life was no longer in my control.
A friend of mine – and great tart maker – has adapted the term coined by SARK, the author of Prosperity Pie
http://www.planetsark.com/eshop_products_books_feat_01.htm
She makes a list of what she wants at the beginning of each new year and tucks it away somewhere, only revisiting it at what she terms her personal AGM mid year and year end. And she rarely sees a year through without achieving at least 90% of her listed items.
Like trusting the process, this method is meant to free your mind to recognising the immediate opportunities without always focussing on whether they will achieve your ultimate goals.
It’s never been my strong point.
But, having said that, while fighting the process and trying to open all the doors to what I have wanted, I inadvertently left a window wide open and my child climbed in. And with him came everything I ultimately ever wanted. The child I never wanted saved me from the person I wanted to be and made me into the person I am meant to be.
Trust the process and you can have your prosperity pie and eat it too.
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January 10th, 2010
I could say I only watch Grey’s Anatomy because it is filled with some of the most delicious men on television but it’s not the whole truth. I watch it because it makes me cry. I watch it because the script writers have a beautiful way of pulling ever so gently on my heart. And this quote from the latest series is a perfect example:
“When we say things like people don’t change, it drives scientists crazy because change is literally the only constant in all of science. Energy, matter … it’s always changing, morphing, merging, growing, dying.
It’s the way people try not to change that is unnatural. The way we cling to what things were instead of letting them be what they are, the way we cling to old memories instead of forming new ones, the way we insist on believing despite every scientific indication that anything in this lifetime is permanent. Change is constant.
How we experience change, that’s up to us. It can feel like death or it can feel like a second chance of life. If we open our fingers, loosen our grips, go with it, it can feel like pure adrenalin … like at any moment we can have another chance at life. Like at any moment, we can be born all over again.”
Lately people I know have been telling me that getting divorced suits me. Perhaps it’s not so much the divorce that has changed me but rather the way that being separate from my other has forced me to be enough on my own. Just enough. I believe we spend too much time trying to not change, and trying to convince ourselves that the people we love are incapable of it, when it is impossible to remain unchanged on almost a daily basis … by the things we experience and the people we meet. It’s simply impossible not to walk through the flames of transformation with every single thing we do. Being enough, and being happy with that, should not by any means exclude change.
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October 30th, 2009
I crossed over into the life of my parallel dweller. It was temporary – 10 days – and it was fabulous. I booked to travel to Paris and London to run a race, visit friends and stroll the High Streets of my heyday. I counted down the weeks, days, hours and minutes to my departure, planning everything in minute detail so as to not miss out on anything I had been hankering for.
I have a friend who won’t leave her child for a night and I have friends who will leave happily for three weeks and I have friends who have varying levels of tolerance for staying away from their kids … somewhere between those two extremes. I don’t yet know where I fit.
Leaving my husband and child was filled with mixed feelings of ‘get me out of here’ and ‘I’m a terrible mother for wanting to leave so badly’. It was made worse by the call I got while going through passport control – my child was in a state because he was under the impression that I was leaving forever (perhaps he just knows me well enough to realise what a fine line I was traversing trying to connect with ‘the other side’).
I had pangs of wanting to take my child with me on my mini-adventure and a small amount of separation anxiety – a direct result of his having formed so much a part of my identity for so long now. But, once on that plane, I had shunned my mothering comfort zone and assumed my old identity – I was a free agent, meeting people as a confident, independent woman; a person I thought I had lost. The next ten days, as you can well imagine, were a whirlwind of plugging back into the grid of soul connections and lifestyle adjustments. I rode the rollercoaster of hating every minute and never wanting it to end. I was high on adrenalin and I almost valued my fix enough to call home and say I was staying. Instead … well, I’m back after tearful farewells and aching hellos … and it’s as though I haven’t quite left the fairground, but everyone’s packed up and gone home.
I feel now like I have an overloaded system of unprocessed information and things undone. I have launched myself into a state of limbo between lives; between choices; and I find myself pining again for what might have been. I have one foot in my parallel dweller’s life and it feels like she wants to keep it there – perhaps out of spite for what she sees I have … so much of what she will never have.
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October 29th, 2009
In my latest therapy session we discussed all the many ways my life has changed. Could I say I regret having had a child or would it be more accurate to say that he has got me to where I am today and contributed to the person I am right now?
I have always been aware of that sassy chick in my parallel universe who has a great job earning a great salary that allows her to buy the things she wants and enables her to travel to Japan and Brazil on a whim. She is confident because her clothes aren’t always in a state, she can still wear heels and her stomach muscles are still as taut as when she was thirteen.
There’s no doubt I am still aware of her but I now look at her with admiration, not envy. She possesses a lifestyle of different choices and though some may seem so much better from where I’m standing, I am certain my choices show a lifestyle just as enviable to someone on her side.
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October 22nd, 2009
Something that keeps coming up amongst my peers is the decision to work full time or not. I know what it feels like on the inside – believe me I have been there, desperate to have more of everything good, terrified of giving up anything in case I need it later and paranoid about not being able to provide for the future. But, looking in now from the outside, I have so much faith in the process of a holistic lifestyle. I can’t consume what I don’t have and can’t waste what I don’t have. My choices are more limited but my enjoyment of life totally unrestricted. There is a calmness as though life is slower, more meaningful and less inhibited than before. It seems the more one has, the higher and nearer we place the boundaries … and when you have less, there is no end to the potential you can achieve.
I was chatting to a friend (you know, the ones we non-working mums meet up with for play dates) about ambition and success. Her father-in-law had a simple life and a regular 9-5 job, put all his children through tertiary education and was a respected and loved man. Compared to a man in a powerful executive job who hardly saw his children, apart from annual family holidays, we were weighing up the benchmarks of success. I’m sure if there were a vote the outcome would be more or less equal based on the perspective of the person voting. As for my vote … it’s pretty obvious what it would be – success means nothing unless it has a positive impact on the significant people in that person’s life. What’s the point otherwise? If the choice boils down to a simple education thing, is it better to be able to afford to put your child through ’varsity or is it better to see him and help nurture him before then so he is better able to put himself through ’varsity? My child is still little so I choose to see him – I might, however, change my mind when he becomes a teenager I see so many parents torn between their need to see their children and their neurosis about their nest egg and recently a lot of people have lost their nest egg despite their choice to grow that instead of their children. Obviously there are people who don’t have the choice and have to be a double-income family. But if no one’s going to die if things are downscaled, then surely the choice is a simple one. This isn’t a judgement of people who want more as I totally get it – I get ambition and the freedom money can buy – I just need to make the point that all choices come with compromise and it’s best to be certain you can live with whatever that compromise may be.
Sure it’s always going to be scary – what important choice is ever not scary? – but it’s a matter of going to the edge and taking the leap of faith to see if flight is possible. There would be no reason to live if it weren’t for the challenges in life – after all, it is the challenges that make life what it is in the first place.
I don’t know anyone so far who hasn’t jumped first and then made the choice to fly.
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October 20th, 2009
Everyone likes company from time to time and the easiest way to get it is from a sibling … often yet certainly not always the case. But this is no reason to keep breeding. Survival instincts just change for a child who is destined to be on his own. An only child can play with whomever he likes, wherever he likes, whenever he likes … and doesn’t have to play with anyone when he doesn’t feel like it. He is neither restricted to siblings nor forced into relationships he doesn’t want.
Children with siblings tend to remain in their comfort zone, as there is little need to look beyond that zone. Parents can make this worse by forcing friendships to form between siblings, which are often not the natural relationships, and at the same time not encourage lasting relationships outside of the family unit. I can’t help but wonder what kind of restrictions this places on the child in other areas of life later on.
People ask if my child wants a sibling. Yes, of course he does … but he doesn’t know what he’s talking about. He’s four and people actually think he should be the one who gets to decide. I also get asked regularly why I don’t want to at least try for a little girl … little girls are a mystery; big girls are a mystery … I have three sisters so I don’t even want to go there.
I would hate to place myself as the benchmark on these issues but, having grown up in a big family, I can honestly say that it is far better to have friends scattered around the globe; friends who drift in and out of my life, as well as a potential pool of friends just waiting to be made, than siblings who feel entitled somehow to a pound of flesh for coming from the same womb. Everyone is as dysfunctional as the next person; I just like to be the one to choose which dysfunctional people I want to hang out with.
After all, there are no answers … only choices.
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October 15th, 2009
I was thinking about this and wondering how to incorporate this topic into a baby blog … until it became totally clear when speaking to my father about recycling and the use of chemical fertilisers. He said that in 2050 he won’t be alive and that he can basically do whatever he likes until he dies because he will not have to live through the consequences. This is a man with four children and five grandchildren.
I have a child and that brings with it tremendous responsibility to the earth as the earth will ultimately sustain my legacy. Not only is having a child a huge carbon footprint I am leaving on this earth but also a huge risk. He is already very environmentally savvy because, no matter how much money I deposit into his bank account every month, he’s not going to be able to buy himself anything if the earth is sick and people are suffering and he has to fight for his survival.
The best thing I can do, this Blog Action Day, is to send you to three separate websites which fully explain the plight of our world. They explain exactly what climate change is and the effects it will have on our future generations of children: things that include malnutrition, susceptibility to heat stroke, increased illness, lung damage and inhibited growth. Millions of children, predominantly in the developing nations, are going to be affected if money isn’t poured into climate change … not forgetting that everyone can do their bit at home rather than waiting for their government to act.
25 Million malnourished children in 2050
Diverting Aid for Climate Change Threatens Children – Oxfam says
American Academy of Pediatrics – Global Climate Change and Children’s Health
I’ll draw your attention again to the Story of Stuff (link on right) – it’s my favourite website and it points out the very basics of how everyone can do something to reduce their carbon footprint and be more aware of the impact they are having on this now fragile earth.
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August 12th, 2009
How do you teach your child about modesty? Yeah, yeah, I know he’s only three … but I’m obsessive compulsive and therefore have to feel great pain over trivial things on a daily basis. My need to be the perfect mother … or is that my need to have the perfect child? Whatever! My need is getting in the way of a happy marriage … according to the other person who is the target of my obsession. Or perhaps it’s because he is not enough of a target anymore now that there is a child to dilute my anal perfectionism. But, since that has absolutely nothing to do with the title, more to the point now.
I have noticed that everything my child has is better than anything any other child has … according to him only, that is. I blame myself … of course (see opening paragraph!) … mainly, I suppose, because I try and teach him to be proud of what he has. And somewhere along the line, the boundaries got blurred. Combine the pride and the blurred boundaries with his confidence and here is a child who will approach anyone and tell them about all the things he has. And, I have to admit, there is a certain smugness there.
Precocious was a swear word when I was growing up … not that I have any problem with swear words or anything, but I feel the need to use this particular one now when referring to my child. Maybe it’s not such a bad thing to be now that children can actually be both heard as well as seen. But that still leaves me with a gap where the modesty lesson should follow.
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July 28th, 2009
I had friends … you might call them acquaintances … in London, who have moved back to South Africa, had children, and totally dropped under the radar. I know it is normal to change friends when you have a child … after all you have a new identity and you need to be comfortable with that new identity without feeling like a total fraud because you have become a totally different person. Then there are the friends you have that are even better friends for the very same reason.
And then there are the Facebook friends … the people you once knew but who have now become their children – even on Facebook. I battle to get even a glimpse into the lives of people I haven’t seen in years because they have placed themselves behind their new personas as parents. There is the tricky issue of new last names … an argument I won’t get into as I kinda get the deal even though I am totally anti the idea myself … and the fact they use pictures of their children for their profile pictures. And all they ever discuss are things to do with theirs or other’s children and child-related things.
It’s fine to be proud of your children – obviously I realise that – but surely you lose yourself if you never let yourself see the light of virtual day. Somewhere behind the parent lurks the free-spirited singleton … surely!
Perhaps it is my own character that is flawed in thinking that no one could possibly be that attached to parenthood to want to become someone else in order to fulfil a stereotypical role. But is it too much to ask to just have my friends back the way they were even when I know they will never be the same again …?
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July 20th, 2009
It’s happened. That face that I saw in the mirror three years ago, two years ago and even last year was a different face to the one I see today. I saw a mother on the verge of a nervous breakdown and I saw a person stuck in societal traps, and I have been punching my way out of that box for years. I am out. After years of self-doubt, self-flagellation and general self-loathing, I can today look in the mirror and see a different reflection.
I used to hate that question: ‘So what is it that you do?’ I used to stumble and stammer and make a total botch up, not knowing what exactly I did do … I was stuck in a kind of limbo, a time warp between lives or stages. Having a child in your 30s does lend itself to a small amount of confusion when all this happens and you automatically assume it is the proverbial mid-life crisis. I have grown up with a mother who has always tried to force me into the housewife box, a box that is both too small and too regular in shape to fit even my big toe … so it stung when people automatically made that assumption as soon as I gave birth (a lot like the people at my wedding who made the assumption that I would cease to work as soon as the nuptials were complete). I could have claimed to be on maternity leave but that would have prompted more forceful enquiries of, ‘So, what is it you do?’ i.e. what great job is this maternity leave sandwiched between.
After years of trying to find my mojo and getting myself into a tizz over not earning, not achieving, not contributing and making not the blindest bit of difference, I found my space and my place. I made a choice. I’m working on my second book and in-between writing days I do volunteer work in community schools. I suppose I am lucky that I did well for myself before having a baby, and my husband is able to cover the bills. But it is not an easy choice relinquishing power and accepting a dependant role. I have made a lifestyle choice for the whole family, limiting our earnings to a single income and I have to live with the consequences. But, paying or not, I have never enjoyed any job more than the ones I am doing now so that makes it a relatively easy choice after all.
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May 25th, 2009
Yes, I realise how absurd that sounds but there is a company that has set up a system whereby a mother can deposit her unwanted baby in a box: as she places the baby inside, a message goes out to relevant people and, within five minutes, someone arrives to take care of the baby.
I am involved in a project called the Hero Book Project (look at digitalherobook.org) to get a general idea of what it’s all about) and today I was told by a scared and confused 8-year-old that she had seen police arrive in her community to take photos of a dismembered baby someone had found stuffed into a metal drum. She described it to me in great detail and explained how, when she told her father about it, he had rushed off to check if it was her baby sister.
To put the frequency of this problem into perspective, the same story was told by an adult at the school but told in such a way that it sounded more like a common inconvenience than something that only happens rarely enough to make a big deal out of it. If I am honest, I can compare it to my annoyance at hearing that another person had thrown themselves under the train on the Underground … upsetting only because it meant I would be late for work.
But I digress. For most of you reading this post, the idea is too horrific to confront and think about, but please spread the website … and the word … because no one really knows how desperate a woman can be when faced with the prospect of an unwanted child.
Baby dumping is not an issue that can be ignored. And finally there is an organisation that has taken on the task of really dealing with it by providing mothers with an alternative. The only way any organisation like this can truly work is through input and support so please log onto thebabysafe and see how you can help.
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May 10th, 2009
As I stumble down the stairs with yet another bundle of laundry, I can’t help but ponder my choices … specifically the one that prevents me from chasing down my parallel dweller and demanding my life back so I can go to work and leave all this behind. The child wet his bed, the dog is particularly needy and the husband is being passed over for all the small stuff that seems to never get done without the correct prioritising. It’s a mess. It’s my mess. It scatters me.
What defines you as a failure? Who decides? Do we? Or do we put that decision in the hands of people who care little about us, and possibly don’t even know us at all?
Considering my choices, I realise that value does not come with a paycheque. Too many people are working too hard to prove that they are valuable and getting nothing but grey hair and a redundancy package.
It’s entirely up to you whether you want to feel like a complete failure … or whether you can accept that you are just changing your focus and accept that you have been a success and you can still be a success – just without the paycheque. Having said that, it took me almost three years to realise that I didn’t have to run screaming from motherhood and that equality doesn’t come with that paycheque but rather with a meeting of minds. I do sometimes hanker for my life without a child, for the comaraderie of a job, for the satisfaction of knowing I am going to get paid even if I am not really valued.
I saw a stone statue of a woman at Kirstenbosch. It is a woman carved in stone, sleek and bold, elegant and poised. The plaque read something along the lines of: a woman wants to be beautiful and respected but also wants to retain some of the traditional values. The woman I was there with has a 2-year old daughter and she has decided now to quit work as she’s done the whole corporate thing for so long and she realises she is missing out on the other stuff at a time when the ‘other stuff’ is slowly disappearing (i.e. each day that passes is a day you can’t get back with your children). I also read something in a Steve Biddulph book that goes something like: the work of the old days took physical labour but at least it only took your body; these days you have to give your soul.
We have too many choices as women these days but what we have to realise is that they are still choices. We don’t have to do it all. We actually get to choose. It’s pretty fabulous if only we could deal with our choices and not always want what we have given up.
I work for free now, giving my time in little ways to children who need me. My paycheque is the incredible satisfaction I get from reaching out. And because I now have a job to go to, it doesn’t matter that there is no actual paycheque because I have finally found where I need to be. This makes the work I do at home so much more valuable to me as it no longer scatters me but keeps me grounded. I realise now how easy it is to slip into the dark places.
There’s been a shift. I am finally comfortable in this space as I have accepted it ‘for now’. I am giving my heart but I am not giving my soul.
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May 8th, 2009
This is for the benefit of a friend of mine who thinks I harp on about the subject just a little too much. I see her point … but that doesn’t prevent me from wanting to keep making mine.
I am puzzled by the claim by Pampers that there is little difference in the environmental impact caused by disposables versus cloth nappies. Perhaps, at a stretch, the old fashioned way of doing the cloth nappies (and I mean decades ago) may have had an equally damaging effect on the environment–the nappies were put in buckets and collected by companies in trucks who would take all the nappies to a central laundry where they would be boiled in all sorts of chemicals and dried in huge industrial machines before being pressed and driven back to the collection point.
Even so, this cannot have contributed as harmfully as the massive landfills created by disposable nappies. In England and America alone, 25 BILLION nappies are thrown away each year so it isn’t surprising that 33% of landfills are made up of disposable nappies. Add to that the fact that they take almost 3 HUNDRED years to decompose, meaning that not one disposable nappy has decomposed yet! This is just the half of it; if you start Googling the harmful effects, you will find out about the trees that are cut down to make the nappies, the forests that are destroyed to make the pulp that is used for the gels, etc. etc. The negatives are endless and there is only one positive: convenience.
There is no argument about environmental damage and which variety of nappy is worse … yet people still allow themselves to be tempted by the perceived convenience of disposables. It’s a no-brainer.
I have used both and can state categorically that, not only are the cloth variety no less convenient, but there are actually so many benefits to using them, which I can enthuse about only because I was an instant convert when I started using them when my child was 5 months old. I could have chosen any number of a variety of pre-shaped cloth nappies that require no folding … but folding a square of terrycloth into a nappy is easier than making a paper plane so it didn’t warrant the extra expense (the point is there is no excuse about the folding as there are options). My child had not a single bout of nappy rash due to the cloth being a natural substance and because there are wonderful things called nappy liners, which keep baby dry and which are flushable. My child knew when he was wet or when he had made a poo, which made it so much easier to get him out of nappies really early (yes, I can boast that he was in proper undies at one year)–so, again, a way more convenient option because I only had to wash nappies for just over 6 months. The only equipment required was a nappy bucket with a safety lid which was kept in the bathroom filled with water and a natural organic nappy sterilizer … this meant that the nappies only had to go into the machine every weekend and they could be washed at an environmentally-friendly forty degrees in thirty-five minutes before being hung up to dry.
They may have tiny feet but bringing a child into this world leaves a massive carbon footprint. The least a parent can do is make choices that this little person will not have to pay for in several decades time. It’s time to take an ethical stand and think about the big picture of having a child and not just the selfish desire to procreate.
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May 8th, 2009
I worked to the point of obsession (me and Gina) to promote independence and a sense of self. I ensured that my child would be in bed every night be 7 p.m. so that my husband and I could have time … adult time. My child slept in his cot from day one and only slept in our bed on occasion during daytime sleeps and very rarely at night if he was too sick and we were too tired to attend to him (up and down the spiral staircase!). It’s not easy following such a strict routine but it pays off when your child responds and never gets between you in bed.
Well, that was the idea.
Despite all efforts, he came between us anyway … not physically but emotionally. He is always there. And there remain so many unspoken conversations about how we both feel in our new identities as parents. Being a parent is a vulnerable and fragile time and it is often not treated with the respect it deserves. I am a wife, a daughter, a sister, a friend, a lover, a writer, a patient, a client, a consultant, an employer, a dog owner, a Beetle driver, a shoe lover, an optimist, a runner, a breather … and so much more, I could risk running out of blog space. But when I added mother to this list, it tipped the scales, and balance is something I have been seeking ever since. I find it so difficult to switch and juggle a multi-faceted personality … but only when I am in the role as mother. My new persona takes so much from the old ones and it’s difficult enough trying to deal with those stats when you’re also playing out a guilt trip about what your new role is draining from your partner’s other personas. You whine and moan about not getting enough space when it’s just the two of you … but when there’s three, space is the one thing you could happily do without.
Does he know he’s getting between us? Of course not. I used to tell him he was ruining my life … and he developed a sense of humour. Now, I giggle with him all day and deal with the other stuff when he’s gone to bed.
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May 5th, 2009
My child is a little old soul all wrapped up in a brand new body, full of wise words, a sociable disposition, a clever sense of humour, an awesome vocabulary and many, many lessons.
Just as he has lulled me into a sense of complacency and illusion that I have a very mature child, he will throw himself on the ground, throw anything he has in his hands at the time, tell me that I have a problem and refuse to do anything I ask of him. These are the terrible twos that have taken over a year to get here … and a rattling reminder that he is in fact a perfectly normal 3-year-old.
I made a vow before he was born that I would never smack him–it never worked on me but, instead, broke me … something I always suspected was the intention my parents had in the first place trying to deal with a brood of four and having little idea of how to go about that very tricky task. I have stuck to my vow even though I have to admit that there are moments when he gets so stroppy with me that I am tempted to klap him right across the room. These urges used to be a lot stronger when dealing with my anger at having had him in the first place–those days when I was convinced he had ruined my life and liberated me from my parallel dweller who wears her shopping and travelling fetishes on her sleeve–that I would remove myself from the room where he was performing just in case my anger got the better of me … a time when my stubbornness has served me well–I was, under no circumstances, going to turn into my mother.
If I can connect to my anger for long enough to take a deep breath and realise that it’s my stuff I’m dealing with and it has nothing to do with him–he is, after all, behaving like all 3-year-olds should–I am always amazed at how suddenly he drops his arms, puts a big smile on his face and carries on as though nothing has happened. As mystifying as it is maddening.
Something to ponder then is that perhaps the changed behaviour in children who are smacked has less to do with the smack and more to do with the fact that they are just following an inbuilt chain of events.
There is just no way I can smack him … how else would I be able to teach him that it is best to take out his frustrations on a cushion … or on the very same punch bag I used to defer my feelings of anger for him.
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April 28th, 2009
I have a friend who believes in this concept – amazingly, just the one. There are those who get really uptight if you so much as reprimand their kids for such indiscretions as smacking, kicking or even biting your own precious offspring. And then there are those who believe that bringing up baby all on your own is a lark and if not for the input from all around, your child would not be quite as balanced as one would wish. Perhaps all the breeding for more and more kids has a lot to do with parents trying to create their own mini-village … who knows. I certainly don’t have a clue what it’s all about and I could spend this lifetime and the next trying to figure it out.
Like any crisis that happens en mass, people tend not to individualise in order to better contain it. This seems to be what happens with parenthood – it happens to everyone who has a child so parents are grouped together into one collective and a rule of generalisation is applied to everyone in the collective. But, behind the scenes, there are people screaming in pain at the stress of it. Broken marriages, non-existent sex lives, grey hair and emotionally screwed up children.
It is not easier being part of the collective … ‘the collective’ is not the same as ‘the village’.
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March 30th, 2009
We are no longer the cool couple with the throw-away lifestyle, the fabulous wardrobe of designer styles and the list of RSVPs to get through. A weekend away at a designer hotel, strutting onto the plane in killer heels pulling designer luggage is something in my history books. The plane is now a 4×4, the killer heels, hiking boots, designer luggage? – the only luggage is pure essentials as the toys and kids clothes take up all the space and the only thing I pull is my 50kg dog.
I used to book a weekend away every six weeks and those weekends always involved a flight and a lot of room service. Now the only places that will have us (with our child and dog) are those horrid places that have polyester bedding and no heating in winter. Room service? – there is generally not even coffee or tea supplied.
So, I spend an awful lot of time searching the wwweb for pet-friendly holiday accommodation and usually end up not going away due to never being able to find something that is suitable for both pooch and us and I am still more than reluctant to put him in kennels because … well, because he is not so much a pooch as my first born (but you know this already). House/dog-sitters are rare but when found I thought it would be a breeze to book luxury accommodation for two adults and a toddler. Not so! I have been amazed at how much effort I have had to put into a search, only to find on step 12 or 13 that kids are either not allowed or are only accepted after a certain age. That was until I discovered the Portfolio Collection website. They have a specific search for places where children are welcome.
Check out their travel blog too, and look at the Kids of Nature website, where you can browse through other parents’ stories of traveling with their kids and share your own travel tips too.
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October 31st, 2008
When Annie Leonard (www.storyofstuff.com) looked in the mirror a couple of decades ago, maybe the current Annie Leonard was the furthest thing from her imagination … or wildest dreams. Perhaps she cursed her reflection because she failed an exam or a job interview or didn’t make the grade to compete in the Olympics. I am not saying any of these things happened … but they might have. They might have happened to set her up to a challenge that she had no idea she would have to face, back then. And here she is, trying to save the world by standing on a soapbox (one made of 100% recycled material of course). The Story of Stuff is also a story about how stuff happens … and we’ve all been there.
If Al Gore had become president, he might have been too wrapped up to investigate and discuss climate change – global awareness was key to launching his ideas. I don’t mean to frighten anyone or set anyone up to fail by making them think they have to be that huge to be noticed or recognised as achieving … but, perhaps when things don’t go exactly according to plan, it’s because there is another plan that’s just out of the picture right now and you just need to pan around a bit to find it. There are different paths and we all have to find our own. Flexibility is something that is shut down in most of us because it allows freedom of spirit and in this day and age that is considered a dangerous quality as it means you will be unable to conform …
We’re so trapped by society that even if we know what the problems are, we get stuck anyway.
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October 30th, 2008
So, where did it all start – my crazed-bear obsession with the environment? Well, it started slow – terry cloth nappies, solar powered boiler, gas heaters, wood fires (using wood from alien trees), recycling … and then I was sent a web address: www.storyofstuff.com and I fell head over heels in total ‘fatal-attraction’ love with the whole concept of sustainable living.
Everyone should watch Annie Leonard’s mini movie and look at her tips to find another way to exist on this finite planet. Sure, it’s hard to be a total convert, but we all have to start somewhere. Dieters who start their diets on Monday can continue to do so as long as their attitude to the environment doesn’t also spell procrastination. Everyone has to start today to do his or her bit and no one is going to mind if it’s just a small bit … as long as it’s something.
To give you a kick in the right direction, try Wiser earth to get involved with the greater good. And speaking of the greater good, have a look at Greater Good. There is a South African equivalent which has less to do with the environment and more to do with … well … the greater good:
Enjoy the march. Besides anything else, marching beats dieting.
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October 7th, 2008
Ok, so we all know my child was toilet trained by his first birthday … the whole of Cape Town seems to know and it has become urban legend. I was not trying to prove anything but purely exercising my need for self-preservation. I wanted to go the terry-cloth route but couldn’t cope with washing them (despite the Marigolds) … so I had to devise a plan. By ensuring all ‘pushing’ was done out of the nappy (something that took a fair amount of vigilance), poo nappies were practically eliminated by the time he was six months old. The rest came easy. He didn’t know any different – the toilet was always the place to do the business and there was no struggle associated with having to get him used to the toilet after years of feeling comfortable sitting in his own faeces (which, let’s face it, is just not right).
When I was pregnant I used to tease that I had a parasite … until I my ‘parasite’ actually got a parasite. He was nine months old and the culprit was Giardia. This karmic payback not only caused the filling of terry cloth and waterproof liner but also the spreading of said parasite-infested faeces down child’s trousers, out past the ankles, down my jeans, onto the car seat and baby seat … all while lifting my child out of the shopping trolley and into the car to go home. Eco or not, there was no salvaging that one – the child was stripped and hosed down in winter frost on the front lawn and the terrycloth nappy and liner were promptly disposed of.
The point that is becoming so hard to make here is that all those things usually associated with potty training that no one thinks has anything to do with anything else because everyone is brainwashed into believing that the only time one can potty train is after two and only once the child has indicated certain personality changes … have more to do with things that are going to happen anyway. Around the time that traditional potty training takes place, my child went through the hand washing, the need to watch the poo flush away, holding the poo in until it hurt etc. … yet he had already been out of nappies for over a year.
So does it not stand to reason that all the pressure parents put on themselves to look for cues and then try and get their kids trained is totally unnecessary as this is just part of the normal developmental stages?
Which leads me to the obvious conclusion that I am now confident that I did it the right way after all … despite all the critisicm and warnings that it just wasn’t normal and that I would find out later on when he regressed. He didn’t regress and happily uses the toilet by himself, even lifting the seat when he does so … and he is not yet three.
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August 12th, 2008
“I’d have more children if I didn’t have a husband”, says a mother of four.
This may be because there is just not enough love to go around … after all, when you run out of love … Who do you love more? The man you have been with—seemingly for an eternity—who has ‘gotten used to you’ or the child who has just rocked up in your life and ‘needs you more than you will ever know’.
This tiny little human who has stolen its mother’s every waking moment, and every last drop of effort and energy usurps your husband’s position and deprives him of a little bit of your love.
It transpires that something’s gotta give when there just ain’t enough love to go around. In my case, the fairground attraction ended when my husband, used to a high dose of merry-go-round, had to make do with the swings. Back and forth didn’t do it for him; he went tummy-butterfly cold turkey and ditched the fair completely.
Aaaaanyway, fair or not, he suffered without his full dose, dished out a fair amount of rejection and lost a fair amount of passion in the deal. The baby ended up getting all the love for a while … and the husband is only just managing to function on his reduced dosage.
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February 18th, 2008
If you have a baby and you don’t want that to get in the way of a good holiday, go to Europe where they are tolerated in even the trendiest restaurants and even woken up by friendly restaurant staff and fellow patrons … usually when you have just got them to sleep in their prams … people want them around. And if you are into a cultural trip to see great art, Paris is the place to be on even the busiest long weekend with the most popular masterpieces on show.
It seemed too easy – taking a 7-month-old baby on holiday to London and Paris had images of crying in queues, restaurants, planes and trains. People still claim I’m just one of those lucky mums with an easy child. I can’t claim to not have had luck, as I can’t claim to know what it would be like any other way. What I can claim is that, even if there had been an element of luck involved, it also had a lot to do with dedication, perseverance and tenacity (and that’s baby and me).
To digress slightly, there was an issue with dummy sucking as opposed to thumb sucking. My baby started sucking his thumb as soon as he could get it to his mouth (around 6 weeks) and I switched his thumb for a dummy every time due to the nattering of concerned friends and relatives. Once I realised that dummy sucking involved getting up in the night to replace the dummy every time it fell out (spiral staircase one unfortunate obstacle), I withheld the dummy until my baby learnt to either go to sleep without it or use his thumb or blanket (this involved only two sleep times worth of crying to sort out). But, back to the story …
I booked a flight to coincide as closely as possible with my baby’s sleep routine. Because he had a blanket (several actually but all pretty similar) that he was attached to at sleep time and because he sucked his thumb, he knew it was sleep time as soon as I gave him his blanket and promptly started sucking his thumb … to coincide with take off (and middle ear neutralising!) He then slept all night until the lights went on in the cabin, by which time he (as well as all passengers in close proximity) was well rested.
To digress again, we ordered a TwinArc Travel Cot by LittleLife online, which we had posted to where we were staying in London. This is the most lightweight travel cot you can buy and, therefore, does not reduce your luggage allowance by too much. And, while I’m on the topic of luggage, the pram does not get counted towards your allowance because you push your baby in it all the way to the plane where it gets put in the hold last minute (and not weighed in).
Because baby was following The Routine, there was no issue with putting the cot in our room as he was used to going to sleep at certain times and was not even unsettled by the different environment because we prepared him (never underestimate how much a non-speaking baby can understand) and never made a fuss about putting him in his travel cot to sleep. This gave us free reign to go out when we wanted to and because we were shopping and sightseeing every day, all we had to do was put the pram in recline mode, throw a blanket over the top to block out some light and, hey presto, baby would fall asleep effortlessly … because he was used to The Routine. There are certainly pros and cons to The Routine and I would never be able to convince someone to follow one unless they were that way inclined from the start … but being free to wander the streets of London and Paris with a perfectly rested baby is certainly one of the pros.
Where the luck came in was visiting galleries and exhibitions in Paris where the queues wrapped around buildings and stretched down streets for what seemed like miles. There was always a kindly guard wandering around, ushering all parents with small children to a special queue, which was immensely shorter. At the Picasso museum we even got a personal guide to show us the easiest route and help us into the private elevators.
If you are more geared for rave holidays in Goa and Ibiza, The Routine probably isn’t for you because what parent wants their baby to go to sleep at 7 p.m. and wake up at 7 a.m. when they only get to bed around 7 a.m. themselves?
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February 11th, 2008
A term always used when referring to new parents … but almost never when referring to the new baby. It is usually common for the baby to get all the sleep it requires. Unless, that is, you think Gina is the Rabbi and you are prepared to do whatever it takes for your baby to fall into The Routine.
You don’t let the new baby sleep in your room, let alone in your bed; you never allow the baby to sleep when the Fridge Rules clearly state it is playtime, and you never rock the baby to sleep … ever.
The Rules are very clear on the need to keep the baby awake for two hours in the morning and two hours in the afternoon for playtime. What they are not clear on is that the Rules are specifically in place to help parents with babies who don’t like to sleep. And what they should be especially clear on is that the parent should not distress if baby would rather sleep for 24 hours a day than lie on its play mat and look interested.
I woke him when he was sleeping. I tried to play with him while he was sleeping. I talked and sang at the top of my voice to try and prevent him from sleeping. I tried everything in my power to keep him awake when The Rules dictated. I deprived my baby of sleep. And then I complained of being sleep deprived myself.
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February 6th, 2008
Or rather, a message about a bottle … a bottle of cold pressed sesame seed oil.
I was too stubborn to do the baby-bathing test before I left the hospital. I was totally unprepared for how minuscule baby would be and the thought of trying to wash him in a bath of water while supporting him from head to toe was more than I could comprehend (on top of all the other stuff I couldn’t quite comprehend).
There’s a solution: a sturdy changing table with a comfy changing mat; a plastic bowl; a few facecloths; a baby massage book and a bottle of cold pressed organic sesame oil (there are other oils that can be used but this was the most lightweight I could find). At bath time, the naked baby is wrapped in a towel on the changing mat while you work on each part of the body separately, massaging the oil into baby’s skin (and even the head). Once complete, you use a facecloth and a basin of perfectly warm water to wipe baby down before drying gently and dressing.
This is not only a way around the cumbersome process of bathing, it is also better for baby’s skin – sorting out skin rashes and cradle cap, amongst other things – the massage is great for baby’s body, and it is an incredible bonding experience. While I hate to differentiate between the functions of mum and dad (mainly because it is usually a gross generalisation more than anything else and my husband proved to be a better mother than I was at times), it is a fact that there are men out there terrified of caring for their babies. This massage method brings an easy caring experience to dads as well, and at the right time of day too.
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October 14th, 2007
You can recycle, grow your own vegetables, and cook on gas pumped from the septic tank. But you have to face the fact that when you have a baby, you stamp your greatest carbon footprint on this earth and you have to be industrious to offset your emissions.A third of landfills in developing countries consist of disposable nappies.
This is an alarming statistic by anyone’s standards. But you still have a choice – you can either contribute to this stat or you can trust in terrycloth.
My reaction to this stat was a carbon-emitting shopping spree at an inappropriate environmentally harmful shopping mall. The quest, however, was a virtuous one – terrycloth nappies, nappy liners, Enchantrix (organic) nappy sterilizer and a functional and baby-safe nappy bucket. All in the name of fighting the stats and doing my bit about global warming.
People not only took me as hormonal (a.k.a. slightly nuts), but also tried to convince me that all that soap and water undid all the perceived good. What they didn’t count on was the fact that because I had a big issue with washing crappy nappies, I started putting my baby on the toilet every time I saw him pushing. This not only meant my job was much easier but the washing machine only saw nappies once a week and, since the organic sterilizer had only to work on urine, the nappies required nothing more than a quick cold wash and a bit of sunshine to get them back on the nappy shelf.
Thus, toilet training was easy and my child has been in underpants since he was eleven months old. Sure, there was the occasional ‘accident’ but no more so than any newly toilet-trained child … and the added advantage (yes, another one) was that my child felt so much more comfortable never having to sit in a dirty nappy – come on, is this even forgivable?
I chose to use the old-fashioned terrycloth squares and had to search the web for folding instructions. This site shows you all the different ways you can fold a terrycloth square – try them out on baby to get the best fit and the least leaks (and, by the way, a disposable is just as likely to leak):
Kitty Kins – Terrycloth folding instructions
You can use the excuse that it’s just too much sweat to use this method but, with the new range of shaped nappies, there is no excuse to keep using disposables. You can find a few of the options on the following sites:
Stegi
Cuddlebabes
Natures child
… or you can just plant a tree!
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August 29th, 2007
An avid campaigner against the need to have a child has reached a stage of her biology that she is battling to hold at bay. As the last of her peers to be childless, she feels her life is lacking something and that this indicates that she needs a baby.
Nobody needs a baby; most people just want one. It’s immaterial what your motives are for either wanting one or not but you have to be very clear on what you actually need.
Wanting a baby requires you to want it badly enough to compensate for the loss of freedom, mobility, travel, late-night parties and the halving of your relationships.
But when you choose the alternative, you have to be strong enough in the face of the social pressures, the emotional guilt and the need to know if it will ever be enough to not have one.
Having a baby is like upgrading or downgrading your neighbourhood … whichever way you choose to look at it. It’s a lifestyle choice. Take it or leave it but never feel it is so integral to life that you will feel incomplete without it.
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June 8th, 2007
There I lay, veiled in a drug-induced mist, recovering from the trauma of surgery. I hadn’t learnt anything from my hospital ‘trial-run’ the weekend before and found it almost impossible to ring the bell for help. Friends came and went, my husband was there almost permanently and, even when I didn’t ask for it, I had nursing staff buzzing about checking this and that, taking my temperature, giving me sponge baths … and an unwanted suppository at some point.
Not the type for broodiness and maternal instincts, I none-the-less recollect an almost immediate instinct to nurture. Regardless of all the activity, the exhaustion and the drugs, I insisted that the nurses bring me my baby every four hours through the night … whether he was sleeping or not … so I could nourish him. I returned him to the nursery immediately afterwards so I could get my rest and, come morning, I had him by my side where I could gaze at him sleeping, lift him to feed him and lay him against my skin so he could feel my warmth and feel safe. It doesn’t take any form of maternal instinct to realize the trauma a baby must go through being ripped from the warmth and quiet of a watery womb and into the foul smells, noise and bright lights of the physical world. From a miniscule part of each parent, a body is formed, through which a soul can reach the world. I was intensely aware of the fragility of the situation. And he clung to me, somehow realizing that I was his life-support.
We co-existed like this for 4 days.
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June 7th, 2007
I knew the due date and I knew I was having a boy … so no surprises there. But everything else … Let me just say that you can buy a cot, decorate the nursery, book your foetus into high school, but you can never be prepared for what follows after that first cry when that tiny baby is ripped from your belly. They may as well rip your heart out too because from there on out, you wear your heart outside your body.
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May 17th, 2007
If your partner sheds the only tear on seeing the first ultrasound scan, don’t panic! This does not mean you are not bonding with the bean-sized bunch of cells in your belly. Yes, sure you want to, but … it’s a bean-sized bunch of cells in your belly.
And further to that, this bean-sized bunch of cells is, by no stretch of the imagination, capable of eating a full fry-up for breakfast, a lunch of bangers and mash, a roast dinner with all the trimmings and a midnight snack of a tub of ice-cream. So try not to eat for two. You will only look like a fool if you try and convince the person at the buffet table that the bean-sized bunch of cells in your belly needs its own plate of food. And if you gain too much weight during pregnancy, you will only be depressed after the birth – you’re kidding yourself if you think you’ll have time to go for a 10km run any time soon. Hey, you’re kidding yourself if you think you’ll be able to walk to the front gate without breaking a sweat. As it is, I only gained 12kg and I still looked five months pregnant for several weeks after the birth. And I’m one of the lucky ones.
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May 14th, 2007
I always imagined I’d be able to pinpoint the exact moment … the moment of earth-shattering bliss that would signal the successful exchange of DNA and the beginning of cell division …
Not feeling sure I even wanted a baby, there’d be those moments when I would lie in post-coital bliss thinking, “Hmm, now if I was to fall pregnant, THAT would be a good way to do it.” I even started planning holidays to Fiji, Bora Bora and Hawaii at the mere hint that perhaps we might be ready to have a baby. After all, conception is as important to the parents as birth is to the baby. But the actual planning for the baby never reached fruition. So, at the onset of nausea, headaches and exhaustion, my first thought was to pull out the unused self-test malaria kits I had lugged half way across the malaria-infested Indian subcontinent several months earlier. The lack of pictorial instructions proved too complex and, after puncturing two fingers on my left hand, and one on my right, I drowned both test kits in my blood before figuring out that my stupidity must surely be indicative of the onset of a far more dangerous ailment … Motherhood.
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