In 2010 I set myself a 365 day task to produce a portrait of my world every day and to run each day of the year. I did it.
In 2014 I completed four months of another resolution.
In 2022, we have become nomads and I have resurrected the blog. There are still 2 resolutions: Live life fully in many different countries and eventually find a forever home.
This is a once-weekly blog of something interesting in my life.
I miss my meadow but I am loving the course. I love my fellow travellers on the week's mixed media journey, I love the teacher, Patrick, who is always excited by art in all its forms, and is a genuinely warm human being who is friendly towards everyone, from the dour Museum guards to the 5-year old twins who live next door to him. I love the paper we use, the chalk pastels, the thick black pencils, the colour, the line, the smudging wondrous idea of making a blank page full of the image of a person, the person sitting just there across from you. I love the models for being brave to do this work.
Today I spent the entire day on a large drawing of a man. He was a beautiful model, with a grounded energy and confident sense of self, compared with the skinny rather introverted male model of Monday's drawing day. I think he inspired everyone somehow, because we all did good work today. He is a yoga teacher and masseur.
He is not perfectly in proportion but I got the essence of the man, I think.
The chalk pastel is a wonderful medium, I have just discovered it, never really used it before.
I caught an earlier train today and Tim met me at the station and we had a brief respite between other Things that have to be done. So we went for an ice-cream, which we ate sitting on the bench outside the ice-cream place, with the late light spreading its beneficent glow around us. We told of our days, him ferrying boys and fighting with Leo, the person who sold us the dud car. I told how there is a Fransiscan priest in our group, which seems like a strange kind of thing for a Catholic priest to be doing.
Tim asked me what the point of drawing naked people is, and I have been thinking a lot about that. I think it is because this is the purest form of a person, and if you want to draw people you have to know all their ins and outs, the way their muscles hold up their limbs, the way skin sags or tightens, the planes of the body and the face. And every time you draw anything, including the human body, you are struck by beauty. The beauty of shadows, of long fingers and stubby toes, of breasts with large round nipples, of a penis sitting on its testicle-nest, of the light captured in a pony-tail of brown hair, of wrinkles and ankles and the weirdness of elbows.
So here is another pastel portrait of Leah, looking as though she is sitting on the edge of a swimming pool.
There will probably be no running this week as I leave at 6.45am and get home at 8pm, happily exhausted. I am doing a mixed media course, designed to combine painting and drawing and perhaps other media like collage.
Today in true art school fashion, the model did not appear at the scheduled time and people kept arriving late, so that we finally got started at about 10am, with people from the class volunteer models. This was a beautiful little asian student named Claire.
At 11am, the original model arrived, as did the substitute who had been called by the lecturer. So we had a male and female model all day. It was lovely. I did a pastel drawing of the woman which turned out quite well, I have hardly ever done pastels before.
And I drew a naked male other than my husband. I think it is the first time I have ever drawn a nude male stranger from life. When I was at Art school the black women models had to take off everything but the men wore little undies, always. It is an odd thing at first, to gaze at a man's penis and draw it, it is so out there. The male genitals are such a secret hidden thing in western culture. In movies, women were showing their all long long before the first penis ever made an appearance.
Our teacher/lecturer is wonderful, full of energy and enthusiasm and constantly coming around to offer advice and criticism, and praise.
Frank, the old Italian man who is my friend's neighbour.
He has green thumbs. Plants try to grow better, taller and greener or rounder or more colourful, when he is tending them.
My dad was like that. He grew all kinds of plants, his vegetable garden always full to overflowing, with green beans and golden carrots, little new potatoes we ate with butter and salt and pepper, broccoli florets like green crowns, and round crisp lettuce that he saved from the slugs and snails with many methods, some natural plantings, other methods involving squishing them himself.
For colour there were the tall, scent-filled sweetpeas, one of which made it into the Cape Times as a record for the sweetpea with the most blossoms on one stalk! Fragrant jasmine climbed high for him, and roses that my sister gave him flourished and bloomed each year. Lemons, figs, mulberries and guavas we had in abundance. And at his last house he grew a kind of Frankenstein apple tree which could have been out of a fairy tale. It grew in strange shapes, because it was made up entirely of grafts, and consequently the tree produced about 7 different types of apples!
My dad was a collector. His garage (and shed) were filled to capacity with things he might need one day. Many of his generation went through great hardships which formed thrifty pragmatic people.
His heart also had a great aptitude for kindness. He would fix fridges for old ladies and barely charge them, he would always say yes when asked for help, and even before the asking, my father was there with his large helping hands, his strong arms, the considerable bulk of the big man, able to set things right. He was, of course, also cantankerous, obstreperous, stubborn and many of his grandchildren nicknamed him "Grumpa", but they all admired and loved him none the less, forgiving him his faults because of his goodness.
Tonight I was sorting out all the materials I need for the Painting and Drawing course I am attending from tomorrow, and found an old moonbag in a drawer, which contained these treasures.
I too am a collector like my dad, some for beauty, others for possible uses. The Eucalyptus pod still whistles beautifully when I hold it with my two thumbs in a certain way and blow like my dad taught me, The acorn may well germinate one day under the lesser green thumb I inherited. The shells are beautiful to look at, the sewing machine foot a useful object (if I still had that sewing machine). The hook can still be used, I think it came from 16 Cross Street, and the pod is from one of my beloved Grahamstown jacarandas, and seeds from this pod have grown into four delicate tall trees standing in pots in my house.
The friendly little tractor with Evil Plough dragging him down....
I trudge-ran 2km then ran two more fairly easily with more lift in my steps. 4km in 30 minutes. Hot humid air around my breathing mouth. My own spit added to the globs from the spittle-bugs. Sweat dripping down my eyebrows, painful ankles. Desperate cottontail dash across my path. Horsefly trying to bite me. You are not at all beautiful after a run.
I wonder if funerals are pleasing to the dead. It is something important, to memorialise someone, but the one being memorialised has no say in it, usually. I suppose there are some people who plan their own services, and I think that is a good idea.
I would like to be buried in a cardboard box with an oak tree planted on top of me. (That is my second-favourite tree. An Erythrena is my best, but they can't live in New England.)
All the people I know and love (not very many in this country) must each bring a poem or a song to sing, and it would be lovely if all these were about trees, but they are free to choose something they like too. The service would take place out in the open, in a meadow, or the woods, even if it is snowing.
Then everyone can retire to a good place, a big tent if it is summer, or a warm house if it is winter, and eat, drink and be merry. Every person there must tell one funny story about me that will make everyone laugh.
Then everyone must go home and have sex, make love, whatever you want to call it, with their wife or husband or lover, because what's a good death without being rounded off with the primal life-urge?
The perfect end to a nasty week - I arrived home to an empty house (Molly and Lily and Piggie would have to disagree with that statement), having dropped the boys off at various teenager groups, and Tim away on a hiking trip, to find a big pile of Molly's vomit. At least it was on the kitchen floor. I nearly took a photograph of it because it was such an interesting shape, all the grass had clumped together in the form of a toad!
I don't think I have ever spent a week with so much time spent driving a car or sitting in the passenger seat with someone else driving, like Tim or Nick or Matthew. Matthew actually drove all the way home from his internship at Tufts yesterday, a distance of about 28 miles, merging on to highways and all! I think mothers and fathers who teach their children to drive are very brave.
But unfortunately Tim and I are a bit useless with making deals. We always seem to get hoodwinked, deceived. They just see us coming, "Look, it's those suckers again, how can we trick them this time!"
So, after days and days of searching online for a car for the boys' 18th birthday, we finally bought one, a little old Subaru wagon from Leo in Medford, with a sun-roof that you wind up, and a roof-rack for the kayaks, and plenty of space for friends. We spent the whole of Wednesday sorting out registration and insurance etc. and then hid the car at a friend's house.
Today the little car went in to see about the shuddering which had happened after Leo engaged the all-wheel-drive. Tim compared it to getting Molly, who seemed like a sweet dog. The woman who was selling her to us said goodbye and as she was leaving, put her head back around the door to say, "Oh, and by the way, she has epileptic seizures, but nothing too bad!".
So friendly Captain Stan of the neighbourhood garage showed me the underneath of the car this afternoon, and it is rather a mess, with oil leaks and various important metal frame parts of the chassis so rusted that you can put your hand through the holes in some places, making the car actually quite dangerous to drive. It will cost about $5000 to fix, and is not worth it! I felt rather devastated.
But he did helpfully point out to me that we are covered under the Lemon Aid Law of Massachusetts (what a wonderful name), which makes it illegal for people to sell you such cars.
In addition to the Lemon Aid Law requirements, a private party who sells a consumer a used vehicle must tell the buyer about any known use or safety defects. If the buyer discovers a defect which impairs the safety or substantially impairs the use of the vehicle, and can prove the seller knew about it, then the buyer can return the vehicle within 30 days of purchase. Private parties are bound by this law, regardless of the age or selling price of the vehicle.
I think we may have a fight on our hands though, to get that money back from Leo, who has in all likelihood, spent all the money already. It is incomprehensible how people can be so blatantly crooked. I know all the members of his family, how his wife might be deployed to Afghanistan, how his daughter looked at her 8th grade graduation the other day. He knows that I too have four children, that the car is for my twin sons who are turning 18. How could he sell me a death-trap?
So I parked the car in our driveway this afternoon, and tearfully told each boy the whole story. They both had a sudden terrible thought that I was going to tell them we were getting divorced, but then thought, "No, never Mom and Dad". Matthew was very sweet when I told him how stupid we felt, he said, "You guys are not stupid, it's because you are so nice." Well, it's all very well to be nice, but to allow yourself to be taken advantage of is just dumb, isn't it? And Nick was enraged at the audacity of said Leo, how dare this man do this to his parents!
So, off to my lonely bed tonight. This image is of a quilt that I designed and made for Emma for her 30th birthday last year. A 'tarental'.
Molly-the-dog on the hot hot hot Midsummer Day today, (90F, 32C, 40% humidity), after running 3.25km with me. Although she did cheat, flopping down in the shade of the big old oak at the beginning of Heartbreak Hill each circuit, then watching for me to come all the way around the meadow, then happily loping across the ploughed field and falling into step behind me, pretending she had been there all the time! But I knew, because I couldn't hear that pant pant pant behind me, now could I?
I was wet with perspiration, red-faced, with my heart singing in my ears when we arrived home, breathing noisily. Molly flopped down on the cool tiled floor and panted the staccato of the aria Der Holle Rache from The Magic Flute
Last night was St John's Eve, who is, I read today, the patron saint of beekeepers, although when I looked on the Catholic site, apparently St Ambrose and St Bernard of Clairvaux are the real patron saints of beekeeping.
There are literally thousands of saints, and each one assigned to be the patron of someone, like St Felicity, the patron saint of Barren Women, who was martyred by being thrown by a cow and then pierced by the sword of a gladiator in 203 A.D. St Jude Thaddeus is the patron saint of Desperate Situations. The patron saint of Stomach Disorders is St Timothy. My favourite is St Francis of Assisi, the patron saint of animals and ecology.
I am also partial to St John, or John the Baptist. I fell in love with Rodin's statue of him, and when I met Tim he looked just like that, and he was a baptist when he was young. So I have my very own John the Baptist!
I love the whole idea of water being such a symbol for John the Baptist. There are water festivals all over Catholic South America, decorations of fountains and wells, and St John presides over all this magical water.
Yesterday I ran just over 2km but had to shorten it for a variety of reasons, the chief one being that it was so hot, and also that my husband was at home, waiting for his supper, not that he can't make his own supper, in fact we ate his wonderful omelettes tonight, but he was tired and is a good, hardworking man and I wanted to spend some time with him.
Today was a strange one, full of driving and standing in queues and worrying if we were doing the right thing, and finally accomplishing this big secret thing for the boys' birthday next Thursday. But oh, what a day!
When the boys were about three they learned "Twinkle, twinkle, little star" and would stand and sing it together for anyone who wanted to listen. After being asked for the umpteenth time, they stood to sing it, and after two perfect lines, Nick changed the next two lines to "What a day, oh what a day!" So it became a refrain in our family when anyone had had a tough day.
Today reminded me of the melodrama of family life. Tim took Nick off to work this morning, a 25 minute trip, and I went for a long meander through the wonderful milkweed-full fields, with bees bobbing and butterflies fluttering, robins singing and last night's welcome raindrops still clinging to each leaf and grass-stalk. At about the time I expected Tim back, as he had taken the day off, my cellphone rang in my pocket, Nick, to ask where I was, as he needed a ride home, had got the schedules all mixed up! So Tim had to turn straight back around and fetch him, a car-ride which had taken him nearly two hours by the end of it!
And then we were off! I asked my very kind friend to take Nick to work at the Y in the afternoon, as I knew Tim and I wouldn't be back from our errands by then. We rushed up and down route 1 to try to accomplish various objectives, and at about 3.30 Matthew phoned my cell to ask if I knew when there was a commuter-rail train, but also to tell me that his phone had died! So it all seemed impossible and I told him to wait for me, that I would be there in about 45 minutes.
Hectic planning between Tim and I and finally I was nearly at the destination, listening carefully to the GPS system telling me how to get there, driving in rush-hour traffic, in Tim's stick-shift car, and my cellphone rings! Now changing gears while talking on a cell leads to disjointed conversation, to say the least. It was my daughter in England, asking me where on earth I was, as she had been trying to get hold of me. When I asked how she was she burst into tears and cried out that someone had died! Shocked, struggling to maintain the gear I was in and keep going up a narrow hilly road in the middle of the busy town, I asked, "Who died?" and she repeated, "Don't die, Mom!" And then I realised what she was saying and why, as her friend's mother is dying, and I just managed to say, "You'll be alright, I promise I'm not planning to die any time soon, Em!" and my phone died!
There was more rushing up and down highways in order to get people to their requisite destinations, and at last there was just Tim and I sitting on the deck drinking beer, with the black happy Molly-dog and the frail elderly Lily-cat lying at our feet. "What-a-day, Oh-what-a-day!"
It reminded me of a moment at 16 Cross Street, in about 1996, with me standing at the open door, Emma's boyfriend on the other side of the metal-barred gate, distraught, Emma pulling on my arm, telling me that I had to take him in, he had to live with us because he had had a huge fight with his parents who had "thrown him out". Me standing there indecisive, not knowing really what to do, when four-year old Matthew comes up to me stark naked, (Nick behind him as his wingman, wearing only a superman cape), and tells me in no uncertain terms, that they are "never bathing again!" There was also a dog barking, if I recall correctly, three cats slipping in and out around my ankles, miaowing for their supper, and loud music coming from Jessica's room. What-a-day, Oh, what-a-day!
This person was driving with a big white animal, which I surmised to be a Pyrenean Mountain Dog. We were behind them for ages, trailing along in that terrible Boston rush-hour traffic, the dog's hair blowing softly like grass.
But when we finally went by, the dog turned into a large white stuffed animal of an indistinct species! I was shocked. It seemed to me that they were driving with something dead. Why would anyone want to drive in a car with a large white long-haired toy strapped into the passenger seat next to them?
People are cleaning oil-soaked animals with Dawn, which is apparently the best detergent for the job, because it is very hard on oil but soft on the animals' skin. Dawn has a secret recipe, but what is odd is that one-seventh of the liquid is made up of petroleum!
I wish they would stop pointing fingers and just get on with stopping the oil from gushing into the gulf. In America, there always seems to have to be someone to blame. So much litigation involves blaming and a payout. When we went to South Africa two years ago, at one place we stayed there was a big dam (which would be called a pond here). On the other side of the dam was a tall rockface, and attached to this rock wall, about 35 feet up, was a zipline or foofy-slide. So, in order to use and enjoy this, you had to swim across the dam, climb up the cliff, then stand on a natural rock platform next to a beehive in an old tree-trunk, and launch yourself off to drop into the water at the best-judged time.
We all went on this ziplock, it was absolutely thrilling, but while Nick was waiting on his 5th or 6th turn, he was stung by one of the bees just below his eyebrow! He ran over to Matthew who was about to launch himself, grabbed the handle and leapt! Of course he hadn't given himself enough time to get a proper grip and so very quickly he lost the handle and plummeted down, about 25 feet, to land "SMACK" on his back in the water! I immediately started swimming over to where he had surfaced but he gestured to me to leave him, as he had winded himself and was waiting until he could breathe properly again.
His back was covered in red welts, with bruising later, his eye swelled up for about 3 days, poor boy, but no one was to blame but ourselves. We didn't sue the little farm, we just sorted him out with anti-histamines for the swelling, and arnica cream for the bruises, and tea and sympathy for the psychological wounds. It had been a little accident, and that's what accidents are, they happen quite often in our day to day lives, particularly with children.
So with the oil, it doesn't really matter in the long run who is to blame, just fix it, please! The future of the ocean rests on decisions made by these finger-pointing idiots. Take some money away from our bloated military if you haven't enough. Bring the soldiers home from Afghanistan and Iraq, and those futile Vietnam-type wars. But put everything you have into this effort, it is of the utmost urgency, nothing else matters as much as this.
One of the beautiful and odd-looking creatures of our oceans. A leafy sea-dragon, of the sea-horse family, the only animal where the male 'gives birth' to the young.
The first day of vacation.
6.00am - Drag myself out of bed, after 5 hours of hot sleep.
6.10am - wake Matthew, make coffee for him, make packed lunches for Matthew and Tim
7.15am - take Matt to school to write his last exam.
7.30am - take Molly for walk, pick dandelion leaves, clover and soft grass for piggie.
7.50am - feed piggie, birds. (black dog-bird gets two peanuts too)
8.30am - take all textbooks that I've rounded up to school, because if they don't have them the boys won't get their results, won't be able to apply for colleges, their lives will be ruined.
8.36am - write check for $90 for Matthew's Maths textbook! He negotiates $60 payment to me.
8.37am - drive Matthew to Tufts Tissue Laboratory in Medford, a distance of about 27 miles.
9.30am - go to see car for possible acquisition, in Malden, owned by the friend of a Chinese man who seems very suspicious of me, although I should be suspicious of him!
10.30am - another car in Medford, slightly better, a possibility.
10.55am - start driving to Ipswich Country Club to pick up Nick, about 30 miles. On the way I have to stop at a store so that I can go to the toilet, because by now I am fairly desperate! The desperation which causes eyes to water once you finally get to sit down.'
12.05pm - drive into the setting for The Stepford Wives, alias the Ipswich Country Club, to fetch Nick, turn the wrong way down the parking lot and my old hippie Odyssey, full of bumper-stickers lauding peace and goodwill and calling on people to Make ART, not WAR, almost has a head-on collision with a brassy little strumpet-like sports car, a blonde woman driving (the correct way) and giving me snooty looks.
12.10pm - Nick gets into the car and we drive off. He tells me about his morning's work as a lifeguard and swim-coach, how he noticed a dear little girl sitting in the shallow end on the step with her mother who was not paying any attention to her, and how she was just laughing with the delight of the water, just loving it spilling over her legs, her hands, just living in the pleasure-filled moment.
Somehow we get on to the subject of growing up, of women's lives, and I mention how I am not so fond of summer anymore, because of the hot flushes attendant to menopause, which seem to be brought on by heat itself. I just get nice and cozy in bed and suddenly I want to strip off every layer of clothing or sheet or duvet otherwise I will surely die of heat! Or now, in summer, being hot makes me hotter, it is extremely irritating! Nick sympathizes but is very happy to be a male, although he points out that every single man will have problems with his prostate after 60. It seems a fairly small thing to deal with compared to the legion of suffering women must go through. And I pontificate on this, how we must menstruate, sometimes with a lot of pain involved, then we get pregnant, then we must give birth, painful, laborious, arduous birth! Then as we get older we get to lose our looks, quicker than men because of having children, and then to crown it all, we go through menopause, and it's all downhilll from there!
12.40pm - arrive home, finally, to fetch Nick's checks and drive him back to the bank to deposit them, then to Magnolia Beach.
1.30pm - home, grab a bite to eat, a cup of tea. Sit and watch the birds.
2.20pm - phone Jess on skype.
2.45pm - phone Emma on her new landline.
3.10pm - have conversation with mother of son's friend who is sitting in her car in our driveway waiting for said son.
3.25pm - drive down to Medford again to fetch Matthew. Have long and interesting conversation about tissue engineering utilising silk as a scaffold for manufacturing blood vessels from stem cells. Have another interesting conversation about Shwayze, another pathetic male rapper with no respect for women. (How can they like this music?) Matthew backs down from my passionate outpourings. He has heard me many times before. He knows me.
5.30pm - stop in at Market Basket to get meat for Molly and milk and lettuce, and a few other things that one always seems to notice a need for.
6.00pm - arrive home, unpack groceries, boys phone friends.
6.10pm - back in car taking boys to friends' houses (different friends, different houses).
6.33pm - home, put Molly's meat on to cook.
7.05pm - go for 5km run in the very great heat. Molly gives up after one km.
7.45pm - running down the hill at the end of the run, nearly at home, I have a spectacular fall worthy of a World Cup Soccer match, as I land on hands, then hip, then knee, and then flip over on to my back and slide, hurtling on the sled of pine needles until I come to a stop with my head a few inches from a large pine trunk.
7.46pm - get up gingerly, dust myself off, congratulate all my bones for not breaking, and go in to shower.
7.55pm - Tim comes home, we eat, I feed the dog, I feed the cat, we watch an episode of "Life" which is amazing cinematographically, but with a very irritating anthropomorphising narration voiced by Oprah Winfrey.
And now I am going to bed! Roll on, boys' licenses!
This is a portrait I did at a course last June at the School of the Museum of Fine Arts, in Boston. I am doing another course next week, where I get to become a student again, painting from 9 - 6 every day for a whole week! I can't wait!
She is standing on the railing of the deck, cheeky. Funny creatures these.
Today is Fathers' Day, when westerners celebrate fathers. My father was an amazing chap. He loved his children with an enduring uncomplicated love. We were, each one of the three of us, the apple of his eye. (Apples were sacred in early Britain, and the pupil of the eye was called the apple, so saying that someone is the apple of your eye means that they are as precious as sight, and also precious and sacred to you.) Which is how he loved us.
He was also a cantankerous man, even when still quite young, and grew more curmudgeonly with age, but for us three he was always a rock, always, always willing to help, there with a shoulder to cry on, an ear to listen, a helping hand.
I remember how safe he was. I have never since felt so utterly safe as I felt with my father when I was a child. He was big and strong with huge hands, a fixer of machinery, a mover of heavy objects, a striding person in the world. And yet sensitive to nuances of emotion. He would surprise you with what he had observed when you thought you were hiding it so well.
I think he probably had attention deficit disorder (ADD), which of course wasn't even heard of when he attended a little village school in rural England, in the 1920's. He was a self-made man, struggling with learning disorders, and with my mother's quick brain to help him, he managed to haul himself up in the world and attained a comfortable middle and old age. Of course he was a flawed human being, as are we all, but for integrity and steadfastness you couldn't beat my dad. He died nearly three years ago, and I still miss that love and unfaltering loyalty, still miss his voice on the phone saying, "Oh hello, little Annepan," with such genuine happiness in his voice. Even though I was in my 50's, I was still his baby, his laatlammetjie.
Even though my father grew up in an extremely patriarchal society he raised his daughters the same as his son, pushing us to succeed, never giving us the slightest idea that we could not be anything we wanted to be. He also would probably have liked us to be more conventional women, but he was a good man and let us be our individual selves, even encouraged it, perhaps without always meaning to.
But there are so many bad fathers out there, that I struggle to understand why god is portrayed as a man, a father. The older I become the more I am shocked by how much evil in the world is perpetrated by men.
I like the Hindu idea of many different gods and goddesses, each with a unique personality and human foibles, each representing something of our complex human nature. Gods in our own image. Jealous gods, duplicitous gods, loving gods, mean gods, silly gods, good gods.
Today I drew a picture of my friend's daughter and grand-daughter as a gift for her birthday.
She runs 4.14km in 32 minutes, at the end of the hot hot day, running through the meadow, the half-moon following her trail, the cool breeze bathing her flushed face, her long braid dividing its time between her elbows, brushing each one in turn as it raises in time with the opposite leg.
The child lives every day in the moment, whether it be summer or winter. Here it is, sunshine, hot! Beach day, riding in the back of the station wagon with her best friend, lying in the dogbox the whole way home, telling secrets, giggling, singing songs they love, perfectly in harmony, their voices and their beings. Or here it is, rain, cold wind. Foggy mountain shrouded, wet socks at school, misery riding her bike home, hot cocoa made especially for her by her dad, the best cocoa in the world, sweetened with honey. She doesn't really compare seasons, or notice time passing, she just wakes up each morning and does all the lovely things, reading and eating good food, riding her bike and playing with her friend, and the not so wonderful things, going to school, homework, fighting with her brother. She just can't wait for the summer holidays, and they go on forever, and she cries each January 15th or 16th when she has to go back to school, that first day is always the saddest day of her life.
Now, in her 55th year, she is utterly aware of time passing, she notes the seasons, is always conscious of the hours in the day, not being enough, going too fast, how just a little while ago she had twin babies and now they are almost eighteen years old. She washes the muddy pond-water off the dog with the hose, gets willingly sopping wet when the dog shakes herself, panting and looking like a black seal. She is happily barefoot and bare-armed in the summer heat, and is astonished at the memory of the water being stiff and hard inside the hose just a few months ago, snow and ice where there is now abundant green, weeds and leaves and growth everywhere, when just yesterday, it seems, she had to put on a hundred layers just to venture outside for her daily run or walk in sub-zero temperatures.
She remembers that it is Father's Day tomorrow, her husband's 26th. She met him when her girls were little, they taught at the same school, Nombulelo. He was just a boy, 24 years old, and lovely. They became friends.
How he won her heart, without her even realising it, was one day when she was very sick with a bad cold. At school he told her that she should go straight to bed when she got home. She turned on him angrily, saying, "How am I supposed to go to bed with two little girls to take care of?", but when she arrived home she did actually lie on her bed, feeling awful, after telling her daughters to play quietly. She must have fallen asleep when Emma came in to cheerfully tell her that Tim had arrived and was playing with them. She slept gratefully as Emma periodically came into the bedroom to inform her that Tim had given them their tea, then that Tim had given them supper, then that Tim was seeing to their bath, then he came in to tell her that he was having trouble with Jessica's nappy, because every time he stood her up it fell down around her ankles! So she went in and they all laughed and she showed him how to do it properly, and then flopped back into bed, and as she drifted off to sleep she could hear him reading them a story, and the next thing she knew it was early morning and Jess and Emma had crawled into bed with her sometime during the night, and she was all better!
Sometime later in the year, they got together as a couple. Although they could never just be a couple, because there were two little girls involved. So he said that the three of them made up his "package deal". How lucky they all were to find him, this man who restored their faith in men.
And much much later they had two more babies at the same time! And always, since his commitment all that time ago, he has been the best dad, loving each one, always ready with patience, with sympathy and understanding, with laughter, with a glass of water when they are weeping (which is his cure for crying and most of the time actually works). Reading long books like Lord of the Rings and Harry Potter aloud each night for years, writing and illustrating stories for them, watching videos with them, explaining the plot when they didn't understand, teaching them to swim in the pool and the sea, teaching them Maths, teaching them all how to ride a bike, how to drive a car, how to live in the world.
So here is an image of his strong arms around all of them, his arms that grew bigger and bigger as needed, and are still growing. Happy Father's Day!
I didn't run today because I had to spend the day at school, doing last orders, cleanup, etc. But I did go for a fairly long walk with the black dog, quite early this morning.
Molly rushed off ahead of me along the path into the forest, running to the ball tree where she waits trembling with anticipation. I walked more slowly, when suddenly I felt someone watching me.
Looking in the direction from which I could feel the stare emanating, I saw a young doe, about 25 feet away from me, stock-still, gazing at me, trying to determine how much of a threat I was. She had large velvet ears trained on the air like satellite dishes, a narrow pretty face, large brown eyes scrutinizing me. Standing on her silent legs, ready, alert, waiting.
Eventually I decided to get my camera out to take a photograph, but she was too shy for that and, turning, she moved off unhurriedly, but out of range before I could get the camera ready. And I thought how important it is to live in the moment, sometimes NOT to record it. Taking photographs means that you are always looking at everything as a possible subject. I had thought how I would show Tim how close the animal had been to me. I had thought how beautiful she would look in the photograph, through the green morning leaves. I thought how amazing it would have been if she had been a wild horse instead of a deer. Horses are definitely more mysteriously beautiful than deer. But deer remind me a bit of horses, so skittish and delicately powerful. Nevertheless, I spoiled it somehow, spoiled my perception of the experience.
Like other technological accessories that we are hooked up to at any given moment of the day, cameras have taken over our lives as well. The new generation is the most photographed generation ever, because cameras are relatively cheap. Also, it is so easy to take a million pictures, you don't have to think about the cost of film or developing, you just upload them to your computer and there you go! So on every computer is a glut of images which are bad, blurred, poor in composition, over-exposed, under-exposed. All taking up space on our hard drives, and taking up space in our heads too. And it takes far too much time to go patiently through them and delete the majority, just keep the beauties.
No longer do we have carefully wrought photograph albums with dates and captions under images to pore over on a rainy Saturday afternoon, Two little girls sharing a towel, remembering beach days feeding the rockpool fish with crushed periwinkles, Cousins at the swimming pool, and the feeling of the chlorinated water in the bright sunny swimming-pool of the cousins, where we swam underwater and tried to understand the garbled words the water made for our mouths and ears. Pop and Granny at Christmas, and I am back at 10 Forest Drive, hot and bothered adult women in the kitchen, children playing french cricket in the back garden, even Pop joining in on occasion, with his shy smile. And great aunts and uncles that we barely knew, just saw in photographs, although one, Auntie Phyllis, was a character alright, changing her name by deed poll to her lover's surname when his wife would not divorce him. They lived happily together for years and years, at a time when that was definitely frowned upon.
One such photograph I have pored over is this one. My parents before they were even married, just two beautiful young people brought together by the Second World War. With their whole 64 years of marriage ahead of them, a lifetime.
My dad was always touching my mother, hugging her, putting his arm around her, even nabbing a quick feel of her breast. In just about every picture that we have of them together, they are close, drawn in to one another. He loved her in a very physical way, right up until she died.
The run was 4.7km, a long uncomfortable struggle. The black dog loping along behind, panting, panting, loud rasping in the muggy air. After three days without a run, the joints refused to oil themselves, ankles, knees, all the many bones of the feet, all seemed to be aching. And still are.
After three km, I found I had slowed down so much that I was just trudging along, barely running. So I picked up the pace for the last couple of rounds. Psychologically I do really well in the last circuit, because I know it is nearly the end, so my body is happy for my mind to push it, because it knows the end is in sight, rather like riding a horse. They're always faster on the home stretch.
As the mother of four, I am convinced that children are born with their own characters. Emma has always been right out there with her emotions. She has always let you know exactly where you stand, what she feels. Jess was entirely different, she observed, she thought about things.
One evening the murderous hunter cat Rumpleteaser brought a rat inside. The girls managed to distract the cat and rescue the rat and then refused to allow Tim to kill it. So, being the good father that he was, (and almost always allowing his girls to wrap him around their little fingers), and even though the rat looked wounded, he captured it in a bucket and released it in the furthest corner of our garden. About half an hour later Tim noticed that the rat was back kind of butting into the wall of our house, obviously brain-damaged and suffering. The girls were horrified to hear us discuss and agree on the fact that the rat needed to be put out of its misery, that he was actually going to kill it!.
Emma raged against us, pleaded with us, even suggesting that we take the rat to the vet to fix it! She cried and shouted and eventually was sent to her room to calm down. And then it was bedtime, and everyone settled down, there were explanations, reasonings, acceptance.
Later, Tim and I went up to bed ourselves, and at the top of the stairs, Jess had carefully placed her statement, their little easel-blackboard, and in careful chalk writing, I love rats.
Tonight, a little drawing of one of the daisy survivors of Evil Plough, who now lives happily in my garden.
Girl and spray.
Boston Tea Party Ride at Canobie Lake Park.
A lovely day with grades 6 and 7 at the roller-coaster park. Roller-coasters probably relieve stress, you can scream your heart out, feel that adrenalin rush and the endorphins that follow. For me, teaching Matthew and Nick to drive is scary enough.
Another auspicious day, another daughter's birthday today! 28 years old, good grief! So again, thoughts of this child all day, thoughts of her birth, and all the years of her growing up into the strong passionate woman she is now.
Jessica - my second daughter. She was not keen to be born, this one, so she was induced, (which makes for a rather painful labour) and when she at last slid out into the world, 4.3 kg fat, looking like a little old man, in that strange squished-face way of all newborns, my heart just expanded with love, an almost physical feeling. I told my mother how astonished I had been, that I could love another person as much as I loved Emma, that we have this amazing capacity. Of course she knew about that already.
The nurses said, "Ag shame, another little girl. Well, maybe you'll get a boy next time." but I was thrilled with my little girl, I had not even contemplated a boy.
When Jess was only six weeks old I had to go back to teaching, at Jongilanga High School, which was about 25km out of East London at Kwelerha, in the middle of the bush. I expressed a little milk at each feed so that there would be enough for a couple of bottles for the baby while I was away at school, as I had to leave her with the sweet nanny Eunice, on whose ample back the little baby spent most of her day while I was not there. As soon as I returned home I would greet the 3 year old Emma with lots of kisses and hugs, give her something nice to do next to me, and then take the usually pretty hungry Jess and sit down with her to feed her. I remember us staring into one another's eyes, euphoric, animalistic, both creatures in need of one another, the bond secure again.
When Jess was about 3 months old I took her to the doctor because I was afraid she was retarded. All she did was drink and sleep and smile. (Emma had required 24 hour service to her desires, from birth, and I had willingly provided everything, with great devotion and love.) The doctor reassured me that this was how babies were supposed to behave and that I was actually very lucky to have such a baby.
We were at the Rhodes pool one hot Grahamstown day when Jess was nearly two and a half years old. She ran along the smooth wet concrete that surrounded the pool, slipped and fell flat on her back, hitting her head hard. I ran to her but she was gone, a limp rag doll lying pale in my arms. I started running frantically, I'm not sure where I was going, and Tim said calmly, "No, put her down," and laid her out on the grass, my dear girl, my baby. He knelt down reverentially and breathed life back into her, breathed the pink back into her skin, breathed the little lungs to work, inspired the dark eyes to open, the limbs alive and clinging to me again.
I remember walking across the dunes to Shelly Beach at Kenton, the four year old Jess and I trailing way behind the others. I looked around to see her setting her feet down erratically over the flat rocks and scattered vegetation, bravely marching along on those skinny legs, peering at the ground. I asked her what she was looking at and she beamed up at me, "Look, the flowers are all smiling, Mom." They were little hardy purple vygies (mesembryanthemums) that I hadn't even noticed.
In time she has grown into a feisty passionate woman, a kind of animal whisperer, who has worked with tigers and lions and now cheetahs, who is brave and strong and true, like the song.
So happy birthday to my other darling dancing girl, who made me a mother for the second time, showed me how much love I had. Thanks for 28 years of love, of drawings and discussions, sunshine and shade, and for pointing out to me how flowers smile!
This collage I made for Jess when she left us last time. We are all hugging her still.
This has been a very happy last week at my school. Today was the Talent Show, organised by the Middle School student council. It is astonishing to watch another side of the students you teach. One grade 6 girl, who doesn't excel much at any academic work, sang Leona Lewis' Bleeding Love like a professional, this deep voice full of tone and emotion, emerging from this young kid, and she, taking over the stage, emitting such a confidence. The audience adored her and she came off to roars and applause, her face beaming her elation.
The audience loved the teachers' show too, and Lady Gaga and the Gaga dancers brought the house down!
I was in the 'bully' teachers' musical number. We were all fairly confident, even those among us with no natural dancing talent, because the best dancer was to dance in front so that we could watch her for our cues! Except that, when we were all taking her lead, she suddenly forgot the moves herself, and it kind of fell apart somewhat, but we all did our best and were complimented by the kids afterwards!
Then it was Field Day. Students were divided into 5 groups and each group did a different event for 45 minutes, then changed over to the next one. They played "old fashion" games, like throwing water balloons in pairs to see who lasted the longest. Soccer was played by two teams. "Capture the Flag", the Obstacle Course, and Close Combat were the other events. It was largely run by the 11th grade kids, who were really good at keeping things in check and establishing rules.
I learned how to play "Capture the Flag" which I have never played before. It is fun to see kids running flat-out, striving to catch someone from the other team, or to rescue their team-mates, or to grab a flag!
Keeping children busy, and happily busy, learning, experiencing, makes for a better world. And a good mix of physical and mental activity. If you have a curious mind and you get to run about every day, I think much of life is better, not so many drugs, not so much depression.
John Malkovich, who gave the commencement speech at our graduation tonight, (his son was graduating) made an interesting comment about drug use. He said, "Sure, man has always wanted oblivion, but never oblivion always. Remember that."
Time suddenly shows me these graduating students I have taught since 6th grade. Then they were just little bright sweet things. Now they are all adults, the guys thick and swarthy, or enormously tall and lanky, all with defined jaws, longer noses. The girls all beautiful, fresh-faced, wearing pearls and high heels (I wonder why that is the status symbol of growing up, being able to wear high heels, which are just about the most stupid shoe ever invented). Life is waiting for them, big LIFE out there, away from our little safe family of a school. We had the biggest graduation class yet, 22!
Another drawing from Six Flags, a kind of pseudo mill.
Scratch and Sniff
Common Milkweed bursting into blossom.
Each stage of the pink bud opening is portrayed in this image, these beautiful scented flower-globes. They are little five-cornered gifts being unwrapped, unfurled.
What a bright start to the morning, and it was a good day today. Except that my husband left for Texas for a week.
There was a little spider eating what looked like a mosquito - Go little spider go!
Public speaking is not my forte. I am fine in front of a class full of my students, but in a large hall of parents, I tremble with anxiety - What am I going to say? How are they going to perceive me? Will I suddenly become inarticulate?
At the annual awards ceremony I have to present the award for excellence in Visual Arts, and one year I practiced my speech too many times, which resulted in a ridiculously nervous woman standing on stage tongue-tied and trembling.
So today I decided not to even think about what I would say. I just enjoyed the whole event. The beautiful children singing. The beautiful childrens' singing (what is it about children singing that is so evocative? I suppose one harks back to one's own childhood). The happiness on the faces of just about everyone, not just those who received awards. The sweetness of all these youngsters, aged 11 - 14, still babies really. And when it came time for me I just went up and spoke, and it was EASY. It just flowed out of me and people even laughed when I wanted them to. Tomorrow night I have to do it all over again at the 12th grade graduation, so this method is definitely worth trying again!
Last year I chaperoned a trip to Six Flags Roller-Coaster Park, which is ridiculous really because I am pathetic when I see roller-coasters and find that I have no desire whatsoever to go on one.
The students scattered excitedly, so I just saw a few fleeting glimpses of them throughout the day, they could all have caught a plane to the Bahamas for all I knew. I sat and drew, which was a pleasant way to spend the day, but I didn't really have to go all the way there (3 hours on the bus) in order to do that. This is one of my images from that day.
I am going to Canobie Lake Park with the grade 6's and 7's on Wednesday, which is a much tamer roller-coaster park, and there is a dragon ride there that I love, for very small children and me!
My very good husband. In my very lovely meadow. On a very beautiful day.
I ran 5.29 km today in 38 minutes. We have had several days of off and on rain, so everything is damp and rather radiant.
It was the monthly beekeepers' meeting this afternoon, and in the summer we have the meetings at the houses (and bee-yards) of members who have volunteered to host the meeting. A year ago we had everyone at our house and it rained as well!
It is an interesting group of people, and generally a gentle group, because I think you have to be fairly kind and caring to be a beekeeper. This afternoon the youngest person was a gorgeous little dark-eyed girl of about five or six, sitting on her chair with her snack in hand, and an ipod's earphones over her ears, probably telling her a story, from her rapt expression! (The very young are plugged into technology from birth.) And the eldest was an interesting old man with bleary eyes and long teeth when he chuckled. He doesn't keep bees anymore because it is "too much work" for him now.
Some members have been keeping bees for more than four decades, which is a great deal of experience. During the discussion on the vast number of swarms we have had this year, one person mentioned that he loves this part of the meeting, because whatever problem he has he will always come to a meeting, ask his question, and get an answer. Someone piped up "At the very least, you'll get ONE answer."
The landscape driving home was soft and indistinct, reminiscent of the old man's face.
My youngest son is heartsore over a girl and has been sad for days now. Which is very unlike him, he has always been an easygoing kid. But I think he gives his whole heart to every project, including a girlfriend. And he has been reading a book called Revolutionary Road, which has had a profound effect on him. It is a rather depressing book about relationships between people in 50's suburbia.
So amazing to watch time metamorphose your dear chubby little baby into this thoughtful young man. He still has that baby's huge eyes though.
I ran 5.92 km today! I thought I was running 5 but I must have run an extra circuit by mistake. The sky grew blacker and blacker so that every time I entered the forest road it was the dark forest, the darker forest, the darkest forest.
Funny how we are such creatures of habit. Like sleeping on a particular side of the bed. For years couples sleep in the same pattern, the man on the left, the woman on the right, or the opposite.
And my babies, the twins, each chose a breast they liked, and wouldn't drink from the other side after a few months. Nick got so fat that I thought his breast was giving creamier milk than the other, so I tried to swap them, to serious refusal from both tiny people! I think Nick just did all his growing very quickly after he was born, because the big round laidback Matthew had been lazing on top of him, crowding him in the womb!
And if you go to a conference, or a classroom, people tend to come in each day and sit in the same spot they sat in previously, it's where we feel safe. And if the facilitator or teacher tries to move people out of that place they become very insecure.
The reason why I did not have a km planned out for such a long time was that when I began running seriously my circuit looped on the road at the point where it curved downhill and everything got very slippery and icy in the snow, so that it was dangerous to go down further. When the snow had gone I just continued turning around and running back up the hill at that spot, because that is what I had done for some months, it had become my habit!
Running is hard but I love it. As I run I am sometimes aware of how the physical frame is put together, all the joints, the mind pushing the body on, the brain and the anatomy striving together to propel this body forward, the industry of the muscles, the endeavour of the will. Sometimes I find myself arching my back to get the maximum length to my lungs, my diaphragm, the air getting pulled into my mouth, down through all the little tubes and bronchioli, my good dependable heart pumping, pumping the blood, keeping the arteries elastic, flowing through the muscles.
My legs automatons of my brain, my elbows flying above my loose hands. Elbows are such strange things, wrinkled and tough. One morning long ago, cuddling in bed with the little boys, Matthew was stroking my arm and telling me his dream, when he suddenly asked, "Mom, are your elbows older than you are?"
Coming out of the wooded road into the meadow for the last circuit, I surprised and was surprised by a deer hurtling away from her perceived danger - my running figure. I thought she had gone off towards the 3rd meadow, but after I had circled the meadow and was re-entering the forest at a fast pace (I always try to sprint the last 200m or so), I was astonished and delighted to find her suddenly to the right, just a short distance from me, running neck and neck down the home stretch for a few meters, until she without warning decided to cut across right in front of me, leaping high like the road signs, her bright white tail the last I saw of her as she disappeared into the undergrowth on the other side of the road.
Another washed clean day after the damp endless rain of yesterday. These are some of the survivors of the Evil Plough.
See the pink coming on the milkweed? Soon it will be a scented globe of pink delights.
The red bug is a male milkweed bug or Oncopeltus fasciatus. They feed on the milkweed but don't seem to harm it.
The daisy opens like the eye of a sleepy baby, lashes slowly uncurling.
And this bumblebee's nest was not destroyed.
Today was the beginning of the Soccer World Cup in South Africa. Yesterday we watched parts of the opening concert online. Danny Jordaan repeated "The Waiting is Over" in a deadpan way, many monotonous times. I'm not sure where he found the cojones to organise this world cup. They were not in evidence last night.
Desmond Tutu, on the other hand, displayed his natural charisma, in a wonderful speech in which he sang, danced, referenced evolution "Africa is the cradle of humanity... We are all Africans Ho! Ho! Oooh Hoo! So we welcome you all home!", compared South Africans to "ugly ugly caterpillars" who are now turning into "beautiful beautiful butterflies", laughed his high-pitched lovely laugh, all the while bearing a strong resemblance to a garden gnome, standing there in the chilly air in his green and yellow outfit, with the pointy green and gold beanie the finishing touch!
I love this man of such integrity. I had the honour of meeting him in the 80's, when I was teaching at Nombulelo secondary school, and shaking his hand (for a long time), feeling myself part of that warm enveloping love that he exudes with his smile. He deserved his Nobel prize, whereas Obama did not.
He has always been outspoken in his criticism of injustice. Nelson Mandela called him the "moral conscience" of South Africa. As head of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission after apartheid ended, he ''played the role of healer, confessor, comedian, politician, proctor and even grammarian" correcting white lawyers pronunciation of black names. He wept several times after hearing graphic details of murders. An admirable man. A small man with an enormous heart. A huge life.
I didn't feel like running today, after my marathon 5km yesterday, so I didn't. I walked a long way with Mollytheblackdog, in the beautiful day, feeling somewhat happy, in spite of everything.
Tonight I have used an old self-portrait I did when Jess was a little smiley baby who had shown me that love has no limits, and my husband and I had decided to get divorced. 1982 - I was young and brave. I hadn't met Tim yet, I hadn't even been back to live in Grahamstown. Amazing, how we have no idea what is in store for us.
The roots draw up all the good things, water and minerals create sugars, food for the new growth, the meristems with their primordials, where wood cells called xylem, elongate and divide, creating new cambium, while the bark cells called phloem take the food to the extremities, where the leaves begin, the green green leaves, wide open to the sunlight and carbon dioxide that are magically converted into more food, sugars and starches. Plants store starch for the long winter sleep. When the tree feels the spring urge, starches begin the perennial waking up process.
It is difficult to live consciously in the world and be happy. As we grow older there seem to be more and more awful things that we hear about and that we then keep in our heads and look at every now and then, even if we don't really want to. How do we balance these images with good ones, and with being able to forget? I find watching this little tree somewhat helpful.
Some things are so huge they are impossible to be rid of. I have this terrible feeling that it is already too late for the earth, this gusher in the Gulf of Mexico is just the beginning of the end of the ocean as we know it. There are smaller gushers which have been found more than 100 miles away from the main BP one, so it seems as though they might have ruptured something which can never be fixed. So much life affected, it is heart-wrenching to try to comprehend. Entire ecosystems can disappear because of one missing link, like plankton. This is the worst oil disaster ever. Everyone is going on about the money, the money that BP must pay out to each fisherman, every hotel owner, any person who has lost income due to this catastrophe. But I don't think enough is being done with regard to the ocean itself. How and if it can be saved.
And people are so disappointingly despicable. There is a theory as to why it has taken so long to find any sort of solution (and what they have done now is not a solution by any means), which is that BP was trying to find the best way to cap the well so that they could collect the most oil. This was their primary motivation, not just to stop it! And, incomprehensibly, the fact that other boats are purposely spilling waste oil and dirty oil-laced bilge water into areas already fouled by the BP spill, hoping not to get caught! Dumping like that is cheaper than having tanks pumped out and cleaned properly according to government regulations when they get to shore. And the reason they know this is that the Coast Guard have a forensics lab in Connecticut which is for the exclusive analysis of oil samples found on beaches. The oil washing up on Florida beaches right now is not from BP's Deepwater Horizon!
When I was 16 the Wafra oil tanker went aground off Cape Agulhas, and I volunteered many hours at the South African Foundation for the Conservation of Coastal Birds (SANCCOB) cleaning African penguins. They were forlorn, covered in oil, refusing to eat, standing in the pens looking so woebegone, their little flightless wings the saddest thing about them. I don't know how many we saved, but the lessons gained from our experience went towards the recovery of oil-covered animals in all subsequent spills
Between 15 and 20 000 barrels of oil went into the sea in that case, but it was a finite amount. As was the case in most of the other spills where tankers ran aground, including the terrible Exxon Valdez disaster in Alaska twenty years ago. That coastline and its ecosystem with orcas, river and sea otters, seals, and numerous birds, has still not recovered, in fact has taken much longer to recover than scientists predicted. In the BP disaster, millions and millions of barrels have already streamed into the Gulf and are still spurting strongly, 52 days later. (The word "spill" sounds like a glass of milk which you accidentally push over, we need a bigger word.)
Six months into my quest, today, a day of cold and drizzle, I worked out a 1km circuit, so all I have to do now is run five of those and I have my 5 km distance, which has eluded me. It took me 45 minutes to run 5.13km, which is very slow really, and for the first three km I coughed and hacked away, probably due to the damp air. Ended with a 200m dash, and clean lungs.
The robins love the soft ploughed field, stalking along, alert, pulling up worms and bugs in their orange-breasted stick-legged kind-of joyful way.
