Day 200 (165 to go! Woohoo!)

Harvest.

Blackberries picked near the bee-yard.  There are SO many - delicious!  They remind me of mulberries, which I long for almost as much as I miss guavas.  I recently discovered a huge mulberry tree near the sports grounds of the school next to ours, although it is a slightly different species from the one found in South Africa.

Every year when our enormous mulberry tree came into fruit my mother threatened to cut it down (well, have it cut down, she couldn't even change a light-bulb) because of the wicked starlings, who delighted in excreting in purple abundance over her clean white sheets drying on the washing line.  My dad always managed to placate her though, even doing some of the re-washing himself a couple of times!  We had a washing machine which washed everything in a tub, then you had to run the wringer on top of the machine, and carefully feed everything through (keeping your fingers and hair free!) to take out as much water as possible before you pegged everything on the line in the bright summer sunshine to dry.  And later you went to get it all in, carefully folding each item with your mother, the lovely aroma of sunlight remaining on the cotton sheets you slid into at night in your lovely cool bed.

In 16 Cross Street, our beloved Grahamstown home for 15 years, we had a beautiful loquat tree, in the slender space between the outside flat and the house, which also housed our vegetable garden.  It was a prolific happy tree, and when in fruit, was visited by wonderful fruit-bats who gorged on the sweet loquats.  There were always plenty of loquats for our family and for theirs.  Their swooping bodies would swarm the tree at dusk, their little mouse-faces, their beautiful skeletons almost observable in those leathery wings.

They shared a love of large white areas with the starlings of my childhood, so our north-facing wall was always splattered with dark Jackson Pollock splashes.  The woman next door became irate because they abused her pristine walls as well.  She tried really hard to force me to cut down that tree.  But as I pointed out to  her, it was only for a short time of the year, and the rain washed everything clean fairly frequently, so I refused, preferring the enchanting bat-life to an emptiness in the garden and clean walls.

This memory reminded me of an old drawing I did of our little doomed baby fruitbat fast asleep on my hand.  The dear little exotic creature with whom we tried so hard, Batman, who would hang on the bedroom curtain while we were away and when we entered the room he would clamber across to reach us, so happy, little squeaks of joy.  Who would hang like this, anywhere on us, and fall fast asleep, after exhausting himself practicing his flying, hanging upside down from a finger, those strange webby wings flapping away, pure instinct, with no mother to teach him.  Jess would sit with him for hours on the swing, pushing off idly with her foot every now and then, while feeding him or examining him intently.

He stole our hearts (well, not Tim's) and we all wept at his loss.  When you feed and care for a creature you can't help but love it.  I still think of that time as an amazing experience from which the girls and I derived so much, even though he made Tim terribly ill, and for whose recovery I am eternally grateful.

I ran 3.12 km this evening, with the late sun pointing out the glowing beauty of certain trees for my attention.  I felt so good, hot and sweating, but easy in my body, my limbs working in synchrony, ready to run on and on through the fields, toward the dark trees, past hidden loud deer hurtling away in the undergrowth, past yellow flowers glowing in the last flare of the sun, down the path made by the once babbling brook, up through the lilting sunset songs of unknown birds, but my feet took me home, where I wanted, after all, to be.