Day 273

Nick flying.

If running can be thought of as falling forward a little with each step and then catching yourself before you fall, then I fell forward and caught myself for 5.23km this morning, in 41 minutes, which is a rate of 7 mins 50 seconds per km.  Yay!  The elusive 5km.  And the elusive under-eight-minute km.  And it felt fairly easy really, because I set my mind on 5km, and wouldn't let myself stop after 3 circuits or 4 circuits.  And every time I felt my steps slacking off I made sure I spurred on my sky-blue shoes, felt my braid swishing my elbows, and sang the rhythm a little faster in my head.

My sister had to deal with the deaths of my parents all by herself.  My brother and I went out from our respective countries to see them and be with them before they died, but left before the actual end of each life.  It is nearly three years since my dad died, and nearly five since my mother's death, so strange to think that they are not there anymore, in their little cluttered house, my mother with cupboards full of sewing and needlework projects she would never have the time to finish, my father with a garage chock-a-block full of tools, wood, pieces of metal and parts of engines which might perhaps come in handy one day.  They were both squirrels by nature, and as a result of their early lives.

So my sister, the eldest, and therefore the most accountable by birthright, had to be the one who was there at the end, who participated in their final weeks, who was responsible for informing her siblings, who organised the funerals, sorted through all the belongings, decided what to keep and what to give away, and although she did not inherit the cluttered part of their natures, she now has all these boxes taking over a large part of her house, waiting to be sorted into shares if and when my brother and I so wish.  I hold her in high esteem, for all these reasons and more.

She put some of their ashes together and buried them at the Wall of Remembrance outside the little old thatched-roof chapel which was the first Anglican church in Pinelands, before they built the huge ugly brick St Stephen's church just next door.  My parents went to church when they were young and although they slacked off and doubted in the way of many older people, they always had an affinity for their roots, as one does, I suppose.  She kept some of their ashes for my brother and I, and we were going to be together to scatter them for my brother's sixtieth birthday, but my sister couldn't make it because she broke her ankle.

So I have this big brown envelope in which are two little plastic bags containing the ashes of my parents.  They are on one of the shelves of Tim's and my little walk-in closet in our attic bedroom, tucked away at the back.  And every now and then, searching for a top I haven't worn in a while, I come across them, and am suddenly immersed in tides of feelings.  I gaze at them, put my hand in to feel them, my dad blacker, my mum with more browns, which is probably a result of the different heat rates in the crematorium, I would think, it can't be that men and women are different colours, can it?

I had always thought that it would be ash, like you scrape out from our woodstove, soft ash, but it's not, it is gritty, bits and pieces, and my dad's has an inch-long piece of bone in it, the only shard from that giant's body, that great strong person who made me with his body and my mother's, with pleasure, with love, with surprise when they learned that I had taken hold in her uterus, another child, so late, a laat-lammetjie, a late lamb.

And each time I am shaken by grief, by their absence in my life, by that terrible and utter loss.  They are no more.  Their warm and loving selves have been reduced to this little cold bag of grit.  And I miss them with my whole being.

A sort of angel/ballerina/crow-dancer tonight.  (after Degas)

Day 272

Beautiful day, beautiful beach.

The temperature was deliciously warm today, 80F (26C) and the water was not too bad either, so I swam and swam, catching wave after wave, although they were not strong, and only went halfway into shore, so I had to employ all my skills to catch them. The water was clear as the Caribbean, and I laughed at the little silver fish darting before me as I rode a wave. Making my way back out to the big waves, I observed two larger fish leap right out of the water in front of me.  I wondered what they were racing from, and then a dark cormorant surfaced nearby, in the act of swallowing one of their compatriots.

Two men came out after I had been in for a while, with their boards too, but they were both useless, poor lambs, and of course they would never have asked me how it was done, being men, and I couldn't give them pointers, being a woman and knowing that they would think me facetious, or superior, or flirty, or something negative, such is the complexity of relations between the sexes.  One was too scared to come all the way out to where the waves broke, but the other came way out and I caught him watching me carefully.  He never did catch a wave, and when I finally went out he followed me out, just giving up, I took away all his potential luck.

An elderly woman came up the beach past me and went up to her husband sitting in his chair.  I saw her asking him to come into the sea with her, and he protested that he had no swimsuit.  From her gestures I could see that she said he should just go in up to his thighs, and she knelt carefully down and tenderly rolled up the legs of his khaki shorts for him.  Then helped him out of his shirt, and off they went, his figure bent, hers much straighter, but both very old.  At the water, she waded in until her body was fully submerged, except for her head, which never got wet, her hair still perfectly coiffed.  While he waded in until his ankles, then waded back out on to dry sand where he stood and watched her cavorting happily.  Perhaps she had just needed someone to watch her, to share in her delight.  When she was finished, they walked back up to their chairs where they sat, facing one another, an unusual pattern of chairs, her feet up on his chair, chatting happily away.  When I went home they were also packing up and he turned to me on the path with his old bent back, and his soft old cheeks, and said, "Another day in paradise, hm?"
 
I read a wonderfully disgruntled quote today about the meaning of life, in an amazing book called The Elegance of the Hedgehog.
"Indeed, what constitutes life?  Day after day, we put up the brave struggle to play our role in this phantom comedy.  We are good primates, so we spend most of our time maintaining and defending our territory, so that it will protect and gratify us; climbing - or trying not to slide down - the tribe's hierarchical ladder, and fornicating in every manner imaginable - even mere phantasms - as much for the pleasure of it as for the promised offspring.  Thus we use up a considerable amount of our energy in intimidation and seduction, and these two strategies alone ensure the quest for territory, hierarchy and sex that gives life to our conatus.  But none of this touches our consciousness.  We talk about love, about good and evil, philosophy and civilization, and we cling to these respectable icons the way a tick clings to its nice big warm dog."

She goes on to say that it is Art that saves us.  The pursuit of Art in all its forms.  Yes!

I ran 2.8 miles, (4.5km) at 7.33 minutes per km, an improvement!  Although the run was a series of mishaps: a) a frog made a stunning sideways leap away from my right foot as I was about to trample him!  I was glad I didn't kill it, but it gave me an enormous fright, a little cry escaping from my lips! 
b) The next circuit I raised a bump on the top of my head by misjudging the ducking of said head under a fallen tree across my path, which has been there for about two months already!
c) And I miscounted the laps, so that I thought I had run 5km, and when I tried to make it after I had discovered it was only 4, I couldn't actually get to 5, the best I could do was half a km!

Self-portrait on beach with pregnant woman in distance. 

Day 271

Arches.

Another image from the George's Island trip. 

I woke up from such a strange, strange dream this morning, and felt quite odd and out of sorts all day, like I didn't belong.  A 7th grade boy, a little boy, is having problems at school with his work and his socialisation, and I felt great empathy with him, although I could do nothing to comfort him.

Two images for tonight.

The village.

Highland dancer.

Day 270

These are two herring gulls I saw yesterday on George's Island.  I was fascinated to see that each of them had a constant drip of water from the beak.  Seagulls are one of the few land animals that can drink salt water.  They have a special gland above their eyes which basically separates and excretes the salt, and this is then secreted from the nostrils in a fluid, hence the dripping bill. 

Apparently herring gulls were hunted nearly to extinction in the 1800's, but they survived and have become very successful, and are considered pests by many people, the "rats" of the beach.

My mother loved seagulls though, and so she passed on that love to me.  (I also confess to loving pigeons).  Sometimes we would go, as a treat on a wintry Sunday afternoon, to Greenpoint to feed the seagulls all the old bread my mother had saved up during the week, and if we didn't have any old bread my dad would buy a half-loaf with which to feed them.  I could stand next to the car and hold up the bread in my hand, and some of them were bold enough to take it right out from my fingers.  My dad loved to throw bits of bread and watch them swoop and scoop them out of the air.  It was thrilling and we were all three enchanted by these beautiful sleek creatures of the sea and the wind.

When my parents came to visit us in Winthrop where we first lived, on coming to America, I took them to our nearby beach one grey afternoon with two canvas chairs so they could sit down, for they were already very old, and I gave them bread which they threw to the gulls, and this time it was my turn to look after them, to carry the chairs, to help my mother with her walking stick, to watch them, to take a photograph so that I could look once again at these two most beloved old people when I remembered them today.

I ran 4km today, and could have run longer, but for my stupid green socks which were down the backs of my shoes, and the fact that I was utterly soaked through from beating a path through sodden goldenrod, grass slick with raindrops, and a gentle drizzle.  My path was almost dry by the third circuit, as all the water had been absorbed by my sky-blue spongy shoes, my awful green socks, my trousers, and probably my skin itself!

It took me 35 minutes, so still not good, but at least I know I can still run 5km, it is not beyond me.  Maybe Wednesday will be my next 5km!

I am so so tired tonight, so instead of a drawing, here is an interesting photograph of me in one of those old rooms in Fort Warren on George's Island, me and my ghost.

Day 269

Tim at the window.

I went to George's Island with Tim and two other photographic friends from the Camera Club.  I hadn't been to the Harbour Islands in nine years, and suddenly I have been twice in the space of two months!  Fort Warren is a very atmospheric place, with deep patches of chiaroscuro and lovely frames within frames in the vast expanses of brick, stone and wooden halls and rooms which were used to house soldiers, cannons and anything else required in a fort.  The other three had a photographic assignment to pursue, which was the frames within frames.  This is my take on it.  You can see Tim's one here. 


The weather has suddenly cooled down, after two beautiful warm days, positively hot, in fact, and today we had fair weather with wispy swathes of white on blue as we left the harbour, and the sky grew steadily more grey and overcast, the wind ever stronger, so that on the boat on the way back, everyone shuffled into the warm closed-in cabin part of the ferry, only one little girl and I braved the bow of the boat, holding on to the railing while we rode the swells like dolphins. 

It was a grand day, Tim asked me to model and I had to do various things, like run and twirl and sit sombrely on a windowsill, and some of the pictures are lovely, even though, as I pointed out to them, the model is of an advanced age!

This boat created some lovely waves for us.  I love all the black, white and grey horizontal lines.




Shades of Orange - seen while walking up through the city to catch our (Orange-Line) train.

Sometimes you think that you are very busy doing something, like cooking, or checking your email, or writing your blog, like right now, when a little old cat comes strolling purposefully towards you, her body wasted, her once perfectly calico coat now blobbed with matting in places, her eyes big green lights in her bony little face, her back legs threatening collapse at each turn.  And you realise that there is nothing more important at that particular moment, than squatting down and stroking the 'rosary of bone' which is her spine, the soft ears which love to be rubbed, and the chin, under which you gently scratch and scratch, for the simple reward of the eyes closed, ecstatic expression of a very old soul, who will not always be here.

Day 268

The woodpile Tim and I packed today. 

On Thursday, Matt, our friendly woodman, who resembles Mark Wahlberg, delivered our first cord of wood for the winter.  He also sawed up two fallen trees and, just like that, felled two dead trees that he noticed and sawed them up too, a whole extra cord of wood for us!

A good woodpile gives you a great sense of achievement !  There is an art to it, and this is the first year that we didn't have any collapses, so we must be becoming New Englanders!  It is a communal effort, and when the woodpile extended behind the little old woodpile of what remains from last year, it made sense for one person to stand behind the pile and pack, so Tim threw me logs which I then stacked.  I only crushed my thumb once, with a particularly heavy oak piece. 

Afterwards we surveyed our work proudly, and while we were eating a late lunch I felt so happy and grateful that I am still able to do this heavy work, fairly easily, with my big hands for managing large chunks of wood, my good strong legs which had run 2.3 km in 17 minutes prior to the packing, and my limber body for bending and lifting, bending and lifting.

A pastel selfie for tonight, which is what the photographers call it. 

Day 267

Butter and eggs (Linaria vulgaris) Toadflax.

This little plant has flowers which look like snapdragons, but it is unrelated.  It is an exotic from Asia originally, via Europe, and the flower looks a bit like an egg sunny-side up in a pan of butter.  It can apparently be used as a laxative, if you make a kind of steeped potion from it. They often make me smile when I see them because of their common name.

Last night we went to the boys' school for open house for the last time.  It is so strange to think of all these last things this year will hold.  The last time they'll be the stars of the swim team, the last prom, the last year they will be scholars, which is what school students used to be called. 

When I enter a classroom and have to sit at a desk, I have an immediate and irrepressible urge to rebel, to do wicked things.  I think I loathed school from the second day of 1st grade, when they put me into 2nd grade.  By the time I reached grade 10 I was skipping school on a regular basis.  It was perfect because the train tracks ran right past the back entrance to the school, which you reached down a long overgrown path.  Close to the subway, or in the subway itself, you would often come across "Wobbles" a man who frequently exposed himself to us schoolgirls, who, if we were in a group, would roar with laughter, but if we were alone, which we were never meant to be, we would hurry on by, not quite sure about the validity of the theory that men who expose themselves like that are harmless. (The subway was quite literally the tunnel under the railway, through which you reached the other side of the station, not a subway in the American sense of the word as underground trains)

I would ride into the city and sometimes go to a movie at the Monte Carlo, an old movie theatre on the Foreshore in Cape Town.  But there were often dirty old men at those matinees, who would move seats closer and closer until they were sitting right next to you when they would proposition you with unmentionable things, at which you would be obliged to shake off their groping hands and run out into the brisk southeaster which blew everything clean.

Every Thursday morning the Cape Town Symphony Orchestra practised in the City Hall, and I was often in that sparse audience of regulars, a free concert, when I could watch my idol, the Swiss conductor Peter Perret, who was the principal guest conductor for two years.  I remember feeling sorry for him because he had to leave his Vietnamese wife at home, as under our Immorality Law, their union was immoral and unlawful.  

Sometimes I would just walk up Adderley Street to the Gardens, and go and watch the birds in the huge aviaries for a while, feed the squirrels, and then just sit and read, taking up a park bench like a bergie or a bag-lady for a few hours.

I was nearly expelled a number of times, but my poor parents managed to talk the principal down each time, and tried to make me promise to be good, and I really did want to, I just found myself like the proverbial square peg in a round hole, or whatever it is, school being the only place in the whole world where I did not want to be.

I have taken care not to tell my children these stories, so that they would not repeat my behaviour, but my last children are in their last year and go to a lovely school, and they are good boys like their dad.

And then I became a teacher!  Go figure.

I doodled on my demonstration piece for the Paul Klee inspired grade 7 project. 

Day 266

Diaphanous milkweed seeds tumbling out of their pod.

Periodically in our family, we write messages for one another on the large mirror in the bathroom, using soap as the writing tool. 

The other day I wrote HANG UP YOUR TOWELS!  Because, even though, over the years, I have managed to teach my sons several good life lessons, hanging up the towel after a shower is not one of them.

The next evening, lying in the bath, I noticed that the message now read HANG UP YOUR BOWELS!, courtesy of Matthew (probably).

I erased the B and replaced it with a big fat T, and went off to bed laughing.

The next development was that the big T was erased, and a phrase added below, so that it now read: HANG UP YOUR OWELS  They're living beings

My response: HANG UP YOUR VOWELS!   There is only one in OWLS!

This morning "VOWELS! There is only one in" had been erased, so that it now stated: HANG UP YOUR                  OWLS!

So I drew an image of an owl, with a little speech bubble enclosing, once more, HANG UP YOUR TOWELS!  And below, leading up to the word OWLS, "Listen to the".

And I hid the soap.

Tonight there is my drawing of an owl, next to it, a blank space, and below it, just: Listen to the OWLS.

I ran 2.09 miles (3.36km) in 29 minutes.  Which is 8.37 minutes per km, probably similar to some people's walking speed!  Anyway, I try to make sure, as I run over the increasingly leaf-strewn forest floor, that I bounce along, that I'm not just trudging, but that my heels go up in the air each time, and when I feel my braid swishing each elbow, I know I am running correctly. 

Today I wondered how I ever ran 5km though!  3.5km is hard enough!  But Molly and I trundle through the tall-grassed meadow, still rife with white butterflies, and yesterday I saw a monarch, which I imagined might have been the metamorphosis of my little coughing caterpillar. My last hummingbird was on Sunday, she looked quite confused, rifling through the Rose of Sharon flowers and then coming up to the window feeder which contains only sunflower seeds for all the small titmouses, chickadees, nuthatches, and today, a downy woodpecker!

Tonight, a collage I made as a card for my friend.

Day 265 (only 100 more days to go - woo hoo!)

Have you ever loved a crazy lunatic of a black dog?
Have you ever grown an erythrena from a lucky bean seed until it is 10 ft tall?
Have you ever killed a flock of starlings by accident by putting out warm water for them to bathe in, in the middle of winter, so that when they flew off in -20C temperatures, the water on their wings probably froze causing them to plummet to the ground?
Have you ever laughed yourself silly at a funeral?
Have you ever grown a baby in your own body three times, once two babies at the same time?
Have you ever cast the spell of art, showing children how to express themselves with paint and coloured pencils and graphite and clay and wire and papier-maché and all kind of other things?
Have you ever lost your mind, your self, your knowledge of whose breath you are breathing, during sex?
Have you ever spoken in tongues, but not in church?
Have you ever taught your language, so easy in your own head, to children with another language in their heads?
Have you ever cried for so many days that your eyes disappeared?
Have you ever discovered evidence of fireworks in 'your' meadow and hated the perpetrators with all your heart?
Have you ever been accepted into a clan and given another name, from people of another race?
Have you ever been terrified for your life while people threw rocks at you?
Have you ever lived the rollercoaster of the last 55 years on earth?
Have you ever found yourself enchanted, almost every school morning for ten tears, by 1200 students singing Bawo wethu osezulwini (The Lord's Prayer in isiXhosa), with that inimitable South African sun shining on all those heads containing such beautiful music?
Have you ever said something terrible in public and never been able to take it back, to rewind it into your mouth and your memory again?
Have you ever created something no one else has ever created, and been so very proud of it, and then given it happily away?
Have you ever smelt fear?
Have you ever loved someone so much that in that moment you feel as though you will burst into noisy blossom?
Have you ever been struck dumb and wet-cheeked by the beautiful radiance of crimson, golden, carmine-flushed, claret-blushed, vermilion glowing incandescence of autumn trees in New England?
Have you ever sat up with a sick child and earnestly made an agreement with "god or whatever means the good" to willingly die in its place?
Have you ever been capable of cheerfully ringing the neck of someone who hurt your children?
Have you ever embarrassed your children by metaphorically doing just that?
Have you ever taken off on bright new wings after getting divorced?
Have your ever taken a gigantic leap and left your own beloved country for another strange and peculiar one? 
Have you ever felt the delicate thrill of a nuthatch's feet on your hand?
Have you ever stripped your moer (lost your temper utterly) in a public place, like an airport, or an RMV, and been ushered into a little room, offered tea and pleaded with to calm down?
Have you ever made a nest on the couch, settled yourself into it, and read a book all day, from cover to cover, melting into the story, and been surprised and bewildered at the mundane life you were returned to after the final page?
Have you ever fallen in love with a meadow?
Have you ever nearly died from eating a poisonous squash you stole from someone else's field?

Have you ever, on this, the last day of summer, gone swimming in the silvery light of the nearly full  moon in the cold waters of the North Atlantic Ocean, floated on your back like a mermaid and forgotten which was the sky and which was the ocean?
Have you ever kept a new year's resolution for 265 days?

Day 264

Her messy desk this morning.

Even though she only had to be at school by 11am today, it was still a mad rush and suddenly the time was 10.15 and she hadn't left yet! 

The bed had been too comfy, sleep too inviting.  Then her morning tea, sweetened with honey and cooled down with milk, had been so delicious that she had had to sit and savour it.  Outside the sun had beckoned, the birds had needed feeding, the black dog had made a request for her to throw a yellow ball in the meadow, the piggie had required dandelion leaves, her favourite food at the moment, which are becoming scarce since her husband mowed down her constant supply in the overgrown lawn. 

The ancient cat had miaowed for a good old neck and ear-scratch, and after that for her vitamin-enriched treats, which she takes so carefully from the woman's fingers, one at a time, so sweetly.  All the indoor plants had suddenly decided that now was the time when they needed watering, they absolutely could not wait until the evening.  The washing in the drier had mumbled something which sounded like "...folding" although that had been something she could easily ignore, not being a living being, and therefore not as needy.

She made a colour-wheel for her grade 7 classes, who are doing beautiful graduated abstract watercolour paintings inspired by Paul Klee, and then tonight she drew a man and a woman arched around the wheel, holding one another by the feet, like elephants with their tails, spinning around the colourful world.
 

Day 263

Delightful little girl on the shuttle bus in front of me last Saturday.

She was so dear, but I was not impressed with her father, who bit her pigtails and pulled them with his teeth until she cried out, which he repeated several times while we were waiting in the queue for the bus.   He had a pinched face and a scrawny body, and I took an instant dislike to him.  His other daughter was in the arms of her grandfather, his wife's father, and she looked so sad and solemn that her expression led me to think badly of her father.  Perhaps this little thing has enough spirit to survive this man.  I really hope I am wrong about him.

I heard an horrific report on the radio today about sex trafficking in America, and about the big campaign to shut down the adult services department on craigslist.org, which has actually achieved that demand, it has been shut down. Children as young as 11 and 12 (and many others of course) were being bought and sold each day on this site (and I suppose other sites now too).

Apparently the internet has changed the way prostitution works, so that now it is not just women walking the streets, but a client can order someone to be brought to him, just as you would order a book or an item of clothing from an online store.  Which makes it much harder to police, even though it seems as though it has never really been policed properly, mostly a blind eye is turned, on this, the "oldest profession in the world".

A while back Tim and I watched a shattering British movie called London to Brighton, about just such a situation, where an older prostitute (about 24) is ordered by her pimp to take a young runaway girl to an old man and how what ensues thereafter leads to them running for their lives, jumping on a train to Brighton.  Absolutely brilliant and mindbogglingly shocking.

We can thank our lucky stars to have had good parents, to have lived the lives we have lived, because that is all it is, luck.  To be born above or below the railway tracks, is it karma, or just fate?

But even though all these terrible and terrifying things are happening, we still have to get up each morning, we have to live our everyday lives with some measure of happiness, we have to keep the light above and the dark below, ignoring neither.

So here is my symbol for all those girls and women,  finding the door unbolted, the pimps horribly dead, swimming away from the cruelty, away from the suffering, coasting through the blue blue water...
Light and dark, up and down, orange and blue, who are you? 

I ran 2.12 miles (3.41km) in 28 minutes today, hard going, last km easier. (8.12 minutes per km, which is lousy!)




 

Day 262

Three sisters.

I noticed these three spectators while watching the amazing Scottish band Albannach perform in the Piper's Pub yesterday, which was basically an open-sided tent.  (This link does not do their presence justice, but does give an idea of the sensual enchantment of their music.)  We made a mistake in where they were playing so we arrived too late to stand close to the "stage" area and when I found myself being crowded in, the beginnings of being squashed feelings came over me and I had to get out, so I made my way around to the back, where hardly anyone was standing, and I found that I had a good view of the band, albeit from behind! 

I think the photograph captures the characters of these three very well, or so I imagine.  The middle child, on the left, is practical and stubborn, not really moved by the music, just there because she has to be.  The eldest, in the middle with the turquoise top, is the responsible one, and thinks she is grownup compared to the others.  She kind of shepherded them into this area behind the band, and then copied what the other adults were doing, and whistled with the best of them at the end of every number!  The youngest one on the right is the dreamer, look at how expressively she is dancing, she's just lost in the rhythm of it, spellbound, so sweet, reminded me of my Jessie-Jess, and my Ems, when they were little, and always dancing at these kinds of events, oblivious to everything but the music.

The hand on the left belongs to this gorgeous rangy woman, like the littlest girl all grown up in a few years' time.  She was also caught up in the sensual sexual emphatic cadence of this big drumming piping movement of sound.

I haven't run for a while now, but will run tomorrow morning again.  Late this afternoon I went to the beach thinking that if I didn't manage to swim I would run.  Although the water was cold (63F, 17C) I couldn't resist the waves, a gift from Hurricane Igor.  I swam and boarded for about 45 minutes, crashing my body through huge waves, tumbled by a few, catching many, some so strong that the surge almost washed me off my board, forced out at last by the thought that if I stayed in any longer my feet probably wouldn't follow my brain's orders to walk me out on to the beach, they were that numb!

When I walked in the door it was already evening and Tim looked up from his book and asked, fairly placidly, "Where on earth have you been?  I was wondering where you were because it's nearly dark and it's cold."  And I was suddenly so happy to think how lucky I am, that I could do this, going off on my own to swim in the crazy waves, that I am a free woman, compared to the tyranny under which so many women in the world live.  I didn't have a husband who said I should stay at home to make dinner, or to clean the house, or to wash his back, or even because it was dangerous.  He worried a little about me when he realised how long I had been gone, but that was all.

Early on in America, I remember asking a new acquaintance if she wanted to come with me on a cold winter's Sunday afternoon to Borders Bookstore, one of my favourite places, where there are thousands of wonderful books, and you can sit in easy chairs and read for as long as you like, or drink delicious hot chocolate and chat in the warmth of their little coffee shop.  She was all excited and said she would love to come, but a few minutes later she phoned me to say that she was sorry, she couldn't after all, her husband wouldn't let her.  I was puzzled, "Your husband won't let you?  Just tell him you're coming with me for a couple of hours."   She replied that no, she couldn't come, and that was that.  I was utterly shocked.

The silvery sea and the darkening sky.

Day 261

What they really wear under their kilts.

Tim and I went to the 35th annual Highland Games in New Hampshire, the gathering of the clans, of which there were about 60!  Who knew?  There were literally thousands of men dressed in kilts, with sgian dubhs (daggers) tucked into the top of their socks, highly decorative sporrans and the like.

My mother would have loved it all!  We have Scottish blood and hers ran strong, stirring a love of bagpipe music, highland dancing and of the lochs and misty mountains of Scotland itself. 

I think many of us must share this blood, because so many people I know are touched by bagpipe music, brought to tears by its mournful beauty. (It doesn't take much to bring me to tears, as my children will all attest to).

Watching all these people so splendidly wearing their tartan, bearing their flags, shouting their war-cries as each clan-name was announced, I thought about how human beings have a great need to belong to a group, a clan, a family, something to love, to fight for, to be proud of, to make them proud of you.  (The announcer went through the clans alphabetically, and I had to stifle laughter when the public address system blared forth, "MacNipple!" to loud applause and battle-cries.  I think it must have been McNichol, but I had funny pictures in my head.)

I have adopted Massachusetts as my home and feel pride when I hear that we have the highest standard of education in the whole country, when I take visitors into Boston on the harbour water taxi, seeing that skyline that is now part of my idea of home, driving home to my little town which I love.  But it is nothing like my deep gut knowledge of my true country, the country of my heart, my roots, my Table Mountain, my Indian Ocean, my Great Karroo, my dry summer earth, my rainy winter streets.

And how easy it was long ago for people to feel this great bond with a locality, because they were born there, lived their lives there, and died in the same place.  Whereas someone like me (and of course I am not alone, this is a common occurrence, especially nowadays) is torn into several pieces, being a South African of mainly British, Swedish and Scottish descent, now living in America.  So when Maureen MacMullen, a Scottish singer, sang the national anthems of the three main countries represented at the games, God Bless our gracious Queen, "because Scotland is still part of the United Kingdom", Oh Canada, for all the Canadians taking part, and of course The Star-Spangled Banner, I felt some kind of affinity with at least two of those anthems.  And I missed of my own national anthem, Nkosi Sikelel 'iAfrika, wrought from four languages, a composite of ideas, so much pain and injustice and long years before it became the official anthem. And so much a part of my personal growth, when I was a teacher at Nombulelo, and learned so much myself.

There was a Mass Highland Fling, which I could see only vaguely, as the dancers were behind some gathered clans, but the sound of that music brought back the familiarity of those steps and gestures, and my limbs wished to join them.  I actually danced at the Highland Games in Scotland and won a silver medal when I was eight years old.  And when the Canadian Mounties Pipe Band struck up Scotland the Brave, I had to put on my sunglasses while tears poured down my cheeks.

The whole day my mother was with me, her warm arm around me as the sun on my back, her strong smiling voice singing out the words for my ears alone,  "Land of my high endeavour, Land of the shining river, Land of my heart forever, Scotland the Brave!"

Day 260

Mist on the fields this evening.

Doing the accounts this morning, opening all the envelopes with the beautiful little wooden letter-opener that my dad made me, I was enfolded again in that love, that great grand love he had for his children. 

My father had such energy for life, for beauty.  In that head of his was confusion and bewilderment about certain things, but always a deep ethical knowledge of right and wrong.  When I was a teenager I read an article about a hand-loom used by the Navajo tribe, and asked if he could make me one.  He designed one just from a little picture in a magazine, built it over a weekend and presented me with the finished product.  He helped me learn how to use it and I made a few runners, and even took it to university with me, although I can't remember using it there. He was always willing to spend time with me, to make something, to fix something that was broken, even though he worked so hard. 

When my mother died he was like a planet without a sun, and slowly foundered out of his orbit into confusion and dementia.  But in the early days he busied himself with things that he could still keep his mind on, and one of them was a little box he made for me with the help of his dear friend, my cousin Carol's husband Porti, who is a wood-carver, a maker of beautiful things.  He spent ages in his workshop with him, and eventually sent me this exquisite little lidded box.

It is strange to be at the age where the boys are quite grown up, and are off on their own with their friends, have little desire to spend time with us, these big independent sons who were such dear little tow-headed boys.  Sad to think that we have had our last camping trips with them as boys, gone to our last parties where they were the heroes of the younger set and our hearts swelled with pride at their good behaviour, their sweetness with the little ones.  We are no longer the ones who know the answers to all the questions, we have become "the old toppies", the ones with out-dated ideas, we are not cool anymore.  I know this is the way life works, how it is supposed to be, but tonight is filled with heartache at these thoughts. 

Well, I still teach adolescents, and had such a lovely afternoon class today, with good discussions, sweet students, and creative work inspired by the wonderful magical Marc Chagall.

Maybe this is inspired by him too. 
Waterlilies.

Day 259

My gorgeous daughters a few years ago.

Scenes from my morning:

Desperate attempt to sleep in after going to bed at 1.33pm.

6/05am - Alarm goes off, Tim gets up to wake boys, forgets to turn off alarm.

Set alarm for 8.30am.

The dog has a seizure on my bed.

Clomp downstairs to take dog out, dog and I run back up, jump back into bed, invite sleep into my closed eyes. Maintain foetal position trying to regain warmth of bed from a few minutes' before.

Tim, from bottom of stairs: "I think you'll have to take me to work Anne, because I have to take the car in to the garage and I can't find a ride..  I have to be there by 8.30 for a meeting..."

Clomp downstairs and pull on clothing, there are about 4 flies in the bathroom and I have no idea where they are coming from.  Kill two but two evade me.  Swear at flies and the world in general and drive off to pick up Tim at garage.  Offer Tim to be driver of car, but he doesn't take it up.  Drive car along backroads to Tim's work, Tim telling me the contents of a reputable magazine article surrounding the not-so-pious Taliban and things that they get up to.  Wonderful topic of conversation.

But the day did get better and reached a zenith in the middle.  My oldest American friend Mary and I went to beautiful Rockport, had lovely lunch, amazing conversation, wonderful shopping afterwards, all for my birthday treat!  She bought me a top and a long cardigan which are possibly two of the most beautiful pieces of clothing I have ever owned.   She said Joan (my mother) would have approved.

I had just recently met Mary when my mother and father came to visit that very first year we lived in Winthrop.  They were already in their 80's, and made their brave way across all those oceans to visit us in our strange and difficult first year in another country.  I had decided to invite Mary to tea, and my mother took her aside when I was out of the room, asked her what she thought of "Our Anne" and told her she hoped we would be friends.  Practically ordered her to be!

It was the luckiest thing, us meeting them, as they are like extended family now, Mary having even stood in as the boys' grandmother on several "Grandparents Days" at their elementary schools, when she would come and examine all their work on exhibit, then treat them to lunch, just like a grandmother would have done!  She and Jim also always spoiled the boys with all the "forbidden fruits", ice-cream, soda, KoolWhip, (synthetic cream which is utterly disgusting but which little boys seem to love) and other amazing treats.  They gave the boys a GPS system for their car for their 18th birthday, before we had even bought the car!  So that they would never get lost, her dear boys!

My classy friend Mary.

Later, the day plummeted downhill again.  I had to go to school for a Back to School Night, where the parents come and sit in their childrens' desks, and the teachers rush around to each classroom where they have 10 minutes in which to tell about their subject.  Only they put Art, Theatre and Music together so that we three teachers each have about 3 minutes to give out our handouts, then say a little spiel.

The best times are in the corridors outside with all the other waiting teachers, telling stories, gossiping, laughing at the fact that we all have to drive all the way home, go to bed, then get up tomorrow morning and drive all the way back in time to teach!

Day 258

Rabid Wolf spider dancing with her eggs.

Apparently this little spider is related to the poisonous European Tarantula and so its bite was greatly feared, although it is harmless to people.  According to legend, the only way to save someone bitten by a European Tarantula was to dance the tarantella!  

I didn't run today but rode my bicycle 6.6 miles to take my car to an auto clinic for a service, and then to fetch it again.  The only hill I couldn't climb while still on the bike was our driveway's terribly steep mountain!  Riding is easier than running because of the downhills where you can coast.

I have somewhat lost my nerve with cycling though.  I found it incredibly stressful riding on the road, with just a narrow strip for cyclists, and when a school bus, while passing me, suddenly emitted a loud noise while changing gears, I nearly teetered right off into the gravelly roadside.

Going back to fetch the car this afternoon I rode mainly along the pavement (which is called the sidewalk here, while the pavement is the road) but it is somewhat curtailing as it is full of little dips and holes and uneven patches in general, so my bum was pretty tender by the time I actually got to my destination.  I thought I was going at a riproaring speed, but an elderly couple riding bravely and seemingly unfazed by traffic rushing by, went by me in the opposite direction and then about 10 minutes later came up behind me and sauntered past, completing a 20 mile loop, most probably.

The thing with speed is that when you are older you know what can happen if you fall off.  In graphic detail. 

When I was 35 my dress got caught up in the back wheel spokes while I was hurtling down Cross Street to fetch something from a friend, in the fading light of a beautiful summer's day, resulting in me flying through the aforementioned fading light and crashing to the ground on my left arm, snapping the radius.  Extricating myself from the mangled bike which had landed on top of me somehow, and holding my rapidly swelling broken wing close to my body, I banged on the nearest door with the knuckles of my good arm, until an alarmed man answered and phoned Tim who raced down to fetch me.  At home he sat me down, took off my watch, had to carefully cut off my ring and bracelets, and instructed Stephen to give me honey while he phoned the doctor who told us to meet him at the hospital.  (Emma and Jess had been promised ice-cream, and Emma said, in a very disgruntled voice, "So does this mean we're not getting ice-cream anymore?")

So there is still a metal plate holding the two pieces together, with big bolts that you can feel through the skin, and my arm is a bit crooked, but works very well, apart from the fact that I can't do a handstand on the beach anymore, a feat I only accomplished a few years prior to the fall, so it was a very short-lived accomplishment.

Anyway, this fact prevents me from flying down hills as I was wont to do when I was much younger, which is quite sad.  I hang on the brakes now, and hope against hope that I will remain on the bike the entire way down the hill. 

My dad never really retired, and once when he had been called in for a consultation on a refridgeration job at his old company in Paarden Eiland, he was offered a ride on a big motorbike one of the young engineers had recently bought.  My dad, who must have been in his mid-seventies at the time, was thrilled, as he had ridden a motorbike in his youth, and so he hopped on and off he went.  It was fine until he got on to the freeway, and then, he told me, he lost his nerve, and couldn't even go faster than 70km an hour, and returned to the factory very cautiously, where he handed back the bike with a heavy heart.  He couldn't stop imagining himself falling off, and the damage it would cause his body, and his life.

An image of my hand on the steering wheel of my car.  When you first learn to drive, like the boys have just learned, the feeling you have is incomparable, it is independence, adulthood, the open road, speed, freedom!  And you retain a little of that forever after, especially when you find yourself driving alone with your thoughts, with those old dreams.

Day 257

Silver and gold.

She ran 2 km quite fast before school, although she can't remember the time now.  The sky was sunny with some pretty clouds and the meadow was warm and inviting.

But she had to go to school, where the children made beautiful drawings and paintings, and some were noisy and some were quiet and some were quite lovely and others were difficult, as always.

In the bedroom

The curve of the blue-green wave

He finds in her eyes,

She observes in his body

The contours of the land.

Light finds crows’ feet

Have tracked across their faces

And gravity expresses an interest

In their skin.

The shadows of time

Make haste across the ceiling.

But their  bodies still sing

And thrill to one another.

Outside, swallows swirl

All around the high cables

They move as one, all a-glitter

Deciding  the day of departure.

Inside, now they pull the covers up

Familiar, their bodies settle together

Their  limbs entwined in sleep

Dreaming of the deep snow coming

Day 256

Eastern Blue (Perhaps they are called Eastern Blues because of their blue blue eyes.  If you click on this to make it large it seems to be staring up at the viewer, upside down.)

The loud ringing of the phone caused me to leap out of bed feeling rather confused at 10:10am this morning.  I had drifted back to sleep after barely registering the kiss goodbye, vaguely aware of the house settling into quiet after the morning rush before school and work.

And what amazing dreams, vivid stories peopled by those I knew and strangers I didn't know.  Incredible locations, amazing events, with high energy and excitement so that when I woke up I felt charged and happy and flying!  And so guilty for having slept in like that.  I felt as though I had been caught by my mother doing something wicked!

At the other end of the telephone was the school nurse telling me that Nick was sick and needed to come home.  I had to fetch him.  So I tried to pull myself into the real world, finding clothes, shoes, maybe if I put some earrings in I wouldn't look quite so asleep still!  The dog needed to go out, there was no petrol in the car, but eventually I got there and retrieved my congested son, brought him home and nursed him with nice things on a tray, cold drinks for his temperature, grapes and vitamin C, movies to watch (well, he found those himself) and then I took the black dog for her walk, thinking I would run later, but that of course didn't happen!

So today some images from that walk, in the cooling Eastern Seaboard temperatures of autumn, with a heavy sky above which gave way to rain eventually this evening. 

This little blue-eyed lass has only one antenna.  All the butterflies seemed lethargic today, perhaps their lives are coming to an end, or the weather got them down too.

The evil-berried plant.  These plants just look evil, don't they?  They belong in a fairy story, with an evil prince and a wicked queen, a nasty wizard and a feisty heroine who rescues herself for a change!


I have no idea what this plant is and this is the only place I have ever seen it, so perhaps it is magical.

Queen Anne's Lace and Molly.  I like the contrast of the black and the white and how the tail repeats the line of the stalk.

Symbiosis.
Milkweed with its pods all ready for autumn, and Bittersweet having taken up residence on the milkweed plant. 

Monarch caterpillar.
This was the sweetest little caterpillar that I found on a very runty Milkweed specimen indeed.  They have matching heads and tails, but the end with the longer antennae is the head of the creature.

I decided to help it along and put it on a better, larger, more juicy-leaved plant, so I started to break the stem of the leaf it was on as I didn't want to touch the caterpillar itself in case I hurt it with the chemicals in my skin.  As soon as I put my hand over it to do this, it curled up and played dead. 

I duly picked the leaf with the dead-looking caterpillar and settled it on top of a new leaf on the taller plant.

And I waited for it to come to life again.

And I waited.

I went to throw the ball for Molly for a bit, then came back and yay!  It was alive!  I hadn't killed it.

And then I had a strange interaction with this little organism.  I happened to cough while I was watching it, and it reared its head suddenly  while I was coughing!  It was as though the sound had frightened it!

So I coughed again, and it reared up again.  I thought that it must have ears, but on doing some research later, it seems they don't.  So it must have sensed the noise with its antennae.

I stood there coughing and laughing for about 5 minutes at this beautiful thing, which will hopefully still eat enough, pupate, metamorphose into a Monarch butterfly and then fly 2000 miles to Mexico.