Seizième

Rambled through the misty meadows with my ghost-dog Molly, about 2km.  It was so quiet in parts, as though the fog had dimmed sound as well as sight.  But my robins found me along the way, flashing their bright feathers at me, flitting quietly through the branches, moving about in their element.

It is the birthday of my mother, who would have been 93 today.  January is filled with birthdays and anniversaries.

When people are old, it is hard to imagine them as plump little babies, with that beautiful soft skin, that tender little back of the neck, and clear-eyed smiles.  But of course we all started this way, held up and kissed by our parents, fussed over, bathed and fed and marvelled at, worried about, loved.

Granny Gracie with my mother Joan

Pop, my grandpa, with my mother, whom he called "Peg o' my heart"

My mother was born in South Africa, a third-generation South African.  My great-great-grandfather John Webster was a baker who supplied the Karroo Zuurberg Pass roadbuilders (mostly convicts) with bread for many years and later had an inn nearby called Ann's Villa.  His wife Ann died at the age of 46 after bearing 14 children!  I am very glad that I live in an era with readily available contraception.

We went to Ann's Villa on an outing one day in 2000, as I wanted to see this part of the country where my ancestors had lived before leaving South Africa.   We spent a wonderful morning with the elephants at Addo, Tim taking many photographs,  and then travelled up the old Zuurberg pass, which apparently has a magnificent view if it is not raining like crazy as it was that day.  We had to negotiate hectic hairpin bends and avoid steep drop-offs through thick mist at times.

The little boys were so tired that they had fallen asleep by the time we eventually got there, but I rushed about with a huge and excited sense of my own history (and a sense of relief that we had successfully completed the Pass), looking at the family names on the gravestones, going into the villa and meeting some distant relatives who were renovating it, and then Tim took my picture standing proudly under the sign, "Ann's Villa".

When we arrived home Tim discovered that there was no film in his camera.

Anyway, my mum grew up in Sea Point in Cape Town, in a house on Trafalgar Square.  Such a different place from the crazy crowded city creeping steadily up the mountain-slopes as it is now.  My mother would play bicycle hockey on High Level Road on the way to school.  The little family would  just walk a couple of blocks behind the house, up to the mountain path where they would often go for picnics and days rambling together.

My auntie Nora, Pop and my mother.

Joan on the left was 14, Gracie 37 and Nora 12.

My mum was lovely.  She lived a good long life but I wish she could have died quickly like Tim's mother.  Her death was long and drawn-out and painful and I wasn't there for most of it so my sister had to deal with it all which was so difficult to bear alone and I am still sorrowful about that.   I have yet to scatter the ashes of my mother and father, kindly brought to me in a brown paper envelope by my sister a few years ago.  They are both there next to my bed, a handful of little pieces of grit and ash, with small shards of bone.  They are different colours too, just as they were in life. 

 I still wish I could tell my mother everything important, how the icicles hang shining from the gutter, how my son tells stories like his grandpa, how Matthew is going to Senegal, what it feels like to have granddaughters.  I want to play her Chopin's Nocturne in C sharp minor using Skype, I want to drink tea and eat raisin bread with her, I want to bask in the radiance of her smile.  I want to commiserate with her as we talk about awful things, rejoice with her in all the things we hold dear, and to understand how life is such a rushing torrent.