Day 92

It is extremely interesting and a discussion for another day, how we become who we are.  Most people I know have no idea of the amazing transformation of the humble little American goldfinch from a drab brown nondescript winter bird to a bright canary-yellow beauty who glitters in the spring sunshine. I love this fact about this dear little bird which reminds me so much of the South African Cape Canaries, who came to my feeders in the same way. 

The American goldfinch in spring and summer.

The American goldfinch in winter, with just a tiny little beard showing its golden potential.

South African Cape canary.

My dad always told me how things worked, even when he didn't really know, I think.  He just made up a long story on the spur of the moment.  My mother told me the names of things, flowers, birds, trees, people.  She loved birds, and so I loved them too, because that is what you did. 

It was expected that we would remember all these things because they were interesting, and so we did.  I loved finding out about everything.  Learning is in reality self-education.  It is a curiosity and the desire for knowledge that leads you to find out what you want to know.  It is the knowing that you can question things, that everything is worthy of your curiosity, that we owe it to the world to know the names of our places and the animals and all the green and growing things around us.  That we should understand things as much as we can, that we should be observant, and aware, and enlightened. 

I tried to teach the boys the names of flowers but they were never that interested in flowers and therefore only two stuck in their heads, as Nick's boss, the flower-shop manager, recently found out.  Forsythia, because we laughed about it every spring when it lined the roads, and remembered how Matthew had thought it was such a lovely name, "For Cynthia", no doubt named after someone's girlfriend or wife!  And hyacinths, because I used to buy them one each year to keep watch over in their rooms, and to take note of the little bell-like florets unfurling into the beautiful purple-blue cones of fragrance. 

Recollections of people can be tricky things.  Especially if you don't know the people that well and have had some kind of shocking encounter with them.  If that is the case, that picture will always be the one you recall.  I recently walked in on a teacher sitting on the toilet in the staff-bathroom.  It is just one little room with a toilet and a urinal and a sink.  She had forgotten to lock the door and was utterly horrified when I barged in unknowingly, entirely innocent of any wrongdoing.  The look on her face was instant shock and embarrassment, and I left as fast and as apologetically as I could.  But now whenever I meet her in the passage she sets her eyes to downcast mode and sidles past trying not to be the picture in my head.

In Grahamstown when I was pregnant with the boys I went to ante-natal classes and one of them was specifically meant for couples, so Tim came along with all the other partners, and a man we knew who taught at the university gave a little talk about sexuality and our sexual life during pregnancy and after the baby is born.  Which is, of course, all very helpful.  Except that, as an example, he gave us a glimpse into his sex-life with his wife, which was a very odd personal anecdote, and one that I would rather not have glimpsed, and which, of course, when I saw him in the supermarket the following day, was the only image I could think of, and forever after actually, that was how I saw him.