I had quite an idyllic childhood, besides all the asthmatic episodes. (It is still incomprehensible to me that while I had such an comfortable childhood, there were children just a few kilometers away from my house where everything was very far from idyllic, and that I grew up with no idea whatsoever about them. Apartheid in South Africa was a very well-organised oppressive regime, and if you were a little kid going to an all-white school, living in an all-white suburb, reading highly censored text books and library books, and with no TV {the govt only allowed television to enter the country in 1976, less than 50 years ago. I was already at university when my parents got their first television set, and the programs were heavily censored and controlled until the 90's.} Growing up like that it was not likely you would know anything the govt didn't want you to know.)
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| Me with my dad and sibings. |
I was the baby of my family, and although I was the apple of both parent's eyes, I had so much freedom, as most children did then. We were expected to look after ourselves and only go home if anything went wrong that we couldn't deal with, like someone broke an arm falling out of a tree, or fell horribly while performing a bicycle trick, or was trying to make the swing wrap around the top bar and lost hold and got dragged by the chain for a while.
While riding down a hill one day on the way to my friend's house when I was about nine years old, I was distracted by a set of twin toddlers playing on their front lawn (twins have always fascinated me). As I gazed at them I failed to notice the back of a small truck (we called them bakkies) parked on the side of the road, that I was rapidly accelerating towards.
The next moment I found myself head over heels in the back of the bakkie, struggling to regain the breath which had been knocked out of me when I rode straight into the stationary vehicle and was somersaulted into the bed of the truck! When I had managed to get my lungs over their shock, I climbed carefully down, found my bike with its front wheel completely buckled, and hobbled the rest of the way (about 1 km) carrying the front of the bike and wheeling it on the back wheel. It was just another day in the independent life of Anne Radford.
Another time when I was about six and walking to the shops to do an errand for my mother, a man kept on driving slowly past me and then stopping his car, opening the passenger door, and sitting there grinning at me, playing with his thumbs in his lap. I just kept walking, and he kept slowly passing me and doing the same thing. The third time it happened, I had a good look and it seemed as if he had a really big thumb! I arrived at the shops and bought the bread, or sugar, or whatever it was, walked back and casually told my dad what had happened. He became very irate, demanded from me the make and model of the car (I had no idea, it was just blue, I thought I remembered) and he then rushed off in his car and arrived back about half an hour later, shaking his head at my mother, giving me no explanation.
A few years later there was a man who exposed himself to all the schoolgirls in the subway which led from one side of the train station to the other, and which numerous schoolgirls who took the train, had to pass through on their way to our school. Mostly girls walked in groups, so the general reaction was to laugh at him, and he became known among my fellow pupils as "Wobbles" Some of us who didn't even take the train just went down there to have a look!
It happened to me so often as a young girl, men standing in lonely spots exposing their penises to me. What a strange thing to do! Apparently it is really common, ask any woman my age.
We didn't see it as dangerous, because we were so ignorant, so protected, compared to the children of today, who know so much from movies and tv and youtube etc., including watching pornography by the age of 10 apparently, according to recent statistics mentioned in a Guardian article.
We knew so little about things like rape and violent murder and all those things which you gradually learn about as you become a teenager, and now which the information age puts so unfortunately, so very thoroughly into our heads every day. There is so much I would rather not know about, would love to forget. I can't watch violent movies because all that happens is so real to me, even though others tell me, "it's just tomato sauce!" or "It's only a movie".
But we were lucky indeed to grow up so innocent. The worst swearword we knew was "bloodyfuckinshit" which we thought was one word, having no concept of what any of it meant, except the"bloody" part! We never dreamed of using it, only knew of it somehow from one of our older brothers, We played long imaginary games, we read books, we drew pictures with all the art materials we desired, we went for walks, we stole sweets from the shops up the road, we travelled to school on the bus from the age of 6, we played hide and seek and climbed trees and stretched our limits and learned our capabilities and our gifts.
When I was four I learned to swim in Kalk Bay Baths, man-made constructed tidal pools, which was very scary to begin with but another great endowment my parents gave me. (I believe it is as important as learning to read, and wonder why we lost the knack. After all most mammals can swim, excepting apes {I suppose there is the answer}, giraffes and hippos.)
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| Dalebrook from above. We would stand on the seawall with the waves breaking over us, to see who could stand there the longest without falling in ! |
Thereafter my love affair with water continued, and as a little girl I spent long days during the summer holidays and weekends with my parents and my best friend and her large family at the beach, usually Dalebrook, which is near Kalk Bay. They were the proverbial halcyon days, pure bliss, getting so cold from swimming for hours, and being warmed by some woman's arms, my mother's or my aunt's, rubbing me with a towel and handing me a plastic cup with sweet hot tea which they had brought in a flask. It is still the most delicious tea I have ever tasted. Then playing in the rock pools, watching all the creatures, little fish, crabs, limpets, anemones, periwinkles and even an octopus once or twice. And going home warm and sunburnt, lying in the back of my friend's station wagon next to her, the two happiest little girls ever. That station wagon took 3 or 4 adults and a whole bunch of childrn, all just piled in, no one had heard of seatbelts yet!
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| Matt and Leo swimming a length underwater. |
During this past summer Jess and her family stayed in a beautiful AirBnB nearby with an amazing swimming pool, and one day Matthew and Nicholas took the little ones on their backs and proceeded to swim a length underwater, to everyone's amazement, including the little boys'!
To this day when I see a body of water, the ocean, a lake, I usually want to get into it and float and swim around a bit, be held in its arms. It is a desire that is maybe genetic, as my mother was like that and so are my children and grandchildren, four generations that I know of. Tim thinks I am secretly a selkie, as he does not share my love of water and the ocean. When the granddaughters were small, every summer they would come to our house in Massachusetts. It was near the beach, where we would go every day, and the five of us, my two daughters, the little granddaughters and me, called ourselves the Mermaids. So perhaps Tim is right.
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| The selkie |
Every culture has myths about gods and goddesses of the lakes and oceans, and I love the one about Sedna, the Inuit myth, although it is really violent and cruel. Afew years ago I made an image of Sedna, triumphant over her disabilities! I think if I had to choose some god or goddess to worship, it would be one of the water goddesses.
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| Sedna Triumphant |
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