Home? for the Holidays

As the holiday season approaches, I become quite maudlin and contemplative and sentimental, and think about the past, and picture all the people in the world returning to family and family homes for Christmas and New Year.  It sounds soppy but it fills me with a good vibe, and I guess that's the whole point.

And through the years, I have gone to many different 'homes' for the holidays.  My childhood was all bliss and long, glorious holidays with beach times, views of the Bay of St Francis, boats trip down the canal and the Kromme river.  It was a time that I didn't apprecaite enough while I was a child (isn't it always like that) and it's a time I bottled up like a fragrance and channel it, like a sensory injection, when I get stressed or lonely or homesick for that space and time.

There were also a number of Christmases on the farm in the Magaliesberg, with a Weber cooking chicken in the garden, and my sister and I running around chasing ducks and making fairy houses in the massive garden, and mandatory New Year's day picnic up in the mountains with the dogs.  And then as I got older there were the St Francis Christmases again, this time with my boyfriend, simple lovely times. 

Then I went to Scotland, where its almost impossible not to be immersed in the festivities, the short dark cold days, the snow...it felt like being inside one of those snow globes.  I spent two Decembers there, one on teh coast of Essex with a boyfriends family, and one near Aberdeen, so far north that on the winter soltice there was hardly even daylight.

Now we hope to return 'home' every year with our girls to our beloved farm, where we spent the first six months of this year.  We left alot of our stuff there, and Ashlee has been saying for weeks that she's going to go on the plane to the farm and see Spot the Dog, and Pinki., and Polly and the cats.  and with us moving around so much, maybe that is what she considers her home.  Often when we've been out, she'll say "Ashlee wants to go home."  And I wonder, having lived in as many different places as she has, where is her home?

I thought that maybe her home is ouma's house by the sea, because that's what she mentions the most.  Or maybe she will continue to  build homes, as the years go by, at school, and all over the world, like I did.  In this era that's probably how most children grow up, in transience.

Happy holidays to all.

a Moment of Connectedness in a rather Depressing Windhoek in December

Last night we decided to go out to Spur, as these long hot days in the house with the kids, when it seems there isn't really a cool moment, were started to get to me!  So we all got dressed up and a lovely evening, everyone in this town seemed to be out and about, we had delicious burgers, Natty enjoyed her fish fingers, Ashlee jumped with her 'maatijies' and sat in a corner alone watching the kids movie with all the hype and screaming around her (that was totally delectable).  And then we drove down the main street to to see the rather minimal Christmas lights, and the tiny park that is usually considered 'unsafe' was buzzing, full of families having a picnic supper and enjoying the outside air and the lights.  Ashlee ran around in a stupified wonder, high on all the coloured flashing, and we named all the different, strange decorations like a dolphin?  For Christmas?  In a desert town three hundred kilometers from the sea??  We drove home with the windows down, breathing in the cool air.  A nice change from those neverending hot nights in the house.

So for one night even this hot hick town for shady poineer business man seemed aglow with a festive spirit, and I said a prayer of gratitude for that!

Sisters stuff

When I found out I was having another little girl, when Ashlee was nearly two and a half, I couldn't believe how history was repeating itself.  I really thought Natalie was a boy because the pregnancy was so different the second time roud, with alot of morning sickness and a little creature that gave me such a hard time, so active in the womb, bouncing around day and night so I figured okay this must be what boys are like. But Natty star was a force to be reckoned with from day one, and I already knew if we were going to have another little girl her name had to be Natalie, the Christmas blessing (naturally) although her birthday is in the middle of October.

Anyway, it was amazing to know that these to girls of mine would be able to be sisters.  I have a sister three years younger, and looking at photo's of the two of them, they remind me so much of my sister and I.  Even the hair is the same, the older one dark blonde, the younger one light blonde.

But having these two made me think of the sister bond in general, sjoe what a dynamic!  The best of times, the worst of times, the soulmate, and the one who can cause you major subconscious issues.....  I know how wonderful it can be to have a partner in crime, an ally whose there with you and understands the family you were both born into.  I see with these two girls, who were not friends to begin with (Ashlee barely acknowledged her sister for the first six months of her existence and spent the next six systematically bullying her), they have now formed a type of working relationship.  Ashlee is both bossy/responsible as well as pretty threatened by her very strong younger sister Natalie.  She only recently starte playing with dolls.  She used to shun them in favour of stuffed animals and tools in the past (real dad's girl), but when she saw Natty playing with a doll she suddenly felt it was necessary to do so herself.  Hats off to the younger sister, leading the way.

And I've been fortunate enough to have a younger sister who also lead the way.  She showed me how to be liberal, cool and interesting, and to this day brings out a different side of me.  If it wasn't for her I would be boring as toast, and hopefully I've given her something to admire.  Long live sisters, everywhere.

To Work or not to Work

I've always been a bit of a freak in the female career oriented world of today, in that I've never actually had an actual job, and worked myself up any type of corporate ladder.  I have kind of always follwed my own rather twisted, intuitive path, and it was a go with your heart and get burnt rather that go with the chapters one should.

I did get to study a Master of Science in Creative writing, at the University of Edinburgh, which was the best learning experience (the classroom learning type) of my life.  And after returning home from that watershed time in that magical city, and a recent broken engagement with a magnificent Greek man, I took a few years to metabolise everything.  I drifted around in Johanneburg, living alone in my flat.  No job, no boyfriend, not many friends, sadness and the quiet downtime that was probably necessary.  And then after a meltdown resulting in total paranoia (I thought the police were out to get me and woudln't leave my house, seriously), I came to Namibia to visit my parents.  And one night I went to an underwater club to see a friend of ours, and I met Hennie.  This really cool guy going through a divorce, and for the first time in my rather vain life, he didn't like me.  I had to pull him in, relentless, for months before he realised what he had.  And after that, things happened very, very quickly.

 We moved in together, connected, went on trips all over the country.  And after a trip to Cape Town, wine tasting, taking in the beauty of the Cape, having time together, I got back and realised that I was pregnant.  It was a total, life changing and heart wrenching shock, and it was evidently difficult for us, having only known each other for nine months, only lived together for a few months, and of course, not being married.  Hennie's parents were supportive but scared, my mom couldn't believe a such a private loner like me was going to be a mom.  But I had a new little person inside me, and that pride and love and care has stayed with me everday for the past three and half years.

For me, having my two girls wasn't the logical next step after meeting my prince charming and walking down the isle in a puffed up white dress with friends and family.  It wasn't part of 'the plan', but it sure was part of 'a plan.'  I found having these children and being a mother the most humbling, crazy, very hard, and indentifying experience of my life. 

And that's why, while other mothers debate about whether to work or not to work, weighing up the odds of having that part of the day to themselves and earning an income, versus staying and bonding with their chidlren, I don't have that choice.  I could never leave these kids, because they gave me a plan, we exist in a wonderfully draining bubble, and I will have to wait a long time before we are ready to break this.