Five Minute Friday, plus OMG, She’s Alive!

So it’s been a while… *crickets*

Life has been crazy, beautiful, amazing, scary and busy since the move to Cape Town. I promise to write a little more about that later.

For now, I am once again linking up with Gypsy Mama, Lisa-Jo Baker (who often makes me cry and always makes me think), for her Five Minute Friday prompt. The idea is that you write for five minutes without editing or worrying about what others will think. You just write what’s on your heart. This week’s prompt was Song. Here goes:

 

I sing the body electric. My body. This electric body.

Electric with dizziness and nausea. Electric with heat and cravings and the need to pee again and again and again. Electric with emotion.

Electric with new life.

A new song in my heart. This new almost person. This new adventure for a small family of ‘us’. Us becoming bigger. Us becoming more. As my body becomes bigger and more.

Like the beat of African drums the beat beat beat of a new heart. It is early days, the song is quiet still. But soon it will grow louder. The song swells as my body does, but the ‘us’ melody remains. The band is growing. As is the joy and the praise and the wonder.

Sometimes I wish it wasn’t so hard to be a mother

Sometimes my child is so badly behaved and demanding and selfish and I-don’t-care-that-you-have-needs that I want to run from the house screaming at the top of my voice. I want to run as far as I can, to place that is quiet like a Bjork song and empty like fog. Someplace just my own, where I rule the pink fluffy clouds and sunny skies and soft green grass. A place that stays tidy and neat as a pin; where the food cooks itself, the laundry is always washed (and ironed), the dishes are always done, and the bathrooms never need to be cleaned. A place where no-one needs juice or a muffin or to ask me a really important question Right Now.

A place where I get to hold and nurture the selfish child within.

Sometimes my child’s episodes of bad behaviour last for weeks – months, even – and I can’t help the feelings of surging anger and resentment. Feelings that fill me with guilt, but that I am powerless to stop. And eventually, even the guilt starts to foster resentment because no corner of my emotional landscape, or mind or space or life is mine alone.

It is all consumed by this little person who runs roughshod over my emotions and needs because he hasn’t yet learnt that the world doesn’t exist to do his bidding. And then I realise that that’s My fault. Because I am his teacher, his life coach, his purveyor of knowledge. And yet again I feel guilty and angry because despite my very best efforts I have failed. Failed to teach him to care for the feelings of others, failed to help him develop the independence to entertain himself, failed to raise a child that I can actually live with.

And live with him I must. Just like I must teach him. Teach him and guide him and tutor him and lead him and then teach him some more. Because if he doesn’t understand that it is unacceptable to throw a monumental tantrum because I won’t let him play a Wii game all afternoon, or drink a juice that consists of nothing but colorants and artificial flavours; it is my job to fix it.

And this is not a job I can quit. This is not a job I can give up on because it is too hard. This is not a job that I have any choice but to continue. Because the wake up, fetch, carry, work, entertain, wipe snotty nose, cook, clean, always-someone-else’s-agenda merry go round isn’t something I can walk away from. Even if I am bone weary about three leagues beyond the point of exhaustion. Even if today I feel that I just can’t win, that this is the one thing that I simply cannot do, that this is all too much and I Just Can’t Breathe. I must carry on and push through and nurture and remember that he’s just a child and doesn’t understand and smile while I’m at it.

I guess that’s what it means to be responsible. What it means to be a mother.

Sometimes I wish it wasn’t so hard.

“Light tomorrow with today!” Elizabeth Barrett Browning

Another Five Minute Friday.

Prompt: Light

When we first decided to move to Cape Town, people warned me about the weather. About how cold and wet and dank and miserable winter in the Mother City can be. So of course we decided to move just in time for winter. Well, it’s not quite winter yet. More like autumn. But the wet weather has certainly started.

In fact, there have been quite a few days of wet, wintry, windy (ye Gods, the wind!) weather. Dark mornings saturated with cold and drizzle.

And yet all I feel is light. It’s like bright, beautiful, yellow, early-morning sun shining into my consciousness.

Light. Weightless. Like a huge burden has been lifted from my shoulders.

Light, lit from within, a fire and passion for life – for love – rekindled.

Because for the first time in many years, I feel safe. And welcome. And like I am a part of something greater than myself – a community.

No matter that it hasn’t been easy to make a move of this magnitude. No matter that I miss my friends and family every day. No matter that I’m realising how much I loved the house I left behind, and how hard it is to rent.

Because even though this is hard – so hard – and should threaten to drop me into the subterranean darkness of all-too-familiar depression, I still feel so much lighter than I did in Joburg. In every possible way.  And I can feel a change in our family. Somehow, we have more time. For each other, for ourselves, for those around us.

I would hate to be one of the naysayers to leave a city and then spout negativity about it, especially since I think that Joburg still has something going for it.

So all I will say is this: I think they call it the Mother City for a reason, because I already feel nurtured here. It’s like the soft beach soil that clings to my son’s feet holds some nutrient that I didn’t know that we needed or were missing until we got here.  So as I find the strength to slough off the skin of jadedness, insularity and distrust that I managed to acquire in almost 15 years in the City of Gold, I welcome the new (old) me.

“Darkness cannot drive out darkness: only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate: only love can do that.”

― Martin Luther King Jr., A Testament of Hope: The Essential Writings and Speeches

The legacy of women, as illustrated by the handmade revolution and my personal revelation

I come from a family of women who are really talented crafters. My grandmother was an amazing professional dressmaker for most of her life (making everything from wedding and matric dance dresses, to teen Goth gear). My mom has always produced the most incredible knitted creations and – having tried almost every craft out there (if you want proof, just look at her craft supplies) – is known for the diversity of craft skills. My aunt has always been a truly gifted quilter and textile artist. My entire life has been spent around needlework, crafts and handmade goods – from candle-wicking to quilling, from quilting to crochet, from beading to pottery. Like the Jane Austen novels I love, the women of my youth always had some sort of stitch work project on the go.

The women that helped to shape who I am spent a lot of time making beautiful things and, while they made, they shared. They shared their time, their skills, their stories, and themselves. My mom, aunt and gran used to attend craft courses together. Sometimes, one of them would go on a course and come home to teach the others her newly-acquired skills. In hindsight, I recognise that this is probably because we weren’t rich and those courses were likely too expensive for all of them to attend. Yet that never stopped them. One of my most distinct memories is of sitting around the dining room table with the women in my family; hand painting vases and quilling decorations for my sister’s wedding. I can’t tell you what happened to those decorations, but I could describe in great detail the warm light that night and the soft hum of women’s voices interspersed with cackles of laughter. I have a similar memory from years later: of sitting with the same group of women, in the now-married sister’s home, working on various decoupage projects. (Mine wasn’t very good)

This constant activity provided a wonderful environment in which to grow up. I hold dear many memories of the comforting hum of a sewing machine and the steady click of knitting needles. It was an environment in which women supported and loved each other – one in which the everyday grind of work and parenting was put aside, along with family politics and all the other things that seem to work to keep sisters, mothers, daughters and women apart. The nurturing support that the women in my family provide to each other is one of the greatest reasons that I miss my mother, sister, aunt and gran so very much.

As a child, being surrounded by so much creativity never really struck me as unusual. But I realise now how lucky I was to be exposed to so much skill and talent. Watching these wonderful women spend time together as they worked on projects both individual and communal is probably the direct cause of my love affair with all things handmade and my obsession with the artisanal. Unfortunately, it wasn’t until very recently that I tapped into my own desire to craft and express myself creatively. So while teaching myself to knit and sew has given me great joy, I’ve also felt a great deal of sadness as I missed the women who should have been here to teach me. I have felt a keen sense of longing for the older generation of women from whence I come. Perhaps it is because I miss them and yearn for their presence so much, that I have become so fixated on possessing one of the heirloom items that they have produced – a quilt for my marriage bed. Fabulous hand-knitted jersey’s for my young son.

And yet, I don’t own a single item created by one of the incredible women who helped shape who I am. This has really bothered me for the longest time. In fact, it’s become a bit of a chip on my shoulder. But tonight I had an epiphany as I sat browsing $500 dollar quilts on Etsy – seriously and unrealistically considering saving my pennies so that I could buy one (even though I know that the women of my family could produce much better work). As beautiful as the hand-made products are, as much work and time and craftsmanship as they demonstrate, it is the love that they signify that makes them so important to me. It is the sense of family and continuity that they demonstrate that makes me so desperate to own one.

So I won’t save up for months to buy a quilt on Etsy. Because, even though I so often feel disconnected from the sense of belonging and continuity that one feels when one’s family lives on the same continent, I do have that love. It just happens to be love sent from afar. It shows in my love of all things craft-related, in my burgeoning creativity, in my never-consciously learned knowledge of selvedge and fabric grain.

But most of all it lies in those tender memories of watching my mother perfect the art of the colonial knot (a candle-wicking stitch), of knowing that she loved me enough to search every fabric store in Durban to find the perfect fabric for the perfect matric dance dress, of countless dress fittings as my gran went on to make that perfect dress (which I still own), of time spent watching my aunt sew while we shared a cup of tea and I begged (ok, manipulated) her to give me chocolate. And of evenings spent surrounded by women – mothers, daughters, aunts, grandmothers, sisters and cousins – quilling wedding decorations over a cup of coffee. The true legacy of the women in my family lies in those memories and not in anything made by human hands.