The Moon and the Stars

Amidst all the noise, the haste, the manic, panicked stress of everyday life, I feel a change. It’s a slow unyielding shift almost imperceptible but very much there. Small things start to change. I see natural beauty way more clearly. The stars and moon in Roberston on Saturday night were so bright they almost moved me to tears with their awesome beauty. The moon played games with us through the clouds and my friend and I spoke and spoke. A rainbow followed us almost all the way home from Robertson to Cape Town. A promise. A gift.

This change has a sense of promise to it. Something is coming. Something is waiting in the wings and it’s waiting for me to be ready. I sometimes smile to myself as things are revealed to me that start to make sense, pieces start to fit together. Someone says something to me and it’s like a gift. I accept it and put it away to examine later.

Still around me the madness continues. For a few moments I block it out and write about what’s inside me.

Hey oh - Red Hot Chili Peppers - just 'cos

Come to decide that the things that I tried
Were in my life just to get high on.
When I sit alone, come get a little more known
But I need more than myself this time.
Step from the road to the sea to the sky,
And I do believe that we rely on
When I lay it on, come get to play it on
All my life to sacrifice.

Hey oh...listen what I say oh
I got your hey oh, now listen what I say oh

When will I know that I really can't go
To the well one more time to decide on.
Well it's kiliing me, when will I really see,
All that I need to look inside.
Come to believe that I better not leave
Before I get my chance to ride,
Well it's killing me, what do I really need
All that I need to look inside.

Hey oh...listen what I say oh
Come back and hey oh, look at what I say oh

The more I see the less I know
The more I like to let it go - hey oh, whoa
Deep beneath the cover of another perfect wonder
Where it's so white as snow,
Privately divided by a world so undecided
And there's nowhere to go
In between the cover of another perfect wonder
Where it's so white as snow,
Running through a field where all my tracks will
Be concealed and there's nowhere to go.

When to descend to amend for a friend
All the channels that have broken down.
Now you bring it up, I'm gonna ring it up
Just to hear you sing it out.
Step from the road to the sea to the sky,
And I do believe what we rely on,
When I lay it on, come get to play it on
All my life to sacrifice

Hey oh...listen what I say oh
I got your hey oh...listen what I say oh

The more I see, the less I know
The more I like to let it go hey oh whoa.
Deep beneath the cover of another perfect wonder
Where it's so white as snow.
Privately divided by a world so undecided
And there's nowhere to go
In between the cover of another perfect wonder
Where it's so white as snow
Running through the field where all my tracks will
Be concealed and there's nowhere to go.
I said hey hey yeah oh yeah, tell my love now.
Hey hey yeah oh yeah, tell my love now.
Deep beneath the cover of another perfect wonder
Where it's so white as snow,
Privately divided by a world so undecided
And there's nowhere to go.
Deep beneath the cover of another perfect wonder
Where it's so white as snow...
Running through the field where all my tracks will be concealed
And there's nowhere to go.

I said hey oh yeah oh yeah..tell my love now
Hey yeah yeah...oh yeah.

That which consumes me

There comes a point in the evening when I become aware of a hunger. Hunger for wine, food, cigarettes, conversation. For you. Most of all for you. This hunger haunts and tears at me. Makes me ache for more. So I push it down. I sleep. I wake. I go on with my life. Still it’s always there at the perimeter of everything I do. Waiting. Wanting. It will not be silenced completely. I can stifle but not quench it. It consumes me.

Rain drops on roses

BEEEP BEEEP. The digital clock next to my head awakens me rudely and as usual it’s dark and cold. Winter in Cape Town. Freezing cold mornings. Frosted up car windows. Kids bundled up looking like Eskimo’s. The ducks who live on top of ‘my’ windmill squawk wildly. My daughter wanders past my bedroom wearing a pink blanket wrapped around her. When I ask her why, she replies that she is practising to be a queen. She already has the regal, slow walk down pat. My cat cranes his neck as I open the bedroom curtain and makes a pitiful mewing noise.

The mad rush of the morning ensues. I do a fairly good impression of a movie on fast forward but the multi tasking version. As I paint my eyelashes, I am reaching for my handbag while screaming at the ‘Queen’ to brush her teeth or hair or both but preferably not with the same brush. I glance out at the grey day and sigh quietly to myself wondering why on earth we do this. Then I remember that pesky need to eat and provide shelter for one’s offspring.

Checking said offspring’s room, I notice that she’s half dressed and singing a little ditty while staring at herself in her dresser mirror. I count to ten before gently reminding her for the 10th time to get dressed. Idly I wonder what you are doing at this moment. Are you alone? Nearly tripping over the cat who is not so subtly asking to be fed, I am interrupted in my reverie. A very un-PG curse escapes my lips as I nearly fall facedown onto the passage carpet.

Finally we are all done. Dressed, fed, teeth gleaming, bags packed, it’s time to race to the car dodging rain drops (on roses) and cats (whiskers on kittens) as we go. I am anything BUT a Mary Poppins song at this moment but I can’t stop the constant stream of consciousness in my head incessantly playing a show tune or two.
Once in the car it’s always a small power struggle. Why do I have to remind offspring to put on her safety belt – why? Do I have to remind her to breathe also? We back out the driveway, tyres screeching and drive the three minutes to her school. I walk her to the gate, quick kiss and hug and it’s off to start my work day not that I’m in any way motivated mind you. I turn back and watch her hurrying with her bag on her back that looks way too big for her and my heart melts. I watch her until I can’t see her anymore and then I turn back to my car.

It is morning and I miss you.

The Big C

Ok, so I’ve been silent for a long time now. Sorry my faithful reader (Scott – are you out there?) I’ve been going about my business and doing the normal life thing: Work, eat, sleep etc. I am trying my very best to carry on with everything as normal.

See what happened is this. I went to the gynae for a check up as I’ve had some complications which I won’t go into here and now. He prescribed some meds for me. He then phoned me 2 days later to say they’d found atypical cells in my pap smear. He’s recommended that I go in for a ‘small procedure’ at a local hospital. The procedure (as far as I can surmise) will determine the nature of the atypical cells and if they can see them they will remove them then and there. The doc assures me this is ‘to rule out the possibility of cervical cancer.’ This doesn’t make me all warm and fuzzy inside.

So, going about my business all the while thinking ‘I may have cancer… I may actually die… I can’t leave my daughter all alone in this world’. Nice hey? I thought so too. I am up and down about this. Some days I feel it’s all going to be fine. Some days not so much. Most of all I feel very, very alone, no matter now much re-assurance I get.

My hospital date is set for 7am on 17th June. I need all the prayer and friendship I can get.

Channelling my Aunt

"Cleaning your house while your kids are still growing is like shoveling the walk before it stops snowing."
-- Phyllis Diller

It’s been a very loooong Easter weekend. We had family around for 2 days and 2 nights and it was fun don’t get me wrong. I’ve just discovered that I am somewhat obsessive compulsive when it comes to house cleaning. I like things in their place. I like order and will do anything to preserve it. I have an aunt who used to get up at 4am to clean her house. I am not THAT far down the road…yet. Her house generally looks like one out of the pages of House & Home. I just strive for order more than the germ-free sanctity of a freshly sanitized bathroom.

Add four kids, 2 adults, 38 Easter eggs and some generic chaos to the mix and the result: a very rattled, still vainly striving for perfection, me. I think at some point I actually WAS following them around with a dustpan and broom. Mostly I tried to ignore the bomb site that was my daughter’s room and just let it go, whilst shouting vague orders in the kid’s direction to tidy up. They totally ignored me of course – shoving things under the bed and declaring their cleaning done.

At about hour T minus 1, I eventually gave up and let chaos reign. They are kids after all and it was the Easter weekend. Some rules are meant to be broken or at least loosened up a little some of the time. So they had a happy hour of being able to run around screaming, throwing things and generally being kids. Yay,me.
We then went to lunch at my cousin’s house on Easter Monday. Her house is nothing less than perfect – even her 3 year old daughter’s room looks scarily like no-one actually lives there. I realised I had gone a little overboard with my obsessiveness when my BIL commented to my aunt (while watching her sweeping, picking up, polishing, serving, washing dishes), that my middle name was actually Lucille (my aunt’s name). Oh dear, it seems middle age has finally caught up with me and I am becoming my aunt. My resolve: Live more, clean less. At least until tomorrow when the dust bunnies catch up with me again.

The Lighter Side of Death

Scene: Sunny Sunday afternoon in Cape Town, driving past a very large graveyard in the Southern Suburbs.

Offspring: Mommy what’s that? (pointing at graveyard)

Me: That’s a graveyard dear, you see all those pieces of stone, those are gravestones.

Offspring: What’s a graveyard?

Me: It’s where the dead people are. When you die, that’s where you go.

Offspring: But where are they?

Me: Under the ground.

Offspring: (short pause to think) But mom, when you’re dead, doesn’t the sand go into your eyes?

Me: No dear, your eyes are closed and you’re having a very long sleep.

Offspring: (another longer pause to think) So, when you’re dead, is it forever?

Me: Yes. Death is forever (briefly considered going into long explanations about the soul and eternal life but decided not worth it whilst driving, so shelved for another day).

Offspring: So if I die, I will be under the sand, sleeping forever?

Me: Yes.

I sincerely hope I haven’t scarred my child for life! I subsequently tried to bring up the soul / eternal life discussion a day later but she was having none of it. She stuck to her guns about sand in eyes and death being forever.