Sunday, July 4, 2010

A Dry June

That is was, June. A dry month creatively but a very wet one emotionally. I have cried a river. I have cried all the tears I have in me and still there are more. And I have flu. Delightful.
I started processing the realities of my life as it now is and the realities my future. It all took me a bit by storm. I started processing the last few years and got hauled back into the horror of the years preceding those. I had one of those ghastly "look back at the whole bang shooting match" experiences where you come down on yourself like a ton of bricks and regret comes barging in like it does with no respect and no regard and no holds barred. And I beat myself up badly. So badly in fact that I berated myself into a funk. So June was a dry dry month.
However, being me, survivor that I am, I also took a firm grip of my own collar.  Which is a step in the right direction.
The horrific dreams of bailiffs banging down the doors will stop and I will be able to see wood for trees.
Because the reality is that it is not all as dire as it could have been and it is not as ghastly as I think it is and that, if anyone is reading this, is the truth of any seemingly terrible situation. It is a resounding truth that where there is a will there is a way.

So here are some of the things I have learned in my dry month.

BE GRATEFUL
No matter how appalled I am and appalling the situation, there is always a long list of things to be grateful for. Some big, some pathetically small. I started a gratitude diary and I write it to God. And God is mighty and wonderful to me. In writing every day, in this gratitude diary, blessings have showered on me, totally unexpected blessings which are the best kind, and that in turn makes me more grateful and so on and so forth and so the wheel of the attitude of gratitude turns.

BE GIVING
It is so easy to be bogged down in my own misery, walking along plod plod plod looking at my own feet. The other day at the super-market, I lifted my head a little and saw a man on a bombed out typists chair. The legs of the chair had been sawn off and the seat was tied to a skateboard with a piece of rope. The man had no legs but the widest and brightest smile you could ever imagine. I was at the till and had just won a R20 note in some in-store promotion. I had to run let me tell you to catch up with the happy man on his home made wheelchair. I gave him the money looking right in his face. "I just won this" I said. "I want you to have it". "I am so lucky!" he said to me. "God bless you." And you know He does, daily. He blessed me with a fit and able body. And so back to my gratitude diary.

BE FORGIVING
It is also incredibly easy to blame the situation and circumstances on some other party. It lets me feel self pity and it lets me feel justified in feeling bummed and resentful. However, in my dry month I have looked at my part and what I allowed and didn't allow and said and didn't say and where my behaviour contributed to where we are now. And blaming everything squarely on someone else is not realistic or truthful anymore. I have to take my portion of it squarely on my shoulders. I discovered that when I did this, my first prayer to God was "Forgive me Father" and therein lies the crunch. How on earth can I expect forgiveness if I cannot first forgive? So the healing process of forgiveness starts first with me. To process and to forgive and to let go.

BE ASSURED
Now this is a fun one. Being bogged in it is easy. Being bogged in so deep that I can barely breathe and can't keep treading water. That drowning feeling is overwhelming. It would be so easy to let the waves close over my head and just give up. Problem is, that by giving up, I stay put. I would stay in this horrible place forever. I have to keep moving forward and in this comes the assurance. Look back. Looking back over my life I saw that there have been many times when I thought I was in an impossible situation, when my heart was broken or my finances were mangled or my life was too chaotic to manage. And I realised, I got through it. Every time. So I assure myself, minute by minute if necessary, that this time will pass and I will get through it if I just keep moving forward. On my desk is a great coffee coaster - it says "If you're going through hell, keep going". Wise words, sage advice.

BE KIND
This is a hard one because it involves an action that does not come naturally me to me; self love. But, in my dry month I have realised the value of being kind to myself. Taking care of the littlest things that I didn't really feel like doing much. Simple things like sorting through my wardrobe and making up new outfits. Giving myself a facial, a mani and a pedi. The big things too. Seeing my counsellor when things were closing in on me, talking my real feelings through with a trusted friend, being kind and gentle with my own heart. The upside of this kindness shown inwardly is that the patience I then as a consequence demonstrated outwardly,  paid unexpected dividends. More people cared. Kindness was shown to me in the most unexpected ways. My chemist knocking more than half price off a scarf she thought would look gorgeous on me and brighten my day. She was right and she all but gave me the scarf and I know she is battling herself. Friends who rally around me despite the chaos in their own lives. And I feel better about myself knowing that I have taken time to feel better, comforted myself without indulging in the dross. Somehow having smooth shaven legs while having a good cry is so much better than a cry feeling manky and unkempt. By being kind to myself I build my self esteem in the subtlest of ways. From within.

BE FULL OF FAITH
This one for me is easier to embrace because I am a saved God server. I am not religious in any way but I do have a deep and meaningful, loving and assured personal relationship with God. And that for me is good. I have found that understanding faith when you are up to your eyeballs in the pit with alligators chomping around your ears is not always easy though. Faith is living by what is unseen. And if all you can see are the alligators, faith is a little tough to hang onto. However, I found in my dry month that faith moves mountains. Alligators or not, faith is the assurance that not everything is what it seems to be and that waiting on the other side is something new and different. God promises us that He has plans for us, plans to benefit and prosper us and never to do us harm. It is this assurance I hang onto and this assurance that feeds my faith that tomorrow will be different and better and not the same as today.

EASY DOES IT
Rome, as the saying goes, was not built in a day. And likewise, my situation is not going to change overnight no matter how desperately I want  it to. The magic fairies are not going to sweep in and wave their magic wands. This is a one day at a time life we live. We have no control over tomorrow and we have no way of changing yesterday. All we have is today and each today comes with it's own set of circumstances and issues and pluses and minuses. In my dry month I have learned to take very deep breaths and just take things one step at a time, one day at a time, little by little. Suddenly the feeling of being overwhelmed leaves and I can cope. It's when I try and run at it like a bull at a gate that it all goes horribly wrong and I find myself drowning in a sea of anxiety and fear. So easy does it.

ELEPHANT STEW
Yes, put altogether, my circumstances are enormously overwhelmingly hugely frighteningly massive. However, to make an elephant stew, you start by cutting the elephant into bite size pieces. Try it any other way and there will never be either a pot big enough or an elephant small enough to make that stew. I found by breaking the whole sorry mess down into its parts, the mess is easier to work through. Bite size elephant. Each part can be dealt with individually and it's no longer so hard to work through.

WRITE IT ALL DOWN
I have also found that writing it all down works. Not the mess, but the solutions. Not the current scenario but the desired outcomes. This is part of the visualisation process, the part that we can be assured about and be faithful for. By writing it down, it keeps me focused, keeps me assured and keeps me faithful.
And it is incredible to see how, when combined with my gratitude diary, all the little blessings add up to the place I want to get to. Every today is so much better than yesterday and so it goes, step by step, little by little.

PRAY AND SURRENDER
I pray, all the time. And it is amazing the comfort that comes from this. My gratitude diary, acts of kindness, giving, even listening to music, in my heart us a prayer constantly. For me again, this is a simple thing and I realise it doesn't come to everyone as easily. However when I was a new Christian, still battling with concepts and bogged in childhood ideologies learned through religion, prayer for me was tough. Until I started acting "As If". I acted as if someone loving and kind was listening. I acted as if this loving entity knew all my hearts desires and all my pain and all my fear already. And prayer became easy. What is not so easy for me is surrender. Being a survivor means doing things my way and at my pace. Surrendering means leaving it to someone else to do at their pace and in their way. This is the trust relationship with God. In my dry month I am learning how to surrender my will and my way to God. I am acting again, "as if" and through assurance and through faith, trusting the outcomes to God. And God keeps on delivering.

Dry creatively, yes but far far from uneventful and a month of profound growth; profound highs and profound lows. I have learned so much and I am not where I was the month before or the month before that. My pain is still palpable but I am not so raw anymore, I am not so afraid and I am not so alone anymore. In all, a good month.

Saturday, May 29, 2010

Clever Old Dames

Okay so this week went by in a flurry and before I knew it Friday was here and I was all kerfuffled. And my hair! This entire week has been a hair event from hell. I love a short choppy style, easy and no mess no fuss and cannot see wood from trees to get an appointment to have it cut any time in the near future. So guess what? Being a hoarder of old magazines and postcards has its advantages. Somewhere in my magic box of tricks I remembered seeing an article about hair-do's written in the forties. You guessed it, how to cut your own hair was a big thing during the war and if those frugal old dames could get it right during a blitz, why couldn't I? Why not indeed.

I have all the advantages; alligator clips from my GHD kit, bright lights and very sharp scissors and almost perfect vision with my glasses on. Add to this no interruptions from air raid sirens, falling mortars or rabid gestapo and my chances of success were much much better than my predecessors.

I set up shop in my bathroom and laid all my equipment out carefully. About 7 seconds into my preparations, I realised that my dress making scissors were much too big and much too clumsy for the job. This sent me scouting through the boys bedrooms for any other sharpish scissors that would do the trick. My eldest came to the rescue with a lovely pair of bright orange scissors with a classy Ben 10 motif on the sides. Perfect.

Preparations now complete I notice I had attracted an audience of 2 small boys, 2 kittens and Victor the Mutt. All in my very small bathroom. Victor was the only one smiling at this stage in that vacuous way of dogs complete with his tongue lolling and tail wagging. The kids on the other hand were wide eyed with anticipation and my eldest in his sage way voicing his concern at the sensibility of this latest foray into haute coiffure.

Let me add at this point that my preparations did not actually involve finding said article on how to do this. No! I relied on my perfect recall for all facts trivial and was absolutely dead sure I remembered each and every step verbatim.

I began by wetting my unruly mop and combing it through into neat rows on my head. The article said (and I am sure of this) to section the head into quarters and then twist each section into a bunch and cut through at even lengths. This I did, repeatedly, all over my head until I resembled a startled hedgehog. So far so good.

By now my audience was in disarray. The kittens were eating my shorn locks, Victor was asleep and the kids were once again falling about laughing and pointing. It is at this stage that I started to worry about texture and decided to add a new millennium twist to my new found hairdressing talent. Taking each clump of newly lopped hair in one hand and the Ben 10 scissors in the other, I proceeded to chop into the top of each clump to give definition and texture to the cut. Clearly I was still on a roll.

Then for the moment of truth. I ran my hands through my hair to separate the clumps and see the final result and discovered I had given myself not the perfect Sixties Pixie sported by Hepburn et al, but a perfect trailer park Mullet!

Back to the drawing board I went, this time working on the back of my head and without glasses which kept getting in the way. This of course reduced visibility forward to near zero and despite my kids total belief to the contrary, the eyes in the back of my head were seriously out of order. Being the trooper I am I however persevered and I have to say the outcome is not half bad.

I did wake up this morning wondering if I would have to make up a story about the hamsters going nuts in the night to my long suffering (properly trained and qualified) hairdresser but no; my Pixie is perfect. With the right amount of moulding mud, texture goo and wet look gel, you can't see any sign that the Do is DIY at all and I am righteously proud of my new locks.

Clever old Gals those war brides.

Tuesday, May 25, 2010

Extraordinarily Astounded

I recently joined a group on Facebook called "Extraordinary Women" and got a warm fuzzy feeling at having been invited to join this select group of African lasses dedicated to celebrating the joy that is womanhood. What an interesting bunch of girls I found in this group from all over Africa and beyond. There were posts aplenty about the words of inspiration that the group send out daily and I looked forward to getting my first instalment when I sat down at my desk this morning.

Look, life hasn't exactly been a bed of roses recently and I have found myself quite blue quite often as I struggle to make sense of how my life has been turned upside down. So the thought of something uplifting from my new found gang of empowered girlfriends was quite exciting.

Coffee in hand I opened the message to be met with the screaming headline "Bacterial Vaginosis".
I almost had cardiac arrest. This was not the inspiration I had anticipated at all. In fact it was an assault. However, like a lemming to a cliff I was compelled to read the article start to finish despite my mounting horror.

Without subjecting my already very small fan club to a similar assault, let it be said that there is nothing empowering about a Vajay-jay as far as I am concerned and after reading this article I am more convinced than I ever was of this fact. Having lived through the extremes of birthing my first child in a teaching hospital, I can tell you that a Vajay-jay is the least empowering part of being a woman.

The article went through the symptoms of this ghastly infection in graphic and granular detail and if that were not enough, then proceeded to espouse the virtues of crushed garlic and plain yoghurt as a remedy applied directly to said infected area, or better yet, inserted for maximum relief.

The thought of an already distressed Vajay-jay being furthermore abused by raw garlic and yoghurt sent shivers of revulsion up and down my spine and much to my own dismay, sat clutching my coffee cup  staring into the middle distance, resisting the urge to dash down the passage and inspect mine for any sign of this nasty interloper.

Now I am all for garlic and its medicinal qualities, but you can bet on it that should I ever be blighted by this particularly nasty bug, I am definitely not going to be putting the garlic crusher to use for any other purpose than those culinary and the idea of a nice cool punnet of yoghurt will never be the same for me again, ever.

The article ended with a warning about multiple partners and thus comforted, (I don't even have one partner) I closed my browser and moved on with my day. I can assure you I have never been so overjoyed to do the accounts as I was this morning. And I am near dying with anticipation to see what the Extraordinary Lasses produce for tomorrow.

Sunday, May 23, 2010

Lost in Translation

As we head toward the very last days of summer here in Ramsgate, the kids have been making the most of the sunshine. While my intrepid twosome donned their safety gear and made off up the road on their jay-boards, yours truly sat smugly on the garden wall thanking my Creator for not making me the compulsive type that would feel the urge to give the contraption a go. No, I sat vicariously enjoying the thrills and spills and soon enough, read the packaging for one of the boards.

"This board changes you. You can become light more, more stylish than whom. Everyone accepts this fact. You will also challenge early."
This had me sitting up very straight indeed. Whoever would have thought that a quick spin on a semi-articulated skate board could revolutionise my life so radically? Clever Chinese!

Given present circumstances, this was exactly the elixir I needed for my soul even if it came in the form of two wheeled pads of death joined by a swivelling thingummy in the middle.

Being cautious, yours truly dragged one of the boards into the lounge and much to the amusement of the boys, practiced while gripping the back of the sofa.
No less than a nanosecond after placing my feet on the thing, I resembled a Cantonese contortion artist with my left leg slung over the back of the sofa and my right stretched out in front of me gripping the board with my toes and hanging on for dear life.  It was a totally unstylish moment.
My toe grip of death gave way shortly thereafter and as the jay-board shot across the room sans mommy, and I plummeted off the back of the sofa onto my derriere, there was nothing light about the impact.

I was also finding it hard at this stage to accept the promise on the packaging. Nobody in this house was accepting this fact, noone at all. No, my fan club were in fact falling about pointing and laughing.

The only fact I accepted was that much like Vuvuzelas, the skill required to ride these demon contraptions from hell was reserved for 8 and 5 year olds and not their forty-ish year old mothers.

I will challenge early? Pah. I challenged alright, every law of physics and discovered that gravity has much stronger pull when you are trying your damndest not to land on your arse on a flagstone floor.

However this board has changed me. While my right butt cheek used to match the left, it is now proudly sporting a fresh blue bruise complete with the pattern of the floor grouting. It's a unique bruise though. Gotta look at the bright side now don't we?

Saturday, May 22, 2010

Darling of the Daring Dash

Having awoken when the air was still poisonous this beautiful Saturday morning,  I roused my offspring from their slumber, hauled us all through the shower and shoved breakfast down our throats all before 6:30. This was so we would be on time for the grand inter primary sports day which started, get this, at 7:45.

Now I had a vague recollection from last year that this illustrious event was held at the primary school in Port Edward, a mere 30 kilometres south of us and as the eldest kept referring to "Suid Natal" (South Natal) I figured, in my blur of early rising that South is indeed way South and set off in good time.

I had even diligently checked the sports notice tacked to the fridge to make sure we had the right kit, right time and right child dressed in the right uniform last night and again this morning.
Well bugger me if we don't get to Port Edward, bang on time I might add, and there isn't a car in sight. Nary a one.

The horror that descended over me was palpable. One I hate being late and two, my eldest is so very particular about "events". With ice cold blood running through every nerve and sinew I picked up the trusty cell and phoned another mom. "Oh No! we are all at Port Shepstone, Port Edward is next weekend!"

Okay, one wildly and quite expertly executed u-turn later and we were heading for Port Shepstone, now a jolly 50 kilometres in the opposite direction. The kids had the grace to wave at our house as we shot past it in a blur and the poor little mites didn't whimper once as we dashed our way through the early morning taxis and delivery trucks to our destination.

Once there, the eldest was flung out of the back seat and pointed in the general direction of his team while the youngest and I drove up hill and down dale looking for a bleeding parking spot that didn't involve losing the exhaust pipe or the sump on a curb stone.

We made it in time for the bulk of the matches having only missed the first one so all was saved and the eldest played really very well despite his hell ride to the tournament. Something about adrenaline overload I think.

And next weekend, we know where we are going. Definitely.

Friday, May 21, 2010

The Beautiful Noise?

For all those of you intrepid adventurers coming out here to Sunny South Africa for the FIFA World Cup, brace yourselves. Today I experienced firsthand the assault that is the VUVUZELA. The kids were totally jazzed that today was Vuvuzela Friday - all part of the big World Cup buildup - and could take their Vuvuzelas to school. This meant mommy had to buy them said Vuvuzelas which we did late yesterday afternoon. Amazingly enough, for an adult they are almost impossible to blow. However for an 8 year old and a 5 year old, this talent comes all too easily.
Within minutes of buying the things our house was resounding with a sound similar to that of a bull elephant with his testicles caught in a bear trap. Not pleasant. And very very loud. And persistent. And you guessed it; agonising. By the time I went to bed last night I truthfully thought my eardrums were bleeding.

This morning, en route to school which is only a twenty minute car ride, the vuvuzelas were blown, waved about and even burped through which reduced me to a gibbering heap of jangled nerves with a twitching left eye. The school ground was alive with the sound of tooting. Four hundred little people ranging in age from three to twelve were racing about with their multicoloured instruments of torture, blasting them with precision at anything that moved and where the talent for blowing was not so great, sword fighting with the things. Never was a mother so delighted to drop off her kids and leg it for work. I don't think the car even stopped properly before mine were dispatched and I was  weaving my way through the traffic to get the hell outa there. Their teachers have a new found degree of respect from me for dealing with that lot.

So here is the thing. These innocuous looking plastic tubes can let out a sound well in excess of any EU decibel safety limit and could be used quite effectively, if it ever came to that, for cruel and unusual punishment in time of war. Guantanamo Bay could have shelved the Kylie and Brittany CD's happily and saved loads of money by just having a few small five year olds and a Vuvuzela on permanent rotation to extract whatever intel they ever needed from even the most hardened terrorist.

I fetched my offspring this afternoon who both complained of various Vuvuzela incidents. My eldest had been sword fighting and had a vuvuzela broken over his arm by a class mate. Both complained of tingling lips and the youngest said his had spit running out the end of his. I have had to shout and use sign language for all hell hour instructions this evening and been met several times by doe eyed stares of incomprehension; I think their ears are still ringing from 8 hours straight cacophonic abandon. My heart goes out to their teachers, brave souls that they are.

What worries me is the assault that awaits our international visitors coming here to watch a few games of footie. I barely survived twenty minutes in a car with just two of the bloody things. How will anyone survive a two hour football match with fifty thousand of them in full swing? Never let it be said you went unwarned.


Sunday, May 16, 2010

Nature; She Is All Around Me

The boys and I rattle around in this huge house now with far too many pets and far too much wildlife all around us. We have had one dog carted off by a wild cat (Rooikat) which is like a small lion and another uplifted by a Crested Eagle who mistook the dog for a small buck. The eagle dropped said dog into the lagoon and I can only imagine that the eagle shat itself when the “buck” instead of calmly accepting its fate, barked at the eagle and tried to take a chomp out of it mid flight. The dog lived despite 42 stitches to its legs. The rooikat won in the first wildlife saga.

Our menagerie has grown quite dramatically in the last few weeks since the chap went MIA. I think it has been a welcome distraction for all of us to be taking care of the new additions instead of stewing over the detail of the disappearance and worrying ourselves sick.

We have old faithful yellow dog, Tango who is a deaf as a post but loving and dependable. We added Victor about three weeks ago after Bruce the bed king took off on another of his jollies never to return. Victor is loud and totally irresponsible. He barks at his own shadow which is good since we live on the outskirts of town in the middle of a forest, so loud and indiscriminate barking is good and makes me feel safe. And with his arrival we are only twenty four dogs short of  the complete phonetic alphabet.

Bruce I fear used up all of his canine lives by tussling with the bush pig once too often. It was inevitable. I mean now many times did he have to be stitched back together again after mauling the poor pig?
The dog was incorrigible. He had a go at a porcupine in the drying yard too on a number of occasions. It is quite some trick extricating porcupine quills out of the face and chest of a pit bull terrier at two in the morning who is still showing every sign of rampant blood lust.

He ate my car, did Bruce, which became a favourite past time. No car was safe venturing down our cul de sac. Some poor sod would come Sunday driving looking for the beach and end up beating a hasty retreat with a pit bull attached to the front or rear bumper and he would not quit until both number plates were off said vehicle and the occupants thereof required therapy and tranquilisers. Until Bruce disappeared, strangers in these parts were all quite ashen faced standing at our gate clutching car parts to their chests and shaking spasmodically. Life has been a little calmer since he left and a lot more sociable.

Then there is Puppy who is not a puppy at all but a hybrid cross between a miniature pavement special and a small buck with rat genes somewhere in the mix. She is our intrepid survivor. Eagle nil, Puppy one. She is quite reticent about the outdoors and I don't blame her.

The new kittens are a delight and are named Ginger and Wasabi. The cousin's kitten is named Sushi. We had to hold the theme and seeing the one kitten is, well, Ginger, and the other a dull grey with green eyes, Wasabi was a natural choice.

Don't ask me please how my youngest named the hamsters Fruit and Veggie.

Add to this the fact that we have no doors in the passage of our house or windows for that matter, but large gated arches that are open to the elements. I really don't mind the elements. Elements that come through the arches can be wiped up, swept out or otherwise mopped; not so the almost Darwinesque collective of creatures that slither, crawl, shimmy, slime, fly and scramble into our otherwise marginally ordered lives.

My post bath time, bedtime, do your homework routine was shattered a few months ago when I took my well earned mommy shower - that's the one where you hang onto the wall and let the water just drown out the demands in the background - and towelled off sharing said towel with a metre long black mamba who had bedded down in the linen cupboard. The chap was still here and I must say he earned my love and respect that night for chasing the rather pissed off snake away from his screaming, stark naked and hysterically leaping wife and smashing its head off with a number one wood. It was the most action the golf club has seen since its manufacture and I do highly recommend golf clubs as effective snake eliminators.

We have about a zillion gecko's in the house too which are near impossible to get rid of. They are both a blessing and a curse these transparent little lizards. They eat bugs and things that fly and crawl rather efficiently but then defecate incessantly all over everything and have a nasty habit, the bigger ones do, of losing their grip and dropping off ceilings onto you, usually in the dead of night.

We have also had a 2 meter long legavaan lizard lick my leg through my study door. Of course the boys thrive and have scorpion farms and collect insects that defy belief most of which they do not even have to venture outside to find which is rather disturbing. For me, well, as I said, far too much wildlife.
Thank God there are no rampant rhino because I swear if there were, they would use my lawn to frolic around on – we seem to attract beasts like the Arc.

[this post started with a cut and paste out of a letter I wrote last night to my friend Naomi in London..thanks Nomes for your inspiration; baby girl I think you have helped me unblock my block...]

Monday, May 10, 2010

Someone Else's Table

You used to sit at my table enjoying our hospitality and bonhomie
Drink our wine and eat our food
Talk about someone else and this and that
Discuss who did what and why and how
And crimes of other marriages, not ours
And how lucky we all are and smug
In our booze fueled get togethers and camaraderie

Now you ask how are you when we by chance
Bump into each other at school or the shop
And you tell me you know
Just exactly what I am going through
Because your aunt or your husband's friend went through but exactly the same thing
So you smile sadly and you nod sagely and with a knowing look
Move on in your sidestep social dance

And happily report my news at someone else's table
To be discussed and pondered on
While drinking their wine and eating their food
While here, a family is holding on by threads
Coming undone
And although you cannot see it, my heart has gone through the windscreen
In a screech of tires and shattered glass
The wounds don't show but I still bleed
And would love to tell it all if I were able

To move past the point of shame
While you, smug and self satisfied, delude yourselves
Over hors d'oeuvres and chilled Chablis,
Convince each other that all is well
Tut tutting and humming and soaking up the detritus
Of my calamity
Not thinking to ask me for the facts
Before you fictionalise it all into something more digestible
And layer speculation on top of pain

While you feign compassion and today a modicum of care
Over coffee and those little mints,
You are the Queen
Whose maid might well be making it tomorrow
With the King
In the counting house
Which is bare.