january - first page of the new book

What a day in Cape Town! It started early with a walk from Kalk Bay to Fish Hoek with Nicky, a swim at Dalebrook, my first taste of a C'est la Vie cinnamon twist and a strong black Americano. A quick swim in Nicky's pool and back home to get some cleaning chores and Wine Time work done.

Now here I sit at the computer downloading some photographs for my new email and at the same time eating a packet of Lays crisps and drinking my first beer of the year.  It must be 35 degrees outside and not conducive to working. It still feels like holiday time.

Starting my new diary last week made me realise that it is important to set some goals for 2015.

There are many things I do want to do this year and these are some scribblings that I have already made in my book.

To read more - I have already read two books this year. Ben Elton's - Two Brothers and JoJo Moyes - Me before You.  Both good reads and I have now started Paulo Coelho's Adultery.  Every January I start off like a train and then my reading fizzles out a bit. I will keep a log book of books read this year and try to read a bit every day.

To travel - Michael has a family reunion in Canada in August and we hope to travel to the UK and Scotland first. Michael is not the most adventurous traveller and a trip to Hermanus is far enough for him. We have procrastinated for too long, there will never be enough money, work commitments will always be there but last year I saw fit people die, friends battling cancer and others getting suddenly old and frail. Sometimes you just have to do things and not waste time waiting for the right time, saving and planning for the event.

To push myself harder in my business.  Things at Wine Time are going well but I am inclined to get myself into a comfort zone and wait for things to happen. Unfortunately (or fortunately) money does not motivate me but with travel on the cards, it would be good to increase our business database, get more customers and earn more money. The potential is all there and we have had a good year. Our warehouse is full and most of  the wines paid for, we have bought a brand new van for deliveries and we get so much positive feedback from our customers about our wines and service. For the first time I have a job that gives me time for myself and I am happy and content with what I am doing. Morning walks and swims and a job that is physically tiring and gets me out and about with a good balance of time alone and time with people. This makes me very happy.

To never miss a chance to swim in the sea. An old bathing costume and beach towel is a permanent fixture underneath my car seat.

To continue to explore my creative side. 

Art classes this year have been awesome and have taught me that everyone can draw and has their own style and flair. A lovely group of ladies getting together once a week, for a couple of hours, with pencils and wine is a wonderful way to end a day.

Gardening is something else I would like to do more of and learn more about. It must be one of the most rewarding hobbies to dig and plant and water and at the end create something that gives you so much pleasure.

To try my best not to spend money on unnecessary stuff. A sucker for grey and black t-shirts and vintage stuff for my kitchen and garden (which I do not have space for). Time to avoid the shops and make do with all the excess that I already have and give away what I do not need.

To keep walking and stay fit and strong. I could say lose 10kgs and cut back on the wine - BUT WHY? 

To visit new places close to home. Nicky has made a list of places in Cape Town that she wants to go to.  Dalebrooke this morning was one that she has now ticked on her list.  Driving home she told me about swimming in the Silvermine dam (which I have not done for 20 years) and how beautiful sitting on the verandah at Chart Farm is (can you believe that I have never been there?). So there are two more for my list. I will let you have my complete list next week.

Counting my blessings everyday. The bestest husband in the world, healthy and happy children all making new lives and careers for themselves, a healthy mother and an extra special family, so many wonderful friends, food and wine in the fridge and more grey t-shirts than any girl could ever want. I am blessed!!

It is indeed brave of me to publish this picture (hence the reason I have kept it small) but it is the only picture of the boys and I taken together this Christmas. 

It is a special one, taken in the rough seas on Boxing Day (on the day when I did not win the race into the water) of my three sons who are best mates and still little boys at heart and who give their mother much joy

just thinking stuff....

Tidying up and getting two rooms in order for two sons who have not been home for a while has been a job (and a half) and has led me on another "thought train" and discovery. 

Nic has been home a couple of times this year and is not that far away but Matthew has been away for two weeks short of a whole year! The longest I have ever not seen one of my boys. With time differences, Hong Kong seems very far away. Nic was away once for 10 months (without a sighting) and Gareth for two years (but with a few visits backwards and forwards). This is a not-so-nice family record.

Today while out on the road, my mind for some reason , went back five years. Back to what my niece Amy, then aged 13, shared with me about growing older. She was wishing that she could go back to when she was 12 and everything was different and her life was so easy and good. Her old school, her cousins and their different girlfriends, her crush on one of Matthew's rugby friends and the fact that Matthew was leaving Cape Town. These being a few of her many "sadnesses" at growing up. She was upset and was wishing very hard and wondering why don't go back to how they were, just one year ago.

They never do. Getting ready for the boys to arrive home brings with it the knowledge that things will never be the same. Things change and are not meant to be the same. We grow and we move on and start our own lives in our own homes and sometimes in new countries.

I tried to put myself in Amy's position 5 years ago. It was a purple patch where everybody was in Cape Town and our lives were full with family get-togethers, big meals, rugby matches and fun. Her cousins were always around, like older brothers and with so many friends, who also became a part of our family.

I started thinking back to my "olden days" and which days I would like to experience again. Things that I can't remember clearly anymore. I thought about, if I was given a chance to go back to a couple of days from my early life, in a time machine, which days would I choose?

Maybe just as once as a little girl, when my father and mother were still married. I don't remember that well. It must feature our house in Rosebank and both my grandmothers must come to visit. Dalene and I could play in our life-sized Wendy House, for which my grandfather had built and made all the furniture. That wonderful man must also please appear because I would love to hug him one more time. It is really weird how I can remember the smell of our neighbour Deidre's house and the pink overall and cap that her Nanny Anna used to wear. I remember the smells of her cooking as well and the details on their carved wooden staircase with two stories and a red carpet but I cannot remember my own bedroom much at all. I probably moved out of that house by the time I was 7 or 8.

Junior School? Not too memories there or any yearning to go back, except I do remember many of the teachers and pupils. I would love to be around for a break-time to remind myself who my friends were and what we chatted about. I lost touch with most of them when I left Junior School. They all went to the two other girls schools and off I went off to that school with the maroon checked uniform (and boys).

High School? Maroon days. Never really fitting in there but managed to develop a severe distraction and attraction to boys (and not forgetting my two forever best friends). I would love to go back in time and spend a double English class with either Mr Rumbol or Mr Horan. That is about all. 

Relationship days? Was I much the same person as what I am now? Did I make conversation easily? I don't think so. I would love to be able to observe myself at 18 and 19. I certainly know I was much less talkative. 

Wedding Day? I do remember the photographer arriving and I had a face-pack on my face and was in my bathing costume. That led to panic and the hairdresser handing me an Ativan to dissolve under my tongue. The rest of that day and night was a dream and I had to be poked by my bridesmaid to prompt me to finish my vows and not drift off to sleep. At least I was radiant in the photographs as I did not have the usual nervous, false smile. Maybe I should go back to see what it was all about.

Baby Days. I think these are probably the days I would most like to re-live. Just to experience one of those days again and this time to try harder to remember every detail. To check up on just how tired I was at times and how much Gareth really slept!! Photos help but they are a small part of the whole picture. What we did together? How did I feel? How did they talk and walk and smile and play together? Were they really that cute? (Maybe it is time to find the first video recordings of the early days - the one or two that did not have He-Man taped over them).

From turning 40 onwards, the boys and their school days and our Albion Road days are still very clear in my memory. No time-machine needed yet.

When do memories become nostalgia? Now that I am writing this and thinking a bit more deeply about this silly idea of a time-machine taking me back to the past to re-live days that I have already lived, enjoyed, messed up, been happy, been sad, been a shy school-girl, a student, a girl-friend, a mother.  Some of the above I still am and some I will never be again but all those events turned my life into what it is now.  Why would I want to go back and by watching, risk changing even one part of it.

Silly idea and best of all.....

3 more sleeps and we will all be together for Christmas!!

this is a story about....a door

 

Once upon a time there was a girl who lost much of her material possessions but was lucky to keep, love and nurture what was most important to her.

She found a new home which she loved. She had her own bedroom for the first time in her life. It was a dark and musty room but it had the most beautiful door. As in the story of Cinderella, her bedroom was also a door off the kitchen. At night when she could not sleep she found comfort in the light shining from the passage, through the warped glass panes, which reflected pretty patterns on her damp walls. The door was closed at night but she heard the comforting sounds of teenage boys playing music, laughing, telling stories, coming in late and trying to cook meals "silently" in the kitchen. 

Then this girl met a boy who rescued her from the dark and musty room. She moved to a new house which she made into a bright new home. She made a pretty garden and years later decided to change the entire garden. At the same time that she changed her garden, she remembered her old home which had recently had walls and doors knocked out. She remembered the old door which no longer had a home and was about to be taken to the dump.

"Oh Yeah!", she exclaimed, "I have the perfect spot for the door!!".

So she collected the door, painted a wall, nailed the door to the wall and now the Princess has her very own secret door in her new garden.

Of course, she lived happily ever after.

aunty syl's arms*

Weird things happen and link together in the most crazy way sometimes. This morning I woke up early and, as has become the norm, picked up my iPad to check emails, Facebook and the magazine section of the New Yorker. On Facebook, on the Brain Pickings page, I came upon this quote by Anne Lamott:-

"Trappings and charm wear off… Let people see you. Let them see that your upper arms are beautiful, soft and clean and warm, and then they will see this about their own, some of the time. It’s called having friends, choosing each other, getting found, being fished out of the rubble. It blows you away, how this wonderful event ever happened — me in your life, you in mine.

Two parts fit together. This hadn’t occurred all that often, but now that it does, it’s the wildest experience. It could almost make a believer out of you. Of course, life will randomly go to hell every so often, too. Cold winds arrive and prick you: the rain falls down your neck: darkness comes. But now there are two of you: Holy Moly."

Lovely words about friendship. However, it was the bit about the upper arms that made me smile.Yesterday afternoon, I was watering the garden. It was hot and I had taken off my loose denim shirt and was watering the garden in a sleeveless top. I was very hot. I came inside and started cooking (still in the vest). The doorbell rang. It was my sister. After buzzing the gate open and before opening the front door, I ran to grab my shirt (to cover my arms). How crazy is that? My sister who has known me all her life, has seen far more of me than just my slightly wobbly upper arms, had the upper arms hidden from her view. 

Where do these ideas about what we are supposed to look like come from? Why, now mid-50, do I still let them bother me and swelter in the heat rather than wear a sleeveless top. I have no problem on the beach in my bathing costume in front of the multitudes but as soon as I leave the beach and get dressed the upper arms must be covered. 

And then photographs - my brother sent me a picture this morning of my sister and I with him on his wedding day (three years ago today). I had never seen the picture before.The two of them look great. I saved the picture and then cropped myself out of it. Why? Many of my pictures are odd sizes because a certain person has been cropped out of it. After "cut and paste" the "crop" function on my computer must be my favourite and most used one.

I don't even think of myself as vain (but this must probably indicate that I am) but the picture in my head of what I look like is completely different to any photograph ever taken. Can they all be wrong? Very occasionally, there is that one picture that makes me think "Wow, lovely, that cannot be me" "Is it me?". It does not happen often though and those pictures are ones are in frames! In almost every picture that I see of myself lately I look like my father (a very handsome man, I may add, but in later life double-chinned, baggy eyed with thin lips (we won't mention the senile bit)). Then, the voice! Nothing bothers me quite as much as when you make a call on your cellphone and your voice comes back at you. "Please don't tell me that I sound like that?"

My niece in the UK blogged a few weeks ago about this new way of teaching yourself to get comfortable in front of the camera by taking lots of pictures of yourself. Every time I mistakenly touch that "selfie" button on my camera, I terrify myself. She has been taking pictures of herself in various outfits and it is amazing how her confidence has grown in front of the camera. 

The next generation have no fear of cameras and technology. My sons are comfortable having pictures taken and know how to smile. My nieces do Snapchat, Instagram and have hundreds of pretty pictures of themselves and many gremlin faces and squint eyed ones too. I cannot even do a Skype call and watch myself talking. It unsettles me completely and the video gets put off after two minutes.

Another story, planted in our minds when we were younger was about not having long hair when you got to 40. (Very ageing, "mutton dressed up as lamb", must be shoulder length or shorter). Could this have been the same source who said "cover your upper arms", "don't show your knees", "cut your hair"? 

My great and brave friend, going through chemo at the moment, has been an inspiration. She has taken the treatment in her stride, continued to work, complained little and embraced her baldness. Luckily we had a fun morning choosing her very expensive wig or the whole exercise might have left her feeling a tad "ripped-off". She does wear it to work but over the last 10 weeks or so I have not seen her wear the wig at all, sometimes a cap, never a scarf. She looks beautiful. Luckily she does have a perfectly shaped head and beautiful smile. I don't think I could be so brave.

When she had her head shaved my sister said that we should do something to support her. However, she could not be brave enough to shave her head but would give up wine with her during the treatment. Shaving my head would be the easier option for me. Luckily it was all talk and as it worked out none of us have had to give up wine and only one of us lost our hair.

I am jealous of my friends who wear sleeveless dresses and tops with confidence while I swelter with hot flushes and sleeves. I am proud to walk down the road with my bald friend who just smiles broadly and re-assuringly at people who give her the "oh dear you are dying" look. My brave, bald friend who is not afraid to bare her head but, she too keeps her upper arms covered.

What is with us woman? Going back to Anne Lamott's quote - I think I understand correctly that we should spend more time together showing our "beautiful, soft and clean and warm" upper arms to each other so that eventually we will all rub off on each other and we will become a new generation of woman who are not afraid of bare upper arms. Definitely much cooler woman.

Ooops there goes the bell. I think I need therapy.

* Gill, a friend who I worked with for many years started the "Aunty Syl's arms" thing. I did not know "Aunty Syl" but now all  my family and friends also refer to batwing arms as those of poor "Aunty Syl". RIP