We’re going home…

I never thought I would say this, but we are going back. We are going home.

We prepared for so many years before we left, and all we wanted was out. And now, all we want is to go back.

It has been just over two years since my mother passed away. And in those two years, the urge to return has just grown stronger and stronger. To rebuild those few family connections we have left. To wallow again in a culture we fully understand. To stand under the African sun.

So, here we are, preparing for yet another international move. The face of our family looks very different to when we left South Africa 10 years ago.

When we left, we were four in the house. Our offspring has, in this time, grown up into a fully formed adult human who is about to get married, in Norway. Husband’s father is no longer with us. And we are returning with four feline boys.

Eulogy for our mother

No matter how much you prepare yourself, losing a parent is one of the hardest things in life to go through. And doubly so when your parent is, was, as magnificent as our mother. But she would not want us to mourn her. She would want us to celebrate her, as she celebrated everyone in her life.

I don’t have a single good memory to share, or story to tell you. I knew her for approximately 18 271 days, or 600 months, or 50 years and nine days. I have too many memories and stories.

One of the things that was hard for me to accept for a long time was that our mother did not belong to me alone. She belonged to all of us, to the world.

Some people collect books, like me, others collect figurines. Our mother collected people. She loved so many people, and they all loved her back.

This disease that took her from us, from all of us, is so cruel in how it isolates the person affected from the world. And our mother, she belonged to the world, to all of you, all of us, and so many others, so the last year was very hard for her as she fell deeper and deeper into this isolation.

It robbed her of so much. And yet, here you all are, to celebrate her life, because it is not about one year, but about a life lived over a many decades and through many phases.

She taught all of us to live life in exuberance. She lived hers with gusto and abundant joy. She loved to eat good food, and to laugh. And her laugh was infectious. You could not help but laugh with her.

She brought passion to every thing she did, a passion that both of us, her biological children inherited, and a passion she inspired in many of the other children whose lives she touched in her years of teaching.

I have had so many reach out to me since she left us, and they all mentioned the deep impact she had on their lives, more so than any other teacher. And many of those completed high school more than thirty years ago.

Along with her passion, she taught us resilience. No matter how many times she was broken down, she built herself right back up, each time stronger than before, and made it look almost effortless.

But most of all, she taught us that love comes in different shapes and sizes, and it is not a finite resource. You can love many people without withholding from one.

In one of my favourite books, Reaper Man by Terry Pratchett, there is a line that reads “Do you not know that a man is not dead while his name is still spoken? No one is finally dead until the ripples they cause in the world die away, until the clock wound up winds down, until the wine she made has finished its ferment, until the crop they planted is harvested. The span of someone’s life is only the core of their actual existence.”

Let us let her ripples last as long as possible.

One song, more than any other, will always remind me of her, The Whole of the Moon by the Waterboys

I pictured a rainbow
You held it in your hands
I had flashes
But you saw the plan
I wandered out in the world for years
While you just stayed in your room
I saw the crescent
You saw the whole of the moon
The whole of the moon

---------

She loved this poem, and the amazing Michael Sheen delivers it with such power: Michael Sheen performs 'Do not go gentle into that good night' by Dylan Thomas (youtube.com)

The Spider Wars

 Last night, I picked up a spider-related injury.

It is not what you think it is.

As you may or may not know by now, I am severely arachnophobic. I mean, I am scared of many things in life, but I can typically ignore those fears and continue with my life despite them. But spiders, they paralyze me. Or make me move faster than I have ever moved. Or both, in some instances.

I have been alone at home for the last week while my husband takes care of a family matter. It has been a nightmare. It started on Monday, when I started packing the dishes into the dishwasher from the kitchen basin, and, as I moved the last item, and a big hairy spider was sitting in the basin. Needless to say I could no longer use the basin.

There have been a few encounters with them during the week, from the dead spider carcass that blew across my desk to the small spider crawling out of the bushel of apples I was sorting.

But the final straw happened last night. I went outside for a last smoke (yes, I know, go away) and when I was ready to back inside, there is the eight legged monster sitting on the door, just above the door handle.

So, now I was trapped outside.

I tried throwing a few plant materials at it, but this had no effect, especially since it was all leaves and lightweight. I tried to throw my shoe at it several times, and missed each time.

By this time, I was frantic, and texting my husband. He’s sitting on the other side of the planet, watching me through the camera covering our back garden, probably laughing his ass off, and trying very hard to be supportive.

Finally he suggested that I should use the torch on my phone, light up the area around the hosepipe, and just use the hose to blast the bastard off the door.

It took me about ten minutes to work up the courage to do this, but finally, I managed to wrangle loose the hose pipe, turn on the tap and then blast the doors.

And the bastard slid himself in between the two doors, snug as a bug in a rug, avoiding the arctic blast of water coming his way.

Fuck.

But I persisted, and eventually managed to wash him out of there, and then he disappeared.

Ok, so I couldn’t see him anymore. Felt safe to return inside.

So carefully returned the hose to the web-covered hanging space on the wall, closed the tap while quietly dying inside and returned to the door, torch still on.

Yanked the door open and stepped back quickly, torch still my guiding light, no sign of the asshole on the inside of the doorframe. Ok. Scan around the door, and there is the little fucker, at the bottom of the door frame, right where I would enter.

Deep breaths.

I can do this.

So I haul myself in over the little step and into the house in a very swift movement, avoiding touching the ground around where the monster is hiding.

And as I step inside, I twisted my ankle.

Ignoring the pain, I yanked closed the door, locked it, and ran upstairs.

And so it came to be that I had a spider-related injury without ever touching one.

Plant update

Against all odds, both the cherry trees and the apple tree is blossoming, despite still growing in buckets in our dining room.

We also have some new sprouts today: tomato, spinach and chicory has joined the party.

I also, on a whim, bought a flower planter last weekend from the supermarket, and I am super happy to see sprouts there too. Just wish I'd taken down the name 🤣

I also bought a bigger greenhouse, which should hopefully arrive in the next week, ready for when I start migrating the seedlings to bigger planters.

#plantingseason #plantlover #seedlings #springiscoming

It's planting season!

I am rather happy that the end of winter is approaching, and I can finally start thinking about gardening again.

I bought a few fruit trees at the end of last year, and they've been growing in pots indoors, and recently started budding.

Yesterday, I started with the seedlings for a mix of vegetables, fruit, edible and medicinal herbs. They're now incubating on a table in front of the window in my library, which gets good sun. I planted 38 different types of seeds in total and in varying quantities. 

So, in a few weeks I should have a few plants to start planting into bigger planters or preparing for their final homes outside.