So it turns out I found my way to say goodbye to South Africa, and it was sweet and it was poignant and it touched me, marked me... and that makes me happy.
There is this little place called Clarens, nestled in the foothills of the Maluti Mountains that mark a line between South Africa and the mountain kingdom of Lesotho. Its become awfully popular as a tourist destination over the last decade, and no wonder, it's pretty much breathtaking scenery and small-town feel is a haven for artists, writers, young lovers, and happy families.
But I look at Clarens through the eyes of an 11-year-old girl, or at least that's the age I remember it with most clarity. My family used to spend most holidays in Clarens at the house that my father's business partner owned in the small village. I walked the dusty streets, attempted to climb the mountains, and made good and fast friends of the local children when Clarens still had only a single restaurant, a post office and a general store. We enjoyed Clarens in the summers when it was lush and green and warm, and we enjoyed Clarens in the winters when it was one of the very few places in South Africa to be blanketed in snow. But it was the autumns that were most beautiful, with the golds, reds, yellows and browns turning the landscape into an oil painting.
I remember how much I loved Clarens, it's beauty, it's scenery, it's energy that was almost magical. Even when we used to arrive after dark, my parents knew to wake me up if I was sleeping so that I could see the glowing sandstone outcrops as they towered high above - then I knew we had arrived. In my young mind anything was possible in Clarens, no dream was too big and no day was long enough... I fell in love with the earth, the land, and to this day I feel a spiritual connection to the place, which is why a short trip to Clarens with my parents and the children felt like a homecoming... and a home-leaving.
And it was magical. And it was cathartic. And it was a rare moment in the past six months where I was actually able to sit and really drink it all in... no - I am corrected. It was more like sucking the marrow from a bone... every. last. drop. I was able to sit on the patio in the evenings and know 'this is the last time' (in a very long time) - the last time I will enjoy such majestic South African sunsets, still warming my skin as the last of the light fades. I was able to sit by the poolside and watch my boys splash around in the kiddie pool and know, 'this is the last time' (for a very long time) that they will be able to enjoy water like this, with the sun turning their skin brown, splashing and shouting Look Mom! Look at me!
Aaaahhhh - Clarens was good to me and my family, as she always has been.
I take this motherhood thing somewhat seriously – too seriously perhaps.
I consider it make or break if dinner isn’t served at precisely 5:45pm and
doesn’t include at least one protein, one starch and one veg… anything less is
complete failure because honestly, how difficult is it to get dinner done? It’s
not rocket science… unless of course I have two kids screaming at my feet that
they want to play, play, play.
There are many evenings where my kids just want me to read them a story,
or help them build a Lego-garage for their cars, or play just another 10
minutes in the garden and I decline with the usual, “Mommy has to make dinner,
here’s your digital babysitter iPad…”
Things gotta get done, and dinner doesn’t make itself… Just like doctor’s
appointments don’t make themselves, chronic medicines don’t magically appear,
therapy appointments don’t keep themselves and those painfully boring daily
fine-motor exercises disguised as ‘fun’ do not invent themselves… So yes,
things gotta get done and mama’s on it!
But I realised the other day that all this stuff; the nitty-gritty of
keeping kids clean, fed, housed and early-interventioned (that's not a real word, of course) makes me frown. Possibly more than I should frown… because like I said;
I take it all so very seriously… I blame it on a ‘worry gene’ that expresses
itself in my ability to have an anxiety attack over pretty much anything. But
enough about me.
Let’s talk about the kids… and what they actually want from me.
I am
delusional if I think that they care whether dinner is half-an-hour late, or if
they even noticed that I hid veggies in their pasta sauce. They probably couldn’t
care less if I put clean pants on them, or yesterday’s pair (ok, I lie… Harlan
would care. very. much. But he’s strange like that). And have they noticed
lately that their toys are sorted by theme, size, colour and function? Huh?
Nope. They simply don't care about that stuff.
What they do want from me is lots of time… lots and lots… in fact, they
spell ‘time’ this way – L.O.V.E.
And they don’t settle for just any kind of time, oh no. They’d much
rather prefer the kind of time that includes lots of mess, stickiness, chaos,
jumping, hiding, running, laughing, hooting and tooting… The kind of time that will
etch itself in their little cells… because let’s get real, they’re never going
to actually remember each moment of these early years. They may actually not
remember any specific moments at all… but they will remember how they felt
because it’s etched into their little bodies at a cellular level – and their
very essence will be screaming ‘I am loved’, and perhaps more important than
that – ‘my mom doesn’t just love me, but she loves being my mom.”
Because there’s a difference between loving your children, and loving the
process of being their mother.
I find it easy to love my children, as I imagine most mothers do – how could I not love my children
after carrying them for nine months in my own body. It is biologically and
hormonally impossible to not simply love the daylights out of every little inch
of them! I am totally crazy about my kids – stark raving bat-shit crazy.
It’s
the process of being a mom that’s a little more challenging – the balancing of
delivering everything they need to be safe, secure, and healthy while also
remembering to just have some fun, laugh, make funny faces, dance under the
stars, and make shadow puppets in bed at night – you know, the cellular stuff,
the actions that show my children I love being their mom, the stuff that will
leave an indelible mark on them as they grow from little-ones into big-ones.
The stuff that says ‘I am loved'.
I’ve realised that above all else, I need to show my children that I love
being their mom.
