So as the mother who is hardly ever there for anything, I missed (most of) the swimming galas, I missed countless athletic trials, auditions, hugs and cuddles and kisses whilst traveling, I recon we are all right and we will be all right. Liam is now almost eight and in Grade 2. He is a happy well-adjusted independent little boy who can get himself from point A to B with his own transport. He rides his bike to and from school and in the event that he forgot something at home, he just cycles back and gets it!
I think we may have even passed our speech, imagine my shock and horror when I found out that some mothers pay professional speech writers R500 a pop to write an innovative on point speech, really? These are kids, speeching in front of their mates and teachers. This is not the Oscars or the keynote address at the opening of the world economic forum in Davos.
I always wonder where this will end, will Liam really be better off for not being mothered and smothered? As the kid regularly taking the bus to galas, who played tennis with Coach Billy for a full year without mommy or daddy even meeting the guy, who does his own rsvp’s to parties, who knows how to operate a phone, who has been feeding himself and his sister breakfast since he was four?
Luka who goes to ballet and play ball all by herself and whose face absolutely lights up when I do manage to pick her up from school once in a blue moon and who then tells me in her non-stop talking voice that she- did-not-know-I-would-be-picking-her-up-from-school-today-and-that-she-is-so-happy-and-that-she-loves-me-so-much-and-can-we-go-and-paint-her-nails-when-we-get-home! I bought the two of us tickets to see the Russian Royal Ballet in APRIL and she asked me when we are going every morning.
They are happy well-adjusted kids!
And here I finally have time and energy again to read real books, just finished “Vlam in die Sneeu” – the love letters of André P Brink and Ingrid Jonker, I felt like a voyeur with this very intimate glimpse that we got into these two people’s complicated and messed up lives. I must be honest, the version of Ingrid Jonker’s life that were always dished up at school goes a little something like this:
“Genius poet born in poverty raised by grandparents, suffered from depression, killed self in ocean.”
Not quite the way it was, I was especially shaken by the very last letter that he wrote to her, and I cannot help but wonder was that the straw that broke the camel’s back? Was she always doomed to die young? Did she have a million more words to write and to offer the world and had he actually loved her enough would that have made a difference, would she have been alive today? Would Nelson Mandela have read her poem in 1994? Or would she have been a flash in the pan, and forgotten. Did death and tragedy make her famous. I have many questions, and opinions only because I read a couple of letters two star crossed lovers wrote to each other over a two year period. All I know is that she gave more than he did, she sacrificed more and she took her time and efforts to edit his work.
So here we are, January long gone, glorious summer in SA, loving life, now reading all things Ingrid and André, because I can, and because I will rather spend the R500 on good books that Liam and Luka can also one day read as opposed to some pimply BA Afrikaans Grad student trying to make a quick buck out of us desperate mothers.
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