Five days!

Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Holiday in Cape Town with amazing best friends!


CANNOT. WAIT.


The weekend, in short, was exhausting and emotional. On the plus side, I discovered these amazing homeopathic drops for mild depression, grief and tearfulness that will be my new best friend in encounters of the in-law kind. Magic stuff!


I also made enough money at my open day to buy TSC's Christmas gift and presents for his whole family (which did much in putting a stop to the guilt-tripping going on) and my mom and dad.


A further discovery was that I still suck at 10-pin bowling, and that I should not be let loose in company when over-tired, hormonal and angry. Unless I've been doped with my magic drops. Then I'm just peachy.


I leave you with a pic of me and the parentals with Gogo and her family in front of her new house.

Warning: long boring post ahead*

*but it's more here for my memory's sake than for your reading pleasure. Sorry.


I feel like the weekend skipped me. That tends to happen when you spend the majority of your weekend in a car, I guess.

It all started on Friday afternoon. Remember I said I was going home early, having worked late the day before? Well, our genius *sarcasm* gardener, let's call him Special K, left the pedestrian gate unlocked on his way out. We have a gate kinda like this (except the small gate within the big gate is on the other side, close to the gate motor):



If you leave the pedestrian gate unlocked, it is not only unsafe as anyone can walk into your house, it is also likely that when you press the button on the remote for the gate to open, the small pedestrian gate will swing open, which is exactly what happened when I tried to leave the office. The pedestrian gate swung open and got firmly wedged in the gate motor compartment, meaning that the gate would not open or close and that we couldn't even get the motor open to switch it to manual.

Boss Chick was not at the office, so Roo and I tried to push the gate back. No luck. Being in high heels probably didn't help. I eventually called TSC who had to come and lend a manly hand. He managed to lift the gate off its tracks so we could move it backwards, out of the motor casing (now with a nice big dent in the middle), and close the pedestrain gate, which we then taped shut. Needless to say, I ended up not leaving early.

Then, in a rush to leave home for Pretoria before the Friday afternoon traffic started, with our two cats in tow (we had to take them with to my folks' house so my brother could give Sapphire her antibiotics while we were away), I grabbed the wrong handbag. We discovered this when we'd been on the road for about 25 min. We had to turn back to fetch it, seeing my phone, purse, keys etc were all in the other bag. This wouldn't have been a train smash if one of the cats hadn't decided that now would be the perfect time to have a dump. Thankfully he went in the litter box we'd brought with, but we had to drive home with the stench. Ugh.

We eventually all arrived in Pretoria intact, albeit in a bad mood, to find Gogo's stuff being loaded onto the truck. Sad stuff. I gave her the Christmas and birthday presents I'd brought with for her and realised how much I'll miss watching her open her gifts every year. She always gets so excited.

We had supper at Primi Piatti at Irene Mall and tried to get an early night. Unfortunately the felines would have none of it. They are quite used to being at my folks' place, but in the guest room downstairs. When we stay there, they get access to the veranda, lounge and kitchen, which can we shut off from the rest of the house so that we don't wake up to midnight cat fights between my two kitties and my mom's.

But because Gogo's furniture had been moved out, she was staying in the guest room and TSC and I were sleeping in my old bedroom upstairs. The cats, cooped up in such a small space during their prowling hours, were going beserk - running over the bed, meowing at the mosquitoes and generally not letting us sleep.

Needless to say, when we got up at 6.15am, I was not in a happy place. At 7am, my folks, Gogo and I climbed into my parents' double-cab bakkie (pick-up) and started the trek to Ladysmith. We stopped for breakfast along the way and then met up with the furniture truck at Van Reenen's Pass. We reduced speed so that it could follow us to Gogo's new house.

The house is gorgeous. I am so proud of her and glad that when I'm missing her I'll be able to picture her there. Family members and friends gathered around to help unload the truck, which took all of 20 minutes. I snapped photos and followed Gogo on a tour of the house and garden area (not yet planted because there's currently no fence and the goats will eat anything green within minutes) and listened to her plans.

Her sister's daughter died last year, leaving five children behind. Gogo's lazy sister, Florence, has done nothing to help them, so Gogo has met with social workers to arrange food and clothing, and plans to build a small traditional house for the children on her property so that she can care for them. She's incredible.

Then it was time to say goodbye. 25 years of knowing someone and you have five minutes to say farewell without knowing when you'll next see them. Somehow unfair.

I waited my turn, wanting to be last, because I knew I would need silent time in the car to stop crying afterwards.

How do you tell someone with words about the impact she's made on your life or how knowing her has made you a better person? How do you say 25 years' worth of thank yous, I love yous and goodbye all at once?

I don't think I did a very good job. But we cried together, with her laughing even as she held back tears, and hugged each other tightly. And then I got back in the car and waved out the window as she and her family grew smaller and smaller as the distance grew. As we pulled back onto the highway, I sent her a text message from my phone:

Gogo, I love you and I am so proud of you in your beautiful new house. I hope I see you again soon! I will miss you.

We eventually arrived in Durban at about 2.30 and visited the site where my folks are building their retirement home. It's now half a house and things are moving quickly. The plans have been altered so many times because of city council regulations changing and the house is no longer what they originally wanted, but it's looking good nevertheless.

After that, TSC watched the rugby on TV while I snoozed at the B&B. Then we went out for a meal at Musgrave Centre, which brought back floods of school memories. TSC and I watched Shadowlands, a 1993 movie with Anthony Hopkins and Debra Winger, which we both enjoyed.

On Sunday we had breakfast at the B&B and set off on the road again. We stopped in Howick to see my granddad and Lilly for tea. After that it was back in the car again. We continued for what felt like forever, punctuating our journey with a stop to pick up drinks and then, much later, at about 5pm, a stop in some dodgey corner of Benoni for suspect Chinese food. When we eventually arrived in Pretoria, TSC and I packed up the cats and our bags and got into our own car to drive back to Joburg.

This morning I feel like it should be Friday. I always forget how exhausting doing nothing for hours on end while stuck in a car can be.

Have a good week, all.

My amazing Gogo

Our family has been blessed to have to most amazing live-in domestic worker since just before I was born. Her name is Evelyn, but my brother and I have always known her as Gogo (the Zulu word for grandmother).

She first knocked on my parents' door when they were living in Ladysmith, a small town in KwaZulu-Natal. She was looking for work as her employer at the time was abusive. My mom couldn't believe how little money she was asking for to work fulltime, and how badly her employers treated her.

My parents took her in and were impressed with her work and willingness. When they moved back to Johannesburg a few years later (I was just a baby), she decided to move with them. While my mom worked fulltime at the Johanneburg General Hospital (she's a GP), Gogo looked after me, carrying me on her back like a Zulu baby and teaching me Zulu songs and stories. At one point, I knew more Zulu than I did English.

When my brother was born very, very sick, Gogo was invaluable in keeping things running at home while my parents stressed about operations and hospital bills. She would keep me entertained for hours, letting me "help" her with her cleaning the house while we sang together and she re-cleaned the bits I'd done ;-)

As my brother grew older, she did the same with him - carried him on her back, tickled him into fits of laughter and sang to him in Zulu. I remember him telling my mom when he was about four that he was going to marry Gogo when he grew up.

I have such fond memories of Gogo from different stages of my life - how she would laugh at my brother as he tried to learn to kick the ball and fell on his bum because he was kicking with both feet at the same time. She has the most awesome laugh.

She would break up our sibling fights and shout at us when we'd been naughty. We would cry for disappointing her and she would pick us up, hold us to her ample chest and hum soothing songs to us until we were smiling again.

She's a champion knitter and used to knit the squares for me that I was given as homework for school in about 10 minutes flat, or patiently unravel my uneven scarves to fix all the stitches I'd dropped. When my parents bought her a knitting machine for Christmas, she turned her talent into a business, knitting school jerseys and taking orders for all kinds of knitted wear.

Every birthday, my mom and I would get a hand-crocheted or knitted item. She worked a whole year to make a beautiful crocheted bed cover for my folks and a dining room table overlay for my mom's enormous 10-seater table that's been lugged from house to house with us for as long as I can remember. I had the most beautiful knitted clothes for my dolls from Gogo and my Gran, and even had miniature crocheted handbags that made me feel all grown up. I remember when we were renting a house in Dunvegan, Johannesburg, how she carefully built me a mini washing line with a few loose bricks and a string of purple yarn so that I could imitate her doing the laundry - washing my dolls' clothes and hanging them on the line to dry.

While my mom instilled a love of plants in me, Gogo taught me to value the veggie patch. At each house we lived in, she would cultivate potatoes, marogo (a plant that many people think of as a weed, which is a brilliant spinach substitute), mielies (corn) and whatever other veggies would grow well wherever we were living at the time (she moved with us from Ladysmith to Joburg to Durban to Pretoria... she said she'd move anywhere with my family except overseas).

As I grew older, I began to feel guilty about the fact that she was living so far from her own family (she and her husband split many years ago, but she has children and now granchildren to think about).

One day, I had decided to give her a pedicure and was in her flat painting her toenails when I brought it up. She laughed and said that she was very happy with us. I asked if she didn't miss her home. She said yes, sometimes she did, "But Mommy and Daddy (she always refers to my folks this way when she's talking to my brother or me) are good to me. I have a nice house here, friends, food, money... I get to send money home for my children and I go on holiday and see them. And when they get too much, I come back again." All of this punctuated with hearty laughter.

On occasion over the years, some of her children have visited us. They are all older than me, but I loved meeting them. I remember being amazed when Elsie, one of the older kids, made me a mini Zulu broom out of long grass prettily woven with coloured thread at the top and shyly handed it over. I treasured it for years.

Now that Gogo has two grandchildren, she makes sure to bring us new photos after every holiday to show us how they've grown. She is a good soul and the glue that keeps her family together. She organises jobs (often with my mom's help) for sons, nephews and cousins, mediates family arguments over the phone, picks up the slack in her lazy sister's family and oversees all finances. When her ancient grandmother died recently, she went home and put together the funeral and made sure everyone behaved themselves.

She must be in her early 60s now, although she looks like she's in her late 40s, and last year she told my mom she's building a new house in Ladysmith. We've visited her home before to drop off furniture my parents had given her, and at the time she had three long, skinny houses with sheet metal roofs and the traditional mud walls. But her new house is brick and mortar with roof tiles and framed windows and she's extremely proud of it. Her sister is so jealous that she's apparently stopped speaking to her.

Gogo has been wise with her money and savings, as well as clever in her entrepreneurial ventures, and she's now the talk of the neighbourhood in Ladysmith with her big, fancy house. I'm proud of her and how she has supported her family, but I'm also really sad now because she's retiring this month.

When she told my mom about her new house, she asked when she could retire. My mom said whenever she was ready, so Gogo asked if she could finish last year, work this year, and then when her house is ready, retire.

My parents don't actually need a fulltime or live-in maid anymore - I'm not at home (and I make a big part of the mess), my mom is no longer working and my brother will move out (into Gogo's flat) soon, so they were really keeping Gogo on until she was ready to finish up, so since Gogo's request they've starting getting things in order for her.

The new house in Ladysmith is done now, except the tiling. My parents have bought the tiles Gogo wanted as a Christmas and retirement present and put a large lump sum into a bank account for her pension. They said she can have all the furniture from the flat, so this weekend, my dad has hired a truck and we are going to load up the furniture (which is quite a bit - the double bed, microwave, lounge suite, mini-stove, two eating tables, six chairs, the coffee tables, bedside tables etc...) and drive through to Ladysmith on Saturday morning.

I'm getting all teary thinking about it. Gogo has been such a large part of my life since I was born and I can't bear the thought of her not being around to talk to, hug, swap veggies with, laugh at my brother's antics...

But I'm glad that I'll have the chance to see her new home in all its glory and to see her homecoming. And I know it's not goodbye. She has a cell phone so I can call her and we can SMS each other, and she has told me that when I have a baby she will come to stay with me for three weeks to look after me (but we all know that's not in my immediate plan).

But it's still the end of an era and it saddens me no end. I am thrilled for her that she will be able to retire and enjoy having her beautiful house where she can spoil her grandkids and plant another veggie garden, but I will miss her so, so much. This has come so much faster than I was expecting.

I am so blessed to have had her in my life for 25 years. I will miss seeing her so often.