Unwanted guests on my journey

Do you remember the moment when your life changed? Perhaps when you met the love of your life or listened to a doctor pronounce bad news? The knock on the door in the middle of the night? Moments that can never be reversed. Mine was the death of my eldest daughter. Suddenly everything changed and I opened the door of my life to a gaggle of ghastly guests. First was the Guilt. What type of mother was I to let my daughter die? Then in waltzed What If. And later there was Why Me and so it continued. Those unwanted guests have stayed throughout my life and sometimes invited their friends to come and party in my head. My husband and I had different ideas of how to grieve and we struggled to find a way to understand each other. I don't make friends easily and there were certainly no friends close enough that I could pop around and say "Hey, can I sit here and cry for an hour without judgment?" I became a member of a club that no one wants to join, the club of mothers whose children have died before them. I would plaster on a smile and go out into the world and people would say "Gee you are handling your daughter's death so well. I don't think I could do what you do." Yeah right? My doctor, Rex, had told me to fall pregnant before my daughter died. He said it would keep me sane and give me something positive to focus on. And I did as I was told. My mother-in-law went to a fortune teller and informed me that I would do something stupid and kill the child I carried. Wow, that cracked the door wide open for a whole slew of mental health issues and my anxiety level was horrendous. How on earth my husband remained married to me is a mystery. I was more than crazy, I was 'dance under the moon naked' crazy. Two daughters later and my mind was settling down to relative peace when my grandmother died. Here I was with 4 young children, two of which were autistic, and I hadn't been to visit my grandmother for a while. And I couldn't attend her funeral. Four little children, two-hour drive, and my husband's boss wouldn't give him time off to come with me .... hell no. So, a month after my youngest child was born I was back into the pit of guilt and self-loathing. What type of granddaughter was I that I couldn't even find a way to honour my grandmother? Yeah right, it's all about me, me, me. Would you like some cheese and crackers with that whine? Someone told me that I was the most normal person they knew. Really? Do I mask my feelings so well that I can go out in public and not show the real me? But isn't that real life for most of us? I was 29 years old when my last child was born and my grandmother died and now I am 70 years of age. Surely somewhere in those intervening years, I should have learnt to cope? And yes I have. But those unwanted guests lurk in dark corners of my life and at odd moments, will jump out and attack me. The anniversaries of deaths, Christmases and special events. So, if I act crazy, give me some slack, it will be Guilt or What if that is stomping on my good mood and causing me to react this way? The night before my birthday I dreamed that I was yelling at my dead husband and berating him for not being with me for this occasion. As if he had a choice? The family dinner at a restaurant was lovely and I did enjoy spending time with them all. And the painting activity the next day was great and yet I feel guilty for 'forcing family fun time' on my kids. How dare I expect them to put their lives on hold to honour me? I told you, crazy is my middle name. But now I can blame it on old age. I'm officially allowed to go doo lally and people will say, "Oh she's eccentric and a real character." Thank you 'age', I will accept the accommodations you have given me to be a little bit weird.

There is a story about a king in Mali called Abubakari II who travelled to America in 1311. He gathered shipbuilders from all over his country and set them to build boats that could sail across the sea. He asked them to choose different designs so that if one style sank, then the other ones might succeed. 200 ships filled with enough food for two years set sail. He told his commanders to not return until they had reached the end of the world or until they ran out of food and water. There was gold from Africa on the ships in case they found somewhere to trade. Only one ship returned with the story that the other 199 had disappeared in the midst of the ocean. Abubakari was not to be thwarted and he built a bigger armada of 2,000 ships and decided he would command them himself. The fleet sailed down the Senegal river and never returned. Vanished into the abyss of oceans and no one knows for sure what really happened. But the story goes that Columbus found gold-tipped spears when he arrived in the Americas and he sent some back to Spain. There it was discovered that it had originated in Africa. But that is not the truth. Not quite the whole truth. The gold-tipped spears that Columbus sent back to Spain could not be definitively proved to be from Africa, just that they were identical to spears from Guinea (in Africa) The metallurgy was the same ratio of gold, silver and copper as used in Africa. The people in Haiti told stories of a large group of ships that had arrived from the South and the ships were filled with black people. Could this be the lost armada of Abubakari? My father would often speak of how ships used gold as ballast in the keel to stabilize the boats. Can you imagine how much gold would be needed to fill firstly, the 200 ships and then the second 2000? Oh my goodness me. That boggles the brain. Somewhere in the depths of the oceans or on a deserted island lie the hulls of those ships waiting to be discovered. But ah, Columbus wrote no such comment about spears and ships filled with black people. That is a theory by Ivan Van Sertima. He was a Guyanese born professor of Africana studies. And it is possible that he was drawing on stories from his childhood. The truth lies somewhere between

oral histories and scientific facts. But it's a fascinating idea of voyages of discovery long before Columbus and his claim to have discovered America.

Mostert's Mill in Cape Town was built in 1796. In 1924 my grandmother wandered down the road pushing my uncle in the pram and stopped for a moment to enjoy the sight of the four sails gently moving in the wind. She loved the history and the beauty of the area. The Liesbeeck river gently flowing with Willow trees dipping their branches in the water. Actually, knowing the Cape wind, that might not have been a gentle movement at all. Those winds can knock a person over and drag them down the road at times. But obviously my grandmother did not take her child out in bad weather. My husband, on the other hand, would sometimes cart his toolbox full of heavy tools with him as he went to work and back, with the sole purpose of anchoring himself to the ground. It allowed one hand free to grab onto poles and doorways as he struggled up the hill from the station to where he worked at Stanley Porter. He was an apprentice mechanic 6 foot 2 inches tall and 120 lbs light. Skinny doesn't even come close to his physique. Stanley Port was a repair workshop and their primary vehicle of repair was Mercedes Benz and then, next door was Stuttafords Furniture warehouse in Buitengracht street. The street was the original western border of the city and in 1771 slaves dug a street canal, which is where the street and area got its name. (Translated it means Outer-canal street) There were narrow channels that supplied the settlement with sweet water to drink. The Khoisan people called the river the Camissa ... no doubt with a few clicks included. And yes, the river still runs under the streets of the city. Okay, enough of wandering through Cape Town history. Why am I telling you all this? Well, my daughter and I were talking about the movie 'District 9' that her students will be analysing next year. And all that brought up these memories of my life in the Cape and the fact that the movie was directed by Neill Blomkamp, who is a distant relative of the Pike family. Yadda yadda yadda, well at times I do like to wander down memory lane and pretend I'm that naive 18-year-old girl with stars in her eyes and the life was my oyster. I had dreams and goals and yup, none of them came true. But I'm not unhappy with what life dished up for me. I wouldn't go back to Africa, that is all in the past and it does me no good to dwell on things that cannot be. One thing I have discovered is that looking behind us will only give us a stiff neck and oh dear, sometimes my neck gets really sore. I suffer from maudlin memory disease where I romanticise the past and remember the good times but never the bad. Okay, sometimes the bad creeps in. After all, I do have those unwanted guests still cluttering up the couches in my life.