Picture it ... because I did ...
Roughly on the seven kilometre mark a runner, light and effortlessly makes her way into the creek, Rose's Creek. It's late evening, the light is just managing to still push through the canopy of overhead trees and touch the creek in such beauty that runner pauses, crouches, marvels up and down, thinking: this is why we moved out of Jo'burg.
She splashes her face with the cold creek water and then in a mad moment slakes her thirst before flitting up the mountain trail filled with the sense of embodying the very essence of a forest nymph.
An hour later she's doubled over the toilet purging her body from the unthinkable, cloying bug ingested in that beautiful creek.
I will not let myself imagine what is happening above said creek and what I could possibly have swollowed.
I was in the bath with my daughter when Rosecreekious set in and I started turning green and salivating copiously. But what to do? Mom's can't get sick. One in the bath, one in the shower, no soap applied as yet, warning orders to give: 5 minutes, then you need to tidy up and switch the shower off. Then first try and catch 2-year-old girl who thinks this is play time and hiding and running away from mom while naked and wet is a fabulous idea. Ten minutes later the shower is full blast and a second warning order issued as little one swept up and now screaming because, really, mom, you are such a party-pooper.
Then drying off, then greasing up (my children are very dry). then jarmmies, the lengthy rigmarole of kissing and 'ugging all and sundry goodnight, then bottle, lights out, jarmmies again, into bed, out of bed to choose a book, back into bed ...
"...ahhh, you start reading (he's four, can't) mom will back in a mo."
Thank goodness for helpful, if somewhat crippled husband.
So much for the picture of health and light footedness.
Not right that we can't run in the mountains and drink from its creeks.
Wednesday 22 October 2014
Monday 20 October 2014
The Warrioring Crusader and the Grinch that stole Christmas
As parents my husband and I, at this very moment, are fielding everything from dry nights for our eldest to potty training for our youngest, making the mammoth decision on selecting a primary school and answering the endless stream of mind-numbing questions. This is our favourite from the weekend: Can a lions eat rocks?
Then there's the endless stream of instructions, cautions, requests, beratings and, yes, commands, raising of voices, shouting and more recently patient discussions on why you can't eat Niknaks for breakfast, why you shouldn't blast your sister with the hosepipe and why we don't drink bath water.
In all this it would be quite nice to have an hour to yourself. I'm very clear on that: "This is mommy's weekend too." Of course daddy has to pick up the extra slack then but it's that or mommy goes to mad.
As an aside both my children have come up with songs that repeat the word mommy an astonishing number of times. One is simply: "mommy, mommy, mommy." to the tune of nah, nah-nah, nah, nah.
Yes, by the end of the day you wish you were hearing impaired and yes, I often go to bed at night saying sternly to myself: "I will not smack the children tomorrow." And I wake up begging for patience as they fight, over me, first thing in the morning, jostling for territory on the bed.
Oh and we both have jobs, you know, to earn a living to pay for that incredible primary school and the luxury I have of being a mom from midday onward.
This is daily parenthood. Hovering like an ominous cloud over all this, that we try our best to ignore, are the BIGGIES: peer pressure, bullying, drugs, teenage sex ...
But I absolutely love all of it. Every single moment and I would not trade a single refrain of "mommy, mommy, mommy" for anything in the world. My heart bursts with love and pride and absolute amazement every time I look at them.
So when faced with the decision on whether or not to include a family member for Christmas who has days before returned from administering to the Ebola-infected masses in West Africa how is it that we, having obviously said no, stole Christmas?
A better plan would be to offer your medical services in a refugee hospital in Syria or Iraq, that way you either come back, or you don't. Sniper bullets have no incubation period.
Humans are inherently afraid of what we do not know or understand.
Insanely, a return from a European city stricken by a flu epidemic would have precluded our Grinch-like behaviour. But then we know flu, don't we: it is the single biggest annual killer.
Go figure.
Then there's the endless stream of instructions, cautions, requests, beratings and, yes, commands, raising of voices, shouting and more recently patient discussions on why you can't eat Niknaks for breakfast, why you shouldn't blast your sister with the hosepipe and why we don't drink bath water.
In all this it would be quite nice to have an hour to yourself. I'm very clear on that: "This is mommy's weekend too." Of course daddy has to pick up the extra slack then but it's that or mommy goes to mad.
As an aside both my children have come up with songs that repeat the word mommy an astonishing number of times. One is simply: "mommy, mommy, mommy." to the tune of nah, nah-nah, nah, nah.
Yes, by the end of the day you wish you were hearing impaired and yes, I often go to bed at night saying sternly to myself: "I will not smack the children tomorrow." And I wake up begging for patience as they fight, over me, first thing in the morning, jostling for territory on the bed.
Oh and we both have jobs, you know, to earn a living to pay for that incredible primary school and the luxury I have of being a mom from midday onward.
This is daily parenthood. Hovering like an ominous cloud over all this, that we try our best to ignore, are the BIGGIES: peer pressure, bullying, drugs, teenage sex ...
But I absolutely love all of it. Every single moment and I would not trade a single refrain of "mommy, mommy, mommy" for anything in the world. My heart bursts with love and pride and absolute amazement every time I look at them.
So when faced with the decision on whether or not to include a family member for Christmas who has days before returned from administering to the Ebola-infected masses in West Africa how is it that we, having obviously said no, stole Christmas?
A better plan would be to offer your medical services in a refugee hospital in Syria or Iraq, that way you either come back, or you don't. Sniper bullets have no incubation period.
Humans are inherently afraid of what we do not know or understand.
Insanely, a return from a European city stricken by a flu epidemic would have precluded our Grinch-like behaviour. But then we know flu, don't we: it is the single biggest annual killer.
Go figure.
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