First Base

High school was the time of giggling girls and post-dance (I was in boarding school) note comparisons on who got to First Base: The Kiss (or was it holding hands?) As I remember it, girls would still admit to reaching Second Base: The Fondle, hearts a-flutter to a kiss and a wondering hand (bums and boobs only). Third Base: Heavy Petting (just writing that makes me feel weird) was only whispered among best friends, to the shock and disbelief of said friend with a word of caution, or a concealed low-key jealousy. Thereafter you get slapped with the Scarlet Letter: S. Slut.

Then you grown up and First and Second Base are fun but brief and Third and Fourth morph into one and next thing you've reproduced and all Bases are off.

In a big city I stayed below the radar and enjoyed my anonymity; a handful of good, like-minded friends was what I needed and had. Then to the super-small town where there are only a handful of like-minded people you gratefully seek each other out and that's that, you've got mates.

Now increase the size of the town, change countries and continents, skip through the first two months of family, fun and outings, plunge into the third set on establishing a routine, succeed and then find yourself somewhat adrift in the fourth. What's missing?

Friends. Proper ones. Not the ones you wave to across the field and call a "Hiya" to and then, "Alright?" when closer. No. Like-minded people, roughly your age that you can natter with over a cuppa. This is not a simple matter. All the old: how many times should I phone (now inbox) before I look desperate? Maybe she only said we should "do this again" because that's what people say but didn't really mean it? Maybe my sister was right when she said English people don't invite you into their homes? How long should I wait for a response before I suggest a cuppa again? Do they even say play date here? Maybe I came on too strong, too South African?

So when a fellow runner, with whom I chat easily, is my age and has kids the same age as mine responded favourably to my understated hint at possibly getting together – using all the words that would give her a get-out-of-jail-free card: maybe, possible, time permitting – all the above came to mind.

Then score, First Base – and far more enjoyable than the inexperienced super-gob graunch (awful word) of the 14 year old boy at the school fence. Plans are made, the house is found, the front door is knocked on ... the front door is knocked on, a moment of panic, she's forgotten ... a noise from inside, a voice getting closer ... exhale ... "Hi."

Legs tucked under us on the couch, coffee cups in hand we chatted easily. I should have left earlier, I had work to do, but I was having fun. Then the inevitable, "I really must go." The latter brings with it the anxiety of what's to come ... he's walked you back to your school, you held hands, then you arrive at the gate ... in this case the front door and the HUG. I love a good, strong hug but only with people I know very, very well, so when she steps forward, arms opening, there it is, Second Base, staring at me ... other couples are arriving thick and fast at the gate, there's a lot of awkward pausing, pressure from those behind ... I take a breath and literally embrace the moment, albeit a little A-frame.

Don't worry AL, I won't hold your hand but I have made a friend. A proper one.

Lumpy mums and thyrotoxic dads

So we've relocated and are doing our best to settle (the thousand-meaning word). An important step is school, very important, not the a, b, c's and one, two, threes, it's all about mom, the screwdriver and the plastic sheeting waiting on the kitchen floor.
We finally parted company after nine weeks of 24/7; SA winter holidays run directly into the start of UK summer holidays. But we were all still alive, talking to each other and even snuggling in the morning.
After leaving one at school and one at playgroup I suddenly felt like a deer in the headlights, I wanted then back ... and then I came to my senses, tootled off home for plunge coffee and more wondering what to do with myself.
School's a hit until I'm hit with a birthday party invitation. Grossly unfair – day three: don't know the boy, don't know the parents and will need SatNav to find venue. I rearrange my attitude: a party is good, it's an opportunity for our son to make friends, to socialize, so I message the mom and ask what her darling is 'into'. "Spiderman, or anyfing Marvel." I twitch, roll my shoulders and then, roll them again; but I'm being open-friendly-receptive mum.
I find the bus and the toy shop. I ask, but no Spiderman, no Batman no, wait a second, we have a puzzle. Excellent, checks both my boxes (educational and Marvel) plus it's £5 and I have a £4 voucher. Wrapping paper was £3.50.
All very exciting, our son has chosen his outfit himself and is looking suave. We arrive, as one does, to find a gargantuan Spiderman jumping castle in the community hall and spot the birthday boy, who spots us, runs up, snatches his gift and runs away. The mum comes over, "Sorry, he's really shy." But my mind had moved on, uncommon is this type of scenario.
You see, I have found the most intriguing species, it is not concerned with its shape or size, only with the size of the garment it is wearing. If it wears an 8 it must therefore be an 8. Hence, this species spends a considerable amount of time, as it pauses or stops in its perambulations in pulling UP the bottom garment and then pulling DOWN the top garment, over what is frighteningly common, a large expanse of not-insignificant lumpy posterior. The top garment is in itself note worthy. Thin shoulder straps, low necklines, stretchy fabric and the requisite size 8. By the laws of science if the pulled down to cover one area, it must reveal another.
That was the mum; and the dad seemed like a pretty bulk standard, "Yea, Yea!" kinda guy so I took my seat along the wall and smiled to my left and right. On my right was a nice mum who was timing her party shift. She does half, her husband does half. He came in reeking of the nicotine he needs to get him through, I can't say if it was the two at a time fags or a medical condition but his eyes bulged and conversation was tricky, much like conversation with my husband, you start talking and just at the point when you don't want to have to say it again, they turn and say, "I'm sorry, what?"
So I turned to my left. Safer ground, women. A kind, friendly mum introduces herself and me and I learn who their children are; the most precocious little girl belongs to the mum trying to look like Maria Carey, her bum wins out though and there's a girl who looks just like Abigail Breslin in the role of Little Miss Sunshine.
Time is ticking by and I'm starting to lean ever closer to the right to imbibe a little nicotine when the left-hand mum say, "Your son's very tall for his age. Five is it?" I say yes and she says, "Well, you're quite tall."
Bless her, not for a minute did she assume that he is adopted. She made no assumption.
Their bums may be lumpy, they may be tattooed from head to foot with blue hair (and they really are) but her first impression, whether conscious or not, was that he was my biological child. And why wouldn't she? My husband wasn't there.
So perhaps I need to stop running and spend more time on the couch watching Eastenders eating junk.

Babying your 'babies'

I have lived in England for 25 days. England is England, I've been here before, I know what it looks like and yes, settling here is not quite the same as visiting, mostly because when you're on holiday you don't need home insurance and landline, broadband, a school and furniture, and you don't need to teach your children that it is not sensible or acceptable to walk into strangers' houses, go upstairs and look around.

People have asked what I see as the biggest difference between South Africa and here and I usually say: Everything. But something has come to my alarming notice and can certainly be placed squarely in the Incomparable Box.

In Forest Hill, London we visited the Horniman Museum. The kids were interested and gave the displays all the attention a five- and two-and-a-half-year-old can muster until their stomachs roar louder than the stuffed walrus. So we queue for a toasted sarmie (I refuse to call it a sarnies) and some coffee. While waiting and then sipping my coffee I was exposed to the most bizarre and utterly hideous scene. At the opposite table a dad and two kids (minimum 6 and 4 but more likely 7 and 5) arrive with their food and drink. Dad is carrying everything; he dumps it on the table and tells the children in a I'm-trying-to-teach-a-Pekingese-English tone to wait while he goes to get the ... high chairs.

Once stuffed into said chairs he then proceeds to open the wrapping on the straws and put it in the foil juice hole, unwrap their sandwiches and cut them into small pieces; they hardly ate a morsel, probably no space due to the pressure of the cross bar on their stomachs or perhaps they felt ill at the sight of it as I did. Then, "now what are we going to have as our special treat for daddy's day out? And remember if we ask for it we must eat it." We? I lost count of the number of times he told them to behave as he went to secure 'our' brownies. How could they misbehave, they couldn't move.

Since then I have made a study of the British 'baby'. In Cheltenham last Saturday I spied a large leg protruding from a stroller, I peeked in and to my horror found a child of school-leaving age staring back. Parents are laden with baby bags and bottles for kids nearing ten and eleven. Bottles hang from the mouths not of babes but of brutes.

Today started rainy so I took my two, five and almost three, to one of those hideous hellholes termed 'multi-leveled soft play' barns filled with screaming children and bustling adults. Regarding the British obsession with Health and Safety I can safely say that the number of adults sitting in the balls basin below a slide, or crouching through tunnels and helping children up child-sized steps and then reaching down for them and hauling them up half-a-meter, was a safety hazard. An alarming, gob-smacking hazard. How will these children ever learn to be confident, and God forbid take a risk, when a parent is forever THERE, aiding, assisting and cautioning.

Comparatively my kids are feral and I'm a negligent mum; I don't react unless the crying or screaming reaches a certain decibel or continues for longer then it takes me to finish my thought (long). A mum called out that a little girl was crying looking around for the mum, no response. Some time later she saw me with my daughter and pointedly remarked, "It was your little girl crying up there." To which I replied, "She seems fine to me." And she was, she was already halfway across the room yelling for her brother.

Give me wild over pampered any day and as they say, twice on Sundays.

Singing Like a Bird

After years of dithering my husband and I made the decision to relocate; lots of reasons, none of them relevant to this blog. Once we set the ball rolling everything just fell into place, one after the other, after the other after the other after the other ... gathering such momentum that at times it was difficult keeping up. One of those things is that my husband was offered a great job starting 1 July.

We're organized, bordering on, okay! totally OCD; so before he left I started selling things on FaceBook groups, we chose our favourite books and started packing up; or rather piling up. The freight company pack to ensure you're not shipping across your morning stash of 'mommy's little helpers', the pellet gun for noisy neighbours or my still-sealed bottle of ground coriander.

In all this organized chaos though we have left the children's rooms relatively untouched in order not to disrupt their little worlds too far in advance. In fact my husband has taken across their second set of linen – Dora and Thomas – to make up their rooms there to ensure continuity.

We didn't make a big scene at the airport – kiss, hug, love you dad, see you soon. We have a glass in the kitchen with a photo of dad squashed at the bottom ala Cabbage Patch Kid and exactly the amount of smarties in it as the number of sleeps til they see their dad. Pats on the back, I'm an amazing mom, we're amazing parents and of course I can manage five weeks on my own with them, the house, packing and a job.

Over and over and over again I repeated the serenity prayer this morning in order not to actually do my daughter (almost three) bodily harm. From the moment her dad, her special, her favourite, her everything, closed the car door at the airport she thought: Game On Mom – in a quavering Chucky sort of tone.

She's on a deliberate go-slow, a lobotomized incapability of following the simplest instruction and 100% hearing impaired. But that's not the worst, she has developed the most torturous whine. It's soft, but loud enough to jack-hammer against my ear drum, pained in a desperately plaintive, I'm all alone in the world and no one cares sort of way and REPETITIVE.

itchy itchy itchy itchy itchy itchy itchy itchy itchy itchy itchy itchy itchy itchy itchy itchy itchy itchy itchy itchy itchy itchy itchy itchy itchy itchy itchy itchy itchy itchy itchy itchy ...

bobil toast bobil toast bobil toast bobil toast bobil toast bobil toast bobil toast bobil toast bobil toast bobil toast bobil toast bobil toast bobil toast bobil toast bobil toast ...

big bear big bear big bear big bear big bear big bear big bear big bear big bear big bear big bear big bear big bear big bear big bear big bear big bear big bear big bear big bear big bear big bear big bear big bear big bear big bear big bear ...

And boy does she have stamina. Endurance that would put Iron Men to shame, hour upon hour she can go on with this mantra.

Babies crying and the theme song to Barney played over and over are actual forms of torture used today in war to get captives to talk. In between other heinous methods. But when their tormentors leave they flip the "We're a happy family ..." switch.

Well little girl, a round of applause – no electrodes on sensitive body parts, no pliers (I lost all my toenails in a recent ultra anyway) – you broke me, I'll do it, what do you want to know? My phone number, banks account number, password to every online site I'm registered with ...
... anything, I'll sing ... like a bird.

Eco-Terrorists

It's bizarre how the lens through which we see things changes. As a child you relentlessly pursue anything that slithers, crawls, flies or hops with total disregard for the animal in question. As an adult we carefully place a tupperware over a wayward spider, slide the lid underneath and then through it tupperware and all, skin crawling outside. Sitting on the stoep we'll revel in the beauty of an African monarch butterfly, whimsically following its flight path ...
... followed closely by two children with nets in their hands and danger in their eyes. My immediate reaction is horror; I have to stop myself from shouting at them and lecturing them on how the torture of small defenseless animals can lead to life of sociopathic behaviour. After a deep breathe I realize a) they'll never catch it and b) I did it too (and I never caught one).
Shamefully though I must admit to catching what I call Rose beetles. Large, at least an inch long, bright yellow beetles with black spots. We'd tie cotton to their back leg and 'fly' them. What's amazing though is that I had no problem taking them off the bush, handling them, or rather manhandling them to tie on the cotton, but if one flies toward me now I recoil.
So it's a kids' thing and this is how they explore their world. Before my son had the nerve to explore it himself he would pull me by my index finger all the way to the object of his interested and then touch it with MY finger. I complied but their were times when it was just too gross.
Over the past couple of years I have felt dreadfully sorry for many Shongololos (centipedes). My son has build them extravagant homes thoughtfully equipped with kitchen and garage, shoved them in and then shoved them in again when they chose not to move in.
You can just imagine then their delight (my daughter has embraced the pastime too) at being let loose in a campsite in the Kruger National Park.
Dung beetles were it. They pursued their frenetic activity with the same dedication and conscientious spirit as the beetles which can dispatch a mound of elephant dung in a matter of minutes. They prodded and poked, built barricades and obstacle courses for an insect sadly not equipped with the capacity for either reason or logic.
There's a significant difference though between the Small Five and the Big Five: we don't trifle with elephants. Keep the windows closed and avoid antagonizing herds of pachyderms.
Our daughter is going through a mind-numbingly enthusiastic elephant phase, or EFANT! Bumping along a back road we came across an elephant in the road. We cautioned the kids to whisper as we could see significant movement in the bush to the left (turned out to be six in all). We'd seen a couple of lone males in the past two days but the penny hadn't quite dropped for her that these were indeed the living, breathing, incarnation of her obsession. Just then, with the possibility of a mother and calf separation the penny crashed in recognition, she opened the window and pointing madly began yelling: "EFANT! EFANT! EFANT!" Leaping around the back seat, opening the other window and continuing her booming welcome to elephants a mere five meters from the car.
(No worries re climbing over her brother, game viewing turned out not to be his thing and he had taken to squeezing himself behind the passenger seat singing Gungnam style.)
This morning an outside guestroom was being cleaned. Gazing at nothing, coffee in hand, I noticed something flying through the air, across the stoep and into the flowerbed below.
It turned out our housekeeper was dispatching frogs from the room, it also turned out that our dogs are much like children.

Things you never thought you'd say, or hear

Firstly, welcome to my single Russian reader! здравствуйте (I truly hope I haven't said "I like to eat small children for dinner").

This is an interactive blog, there are things we have all said to our children and heard from them that have made us howl with laughter, left us gobsmacked or just plain done our heads trying to fathom how on earth they came up with that. So please comment and add your most outrageous remarks, I'll put them together and we can all feel sane in the knowledge that it's not just us. Universal madness is so pacifying.

My all-time favourites:

1. Ellie, put down that rhino!
[Ellie is the Jack Russel and the rhino was of course small and plastic. He lost a leg. Be grateful for small mercies, the giraffe his head. She took exception to these small benign creatures.]

2. To my daughter: Stop eating the wall!
[Sure the plaster on the low verandah wall is coming adrift but I have no idea where her fondness for brick and mortar came from. I also have no explanation for this but thankfully she has stopped eating our house.]

3. Don't pick your teeth with that aeroplane.
[To my son. That being the operative word, as opposed to any other aeroplane.]

4. To my daughter: Take that eye out your nose!
[At which point she rammed her little finger even higher up her nose. Said eye was one of those decorative crafty types with the moving part inside. Needless to say we had to pin her down and extract it with tweesers.]

My daughter has yet to come up with some true pearls, her age has its limitations, but from my son on berating him for not listening and asking if he actually had ears and what they are for he replied, in all seriousness:

"I'm saving them for emergencies."
[He's four.]

Extreme Tantrums

We finally quit the city and found not just a mountain but an entire range as the backdrop to our historic house; no way were were raising our children in the city. (See http://kerrincocks.blogspot.com/2015/01/opting-out-firsts-in-free-state.html) for an idea of the months of house, town and province hunting that went into this final move.
For a long time people asked us if we had settled in to small town living and our answer was always a very definite yes. It wasn't a question of settling in here but rather, we realized after a few restless months, getting Jo'burg out of your system. You're so accustomed to the Go-Go-Go that you take it with you wherever you  ... well, Go.
But we did settle in and finally breathed out the last of the city.
"Do you ever regret your decision?" People ask. "No." For so many reasons, a major one is the children.
We now have two.
The only time they are inside is if it's raining, if they're eating, sleeping, bathing or watching Pet Patrol. The house isn't small and we're blessed that they each has their own large bedroom and a trunk full of toys but they want out; the pool, the garden, their bikes, the mountains, exploring old mining adits, you name it, they're in, or at least my son is, our little girl is slightly less inclined to tread where even angels play.
My son and I have spent five hours hiking, scrambling up sheer rock faces that the Jack Russell needed help with searching for the source of a creek, we've climbed trees on Lone Tree Hill (perhaps there was only one when it was named), we've driven dinky cars over rockscapes, dragged bicycles over impossible mountain tracks and done a scary amount of rock climbing.
He's four.
I am endowed with the same adventurous spirit and the same energy levels and the same desire to see what's around the next bend, over the next rise and when you look again it would not be inconceivable for us to be in Swaziland. I even almost talk as much, but he wins hands down on that every time.
So when frustrations turn into tantrums and moods escalate out of proportion I recognize the need to release this negative energy. We are cut from the same cloth in this respect. When I'm snappy and short-tempered my husband will always suggest a run. So when he's all over the place, crying, throwing things and generally inconsolable and dare I say, hideous, we take to the mountains.
At first the suggestion is met with more crying and outbursts of reluctance, but I'm stubborn too and force on the right gear, throw some water bottles and a snack in a backpack and grab his hand (or wrist), still kicking and screaming and leave the building.
He loves to run. The first time I handled a tantrum in this way we ran up and down the streets, me next to him, silent, him wailing but running, me encouraging him to let it out: "Scream as much as you want." After a kilometer or so he simmered down but he's stubborn and wouldn't concede a victory to me so maintained a modicum of feigned anger and resentment.
We veered off the road and up a mountain track (his choice), as we began to explore even the anger abated. A sheer rock face a hundred meters or so behind the house stands sentinel to the mountains beyond (although there are obviously paths around and over it). The rock is pock marked and from the bottom looks an easy climb and he wanted to climb it.
The parent in me rose above the adventurer and I said I didn't think it was a good idea. His face clouded over and the adventurer and OMG I can't do the wailing anymore won out. So up we went. It's always halfway up or two hours into a gruelling hike that the dreadful realization of what an irresponsible mother I'm being sinks into me, it's a cold, hard dread.
We were almost at the top when the climb became impossible, he was overtly scared, I was covertly terrified. Two options ... we agreed on down. Fifteen minutes up and over an hour down and five minutes home.
His disposition? Sunny, cheerful, full of confidence, proud of his achievement and most importantly, happy.
(And he still loved him mom.)

Ching Chong Cha Cheat

Ching Chong Cha
Hick Hack Hock
Rock Paper Scissors
Which ever you choose to call it, hopefully not the latter – zero imagination – it is probably the one game you cannot cheat at. It's Ching Chong behind your back and on Cha you present your flat hand, fist or ... hang on a minute ...
In wanting to describe the placement of your fingers for scissors I realize it is the double-fingered, vulgarism of old, now discarded in favour of the single middle finger, but I digress. Peter Pointer and Toby Tall, with Tommy Thumb, Ruby Ring and Baby Small tucked in represent scissors.
So it's somewhere between 5.30 and 6.00am and neither my husband nor I can physically open our eyes let alone move a muscle so actions like nipping to the kitchen to warm a bottle, remove a dry nappy and pop her on the potty, respond cordially to the now ten-minute old plea of: "Can I have breakfast please?" Are just not possible.
Regardless of the night before, actually getting myself out of bed in the morning is a gargantuan task. My husband does it. Not because he's a morning person or because he finds it any easier, but because he knows I will outlast him.
In order to even make it (dressed with my teeth brushed) to the front door with the kids (dressed with their teeth brushed) and all the necessary apparel for their day, who swims on a Wednesday? I have to go to sleep, sleep, not bed, no later than 9.30, at a push 10pm, but then I'm risking throwing on yesterday's clothes to get out the door.
Before I had children I couldn't understand why my parents ate dinner so early. Now I know. Habit. Years of eating early so you can go to bed early so you can get up early.
Is it hideous to every now and then wish with every fibre for those precious Sunday mornings before you had kids?
Here's how bad it is:

• I caution my husband not to trawl for a movie on the tellie; it'll end too late.
• I talk myself into no longer liking a programme I've always enjoyed; it's a double bill and ends too late.
• Some one gave us the complete goodness-knows-how-many seasons of Breaking Bad over six months ago. We know we'll never just be able to watch a single episode each night, once we start it'll be full-on, "Just one more." It'll end too late. We've actually likened the commitment to having another child.
• We turn a DVD movie into a mini-series.
• Every day I promise myself I'm going to spend some time writing in the evening. I don't. I crawl guiltily across those broken promises into bed with my book making small groaning noises in appreciation of how good it feels to be lying down.

So our cheek's are plastered to our pillows, our daughter (legs too short to climb out of bed on her own and use the potty and developmental age too young to fetch and warm her own milk) has given up on calling "Maameee" and is now calling, "Daadee" and our son is now in the kitchen banging about with stools to reach the items necessary to make his own breakfast – enough to chill the core of any OCD parent – and I say: "Ching Chong Cha?"

Eyes closed on Ching Chong, we both manage to peer at the result, hands raised aloft on Cha .

Round one: I lose.

Round two: I win

Round three: In a do-or-die final I pull out my scissors and watch, aghast as his paper morphs into a rock!

Dere's Gold in Dem Dar Hills

The one thing no parenting book prepares you for is children's parties.
Family for tea and cake for his first birthday and, "Oh good heavens no party, he'll never even remember" for his second. At this stage we had not been to another child's party.
When he turned three we had. Or should I say I had, my husband would rather saw his arm off with a plastic spoon.
There are degrees of insanity at these parties, but I was in no doubt I had witnessed the full insanity thereof. For his third birthday his two besties came with their construction vehicles; we let them loose in what would become my veggie garden.
The next year I saw it all again. Parties that must take the moms weeks to prepare, the long, low table and little chairs. Each child's place has a beautifully made (I still have them, they're too perfect to throw away) goodie bag with the latest favourite TV show characters perfectly reproduced and stuffed, to my eternal horror, with sugar in equally well-crafted likenesses. And the cakes, good heavens, the cakes ...
Then there're the moms, encouraged to accompany their child who at least provide me with material for my blogs. It's all so perfect until the kids arrive; within five minutes it looks like a crime scene.
So when our son's fourth birthday came around I knew what I didn't want. No Disney theme, no low-slung table, no rot-your-teeth-just-looking-at-it goodie bag and NO MOMS.
The thought of entertaining them at home was also a non-starter so we took to the mountains; that is after all why we moved here. Since we live in one of the oldest gold mining towns in the country the mountains are pocked with old tunnels and excavation shafts.
The invite Specified old clothe,a headlight and no moms.My friends thought I was mad, taking what started out as six kids but ended up closer to 12 into the mountains on our own. I said, "Bye."
I have a commanding voice and before we left a few short, sharp instructions were issued to a group of seated, super excited kids.
Rule 1: The Jack Russell goes first, she will take care of anything untoward on the path or at least notify us thereof.
Rule 2: Any fighting, you get taken home.
Rule 3: We all have legs and we're all going to use them, no 'uppie'.
Rule 4: No pushing and shoving in the shaft, walk don't run and help each other.
Then we crammed into cars and headed for the creek.
Early that morning we'd nipped out to mark a not-insignificant trail to the old shaft with balloons.
Those kids ate up that trail, they ran from balloon to balloon. They shouted, they whooped, they tripped they fell, they shed not a tear. When they got to a steep, rocky part of the trail I knew some may need help and was prepared to offer piggy-backs, but no, if my mates can do it, so can I and up they scrambled, some on all fours.
It was as if they could smell the gold, it was so obviously one of the most exhilarating things they'd ever done that every moment was priceless and because our son knew the trail it was his 'show'.
We had of course also prepared the shaft with gold.
And to their enduring pleasure they found gold and stuffed their 'prospecting' bags so full they couldn't carry it all. On their own they would notice someone who didn't have any and shared unprompted.
They stumbled back into the light for juice and half a cupcake and then went straight back in.
We walked back to the cars with heads filled with magic and gold, tired legs and a party still talked about.
They were incredible, not once did I need to raise my voice or use my super stare; their energy had been allowed to follow unrestrained, their imaginations unencumbered ...
... and we had as much fun as they did.

Opting out: Firsts in the Free State

My husband and I had always said that Jo'burg had a lifespan for us. From time to time the city would reach its zenith for us, the traffic, the noise, the fact that you could no longer pop out on a quick errand, it would take you all morning. Then there's the lifestyle; before we got married we threw a tent, two guitars and a couple of jerrycans in the back of an old 1981 Hilux, stuffed 100 US dollars in the cubbyhole and waved goodbye, heading north across the Limpopo.
We craved the bush, mountains, creeks, anything but the drunken neighbours, hooters, sirens and the exhaust fumes I ingested every time I ventured out for a run.
The city of gold was fast turning into a city of plastic, faux, faster, better, bigger, more ... everything we're not ... is there really a need for another mall?
But every time we'd had it with Jozi something came up and we'd push it all aside for the moment. Life doesn't stop happening , it doesn't stop for you to stay, "Oh, there's a gap coming up in our life where we will have the time to comb the countryside looking for a gorgeous house in a gorgeous town."
Then something bigger than life did happen. Suddenly and for the most part unprepared. We'd been trying in vain to start a family and had decided to go the adoption route – specifically the trans-race adoption route as the waiting period is shorter and it made not a jot of difference to us – once your intense screening process is complete you wait for the phone to ring, for a voice on the other side to say there's a baby ... it rang three days after our screening was complete.
We wanted quicker ...
The day we took our son home my husband started house hunting online.
Our little boy was four months old when he came home and we spent the next eight months finding heaven via Marquard.
Heard of it?
It's a very small town in the eastern Free State that is desperately trying to be something that it will just never be. The kind of town where the only cafe's cappuccinos are filter coffee with frothed milk and they're okay with that.
The issue with moving outside the three-, sometimes four-hour ring of ugly that surrounds Jo'burg is that you have to maximize towns and house viewing. All this happens online and via email, you see a few possible likes, you scour the map book and ID towns in the vicinity, then scour the online property sites for anything in those towns, then email some over-zealous agents (are there any other kind?) and set up a 4-town, 24-house weekend.
I learned two things: how to change a soiled nappy on the back seat of a moving car with a child in a supported standing position and that estate agents are, in the main, hard of hearing.
On the Marquard weekend we were breathing deeply in the shade of a large tree in the agent's garden, she was trying to flog us her house. I was probably breathing far deeper than my husband, rolling my shoulders back over and over and occasionally adding a head roll in an attempt to stop myself telling her that a) we specifically said no Randpark Ridge-style face-brick houses b) no old houses with visible steal supports running the length of the room just below the ceiling (banks don't like those) and c) no clearly industrial-type offices complete with lengthy passages and meeting rooms. This last was the straw that had me seething under the acacia. I knew while waiting for the door to be opened I didn't want to go inside. And wait we did, for the caretaker (and a hundred of his closest friends), one of which had just used the amenities after what must have been a rough night, to open up.
I was hot and irritated and then our son crawled, for the first time. He was sitting and then he was crawling.
We were delighted, totally chuffed, as parents are, as though they had anything to do with it, and the estate agent? beside herself.
The following morning, before following her to view two houses in Hobhouse, we told her he had held his bottle on his own for the first time. Bless her, she took it as a sign that we were destined for a life in Marquard.
We do not live there but our boy is a seasoned traveller.

Black Like Me

No it's not time for another Caucasian vs Ethnic hair diatribe, although Black Like Me is to most of us a common hair care brand. No, this runs skin deep and is in the words of Mastercard "priceless".
My husband and I were sitting on the stoep (veranda for my US readers, to whom I am very grateful for their audience) when my daughter was a lot younger, probably nine months or so. She was sitting on the floor playing and my son, a couple of years older was sitting close by with his large box of assorted plastic building blocks.
A word on this box of blocks; he could not live without it, he builds Dr Seuss-style houses with a fervour quite rare in one so young. He can spend hours building the most elaborate pieces of architecture, or a minute, one can never be sure. One of our most feared sounds is the clamorous tipping out of the entire box onto the slate floor at 5.30 in the morning. It elicits an involuntary, lengthy groan from our bed in which we are still stubbornly ensconced, denying the inevitable.
I doubt we were sitting quietly reading that afternoon on the stoep, this is a pastime denied the new parent, we may have been watching our new baby girl and marvelling at the incredible coordination displayed by one so young – smiling contentedly, nodding to each other knowingly – but more probably we were listening to an endless, mind-numbing stream of questions and commentary in a language that takes infinite concentration to understand from our son – answers are demanded so attention must be paid – and trying to stop the Jack Russell licking her in the face.
From nowhere he stops and says, "Hey!"
We look up to find him pointing at his sister's neck in sheer amazement, "Ella's black like me!"
For a moment we're dumbstruck and both venture a tentative, "What?"
"ELLA! SHE'S BLACK LIKE ME!"
He couldn't believe it and there it was right before his innocent two-year-old eyes.
It was so random, so left field, so out of nowhere that we guffawed, then laughed and giggled; much later we were still sniggering. It was his sheer surprise.
Of course we knew that at some point our children would realize our skin colour was not the same as theirs – every older child at his nursery school had and as children do had inquired extensively about this anomaly – but when it happened we weren't prepared even though in our adoption screening we had been extensively prepped.
But this, as with most things to do with our son, was on its head; he had identified with her, rather than comparing with us.
When we'd gathered ourselves my husband asked, "What colour am I?"
He thought a minute then referred to what he was most familiar with, his blocks, rummaged carefully through the box and triumphantly produced a block, holding it on high.
"Red!"