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.

Mom time: Just me, me , me ... and him

Four. Four is an absolutely fantastic age. I'm loving four. It's all about the world around you. It's inquiring, it's inquisitive, it's energetic, it's enthusiastic, it's exhausting.
If you're paying attention it's up close and personal, in-your-face development that is fascinating to watch, and not a little scary because you can literally see the influence you have on your child. What you say and what you do matters, because they will say it and do it tomorrow, so what do you want them to say and do?
They're learning right from wrong, distinguishing between fantasy and reality, understanding the concept of consequences ... or at least most of them are.
There are a lot of "it's not okay to say that," and "let's talk about that later", and "did that really happen or were you hoping it would happen?"
But then you always get those tiresome few who appear to have spent these all-important developmental years in the laundry cupboard because aged 40 they seem incapable of telling right from wrong, and in this case, sadly, fantasy from reality.
I'm approaching the 12th kay of a half marathon recently when a man trots up alongside me, gives me a long look which I am aware of but cannot meet. It's paramount that I look straight ahead otherwise I will fall over my feet, or someone else's.
He says: "you have baie mooi boude."
Really?
You've come all this way to run through the misty Kaapschehoop mountains with wild horses, suck in deep lungfuls of gorgeous air, cruise downhills and THAT'S what you're looking at?
So I say: "Really? That's what you've chosen to look at?"
He says: "I'm not a boobs man."
Excellent.
Lucky me.
I say: "You shouldn't be looking at either."
And then the without-fail clincher: "It's a compliment!"
Urgh!
Not only does this jolt my perfect running karma but it grates because the last is said over his shoulder as he accelerates, leaving me and my "mooi bode" used, withered and violated in his dust.
If only I could have tossed a carefree laugh to the wind over MY shoulder and said gaily, "well watch them disappear then."

Why mom's should not drink from dodgy creeks

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.