andamu

[ remembering ]
Twenty-two years.
On the evening of September 3, 1982, my father was walking off the pavement toward his parked car, when a drunk driver came racing down the street, scooped him from the curb and caused him such severe injuries that Pappa died a few hours later in hospital, before the driver sped away from the scene.
Usually the emergency personnel who work accident scenes tell distraught relatives, "He died on impact, he would not have suffered." In this case, I have to live with the thought that he was alive for five hours. I am sure that once the ambulance arrived they must have started some sedation, but ambulances take time to arrive...
::
No doubt any loss of a parent is tough. I was daddy's little girl. He taught me his love for books, and shared his views with me. He did not talk down to me, and took an interest in what I had to say, debated issues and shaped a philosophy, and all this before I was 13 years old.
In the few months immediately before he was killed, our conversations seem to have gained a new dimension. I would like to think he was able to communicate with me on a more adult level - or at least a less childish one.
It hit me hardest in the months following when I would find a passage of interest in a book, glance up at the sunlight on the wall and think: "It's getting close to five o'clock. I must remember to tell this to Pappa when he gets home."
The realization at that time that he is not coming home, will never come home, was shattering.
::
[ meandering ]
Part of the problem I suspect is the lack of ritual in the West. Of course there is a certain almost involuntary rhythm to the events following a death: Shocked relatives and friends coming to the house, staying a while, everyone crying. Then the food starts arriving: Casseroles and soups, masking tape with block printed names on the bottom of the dishes ensuring that each is returned to its rightful owner, and serving as aide-memoire when writing thank you notes. Over the next few days the house empties, with mostly only the food ladies dropping by. On the day of the funeral, again the house is overwhelmed with people, but through the couple of days immediately after, everything returns to normal - or what masquerades as normality.
And that is it. All "ritual" done.
If we had been in India, we would have had a ritual of remembrance every month for the first year. And thereafter every year. Acknowledging what a part they had played in our lives. That we miss them. That we remember them. That we are continuing with our lives.
Now, some years I remember the date some weeks in advance, and/or some weeks later. Mostly I remember the day, but a few times it has passed without my noticing it. I can however never hear the date, no matter what the context, without immediately thinking of him.
::
[ grind ]
Feeling very out of sorts. Part of it no doubt is emotional, but some of it is physical. My body seems hot all over and apart from a headache I have some general feeling of malaise.
Put together some bread dough and punched away some of the ickies. Still snapping at whomever comes within ten feet of me, though. Which only makes me feel worse, of course, and they are naturally feeling horrible after that too, which is worse still and then the emotional issues grow and.... As vicious a circle as any.
I wish I would hurry up and become human again!

I've always looked older than I am. I was tall for my age (though not the tallest in the class) and a bookworm, so I had random bits of knowledge and vocabulary beyond my years which contributed to the image.
My mother was what would be called an X-Ray technician in the States; on the nights and weekends that she was on stand-by after my father died she would take us along when the call came. I would do the admin. work (entering the patient's name in the record book, creating the envelope marked with details to hold the plates, making the entries in the patient folder) and then do the darkroom work (by then mostly automated) once she has taken the shots.
This usually didn't take too long, and I would be left twiddling my thumbs if there were a number of patients to be seen. I figured early on that for children especially this was a tough time: they are lying waiting in the hallway, it is often their first exposure to Emergency Rooms, never mind X-Rays, they have no idea what is going to happen, they are in pain and scared and bored. So I would go up and start talking - anything to keep their minds occupied: "What grade are you in now? What school do you go to? Who's your favorite teacher?" Innocuous stuff, but it made a big difference.
One day I was standing speaking to a twelve year-old boy, having just turned fifteen myself, when a man walking down the corridor wanted to know what had happened to "my son." He wouldn't believe me when I told him I was only three years older than the kid, and certainly not his mother.
::
In seventh grade I once offered to watch a teacher's toddlers at a school function in return for a ride to and from said function, as he lived just at the end of our street. When I rang the doorbell, his wife (who had never met me before) came out and greeted me like an equal and started a conversation, before the teacher came out and dismissed me with "No, no, this is one of my students!"
::
Once I reached University and the big city, I was still considered much older: instead of seventeen, most would likely have put my age just around thirty.
I was working as casual waitstaff for a catering company at a function set up in tents in a fancy country restaurant's grounds, where a household name in entertainment would be performing. I was the youngest of all the waitstaff, and the most inexperienced, this being only my second assignment.
Right in the middle of the celebrity's performance the power went off. She came storming back stage, looked around wildly and fixed her eyes on me, then proceeded to charge me with responsibility for the entire thing, as if I was the catering organizer. She did not want to know about the facts, wasn't interested that I was the junior with no control or even knowledge: she just kept on screaming at me, punching her hands in the air and stamping her feet.
::
My age was also a real downer in company. If I were to meet any group of people socially, they would accept me as part of them and involve me in conversations and subsequent get-togethers. Then at some stage the topic of age would come up in a conversation, and when it became clear that I was just either side of twenty to their 30/35/40, everything would change. It was almost as if they were starting to dumb-down the conversation for my benefit, and suddenly I would no longer know about get-togethers even though they were still perfectly nice (if patronizing) at larger meetings.
Strange how one fact can change people's perception so radically, even when they've had plenty of opportunity to see the contrary.
::
Makes me think of the story of the 90 year-old woman sitting in her rocker on the front porch with her two daughters, 65 and 68 respectively.
"It's so lonely out here," the woman sighed. "We haven't had company in a week. I wish I had someone to talk to."
"But Mother, we're right here," said her daughters.
"I'm talking real company," scorned the mother. "Who wants to sit around talking to children all day?"
::
On the up side, my sister and my husband (both of whom are totally unbiased, of course) tell me that I now look younger than my age. Sort of got stuck looking around 30, and haven't changed much since that. It would be nice to believe them, but I'm the one who sees the increasing number of grey hairs in the mirror every day.
::
A strange thing about growing up is how family relationships change - or doesn't change. Some of my aunts and uncles still treat me (when they see me) as a child, or if as an adult, definitely one much younger, on a different level. This seems somewhat artificial, and at times a little demeaning.
On the other hand, some of them started treating me as a full adult probably much too early, and would disclose private things that I would have much preferred not knowing.

(Yes, I know I am contradicting myself.)

Sue's reactions (over at A Kitchen in Brabant) to perfume shopping sent me off on a tangent.

I've found that quite a lot of perfumes (along with perfumed household sprays) give me a rather nasty headache.
To add insult to injury, most perfumes react badly to my skin chemistry; usually they either stink outright on me, or they turn sickly, cloyingly sweet. And this is not a subjective opinion - even the most desperate commission-based sales person recoils with a glazed look in the eyes and tries to suggest: "Well, perhaps madam would like to try XYZ instead..."
The third issue is that they almost immediately disappear - I can douse myself in a bottle and five minutes later no-one can tell that I had been near an atomizer. Except of course if it is one that really turns foul - then the malodorous stench will of course cling to me for a couple of weeks.
(Yes, and good day to you too, Mr. Murphy.)

I have been fortunate in finding a few that do agree with me, and that I happen to like: Christian Dior's Dune, for the spicy, sophisticated, mysterious times. (Well, who am I kidding, there aren't really any of those times in my life, but a girl can dream, can't she?) And Este� Lauder's Pleasures - clean and fresh and pretty, and ready for the day.
::
Now when Christmas came around last year, mpo realized on the 24th that he still hadn't bought me a gift, so off he went, braving the mobs on Christmas Eve.
Let me say straigt off, he is not the flowery, chocolatey, demonstrative sort, and special occasions mostly go by without cards or gifts. (Don't start feeling sorry for me, though. There are a myriad other ways in which he is incredibly good to me, far better than the standard romantic gestures.)
Anyway, he must have recalled the incredibly enthusiastic reception when he presented me with Pleasures for our wedding anniversary the year before - what a big surprise given that I had been hinting blatantly that it would be the perfect Christmas or birthday gift for four years straight! My Dune bottle was starting to get low, but he was unable to find some (probably forgot the name, and couldn't adequately describe the bottle's shape ;-) )

So he picked up a bottle of Celine Dion, with the matching body lotion to make a nice set.
It really wasn't his fault. How is he supposed to understand about scents?
I use it periodically, extremely lightly, so as not to hurt his feelings. But I've realized recently that he has no idea how it smells - in fact he can't even really tell the three perfumes I have apart!

I think I should find a worthy cause who wants an almost full bottle, and its matching, unopened body lotion, and donate it this holiday season. After all, I'm sure there must be somebody out there who likes it.
(I've tried passing it off onto my little sister, but she's not having it.)
::
More than twelve years ago I rented - at a vastly reduced rate - a beach house belonging to a friend's parents. They had the requisite collection of eclectic paperbacks in the bookcase above the almost-complete sets of Monopoly and chess and decks of cards, next to the bowl with sea-worn pebbles and faded sea shells.

Perfume by Patrick Suskind is set in Paris in the 18th century. Amid a hodge-podge of (mostly bad) smells, a boy is born with no personal odour and, as if to compensate, an extremely sensitive sense of smell.
He becomes involved in the perfume trade and obsessed with a particular fragrance, and lacking conscience and concern to the same extent as personal odour, sets about capturing it.

The book is remarkable for its vivid evocation of aroma through words - fragrances become almost tangible through the descriptions. And what is astonishing that this is done in the translation (from the original German). It is the kind of thing that makes me wish I had more German, so that I could read it in the author's voice.

I gatecrashed another party over at briggy's. I have this habit of commandeering the comment-space to post entire blog entries. But then again it is their own fault for making the stories so interesting.
::
My mother had to go to hospital, so my sister, still a toddler, went to stay with my grandparents. I was attending nursery school, which meant I was occupied in the mornings, so my father thought he would be able to handle me the rest of the time.
At the time the public library building was undergoing renovations, so the books were being housed in City Hall (well, more like Village Hall, truth be told). I'm not even sure whether there was a librarian on duty or whether it was open to the public at the time. What I remember is being left in this paradise of towering shelves, with subdued light, and no-one in sight, surrounded by books, wonderful books. My father's office was across the corridor, and he had given me the best babysitter ever.
Later on my mother would help out at the library when they were in need of staff, and we would go there after 2 p.m. when school let out. I soon could run (most of) the show. Perhaps that is why, to this day, I am still a compulsive alphabetizer and sorter.
::
My father always had one book next to his bed, another in the living room, one in the loo, one in the car, and one in the office. He never let an idle moment slip by without grabbing a couple of paragraphs.
I was hyperactive, wouldn't sit still for a moment. The words I heard second-most frequently from adults were "Slow down!" or "Calm down!"
The words I heard most frequently were "Put that book down and go and play outside/with the others. It isn't healthy for a kid to have her nose stuck in a book all day." Because circus could come to town, and I wouldn't lift an eyebrow if I could just keep reading.
::
When we spent our vacations with my grandparents, I became used to being called to the living room when my grandmother had company. She'd be dragging closer the newspaper or some manual, and asking me to read to the company, to show how well I could.
:: I put up my current reading, completed reading, and intended reading lists in the sidebar on the left.
Obviously the list of books that I have read is not exhaustive, nor have they all been read that recently. Most of them have been read within the last three years, starting with a couple of classes I had in Comparative Literature.
"Aha," says the astute reader. "I am starting to discern the pattern here."
::
After starting work, I went through a bit of a reading lull while settling in and coming up to speed. But then I began yearning for some good reading material, without a clear direction of where to start.
So I went back to the website of the academic bookstore, looked up the current set works for those courses, and started to compile a reading list. I extended it to some courses at a few other good schools, and have been steadily working my way through the list.
This might seem totally weird, but I like the fact that the works chosen for a course have a common theme or thread, examined from different perspectives and in different manners. When a course has been well-designed, there are multiple threads interwoven through vastly different works, creating an intricate, multi-hued tapestry.
::
More than 75% of the boxes that I had shipped here from South Africa contained books. In my bedroom alone I have more than 200 books. We currently have somewhere around 1200 books in the house, I think, on a wide variety of topics. They have not been Dewey Decimalized, but they have been categorized and subcategorized, then alphabetized to the nth degree.
My other recreational reading matter consists mostly of mysteries. British police procedurals by preference. There is however no lack of resources and publicity for those, so it hardly seems worthwhile to put up lists. I'm more than willing to swap names and explore new (to me) authors within that genre.
::
These days I tend to borrow books from the library rather than buy them. Although any book that have made a particular impact on me when I borrowed it will no doubt be bought the instant I spot it on a bargain table - the Gao Xingjian is the latest such example.
The links will take you to Amazon. It is convenient because there are synopses and reviews, and because it makes it easy to display the book cover image.
If you buy something, having been referred by my site, I would get some small commission. Personally, I don't buy books online (except under extreme circumstances - I need the instant gratification of the pages in my hands right away, so off I go to the library (or if I'm desperate, to the bookstore.)
In general in these times of inflated prices, it seems far more prudent to take a book for a test run, see if you get along, before committing permanent shelf space to it.

When I was a teenager the town we lived in had no ice rink. The big city, about 90 minutes away did, and it became a favorite destination for organized youth outings (through school or church or whatever).

This meant that I got to skate about three times a year, after one holiday that we spent with my cousins in the same big city where we went for one session every day for a week. Which meant that I was basically capable of staying more or less upright on the skates away from the wall, and was able to move forward in clumsy baby pushes.

Now picture this: a group of adolescents with all the bravado and mixed-up hormones that this would entail, on a group outing, all swarming over the ice rink. Which meant first that I kept going faster than speeds at which I was able to control my balance (the bravado part) and second that I kept trying to fall forward rather than backwards, because a sopping wet butt was a lot more uncomfortable and embarrassing with all the teenage boys around than damp knees.

It occurs to me that had I been less concerned with dignity and boys at that time, and had I worn knee pads at that stage, I would have needed them a lot less frequently now when I have to potter around the house or garden.

It has been a rather unusual week. I have had arrays of meetings that take large chunks out of my days, leaving only disjointed snippets of time to try and get some work done, and consequently have stayed really late at the lab.
The lights are automatically switched off at seven. There's a manual switch to turn it back on, but that goes off after an hour too, so every hour you're plunged in darkness with only the walkways illuminated, playing the waiting game, hoping that someone else is making the trek to the switch to turn it back on, and wondering at what stage you should capitulate and turn it on yourself.

Thursday I went in much later than I usually do, driving in full sunshine and noticing the beauty of everything, finished by the thick coat of frost on every detail glinting like gilded edges in the bright sun.
It made me realize that I have been missing winter, its beauty. Going in early (7) and leaving late (5.30+) meant that until recently I have been making the drive both ways in the dark.
It is better now, but still the faint morning light is mostly obscured by thick clouds and/or heavy fog whenever it is not actually raining. This is after all winter in the Pacific Northwest.
But it made me appreciate that the experience of the day (and the season) for people who come in a couple of hours after I do would be quite different.

It reminded me of my student days back in South Africa, while I was living in the same high-rise apartment block perched on top of a midtown shopping mall I mentioned in a previous post. For a student job I worked in a bakery in the mall which was a really convenient commute! But on weekends and during break my days consisted of waking up and glimpsing the grey light of early morning over the city, locking my apartment door, walking down the internal corridor, getting into the elevator, and getting out on the bakery's floor. At the end of the day I would reverse the process, the only difference that the grey light I saw when I returned to my apartment was that of early evening.
During breaks I would live for entire weeks never setting a foot outside, and never seeing more than a few brief snatches of daylight except on Sundays.

At the time I could not tell you what the source of my vague discontent, perhaps even depression, was. It was only once I moved to a different apartment that it sunk in. Just like the unusual experience on Thursday showed me what I have been missing recently.
Perhaps I should reconsider my work schedule. I am fortunate that my company allows us great leeway in deciding which hours we want to work; to some extent the main focus is getting the job done on schedule, and being available for required meetings - beyond that it doesn't matter when exactly you are there. It is a great way to help the employees make the necessary choices to maintain the work/life balance.

On the other hand if I make the choice to go in later and stay later, it would negatively impact my family. For the sake of experiencing a few minutes of pleasantness during my morning drive I would be coming home after Angel Face has gone to bed, gulp down dinner alone or, if my precious one decided to wait for me, force him to have cold or drying food as well, spend a desultory hour unwinding, making sketchy conversation, perhaps flip through a few channels, sort out the laundry, have a shower, and crawl into bed.

Perhaps then not such a good idea.

The first time I went "under the knife" as they say I was about four years old - the traditional removal of the tonsils.
I remember being bundled up in the car in the dark around 4 or 5 a.m. and taken to the hospital. I remember being the center of attention afterwards for a little while (no small feat with a younger and cuter sister around). I remember a special toy, a wound-up crawling doll, which worked for about two or three days before it was broken. (It wasn't me, Mummy). I remember eating soup and jelly and ice cream for about a week afterwards.
But mostly I remember my parents being close to me, feeling their love and warmth and concern.

The next time I was twelve: emergency appendix surgery. We lived in the next town from the doctor's office and the hospital, so my mother took me straight from the doctor (almost 5 p.m) to a dress store to buy some nightdresses and a dressing gown, before taking me to the hospital. My dad raced from the town to meet us at the hospital.
I remember my mother -- who worked at the hospital and knew all the doctors and staff) -- came with me as far as the theater doors, much farther than mere mortals are allowed. When I was finally returned to the ward, my dad insisted that I be fully awake and talking to him before leaving for home; it must have been around 10 p.m. by then. I remember being somewhat upset by that: I had great difficulty sleeping the rest of the night with the pain and the dry lips (Nil per Mouth painted in black blockletters on the little white metal board chained above my bed); I was convinced that if I had been allowed to continue drifting in post-anaesthetic bliss, I would have been able to sleep.
But mostly I remember my parents being close by, loving and warm and concerned.

When I was about 21, I had to enter the hospital two days before the surgery to be placed on intravenous antibiotics to fight the infection before they could remove the gallbladder and the seven evenly-sized stones, each the size of half a pinkie-nail.
I remember being told that my lungs had collapsed in the recovery room. I remember at one stage the pain returning outside of the scheduled time for medication, and being helpless before its terror. I remember the humiliation of some of the procedures. I remember Nini, full of concern, and my grannies visiting.
But mostly I remember the big empty spaces where my parents should have been.

When I was 23 I was "strongly urged to undergo surgery as soon as possible to remove the growth and send it for a biopsy," but at least this wasn't another emergency surgery. I remember the woman next to me snoring so loudly and persistently that, not having closed an eye by 11.30 p.m. I begged the staff for something to help me sleep, which they turned into someWHERE to help me sleep, sneaking me into a vacant private room for the night.
I remember the shallowness and triviality around me. I remember my befuddlement after the doctor's report with no-one to answer my questions. I remember Nini dropping in, supportive. I remember various family members breezing by. I remember my upset at the callous way in which the staff treated the woman diagonally opposite me.
And I remember the void where my parents would have been.

Tomorrow my precious one will be by my side. Nini will be close by, and if all goes well I might even be home by nightfall. There will be an Angel Face getting all excited and concerned and confused and interested, popping up everywhere.
But I am already remembering the blank spaces where they would have been.

Angel Face had just turned two when the picture was taken. Granny was 81.

Judyanne over at Widow Shmidow wrote a post about a family member who functions as the disseminator of information. Have I told you yet about my grandmother? She has always been considered the frail one because of her many and varied health problems. It seems ironic that she outlived not only all my other grandparents, but also both my parents. She used to give us wonderful candy treats when we were little whenever they visited, and she drinks a cup of tea about every 30 minutes. She has a number of quirks that have entered family legend, and is still hanging on at almost 84. Her favorite interjection is not "That's amazing," "Can you believe it?" or "Oh my goodness." Hers is something which reveals her nature in ways that she never realized: "Kan jy dit oorvertel?" which roughly translated says "Can you repeat that to someone?" For granny is Gossip Central; she seldom indulges in it by malice or spite, rather it is with an almost childish sense of wonder, and the relish of the news bearer. And she and Angel Face last about equally long before they blab a secret - in other words, about 45 seconds. After my father died, my mother moved us to the town where my grandparents lived, which is also the town where all three her siblings and their families were. (Mainly coincidence, this was not the town where they grew up - there had been no previous ties to the place.) And growing up there, the painful last three years of high school, we knew that once my granny came to know something about us, the entire family would know it within an hour, and most of her circle of friends before the end of the next. After a while, we also figured out how to use this to our advantage. If you wanted to say something to someone on a tender subject, no need to scrape together your courage - just tell granny and they would know soon enough. If you wanted to show off an accomplishment, again no need to go around bragging about it - just let granny "discover it by accident" and everyone would know that you got the highest grades or made the team or got admission or whatever. These days she is truly frail, and instead of wandering around gathering stray bits to pass on, she now has to rely on the world to come to her room. But still, whenever I call her from halfway around the world, she bubbles over with random pieces of gossip about family and mutual acquaintances, and she goes about mining information about our lives in a skilled manner, storing away tidbits for later dissemination.

In the airlock as I enter the lab hangs a cabinet. It has an electronic keypad and a large warning sign to the effect that opening the door without entering the security code will result in an alarm being sounded. The cabinet is labeled contain medical and emergency response equipment.

Passing it every day I was so tempted to peek inside - just because I was not supposed to. The temptation was particularly strong as I left the lab in the evening; I would at times smile to myself as I walked to the car. And then I would remember an incident with my father more than 25 years ago.

I was such a little prude back then -- something which no doubt made my parents very proud, and had them congratulating themselves on their child-rearing philosophy and methodology -- that I could not imagine going against any of the (big) rules.

Anyway, we were at the international airport, wishing my grandmother farewell on a trip abroad, when he and I passed a door marked "Strictly No Entry. Authorized Personnel Only."

"Oh, how I wish I were a criminal," my dad remarked.
"What??" yelped little me, thoroughly scandalized. "Why??"
"If I were I would go through that door," he explained. "Aren't you curious about what's inside?"

At another stage, he said he wanted to go and fly around the Bermuda Triangle so that he might disappear and get to see what was on the other side, what was really going on.
I was too busy trying to recover from an anxiety attack and the accompanying palpitations that the thought of this evoked to try and figure out whether he was serious, or teasing. And I never did get the opportunity: my father was horribly killed when I was 13.

I wonder what (if anything) he found on the other side. Mostly, I wonder at times when I am chuckling about my temptation to open the cabinet, whether he is chuckling with me. How far I've come.

::

The post script of the story: by a long series of coincidental events I have become a member of the safety team that has the code to that cabinet, and others like it. I've seen inside the cabinet now, and I've even handled the equipment.

For a little while it was exciting, like having a secret, being in the know. But gradually the excitement has worn off, and become rather blah. These days if I think of the cabinet at all, it is with a slight trepidation that it might someday be necessary to put my knowledge to use.