goodwillhunter.blog

I always thought that having Dutch parents was about as weird as life could get. Then an invisible particle started spreading around the world, sending humans into a flat panic that had them wearing nappies on their faces and pointing plastic gun-shaped toys at each others’ foreheads.

Covid-19 saw my guy and I go from free-spirited world travellers to small-town scaredy-cats on the brink of insanity. I remember the night of 26 March 2020 well: we hunkered down at his sister’s family home in Noordhoek while they chose to stay in the bush. We arrived in the dark with a few hours to spare before the nationwide lockdown started; the air thick with tension as we braced ourselves, in our unfamiliar surroundings, for a whole new unknown reality…

Shortly after midnight, I was struggling to fall asleep when I heard the distinct doof-doof-doof sound of helicopters approaching. I jumped out of bed, yanked open the curtains and pressed my face against the glass to witness what I imagined would be the scene of bright lights flashing against a black sky as soldiers were deployed to control us – in Noordhoek, I thought?! But I couldn’t see a thing, so with my heart hammering at my chest I went back to bed and tried to sleep. The next morning I woke to hear it again. This time I managed to follow the sound to its actual origin: the Kreepy Krauly sucking against the pool walls. I realised that anxiety might actually be a thing for me.

Over the next few weeks we settled into slow life in the sleepy town, which meant spying on law-breaking neighbours with their consistent visitors and amusing ourselves at the sight of other neighbours running laps around their house; dogs happily following at their heels. Soon I was running laps too. The world was not my oyster but the pool could at least be my hamster wheel as I timed my dizzying circular sprints around it. I also timed my free-diving boyfriend’s nauseating breath holds inside this pool, where he beat his personal five-minute record shortly before breaking into a face-down-in-the-water hypoxic fit and I had to drag him out of the pool to save his life. In diving terms it’s called a samba because the victim’s rhythmic convulsions resemble the movements of that dance, but I do not find this funny and I prefer the kind of dancing where one gets to breathe and not die. At this point we were facing the threat of potential death by corona virus and drowning.

One week later we left the house for the first time, to go grocery shopping. After all my years of travel I never thought that driving over Ou Kaapseweg could feel like a daring adventure. Or that the first items on our list would be industrial face masks and latex gloves and that when my boyfriend returned to the car I’d spray him down with sanitiser like I was fumigating cockroaches. Nor did I imagine that the cornucopia that is Woolworths would ever wane in its seemingly endless supply of fresh foods, but there I stood, staring at empty shelves, pining for broccoli in a haze of pseudo-apocalyptic disbelief.

Driving through town was an eerie experience. Closed shops and deserted streets save for a few masked faces made me feel like I was on a closed movie set. Then en route home we hit a road block. An officer stopped us and asked a few questions about where we’d been, before informing us that the passenger needs to ride in the back seat of the car to conform to social distancing rules. I snorted as I climbed into the back to protect the man I’d share a bed with later that night.

Arriving home was a complicated business. We’d vaguely rehearsed a plan for re-entry into our virus-free zone: leave the potential corona-particle-carrying packets in the garage and go upstairs to shower… wait, or was it to bring them inside and disinfect them first? Shit, we’re both bursting to pee as we’d avoided public toilets on this trip… reconvene after emission. Okay, revisited protocol as follows: take shoes off at the door. Carry packets up stairs and deliver to kitchen floor. Strip off clothes and chuck into machine for a wash cycle. Collect warm soapy water for disinfection of groceries…

So there we are, crouching over a bucket in our underwear like imbeciles, methodically wiping down every single item including a box of tea and a slab of chocolate, for what feels like hours. After it’s all transferred to the clean kitchen counter I go take a shower, wash my hair, cut my nails short and gargle with mouthwash. That night we ate our dinner in a daze of bemused silence as we reflected on the most absurd day of our lives.

Little did I know that henceforth, absurdity was only going to become the barometer by which we measured our entire existence. When the morning outdoor exercise curfew came into effect, Alessandro went for a longer cycle than planned. He was stopped by a cop car full of policemen who questioned why he was outside after 9am, and they weren’t satisfied with his answer that he was en route home from a food shop. He reached into his backpack and pulled out an apple as proof, but they wanted to see a receipt – which he did not have. For fifteen minutes four cops continued to interrogate him over the forbidden fruit and baleful bicycle until he lost his cool and retorted that this was a whole hour of wasted police time in which they could be doing something remotely useful instead of arguing with a civilian over the origin of an apple. They presented him with a R1000 fine. He cycled home with the world’s most expensive apple on his back.

As time went by I felt like I was navigating a life of constant change, both in the external world and internally. I had to choose which new habits to keep because they served me and which ones to drop because they only made me mental – like sanitising every single item I brought home. Greetings had become an awkward dance of anticipation led by raised elbows, and in my case, raised eyebrows… I felt angry when my partner’s friends hugged me against my will (there’s a sentence I never thought I’d say), but when I finally embraced the hug again, I found tangible joy. My head still instinctively does its protective outward turn though, and on greeting a friend’s husband he complained that he’d had to kiss my ear. Habit is a funny thing. I still hold my breath when someone nearby coughs or sneezes, and I try not to share drinks. I still avoid touching keypads and door handles so scraps of toilet paper shields often come in handy, or I use a shopping packet as a hand-condom (another sentence I never thought I’d say).

I have been through all of the emotions. I once walked into a shop where none of the staff were wearing their masks and I asked, with loud sarcasm, if the corona virus doesn’t exist in this particular shop. But I’ve also been told many times to wear my own mask properly and felt the burn of indignant defiance rise within me. I’ve marvelled at the runners who wear their masks whilst exercising and sniggered at the lone drivers wearing theirs – who are they trying to protect inside their empty cars?! I watched a small child crawl on a shop floor and get scooped up by her father, who doused her hands with sanitiser and told her he was going to bathe her whole body in it later, which triggered in me a deep sense of sadness about the world. And then I looked up and chortled at another man in the shop who was happily wearing his mask on his forehead, like a visor. I’ve vacillated between seeing these masks as a sign of humankind’s solidarity in helping to protect each other, and as a symbol of silencing and oppression. But what they definitively do indicate is how much you didn’t realize your own breath smells.

It feels like we’re all playing a game of Survivor, where you’re sure to spread your disease if you walk through a restaurant without covering your facial orifices, but being seated at a table grants you instant immunity. Pay counters have become small fortresses of plastic shields protecting the double-masked and gloved cashier and similarly-armoured customer from each other, but also preventing any decipherable dialogue, so after a parley of shouting back and forth through the barriers they exasperatedly resort to pulling their masks aside and leaning around the open end of the counter to hear each other – and breathe their germs directly at each others’ faces. It’s a joke.

Actually, it’s a near comedy show. I went to dinner with some friends and witnessed a brouhaha develop between two grown men as they debated hotly over the vaccine, and I nearly asked the waiter to bring me some popcorn for this front-row seat. One day I was minding my own business in the local organic grocery store when I realised that another argument had erupted between two older men – one masked, the other not – both bellicose about it. I kept my head down and quietly picked out potatoes as the two combatants hurled incivilities at each other from across the store:

“Don’t tell me how to live my life!”

“You are NOTHING!”

“FUCK YOU!!”

I felt a touch of amusement at the same time as an urge to protect the innocent veggies that lay in the middle of this ruckus. I don’t know whether to laugh or cry at the state of humanity. This time of covid has left me completely discombobulated, and the more I’ve learnt and witnessed, the more my disquiet about humans and their behaviour has grown. What I do know (and what root vegetables might teach us), is that anger is often rooted in fear – and there are a lot of fearful people around. The mass media machine has left us questioning who to trust and what we can believe. What has become increasingly evident is that we have never known what is truly going on in the world, and that fact is just being highlighted for us now.

There were times when I really feared this virus. Then just as I’d changed my mind and started relaxing my thoughts about it, an unintended swipe on my phone revealed an old photo of my face engorged in blood blisters (I was working on a National Geographic series as a dying, Ebola-ridden nurse with haemorrhagic fever) and I wondered whether the universe was trying to frighten me out of my impending complacency. I also wondered about my stagnant career, as that had been my last job before covid hit and decimated the already notoriously difficult acting industry.

After two depressingly quiet years, I recently broke through the iciest winter of my working life and finally booked an international TV commercial… only to arrive at the wardrobe fitting and be betrayed by my nasal passages. Waiting and watching that pregnancy-like antigen test develop two solid red lines across it – I’m talking bold and bright, the kind whose presence you can’t even begin to try and deny because they’re fucking fuchsia – carried for me the distress of a teenager finding out she’s fallen pregnant by mistake. I had no symptoms so they followed it up with another rapid antigen test for verification, and then I was sent for a PCR test, just to shove one more shit stick up my nose and three fuck you’s in my face. I. Was. Livid. I politely left the set with a sad but good-natured smile on my now double-masked face, which, as soon as I got into my car, contorted into an ugly mess of spitting hellfire and screaming tears as I ripped off the masks and phoned my agent to tell them what had happened but could barely talk through the convulsions as saliva frothed from my mouth and anyone who could see me in that moment would have thought I had rabies instead of covid. I cried for two days straight as two years of angst and frustration boiled furiously within me and out through my eyes.

Time is such a strange thing to comprehend. Two years has felt like some kind of twisted time warp that took an eternity but also passed by in a blink. Looking back, I can laugh at a lot of the covid-induced scenes of my life, including the ridiculous timing of that job I lost. I remember meeting my parents for lunches in parking lots where we sat in our cars and ate takeaway food out of polystyrene containers at a safe distance from each other.

At that time my mom was forwarding videos that demonstrated how to kill corona virus by shoving a hairdryer up your nose. My dad died during that first year (not of covid) and the last time I hugged him was through a human-sized plastic bag that my friend had made for me. That friend was one of my first to get covid and I remember arriving at her house to drop off vitamins when her dog came bounding across the street and I ran screaming into my car as I didn’t want to be touched by her possibly covid-infected fur… I threw some old health magazines through the passenger window as I hightailed out of there. Memories of buying groceries and dropping them off with my sick siblings have been immortalised in the photos I took of their faces pressed up against closed windows, like caged animals in their isolation.

As the world went mad, new worlds were created in my head and highlighted the importance of mental health. I felt unsafe and that made me reactive. It’s a process of self-discovery when you find yourself in unprecedented circumstances and witness all your foibles come to the fore. At the height of my distress, when I was most affected by the chaos around covid, I burst into my hairdresser’s salon in such a state that with a worried look on his face he swiftly sat me down and shoved a CBD vape in my hands, but in my confused hysteria I didn’t even know if I was supposed to stick it up my nose or in my mouth.

I’m one Dutch parent down and life is still weird. These two years have made me wonder even more about the human condition; how we toil and scatter like vulnerable, insignificant little ants on this earth. It reminds me of a phrase my brother uses when referring to a hard task: It’s not for ants. I think covid and the loss of control around it has given me some of the most uncomfortable experiences of my life, but they say life begins at the end of your comfort zone so maybe that’s a good thing. It certainly has made me acutely aware of the importance of where I place my focus and attention. Covid has fuelled not only my OCD but also our local outdoor adventures – we’ve become extensive countrywide hikers and travellers. I’ve come out of it with so many new and uniquely South African experiences. That and a strong aversion to touching metal objects. I’ve changed from a kisser to a hugger, and my sanitiser-drunk hands have chapped so much that I probably don’t produce fingerprints anymore. And that’s fine – quite fitting really – because it has been a time of questioning my identity ad nauseam. That and feeling new compassion for ants.

The last time I saw my dad, I had a rare moment alone with him. We sat in the garden, his frail body propped up by pillows placed between his back and the chair. I spoke my usual one-sided chit-chat, telling him things about my everyday life that I wasn’t even sure he could understand anymore. Then I choked on tears as I said something out loud for the first time: I asked him not to hold on for us if he was in any pain. I told him he didn’t need to be the strong man he’d always been; that it was okay for him to let go whenever he was ready. Three days later he died.

I think I had started grieving before my father’s death, as his mind and body slowly withered away… it felt like we had lost him long before he passed. Yet that doesn’t diminish the shock that death brings; the realization of physical finality; the raw pain and sadness.

Six months have passed since my dad died, and I thought I was doing fine. I haven’t cried about him in a while but I think of him often. We celebrated his birthday with a family picnic on a beautiful summer’s day and I was nostalgic and contemplative but not emotional.

Then yesterday afternoon I joined my boyfriend at his friend’s house for a braai. His friend’s dad was there: a white-haired, bespectacled, sweet old man with a slim physique and light-hearted demeanor. He sat quietly with us, engaging in some conversation whilst snacking on peanuts, his joyful face opening in a wide-mouthed laugh. He reminded me of my dad. I asked his age and was told 78 – a year older than my dad’s age when he died, and seemingly in very good shape. I burst out crying.

My reaction caught me completely off guard as I’d spoken about my dad’s death many times without producing tears, so this felt like an embarrassing display in front of mostly strangers. I ran to the bathroom to compose myself, but before I could do that, I sobbed.

I struggled against tears as my boyfriend came to console me and I imagined he was even more bewildered than I was about what had just happened. It hit me out of nowhere. And this is what I’m learning about grief: that it comes in the unexpected moments. Not on the hugely significant weekend of my dad’s birthday, or on the monthly date of his death (which I often forget), but on a random Saturday afternoon at a braai when I see an old man who resembles him.

When I found a postcard in my letter box from my best friend of twenty years, who knew my dad and sent some words of comfort from overseas, I smiled and felt a warm love wash over me. But when I opened an unexpected sympathy card from my boyfriend’s sister at a relaxed Sunday lunch, I felt the sting of tears in my eyes as I battled to talk at the table. Grief tends to blindside me, eliciting different reactions at different times.

It has been interesting to observe my feelings about peoples’ responses to my dad’s death. I’ve felt hurt and confused by some friends who hadn’t contacted me to commiserate; surprised and moved by others with whom I’d lost touch long ago but who sent such heartfelt messages. Just a few weeks ago I discovered a bunch of old condolences that I’d missed on Facebook messenger, and I felt really touched reading through them. I realized that any anger I may have felt about people’s different reactions to death was probably me deflecting an emotion that I didn’t know how to handle, and luckily it was short-lived. It also made me wonder about my own behavior in the past and whether I had shown enough sympathy to others who had lost loved ones. Because I don’t think you quite understand it until it happens to you. I’ve always felt a visceral melancholy for people who are dealing with death but after losing my dad, even though it had been coming for a while, I had this ‘Aha’ moment, like ‘Oh, this is it. This is what is feels like.’ Now I could empathize with a new sensitivity.

I think that some of my sadness has revealed itself in other ways: I’ve imagined my elderly horse dying and felt the heavy turmoil surrounding that. Fear-based thinking has crept into my once mostly positive thoughts. A man who came to fix my washing machine made me feel very uncomfortable in my own apartment and after he left I raged for days. I was spitting fire and plotting revenge and unable to let go of it for longer than is normal for my character. I’ve also had some intensely emotional reactions to seemingly innocuous events: there’s something deep within me that arises like a whirlwind of fury when I’m triggered, something that scares me because of its intensity. When it happens I try to bring the boil down to a simmer, understand where it’s coming from and allow myself the space to feel and release as I realize this is probably still a part of grief. I’ve never felt angry at the world for what my dad went through, but when something unrelated causes my temper to flare, I understand what might be the source.

They say healing isn’t linear. Oftentimes I look at my dad’s oil painting on my wall and smile fondly as I reflect on what a talented man he was in so many respects. Sometimes I have flashbacks of the day he died; his dead body lying on his bed; his sunken face and cold skin. I have to snap myself out of those memories. Soon after he passed away I started asking him to help me with my stagnant career, to pull some strings for me from the afterlife. I was willing my career to soar. It’s like I needed to feel a heightened surge of hope and success in another area of my life to counter the pain and sadness, perhaps a reaction to this torrent of never-before-felt emotions; something else to focus on to try to move towards happiness again. I’m guessing this is a by-product of grief.

There’s a special place I ride to on my horse, a spectacular green amphitheatre at the foot of the mountain where I regularly go and talk to my dad. I’ve always sensed him in nature, like he is part of the trees and the birds and the wind now. I’ve felt close to him when traversing the Drakensberg as he was such an avid mountain man. These are some of the things that have helped me through my grief, as I imagine him smiling in approval at the things I’m doing – the things he loved so much.

I’m grateful for his keen interest in spirituality, which I inherited as I dove into many of his books; Neale Donald Walsch’s Conversations with God changed my life. I think in some ways my dad inadvertently prepared me for his death because his books made me think about it differently: ‘…death is not an end, but a beginning; not a horror, but a joy. It is not a closing down, but an opening up. The happiest moment of your life will be the moment it ends. That’s because it doesn’t end but only goes on in ways so magnificent, so full of peace and wisdom and joy, as to make it difficult to describe and impossible for you to comprehend.’ I love this passage as it makes me think of how happy and free my dad is now. I can take comfort in contemplating his expansion.

Another book that was hugely helpful to read during the last few years of his life was given to me by a friend: Tuesdays with Morrie gave me profound insights into the life and lessons of a man dying of degenerative disease… a man like my dad. These kind of books are gold; they can be like an old cherished friend accompanying and soothing you through a painful process.

After my dad died I found a book in his cupboard titled Chosen by a Horse. It seemed an odd choice for him to read. When I opened it I found his handwritten note on the first page: ‘Tessa; for your 26th’. Goosebumps. The book had gotten lost in the litany of literature on his bookshelf and eleven years later I discovered this treasure! What a gift, reading it now. I take my time through each chapter as I don’t want it to end.

There’s a bittersweet quality to loss that makes me savour every sacred moment I’m alive, but also ponder the pointlessness of everything. Herein lies the dichotomy of death for me: that it makes me spend time contemplating the meaning of life, and that can yield both positive and negative emotions. I wonder about what I’m doing, what I’m being busy about, and about the point of it all. Some days are dreary with disillusion. But ultimately, reflecting on my father’s life that was lived so fully inspires me, and I know that I carry his fervour in everything I do. So I’m gentle on myself on the down days, and allow exuberance to emanate through me on the good ones.

Two days after the teary braai episode, I fell off a horse and got kicked in the head. The concussion caused instant tears to stream down my face, and after getting back on and finishing the ride, I went home and wept. And wrote. On tear-drenched pages I wrote about everything, which has probably been my defining tool in navigating and understanding grief. When my dad could still form simple sentences he said to me: “You must write.” And how right he was. There is an unparalleled catharsis that occurs when you put your thoughts on paper; a healing power that flows through you and to you.

I know my grief will be with me forever, perhaps in different forms at different times. And that my understanding of it will continue to evolve through reading, writing, observing and feeling.

The emotion I’ve found to be most useful throughout it all is gratitude. I once did a voice over for a TV commercial where I spoke for the bride as she smiles and looks up to her father in heaven and says softly, “Thanks Dad.” I find myself doing that a lot now, as I reminisce on the life we had with him.

I can taste the salt from my tears as I’ve just finished reading his belated birthday present. On the back cover it says, ‘A book for anyone who has ever loved a horse, and for everyone who has ever lost a loved one.’ Nothing could be more appropriate right now. I loved everything about this book: the writing, the content; the timing was uncanny and the story mirrored events in my own life. As life imitates art, again I’ve just looked up and said, “Thanks Dad. Thank you for this book… thank you for forgetting to give it to me all those years so that I could read it now.”

The Oscar nominated film The Father paints a poignant picture of an elderly man suffering from dementia, an uncomfortable but important insight into the part of life that we don’t want to face: the end of it. And so throughout my grieving I’ve found art to be my ally. I’ll continue to create, to consume, to write and to read (including many other books that my dad gifted me over the years, which have sat unopened on my bookshelf), as I believe that these are the transformative gifts for grief.

And I embrace my grief as I view it as a testament to my father; to a life that was and continues to be so full and so colorful because of him.

If I could capture the feeling of Covid in an image, this would be it. We meet in the parking lot like every other time, my folks and I, to connect at a distance.

My dad is mostly quiet; his body still; his eyelids heavy with the weight of degenerative disease. He sits and listens to us talk, sometimes reacting with a smile, a laugh, maybe a word; sometimes staring into space as he appears to be in-between two worlds, slowly slipping away from us.

As I say goodbye he turns and reaches out toward me with a sense of silent desperation; mustering up what little energy he can despite his infirmity. The sudden surge of movement seems dramatic in contrast with his stillness.

I see his grey eyes clouded with sadness as he stretches out his fingers, searching for a touch we both haven’t felt in months.

I’m caught between my responsibility to protect my parents and my longing to hold them tight, so in a clumsy compromise I offer my dad my elbow. It feels almost offensive, like I’m giving him the cold shoulder.

But he grips it; he grips onto my elbow like he’s gripping onto life itself, and I bask in the feeling of connection amid a time of separation and alienation; in the profound beauty and the melancholy and the bittersweet strangeness of this moment.

I’m sitting in the departure lounge at Cape Town International, watching my plane arrive: a Boeing 777-something. I don’t need the numbers to remind me of my luck. I’m wearing a goofy grin on my face as I feel like the girl who took a gamble that led to a grand adventure.

I’ve been to Bali once before but under very different circumstances: two years ago I was a solo traveller, having just sold my business and home in Jo’burg, with time and freedom calling me to embark on a month-long spiritual journey in a tropical island paradise. It was one of the best things I have ever done. This wintry evening, as the Cape clouds grow heavier and I pull my hoodie over my head for some extra warmth, I can’t believe I’m headed back to sun-drenched Bali… this time to meet someone there.

I observe the dapper pilots boarding the plane and it occurs to me that I can thank one of my best friends that I’m here at all. Caity recently married a pilot whom she met through Tinder and for years she’d tried to convince me to sign up to the dating app, but it was a hard sell for her. Our perspectives were polarized: she waxed lyrical about how much fun it is to meet different people and go on various dates; I viewed online dating through a negative lens of apathy bordering on disdain. I thought it carried a sense of desperation.

Then, as life does, it taught me one of its lessons in the effect of simply changing your mind about something…

Once I’d finally had enough of my three-year dating sabbatical and climbed off my high horse, I realized that using Tinder might be a more practical idea than checking out the guys sans wedding bands in yoga class (downward dog pose makes for a bit of an awkward conversation starter…). So I downloaded the flaming pink app onto my phone and uploaded a whole bunch of new men into my life:

My virgin Tinder date was with Jason*, the owner of a car dealership. He was sitting on a couch when I arrived at Harveys Bar in Winchester Mansions to meet him for a drink. As he stood up to greet me I waited for his eyes to reach my level but his head stopped somewhere around my chin… I exclaimed an awkward “Oh!” as I realized I had to bend down to hug him hello. We ordered cocktails and chatted for a while, but that was the height of it. He walked me to my car later and I had a little laugh to myself when he strategically stayed up on the pavement as I walked down on the street, putting us at about the same level. He was a sweet guy and it had been a nice enough introduction to the world of online dating, albeit somewhat short of something. I decided that I liked this idea of getting out there and meeting new people.

Steve* was my second Tinder date: an entrepreneur with a kind and quiet demeanor but also a fun, sporty guy. One date led to a few more and he took me for dinners; movies; vegan ice cream. Then he took me paragliding. Instead of the usual five-minute tourist flight, he took me on an epic adventure around Signal Hill and did some quick tricks that made my adrenaline pump and my stomach flip. When I started feeling queasy he simply landed us on the side of the mountain for a romantic break with a view, before taking off with the wind again and doing some more flips above the ocean. Oh my god, Caity was right… this Tinder thing is so. Much. Fun!!! Steve* went overseas for some time and we eventually lost touch, but I think of him fondly.

The third guy I met through Tinder was good-looking, soft-spoken and serious. He wined and dined me at a fancy Hout Bay restaurant. Dan* works in the film industry so it was super interesting chatting to him about his camera work and behind the scenes stuff; we enjoyed comparing notes on the processes in front of and behind camera. He’s also very health oriented and introduced me to the concept of intermittent fasting – through which he’d clearly lost a lot of weight. The guy I met was a complete transformation from the one in the old photos he used on his profile (I was getting used to the strange thing that occurs when you first meet someone and start to amalgamate their real life persona with the one you’d created in your mind…).

The thing about Tinder is, you never really know who you’re meeting, even if you think you have a fairly good idea of the person’s look or personality. And when you discover there isn’t a spark between you, that doesn’t mean it’s not a fun evening or a valuable interaction. I started researching what Dan* had shared with me about intermittent fasting and incorporated it into my life, with beneficial results and a newfound interest in autophagy.

My fourth Tinder date was with Nigel*, a prominent South African journalist and recovering alcoholic who had told me he’s moving to the UK the following month. We met at the festive Mojo Market in Sea Point where he bought a shawarma and I bought a smoothie bowl to go with our green juices. With a mouth full of food he asked me why I’d agreed to meet him even though he’d told me he’s emigrating, and I realized I was on a roll with these Tinder dates… I didn’t care about future plans; I was enjoying conversing with vastly different and interesting people whom I’d likely not have met outside of this app.

Who would have thought – I loved being Tinderella! I wanted to meet lots of men; maybe document my experiences. I had this idea of writing a blog called Ten Tinder Dates. Or Twelve. Maybe even Twenty at this rate…

Number five was another Dan*, whose business is laundry and whose head seemed to be a washing machine… this guy’s behaviour amused me. We had some banter over Tinder text and arranged a day to meet. That day came… and went. I hadn’t heard a word from him and was curious as to how this would play out. He sent some self-deprecating messages when he only remembered our date the following day and we had a good laugh about it.

We arranged a new date.

He forgot, again.

I sent him a message asking if he thinks he’ll forget to pitch up at the altar one day when he’s getting married. Third time’s a charm (but not particularly charming) and we eventually met at my favourite health café, Nourish’d, for lattes and some deserved sweet treats, on him (not actually on him, that would be weird).

Yet another Dan* made my sixth Tinder meeting. I was a little put off when he reprimanded me for not replying to one of his messages within a few hours, but by now I’d learnt that you can’t make a fair judgement until you’ve met someone in person. He sounded interesting: having sold his business in motorcycles and equipment for bikers, he was now travelling the world. A sporty French guy who hardly spoke a word of English; this also made for an interesting exchange. His texts had me chuckling: “I certainly will be there earlier, I don’t really know Sea Point, I take advantage to seeing you to walk me.” I realized that he wanted to watch me approach; not that he wanted me to walk him around Sea Point, comme un chien.

He turned out to be an amiable guy. His English also turned out to be almost non-existent so we sat at Coco Safar giving each other language lessons over lattes. I spoke my broken French and he spoke his even more broken English and we used the wonders of technology whenever we got stuck on a sentence. I loved practicing my French again. I didn’t love being in the firing line of some hefty halitosis. Sacré bleu.

Lucky number seven on the Tinder train was a Spanish-speaking Italian / Peruvian guy from Jo’burg, Alejandro* (you can bust out with Lady Gaga vocals here; I still do). We met at Mischu for a late morning coffee and red capp and a stroll down the Sea Point prom. The moment in which I met this man I felt a strong energy exchange; some sense of comfort, or knowing, or was it… familiarity? He cracked a playful joke with the baristas that made me laugh. We sat in the sun near the Sea Point pools and chatted for hours and I knew I really liked his strong presence and grounded energy.

My eighth Tinder date was three days later with Myles*, an actor who had lived in China for a few years and we discovered that we’re both signed to the same agency in Cape Town. We met for a beer (him) and a veggie burger (me) at Hudson’s where we chatted for hours about the acting industry. I found him interesting and so impressive when he spoke fluent Mandarin. He’s a really nice guy and I wondered how this would play out, as the next night I was seeing Alejandro* again…

For about a week I went on dates with both of them, which was challenging as I’d forgotten what I’d said to whom in our respective (and lengthy) conversations. I also forgot what I’d worn for which date with which guy and had to devise a system of wearing the same set of clothes on consecutive nights for alternating dates to quell my confusion.

There were some awkward moments when I couldn’t remember if I’d already told one of my dates a particular story; or when I asked him to tell me more about his life in Jo’burg and he had to remind me, “I never lived in Jo’burg.” Oops, wrong guy.

Both of them wanted to take me to the Labia theatre for movies so when I went there with one I was nervous that we’d bump into the other.

An evening spent cooking dinner together had me on my toes as my phone was pinging like a slot machine with Tinder messages and WhatsApps from other guys…

Circular dating is hard work!

But Alejandro* and I had a strong connection that flourished quickly. I felt magnetized by his genuine and enthusiastic character; the way his mind works; his permanent tan and washboard abs that look like they’re ready to go salsa dancing and shout, “Arrrriba!” His voice is so resonant it could command an army or soothe a frightened child. I’m intrigued by his sport of freediving and his ability to hold his breath for five minutes and dive to a depth of forty-two metres below the sea. He loves to cook, doesn’t eat gluten or dairy, sprouts his own mung beans and makes the most ridiculously delicious coconut matcha latte (is this man even real?!).

The Italian stallion ran strides ahead of the pack as we dated for a month and the next thing I knew, he was asking me if I wanted to join him in Bali. Ummm let me think about that…

The night before my flight I watched the film Yes Man – a romantic comedy starring Jim Carrey and Zooey Deschanel. It resembled the transformation that had happened in my own life when I finally relinquished my resistance to online dating and decided to try new things. Now I’m in awe of the magic that happens when you change your mind about something and become a ‘Yes’ person… you open yourself up to so much adventure!

Alejandro* showed me a completely different side of Bali from the one I’d explored as a solo traveller. He threw me in the deep end by convincing me to complete both my Open Water and Advanced scuba diving exams in one intensive crash course so that we could go on a liveaboard diving trip together in Komodo National Park, one of the world’s most beautiful dive sites. I was reluctant at first as I’d had a bad experience learning to dive as a ten-year-old, but when I faced my fear and plunged into that water I discovered one of the most magnificent and numinous experiences in this world. I loved it.

So here I find myself unexpectedly back in Bali with a kind and adventurous man, burning incense on the balcony of our beach bungalow as we lie in a hammock together, looking up at Scorpio in the stars and watching the moonlight dance across the water. I wonder about how warm it is this side of the world; how brightly Jupiter shines; and about how easily this could not have happened if I’d swiped left in a split-second decision.

I never made it to ten Tinder dates. I guess eight was enough. There were more matches with whom I chatted over text and was curious to meet but they didn’t follow through with a date. I also made a few faux pas in my foray: one match turned out to be the interest of a friend (awkward) so I quickly vetoed that meeting. I clumsily ‘Superliked’ a guy friend’s profile by mistake (super awks).

There were a few other dudes I dated briefly in between and whom I’d met in the old fashioned, offline way: through living in the same apartment block; at a bar; and at a mutual friend’s wedding. But online dating has been a fun and profoundly interesting experience that I’m so glad I finally gave a chance. I don’t have ten Tinder stories to share but it has taught me seven salient truths:

1. Life is like a box of chocolates. So is Tinder.

2. There are a lot of guys named Dan* in the world.

3. You cannot ever judge someone by their photos or their texts. Meet them in real life.

4. To change your perception or experience of something, simply change your mind about it.

5. There are a lot of good men out there.

6. Be a Yes person! You’ll have so much fun.

7. You never know, if you swipe right you might just find yourself diving off a boat with sharks and turtles and heart-shaped coral in the Indonesian islands. Or snow skiing together in Japan (my next adventure with Alejandro*…).

I deleted the Tinder app off my phone with a satisfied smile. I hadn’t expected this. Maybe it was beginner’s luck. Maybe the cards were stacked in my favour.

Or maybe, I should just listen more to Caity.

*names have been changed

My brother and sister-in-law decided to go on holiday for a week, leaving me to look after their home… a home that came complete with a sick two-year-old; a new, lunatic puppy; and builders working on the house.

Okay, before I get too dramatic, I’ll admit that my job was shared with a daily nanny and a well-equipped tenant on the property, as well as a couple of visits from the child’s grandmothers; but let that not detract from the scale of the operation of six days of looking after Stella…

 

Day One.

My niece makes me ride her teeny tiny bicycle, made for ants, and I’m told I may not hover over it – I must sit down on the bike and pedal, like her. So my babysitting job starts with me balancing on an uncomfortable, too-small saddle six inches from the ground with my knees up around my ears. I think I injure a hip flexor. (God, I feel old.)

Then Stella unexpectedly throws a large ball into my face at point-blank range. I get such a fright that my immediate reaction is to shout at her angrily,

“NO Stella! DON’T DO THAT!”

Her face scrunches up in horror and she starts to wail; she runs away from me, sobbing, and throws herself down on her bed while I’m left stunned – in both senses of the word. Should I be feeling bad, for something she did, that hurt me?

I feel like there’s a lesson somewhere here but I’m not sure exactly what it is…

I tell her that what she did was not nice but that all she needs to do is say sorry and then it’ll be fine. She refuses to say it.

Eventually I try another approach and give her a gentle hug as I say, “Stellie, I’m sorry I screamed at you. It was because I got a fright when you threw the ball at my face, and it was sore. I didn’t mean to scare you… I’m sorry.”

She looks up at me and with all her innocent cuteness says, “I’m sorry Tessie.”

I think I just learned the lesson;)

Later in the evening Stels needs to take medicine for her tonsillitis, but she refuses to swallow the foul-tasting liquid (why aren’t all kids’ meds made to taste like strawberry sherbet?!).

After trying to coax (read: bribe) her in every way possible, Nita and I are resigned to force feeding. She pins Stella down and holds her head back, which I think is not right because she could choke like that, surely?! But Nita has a lot more experience with children than me, so I tentatively push the syringe into Stel’s mouth as she writhes in protest and screams bloody murder, coughing up and spitting out this white devil paste with tears and snot and absolute hatred for us. The noise is so loud I wonder if the neighbours think we’re exorcising a demon in here.

Then suddenly she’s dead still and quiet and I panic as my mind does a split-second somersault, “Oh God she’s choked! She’s inhaled this fucking paste into her lungs like Eric once did as a child with an almond twig and he had to be rushed to hospital and now I’ve done the same to Stella but it’s already too late and she can’t breathe and now she’s dead… I’ve killed my brother’s baby…!!!”

I’ve never been so happy to hear her start screaming again. It’s amazing how many disturbing thoughts a mind can think in a fraction of a second when dealing with little people.

As a reward for her bravery I tell her I have a present… I give her my pink hairband that she’s always tried to take from me. The look on her face is something I don’t think I’ve ever been given from a two-year-old, and I feel a mixture of embarrassment and inadequacy. This babe ain’t impressed. (Note to self: the size of a present should be directly proportional to the level of trauma experienced. This particular incident probably deserves a pony…).

At bathtime I have to coax her again to let me brush her teeth and I start to wonder if parenting is simply the perpetual art of bribery and/ or blackmail?

After her bath I ask Stella to show me which of the three creams on her dresser I should put where on her body (I’m worried I’ll put something Vicks-like on the wrong part…). I laugh that I’m asking a baby for help. Nita laughs more when she finds me slathering Stella’s bum with way too much cream, like I’m icing a cake. I feel like both the baby and the adult are looking at me with amused eyes that say “amateur.”

After what felt like a long first day, I’m excited to put this kid to bed. I read at least four stories to her (usually she gets two) and try to say goodnight but she’s having none of it as she points to her pink skipping rope and tells me what I must do next. By now I think I’m on some kind of parental auto-pilot mode and the next thing I know, even though I am exhausted, I find myself skipping in her bedroom for her entertainment.

If she had hoops, I’d probably be jumping through them too.

 

Day Two.

My alarm clock walks into the bedroom at a rude hour, looks at me and says, “You’re not Mommy and Daddy.” Yes and you’re not my child but let’s get on with it shall we?

I’m still tired from yesterday. Stella drags me out of bed to show me what she wants to wear today… it’s a pink and yellow Earthchild dress that I’d given her, so I feel quite chuffed that she wants to wear it.

My momentary delight dies when I walk back to my room and discover that my brother’s golden retriever puppy has chewed straight through my new phone charger cable.

 

As soon as the nanny arrives I duck to go home and eat my breakfast in peace and stare at my charger in pieces. I wonder if God thinks that making young things so darn cute nullifies their unruly behaviour? Or is it just to prevent us from leaving them on someone else’s doorstep in the middle of the night?

After work I return to my brother’s house to find Stella napping. Gloooorious! Taking full advantage of my freedom, I decide to tan in the garden.

I have just found my spot in the sun when the child pops up out of nowhere, buoyant as ever, wanting me to help her change into a different dress. It’s like she had smelled that I’d arrived and was far too comfortable.

I do crack a smile though, when I see that she wants to put on yet another one of the dresses that I’d given her. Am I finding some sort of parental validation through her choosing my gifts? Or is this another one of the kid’s innate abilities to soften an adult like a pliable piece of Scooby Doo wire in preparation for the next manipulation?

Before I know it, I’ve become a horse for Stella, who is ordering me to follow her maniacal dog Mango around the garden. I came here to tan; I will not leave here before crawling around the grass on all fours, in my bikini, getting scratched by an exuberant puppy while carrying an over-excited toddler on my back who is screaming at full volume and highest pitch directly into my inner ear canal and slapping the back of my head like it’s a rodeo show. I think my eardrum is perforated.

Whatever this babysitting game is, I feel like Stella’s leading it by ten points to nil here.

 

Day Three.

It wakes me up at 6am. It comes and lies next to me and coughs and sneezes in my face. I’m still sleepy so I prop up my phone with one hand to play a video for her while I try to snooze; my other hand covering my face in a feeble attempt to keep her germs away.

She says she wants to watch me riding so I find my most exciting round on Supersport – jumping the South African Derby (the biggest event in SA showjumping). I’m quite proud of this achievement and flattered that she’s interested in it…

Halfway through my round she yawns and says she wants to watch something else. Never rely on children to massage your ego.

She fetches a mop and tells me to get onto it behind her so we can ride it like a horse. And I must make neighing sounds. Yes, I can see how this is so much better than watching the Derby. I laugh as I get onto the straggly grey steed behind her and say, “Okay, this is called double donkey,” and she spends the next half hour terrorizing the puppy by chasing it around with the mop and screaming at the top of her lungs,

“DOUBLE, DOUBLE!!!”

While Mango’s got her tail between her legs and is skulking away from the crazy toddler, Stella’s taken the mop out from between her own and is swinging it wildly around the house. I shake my head and wonder why children – even when sick – seem to have hyperbolic energy at the exact moments when adults and even animals are at the opposite end of the enthusiasm scale and would love nothing more than to sleep.

This kid and her mop are a beast of their own.

 

Day Four.

Stella says the one word I really never want to hear: “poo.” Time for me to pull up my sleeves and get my hands dirty; the kind of dirty that makes you wish you were wearing rubber gloves and a gas mask. This is one stinkin’ diarrhea nappy. There is literally runny brown shit everywhere and after taking a deep breath and holding it tight in the naive hope that I can clean up this mess by the time I need to take my next one, I realize that was futile. Exhale.

I try to fold the overflowing nappy as quickly as I can but dexterity fails me and the stinking sludge seeps onto the white cabinet. Stella is wriggling and giggling and I’m holding the nappy in the air with one hand while grabbing wet wipes with my other hand and hurriedly swabbing them across her bum with fast but seemingly ineffective strokes and at the same time trying to block her from putting her feet down and squelching them in the crappy mudslide that is now slowly spreading out beneath her. I feel like I’m drowning in the bog of eternal stench; stewing in a stream of never-ending shit that I’m afraid might leave its smell lodged in my nasal cavities for the rest of the day; maybe my lifetime.

I think I’ve reached a DEFCON 1 level of sensory disruption and need of a babysitting break. I’m so relieved that work is taking me away for the rest of the day and night so I won’t have to deal with another shit storm for at least the next twenty-four hours…

I wish my olfactory senses were damaged instead of my hip flexor, ear canal and ego.

 

Day Five.

I ask Stella what she wants for breakfast; she says toast with almond butter. I make it for her; she whines that she doesn’t like it. Ugh. Maybe I hadn’t listened properly and she’d asked for macadamia nut butter? Or maybe she’s just being a brat.

I ask her if she wants cheese with her whine but she says she wants it on her toast so I slice pieces of cheese and start adding them. She gets upset with me and states emphatically that she can put it on all by herself. Fine. You do that, little girrrl. Maybe you can change your nappies all by yourself, too?

Finally she’s eating her toasties. She happily wipes her butter fingers all over my clean pants; then orders me to get a cloth to wipe her hands.

I never thought I’d one day be a butler to a toddler.

 

Day Six.

Stella has to have her last dose of antibiotics and Nita and I finally realize that the best way to get them into her is by blending the meds with ice cream. In a gesture of surrender (read: hopelessness), we feed the child ice cream for breakfast. I know the parents would probably have heart failure. I don’t care. I’m the captain now, and I intend on keeping this ship afloat just long enough to abandon it.

Unsurprisingly, the kid turns into a sugar monster. A dairy-fueled delinquent. It goes completely bonkers. It dances hyperactively and tells us that we too MUST DANCE!! It pulls me into bed with it, then shouts at me to get out, “YOU MUST GO AWAY FROM ME!!”

It runs around the house in a frenetic whirlwind of Tasmanian devil-esque mind-blown kinetic energy, producing more noise than anything its size ought to. The puppy joins in the ruckus. It’s like a tap has been opened and all of the crazy is busy pouring out…

I stare at this mayhem with a somewhat sinister smile as I think of my siblings who’ll arrive home tonight. Oh my dear brother, you are so very welcome 😉 And gooood luck with that.

 

******

You might have noticed that my daily reports get progressively shorter. Like my energy. And patience. And my countdown to the day I can give it back to its owners.

Jokes aside, I’d like to think that I’m an awesome auntie and a good godmother to this little girl. And I do love my niece.

I also love to give her back to her parents.

I spray my hands with sanitizer, smile and saunter away in slow motion like a Hollywood heroine from a massive bomb exploding in the background. I survived six days of Stella. My job here is done.

 

I dreamed a dream

of sharing priceless moments with my best friend

a thousand thank-filled moments of ambling through emerald green forests with pops of purple and orange and yellow

dewdrops resting atop flower petals, glinting with magic in the sunlight

we wander dreamily

wondering about old trees that stand so tall and wide and proud it feels like they hold the wisdom of the world

smiling at squirrels scurrying and hurrying and burying

and butterflies floating on the breeze, their delicate wings fluttering in a languid dance

sun beams burn down, warming our skin as we gaze up at giant white puffs of clouds drifting past, cheerily changing shape with the wind

witnessing the trees so easily let go as their leaves turn crimson and fall to the ground

and water droplets gently rain down to nourish and wash everything anew

contemplating the changing of the seasons; of life

we talk about everything and nothing as we canter with the fresh morning breeze in our faces

stopping to graze on long grass and breathe in the earthy air

to behold wild flowers; grains of sand

listening to the birds share so joyfully their chit-chat and sing-song

pressing my face into the chestnut neck that I’ve known forever

and drinking in deeply this ethereal energy

I wake up and realize,

it isn’t a dream ✨

Growing up on an almond farm, the authoritative paternal figure who commanded my respect also happened to be the biggest nut. My father was no fool – he sailed to this country with nothing but big dreams that flourished in the business world and on the sports field – but he did play the fool with abandon, consistently prompting fits of laughter amongst our quartet of van D’s.

Ever since I can remember, André has always been an oddball (I attribute this to his Dutchness). For all his innate talent, drive and dogged discipline that led to his worldly success, he’s also never failed to entertain with his comical quirks and eccentricities…

He took us on exotic family holidays that were punctuated by belly laughter as we witnessed his endless Fawlty Tower-esque moments: lifting his tog bag up by one strap while he was standing on the other so he pulled his own feet out from underneath himself and face-planted on the ground at reception; clumsily falling down steps and over chairs and off bicycles and even out of boats when he wasn’t paying attention; speaking to waiters by using his half-cut bread roll as a talking head; addressing us with monosyllabic sentences and monkey-like enthusiasm as he shoved half a banana in his mouth and offered up the rest of it with: “You? Ba-na-na?”

I remember him doing everything with gusto. When my inflatable island had to be packed away we found him lying face down on top of it in the driveway; arms and legs splayed as his torso was being swallowed by a deflating mass of blue and yellow plastic. When we accidentally threw a key into a public dustbin on a beach, he dived face first into it so his body disappeared upside down in the trash while his gangly legs protruded in an awkward balancing act. Once, when I was a varsity student and out one night, my parents popped into my digs unannounced and my amused housemates found André in my room, wearing the cap and Wonderbra that he’d found on the bed, practicing his golf swing with an invisible club…..

He was always a clown and we were always in stitches. If I was looking for my dad I’d invariably find him digging in the dirt or climbing up a tree to solve some practical issue on the small-holding. His endearing weirdness earned him nicknames like Mr Bean and the Crazy Dutchman; yet André’s inherent dualism made him the ultimate living paradox (I feel like the word oxymoron would be appropriate)…

While his goofiness and physical comedy was marvellous, his physical prowess was something we marveled at, too. In his younger years his string bean physique and agility saw him score countless goals on the hockey field by catapulting himself through the air and throwing his body down to slide across the grass while he slammed yet another impossible goal as the provincial team’s centre forward. The media aptly named him The Flying Dutchman.

His willowy frame belied a physical strength and vigour that this civil engineer channeled into building a whole stableyard (for my mom and I) and a whole squash court with his own hands (in which he would then spend endless hours thrashing his body around the court, to emerge sweating profusely and smiling broadly). He was a machine.

It is a kind of tragic irony, then, that the disease that will eventually kill my father is slowly shutting down his body’s basic mobility…

André has MSA: Multiple system atrophy – a rare and degenerative neurological disorder that causes symptoms similar to Parkinson’s disease and dementia. It affects his speech and his body’s autonomic functions like breathing and muscle control. There is no known cause and it is a progressive and ultimately fatal disease. He is seventy-five.

If I could euphemistically rename his MSA diagnosis I’d call it Marvellously silly antics, because that is what I’ve associated with my dad for most of his years. It’s something I’ve come to learn, in my thirties, that probably the most invaluable thing to have in this life is a sense of humour about things; to not take anything too seriously (after all, none of us are getting out of here alive…). And I realize now that he was inadvertently showing me this all along – through both his silliness and also his stern, abrupt and fiery moments that sometimes scared the hell out of me. Both sides showed me that there is nothing more wonderful than to make people laugh, and nothing more horrible than to make them feel small. Laughter, I’ve learnt, is such a delicious way to taste life and forge a connection between souls!

With a tangible cloud of sadness we witness the crumbling of this generous family man, brilliant businessman and agile sportsman as he is reduced to an old-before-his-time, meekly mannered grandpa whose once stoic emotions now flow freely and frequently (he often cries when saying hello or goodbye). We had to sell his car and ban him from driving nearly two years ago as he had become a hazard on the road – in the parking lot, even! (That didn’t stop him from stealing my keys and taking my car for a joyride one day when I wasn’t looking…).

He falls a lot and has to use a walking stick now – but even with that aid he still loses his balance and topples over sometimes (he’s fallen into a public pool fully dressed, walking stick and all…). I’m not sure how much longer until he’ll need to use a zimmer frame and eventually a wheelchair. His body is deteriorating and his mind is emptying; but I sense that strong-willed soul who still wants to be with us in the physical dimension. And he is still making us laugh with his silly antics that used to be reserved for stress-free family holidays but have now become a part of everyday life…

I often find myself stepping back to observe a situation or interaction for its inherent comedy (read: ridiculousness). Humour really helps everything and I’ve found that life is beautiful in all its laughableness:

André has always been a bit of a weird egg, which is an appropriate expression as a lot of his weirdness revolves around food. He lives for it. True to his orderly Dutch ways, he takes one apple and one lemon out of the fruit bowl every single evening and places them… next to… the fruit bowl: lined up and ready for consumption the following morning. But rules are made to be broken and sometimes I find him standing in the kitchen shoveling a large bag of veggie crisps in his face for breakfast. He habitually rolls oats and soaks them in too much water, slurps them out of the bowl with his hands like it’s a mug, and sometimes starts to prepare another batch of oats if he forgets that he’s actually just eaten breakfast…

If there are berries in the house, he will find them and he will shove them in his mouth like a starved castaway. We buy an oversupply of berry packs and hide some of them so they don’t vanish within twenty minutes of arriving in the house. I now call him Berry Monster. The hand-to-packet-to-mouth action is always on total autopilot and the trail of food left on the floor behind him ensures that we will never lose his whereabouts.

On a weekend away I offered him breakfast and our conversation went like this:

“Dad, would you like some eggs and salmon and avo?”

“No.”

“You don’t want that?”

“No.”

“Okay, so what would you like?”

“Uhhh….. Eggs and salmon and avo.”

“Great choice… coming right up!”

Understanding André has always been a laugh but it has now become an art: a focused and thought-filled process by which we have to decipher what he means when he speaks. He uses fewer words and makes less sense as the days go by. Sometimes he’ll use a single word and from that we will construct the sentence that we think he’s trying to express. It is sad, but beneath the sadness we can find moments of silliness and laughter. He’ll start to say something that I try to figure out and, as if he knows he could have said it better, adds: “With other words….” before trailing off again; and I laugh to myself and think: Yes, please use other words! But they never come.

I miss his call and receive his voicemail message:

“Uhhh….. leave….. ummm….. left a message after the tone. Thank you.”

When I call him back he seems confused about where I am and what I’m doing. He says he’s glad I phoned. And that there’s not much happening there. Then he puts the phone down.

I go home and find him sunning himself outside sans shoes and shirt, with just a little ‘lappie’ over his nose to prevent it from burning. I’m relieved to see that it’s not a bandage from a fall. As I’m asking him about his day, he gets up and walks inside, closing the door and leaving me to talk to myself:)

I spend the night at home and when he wakes in the morning I ask, “How did you sleep?”

He replies, “No, no tea please.”

Later he walks in on me sitting on the toilet and with wide eyes he exclaims, “OH!” and closes the door. He says he didn’t expect me to be home.

We go for a drive and he says something very jumbled about starting….

I gently respond with, “I don’t know what you’re talking about Dad…”

He replies, “Neither do I…”

As we drive he reads the words on the car’s side mirror out loud: “Objects in the mirror are closer than they appear.”

I open his electric window; he closes it. I open it again and he closes it again. Open, closed, open, closed… we continue to play fight like this as we both find it childishly amusing.

We arrive at our favourite place for lunch and I say, “Let’s take a photo together at the entrance!”

He points at my phone and exclaims, “Selfie!”

While we eat I ask him about the most profound life lesson he’s learned in his seventy-five years. He smiles to himself as if replaying an old memory and eventually strings together, “When I was drunk… in England… on hockey tour… and down on my knees… and they were driving me… like a horse…” I burst out laughing. At least he remembers the good times!

His short-term memory is failing rapidly, but his long-term memory is still excellent and he informs me that I should eat the skin of kiwi fruits as it is packed with vitamin C.

After lunch he hands me the bill.

We go to the movies and he says, “You get the tickets… I get the toilet…”

He has started to lose control of his bladder. For quite a while he’s had to pee very often and he likes to unzip his pants even before heading to the bathroom, but it has come to the point where he doesn’t always make it there in time. He now has to wear nappies. It would seem like the most humiliating thing but he takes it all in his short, hobbled stride. (No more striding and diving across hockey fields to score impressive goals; the goal now is to make it to the toilet in time without tripping and falling over his own feet.)

We watch a war movie (André is only interested in watching movies about the war) and at one stage I feel the soft touch of his hand on my arm as he leans across to inform me that Dunkirk is on the coast of Belgium (I know what he means). My heart melts a little as I see his keenness for the movie and our experience of watching it together and I know it is moments like this that I will treasure.

One night we watch an old classic, One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, which he thoroughly enjoys. Witnessing him laugh out loud at the crazy patients and their shenanigans in a mental institution makes me laugh even more at the irony.

On other occasions, when I’ve got the choice of movie wrong – like taking him to see Miss Saigon – I get a comical mix of reactions. At one point he gets emotional, but then starts sighing and checking his watch. Later in the film I see him looking down and staring at his crotch.

When it ends he says, “I never knew it was a musical.”

I reply, “But it brought you to tears; it was brilliant hey?”

“It was brilliant.”

“So aren’t you glad you watched it?”

“No.”

As we walk out I don’t have my hand on him for a few seconds and he nearly falls down the stairs. I catch him just in time, guide him carefully, and we take a slow walk to the car with our arms interlinked. On the drive home I overtake a slow-moving car and smile as André audaciously points and exclaims, “That guy is a slow poke!”

He comes to kiss me goodnight and I say, “Bye Dad.”

He replies, “Bye Dad.”

I quietly observe André as he spends his days sleeping (on his bed, the couch, in the sun, at his desk… anywhere, really); staring into space; and busying himself with trivial things like sorting out his collared shirts (he still wears his work clothes every day) and removing a railing in his closet with a screwdriver. I ask him why he’s doing that and he says “Well… that’s another solution for….. for, um….. for looking at that…..”

He gets up slowly and walks past me with a smile and a wave before disappearing into the garage and emerging with a hammer. I feel a sense of amused fondness as his inner handyman gets to work.

One morning I’m looking for my dad but don’t see him in the house… I open the garage door to find him standing there holding a feather duster, along with an array of random gardening tools. He looks at me with surprise and exclaims, “van Duuren!”

Amused, I ask what van Duuren is doing and he says, “Well, it doesn’t do anything.”

One day he tells me that he’s found blood in his urine so I take him to see a urologist. I sit in the doctor’s office and grimace as he takes my dad behind a curtain and asks him to lie down and bear with the discomfort while he feels his prostate gland. He says it is slightly enlarged but there are no signs of recurring bladder cancer on the sonar. He’s not convinced of doing a cystoscopy because of the effects of the anaesthetic on my dad’s already-compromised brain.

After finishing the examination he asks André if he needs his daughter to help him get dressed. I laugh as my dad immediately says yes and sits on the bed smiling like a schoolboy while I put on his shoes and tie his shoelaces, knowing full well that he is still able to do this for himself. The doctor then asks my dad to pee into a cup and I laugh again and say, “I’m not helping you with this one!” It turns out I should have, as he ends up peeing all over his pants and the bathroom floor and emerges without one drop inside the cup. I help him at home later and bring the sample back to the hospital… luckily no infection is detected.

Back at home I’m looking for the Rooibos tea bags but all I can find in the kitchen cupboard is a stash of cannabis-filled syringes and I feel like a parent shaking her head with a wry smile at discovering her child’s wayward habits. My dad asks me to come to the dining room table where he points at the wooden tabletop and tells me I cannot draft a joint… I don’t even know anymore if he’s talking about some engineering term or a spliff…

He walks around like he’s searching for something so I ask him what he’s looking for. He means to say that he’s lost his bifocals, but instead he says what sounds like the Afrikaans swear word, “My fok-alls I haven’t got…..”

Later I find him creating order by rearranging books and photo albums on the shelves according to their dates.

He asks me to fix the computer screen, again… I plug it in, again. His eyes light up like I’ve performed a magic trick as he asks, “How did you do that?” He spends hours sitting in front of that screen, looking at his Lotus spreadsheet… and reading an ancient information booklet on how to use the spreadsheet….. (I may be a technical wizard at fixing computer screens, but I can’t help him with MS-DOS programmes from the eighties…).

André has always been a little obsessed with numbers and spreadsheets and he works away at them diligently. He asks me to verify the calculations he’s jotted down on the cover of a Times magazine because, he says, “I can’t get this. My brain is….. completely….. shattered at the moment.” He sits for hours crunching numbers and it makes me smile sadly, knowing that he’s working away at something completely irrelevant…

But as I watch him it makes me wonder… is this not what we all do in life, anyway? Humans are funny beings. We spend our lives working away at numbers and documents and spreadsheets and all forms of paperwork to contribute to something that ultimately means nothing. We toil like ants, scurrying around, building and making and fetching and carrying and attaining and achieving and busying ourselves until we die. We’ve become human doings. But when we leave this world we leave with nothing – only that essence of who we are – our being. It makes me think that we’re all a bit mad in the head – and that that is actually okay as long as whatever we’re keeping busy with, makes us happy. Numbers seem to make my dad happy, so my melancholic smile turns into a peaceful one as I watch him work away with pen in one hand and calculator in the other.

My brother and I are spending precious time with our dad when we can. We took him for dinner one night and André inhaled his meal and then started fidgeting with impatience as he waited for us to finish. Eric jokingly asked him, “What? Do you need to get back home at a certain time so you can stare at the ceiling?” and we all burst out laughing.

Luckily my dad still has a great sense of humour about things. A close friend of mine joined my folks and I for lunch, after which she commented on how wonderful it is to see him laugh with so much heart; and to see him look at my mom and I with such fondness in his eyes – beaming – like he’s proud as punch.

I’ve started playing a lot of chess with my dad as he used to be an avid player and he taught me the game as a young girl. It’s great to see that he still remembers how to set up the board and mostly knows how each piece moves – although he makes some very careless decisions a lot of the time, not surprisingly. Eric says he feels like it’s an unfair advantage to be playing chess with someone who has dementia and we all giggle again. I keep getting my dad’s horses and chuckle at the irony of art imitating life here. Eventually I capture his king with my horse… sometimes even with my pawn.

He takes out his queen very early in the game to capture my pawn, not realizing that she’s left wide open to immediate capture as I take her with my castle. André looks shocked, shakes his head and exclaims, “Ah wooow! Yaasus!” I tell him he’s making stupid moves and that he needs to watch where he’s going or he’ll fall – and again I realize the game is reflecting real life here.

Life is a game, ultimately, in which we need to be aware of each of our moves and their consequences. We also need to play; to not get too serious about the game. Sometimes my dad’s inner joker comes out and he copies every single move I make so that the board becomes a mirror image of black and white pieces. I shake my head and laugh as I wonder in which ways I am a mirror image of my dad…

On a cold winter’s night I took my folks out to watch a movie at the mall. André asked if it’s about the ‘oorlog’; I told him it was Mamma Mia. This would be a hit or miss… it turned out to be an adventure. We all enjoyed the film but when I tried to start my mom’s car afterwards, it sputtered to nothing. So at half past ten on a Friday night I was stuck with my parents in the parking lot at Somerset Mall in the freezing cold while we waited for the AA to arrive. My dad started farting. We were literally being Dutch-ovened by a Dutch man in the car. My mom told him to go and take a slow walk in the traffic. I broke into a fit of giggles and buried my nose in my scarf as I complained that I didn’t know what was worse: staying in the car with these two old fogies or standing outside in the five degree cold!

An hour later we were still sitting in the car listening to André trying to say something but all that came out was a bunch of broken words: “Um….. in fact….. when too expensive….. the uh, the uh….. or, too expensive….. and too….. um, too expensive….. for the flight….. uh.” He gave a deep sigh, scratched his ear and opened the door to get out of the car.

Eventually, after midnight, a huge flatbed truck arrived and a dodgy driver told me to keep my foot on the brake because he was missing some hook!? He also said we could stay inside the car for the trip, which I’m pretty sure is illegal, but I was too tired to care. My dad would not have been able to climb up into the front of that big truck anyway.

So there we were, riding home together inside a broken down car on top of a flatbed with my foot on the brake, like the bloody Brady Bunch. When the truck stopped outside our house, my dad went to open his door and I had to slam my arm across his chest and stop him from getting out as we were still raised metres high in the air…

He’s fallen enough in his life. It used to be astonishing when he did it purposefully to score goals on the hockey field; funny when he did it clumsily in some inept social situation; but now it is just scary. I had to hold back tears when I saw him the other day with two swollen purple eyes and a big gash in his forehead.

I once took him to see a clairvoyant who told me that she sees two benevolent beings by his side – angels who protect him. I believe it. Somehow through all of his falls, my dad hasn’t broken anything or done any serious damage to himself. He just gets up and carries on, as if he’s missed a shot at goal and wants to continue with the game. The Dutchman is still flying, just in a less graceful way.

One day he walked home from the nearby shopping centre with his packets of groceries and fell on the tarmac inside the retirement village. He picked himself up and arrived home covered in blood but obviously not too concerned about it: I found him sitting on the couch, blood dripping down his face whilst reading a blood-stained newspaper and stuffing berries in his mouth with blood-soaked hands.

This is the man who in 1980, when my mom was heavily pregnant with Eric, arrived home with his four front teeth missing after being smashed in the face with a hockey stick – and smiled at her like it was a joke. Then two months after I was born he drove straight into a moving train and was thrown through the air in his car, but he walked away unscathed.

He was born with a cleft palate and was essentially a starving baby during the war. In his late sixties he beat bladder cancer. I feel like his angels have always worked overtime…

André is a delightful enigma to me. I can’t find the words to capture his essence, but I have been in awe of him and laughed with him – also at him;) He has always done everything with intensity. I’ve watched him go from being a fervently religious man to embracing a more spiritual view; but always emotionally affected by a greater power (we’ve never been able to be inside a church together without sobbing). He’s always had a voracious appetite for books, health, sports, life; and – now especially – food.

Years ago he gave me some advice that I carry with me to this day. “Remember that wherever you go, you take yourself with you,” he said to me. So simple and yet so deeply profound, I’m sure a thick spiritual book could be written on it, like the ones that line his bookshelves.

I’m learning so much more about my dad now as I watch old home videos from the eighties with my folks. As I get older I become more astutely aware of how much he has done in shaping my life and who I am today. My gratitude for what he has afforded me is eternal. I don’t think I realized just how much of a rock he has been for our family…

Now, he sits on the couch and asks, “What day is it vandaag?” (he mixes his languages frequently).

“It’s Saturday, Dad.”

He frowns as he asks me, “What’s my condition again?”

He’s not happy with my answer of MSA. He prefers dementia.

“Wh… wh… wh… what is the story?”

“I’m not sure, Dad. The story about what?”

“About….. uh….. the dementia.”

Then he remembers and raises his index finger as he states matter-of-factly, “Nobody speaks to me because of dementia.”

I give him a loving smile and say, “But your family speaks to you, and we love you.”

He gives me a resigned smile in return and says, “Yes.”

I don’t recall my father ever telling me he loved me when I was growing up; now he says it to me all the time. It’s almost like the more he slips away from his body and mind, the more connected he becomes with his soul.

We were warned that one of the effects of this disease could be aggression – which he initially displayed but which soon subsided, thankfully. Now he is quite the happy chap most of the time. When he laughs he does it whole-heartedly: with his eyes tightly closed and his mouth wide open as he gives it a full-bodied guffaw. It’s great. It makes me think of something I read in Mitch Albom’s book Tuesdays with Morrie, where the dying protagonist and college professor says to the author: “Dying is only one thing to be sad over, Mitch. Living unhappily is something else.” Even though my dad is slowly slipping away from us and is oftentimes mired in confusion, he seems to be living quite happily.

It must be heartbreaking to watch your life partner degenerate but I see my mom doing her best in such trying circumstances. She’s being a champion at caring for her husband as he essentially regresses back to a childlike state. It is quite thought-provoking to visit my dad every one to two weeks and notice his deterioration each time; and to see my two-year-old niece, Stella, around the same time intervals and notice her progression. Never before have I been more aware of the circle of life.

My dad keeps asking when he can come and see the apartment I’m renting in Sea Point but he keeps forgetting that there are far too many stairs for him to climb. He becomes increasingly confused about things as the days go by, so I hope we’ll be able to understand each other for enough time still (how much is enough time…?). On my last visit home, while my mom was away for a few days, I looked at the notes that one of his carers had written in his file and noticed a spelling mistake: He is trying to have a confusation with me. I wonder if that was in fact an error. How perfectly apt.

…..

I know that understanding André is not nearly as important as spending time with him; as acknowledging him and loving him.

Also, being grateful for this time we have left with him. As the professor Morrie said to his interviewer: “It’s horrible to watch my body slowly wilt away to nothing. But it’s also wonderful because of all the time I get to say goodbye… Not everyone is so lucky.”

…..

On Father’s Day I go home and my dad apologizes to me for forgetting my birthday, which had been three weeks earlier. He then comes to me with the Father’s Day card I wrote him, and says, “I think you are fantastic. I love you.”

I literally feel my heart muscle expand inside my chest cavity.

And then he says,

“You must write.”

Paulo Coelho said that to write is to cry in silence. Perhaps that is what I’m doing here.

I love you, Dad.

Thank you for the laughs, always…..

 

 

(Postscript: André was the first person with whom I shared this written piece. Before I even started reading it to him, he laughed. I asked him why he was laughing and he replied, “Why not?”

I thought, what a great philosophy for life! And what a perfect ending for this essay.

He laughed and cried throughout the stories, and there were times when his happy laughter was so interwoven with his sad crying that I couldn’t tell what he was feeling.

I think he was feeling it all…..)

my surf Sister

and I took a drive

away on a cold winter’s Day

to the Sea where we could See

and Smell and Hear and Feel and Taste

wet faces and salty hair

Birds gliding

Fish jumping

and ice-cold Human feet

shivering

exhilarating!

Laughter bursting

we high fived as we rode in sync

threw caution to the Wind

caught the same Wave after Wave

and waved

at each other

at the World

held hands as we surfed

beside each other and others

all connected

Alive!

In Love

with our Ocean…

with Earth ♡

I’ve just returned to the dating world after a three year hiatus. Back in February 2015 I decided to be single for a while; no profound reason except that I knew I wanted to move cities in the near-ish future and that I was tired of it all… tired of the same old process of meeting a guy; explaining my life story; one of us falling in love; followed by the inevitable heartbreak – usually caused at a really inopportune time on my part (my last three boyfriends were handed their sentences – or rather given their freedom – on Christmas Day, my birthday, and Valentine’s Day, respectively. Maybe not so respectfully).

They were great guys. Incredible guys. I don’t think I’ve ever dated a man who was not extraordinary in some way and most importantly, kind, in many ways (apart from perhaps one bad egg somewhere on the list.) I still love most of them very much and think of them fondly for the people they are, the things they taught me and the special times we shared together. But I’ve always been a fiercely free spirited woman on my own mission and so my plan to be free and single escalated from a few months to a few years… three years, to be exact.

That’s a lot of time. Enough time to forget how this whole dating story works and to return to a world in which you tap a pink flame on your phone to browse through a catalogue of men at the convenience of your fingertips. A world which has never attracted me in the least. As much as my friends tried to encourage me to sign up, I’d never been open to the idea of Tinder – I can’t explain exactly why; it’s just not my style. Maybe I simply haven’t been ready to start dating again. Maybe I’m a little scared of putting myself out there like that. Maybe I feel that my love is too deep to be channelled through such technological trivialities; the romantic in me trusts that things will happen spontaneously and organically.

So I decided to play the game the good old fashioned way that I knew and with which I felt comfortable… by hitting the nightlife in my new mother city of residence (previously I had been living a life of quiet solitude on a smallholding in Jo’burg, and more recently a life of radical restfulness at a retirement home in Somerset West with my parents…) Things were about to change, and drastically. I swapped my usual Friday night attire of baggy track pants and T-shirt for a girly dress and white takkies and a dollop of make-up. My friend Em and I ventured out to Sgt Peppers on Long Street where I met ze German guy. Let’s call him Rudi. He was tall, cute and very enthusiastic on the dance floor – a quality I find especially attractive. We danced and laughed together until I realized that this was probably going to be my first kiss in three years… I tried to keep my expectations in check. It turns out I shouldn’t have had any at all… Rudi stuck his tongue in my mouth like an insect stabbing at food and pulled it out so fast I felt something akin to the bemused indignance of being ‘poked’ by someone on Facebook.

“What the hell was that?!” I asked.

With eyes darting around the room, he replied, “My girlfriend iz here somewhere…”

WHAT?!! He had a girlfriend, and she was right here in this bar the whole time he’d been dancing and flirting with me?! WTAF. I mean I wasn’t expecting to find Prince Charming and hear violins play a rendition of Pachabel’s Canon when we kissed, but this was ridiculous. And what a way to break my three year drought. It’s like feeling a wet splash on your head in Cape Town and looking up hopefully; only to discover a cloudless sky and that someone just spat out the window of their second story apartment.

My apologies to the poor girlfriend of this schmuck!!

Time to leave for greener grass. Otherwise known as Deco Dance. We were old but the night was young and we found a sea of men (not seamen) to float around in; there were so many different types of guys and they approached us with the consistency of waves. A young one caught my eye and then my hand as he twirled me around the dance floor to Whitney Houston’s I Wanna Dance with Somebody! and Grease Lightning’s Summer Lovin’. It was all so romantic and I felt a spark stirring… then he leaned in close to me and announced he was leaving to get a shawarma.

So I kissed him, and with a broad smile on his face he said he didn’t want to go get a shawarma anymore. This boy was cute, and young. Super smart, too. Let’s call him Brain. I found him even more attractive when I learned that he’s a doctor and seven years younger than me. Seven! I used to date men who were way older than me but as my years have increased, theirs have plummeted in inverse proportion to the point where I think I am now playing in cougar category… to my amusement and delight. I didn’t tell Brain my age but he said he thought I was “around 24 or 25.” Oh my god I love you, I said to him (silently) as I high fived myself (in my mind).

Around 4am the music stopped and we were kicked out of the club, so we sat on the streets of Sea Point and chatted with Brain ‘til the sun rose. Em and I strolled home, eventually getting to bed at 6am and I chuckled as I thought of most of my friends who were just getting up around this time on a Saturday to attend to their kids…

I love my life.

Soon after this first all-nighter, Brain and I went on two dates together and I felt like something was starting between us… he texted often and impressed me with what seemed to be – aside from an obviously high IQ – also an elevated EQ. He made me smile and I thought to myself, I might just want to keep this toy boy…

And then he ghosted me.

‘Ghosting’ is a term I’ve heard millennials use for when a guy seems ‘totes’ into you but then suddenly vanishes without a trace – no explanations; no communication; nothing. Gone. Like the wind. Like a Phillip Phillips song. Like that girl in the movie. I do not date guys like that. But after being in touch daily for a while, Brain flew to Durban for ten days and I never heard from him again. He must have lost his phone in transit. The poor guy probably got mugged. Wait, no – I’m sure he was actually sent out on an urgent relief-aid mission to a war-torn African country where he was performing life-saving emergency surgery on children before being captured by rebel soldiers who were now holding him hostage! So he obvs couldn’t text me:)

Orrr… maybe his name should just be Doctor Douchebag. Perhaps the seven year age gap was indeed pushing it a bit and my fantasies of frolicking in the doctor’s office with my new toy boy promptly dissolved into a hazy cloud of age-related realization that I hadn’t been ready to acknowledge… and so with the swiftness of Taylor I shook it off and got ready to meet the next one. I decided to quit trying to understand the vagaries of twenty-something-year-old boys’ hearts and minds and move on, once again, to greener pastures…

The next time I went out it was to Harrington’s, an upmarket bar in town filled with style and sophistication. And me; in my little floral age-defying (denying?) boob-tube dress and alice band and not-so-white-anymore takkies. This was a mad fun night of getting down low and dancing like crazy to old school hip-hop tracks with my friend Eves and a bunch of energetic strangers. In the early hours of the morning I ended up kissing a very good-looking forty year old Australian who was the most complimentary man I’ve met in a long time. He was smart, sexy, and full of sweet things to say about me… and he was heading back down under the following day. Ohhh well, it had been another super fun all-nighter and I smiled as I headed home in an Uber not long before sunrise.

At some stage during these weeks I noticed that my same-aged neighbour, who had just moved into the flat next to mine, was actually a bit of a looker. It turns out he has the same name as Doctor Douchebag and also happens to have a doctorate in his field of study. But at least he has seven years on Casper. Let’s call him Brain Two. He’s high energy, highly intelligent and also highly arrogant, I thought at first. I walked past his apartment late one Friday night after seeing a play and complaining to my friend about the youth of today. She spent most of the time trying to convince me to join Tinder, meet hordes of men (not whores of men, I’d hope) and enjoy multiple free drinks and meals. Enter, the living antithesis of this ideology: Brain Two. Or rather, I entered Brain Two’s apartment, as he invited me in for a drink and two hours later we were still debating the intricacies of Tinder, dating and who should be parting with their cash (he is vehemently opposed to paying for girls on dates as he asserts that we are all equal, while I still enjoy the old romantic notion of chivalrous men picking up the bill. This is an ongoing, heated argument between us…)

Brain Two has me vacillating between my opinions of him and whether I like him or not. I think that he likes me as he texts me all the time, but I can’t be sure and after my experience with Brain One I realize that my attraction barometer must be pretty fucking faulty. So Brain Two was put into the Friend Zone from the start. After all, we are practically roommates, so getting together is likely a terrible idea; and we disagree on everything from dating and money to diet and God – probably the fundamentals on which people build their relationships together and not the ideal circumstances in which to be catching feelings for someone with his Byronic nature…

We’ve basically been fighting about stuff since we met but I think we both enjoy our stupid banter and sarcastic humour. Also, he’s been helping me navigate the world of Tinder. Ironically I’ve only ever opened the app whilst in his presence and then he grabs my phone and starts swiping right like he’s playing a video game. And that’s as far as I’ve progressed on the pink flame: a few random matches but mostly general app apathy. I’m still slowly warming to the idea… my tinder ain’t flamin’ just yet. In the meantime my neighbour has been keeping me busy enough…

One weekend Brain Two was hosting his friend’s friend from Canada, a girl who works for Doctors Without Borders and who was in Cape Town for a night, so he invited me to join them for drinks. It was a Saturday evening around 8pm and I was having an early one: already in my pyjamas and in bed with my book (books are all I go to bed with these days). I was in my lazy mood so it took some convincing, but my fast-rising FOMO coupled with an opportunity to go out on the town versus the thought of staying in bed and reading about my friend’s erectile dysfunction had me painting on some make-up and throwing on some party clothes within minutes… (I have deep respect for this new author and his work in the beautiful Butterfly Man; and I know he’ll humour the tongue in my cheek here – but it was a Saturday night and this butterfly wanted to socialize;)

That decision led to one of the funnest and funniest nights out I’ve had in a long time…

The Canadian girl – let’s call her Dana – was a breath of fresh air to meet. She’s a smart, beautiful brunette with a shiny stud in her nose and a sparkle in her eye; a bright bundle of energy who’s even more enthusiastic than me on the dance floor. We took an immediate liking to each other. There we were – basically three strangers – bar hopping together like old friends. We had dinner at Tiger’s Milk and in an ironic twist of fate Brain’s bank card was declined so I ended up rolling my eyes and paying for his meal. Then Dana and I somehow managed to talk the doorman into waiving the R100 entry fee for men at Harrington’s and allowing him into the club for free. Brain Two was living the life of his dreams.

We drank cocktails and danced until it was time to move on to the Village Idiot, where Brain wanted to meet up with the girl he’d been seeing via Tinder – let’s call her New Zealand, because she’s from New Zealand (“She’s international, she doesn’t expect a man to pay for the bill on a date,” boasts Brain while I roll my eyes so far back I’m nearly blinded). But upon seeing him there with the two of us girls, New Zealand burst into a jealous rage and gave him an ultimatum that resulted in them breaking off whatever they had. So the three of us promptly decided to leave the Village Idiot, and like the village idiot I missed the step off the balcony and face-planted flat onto the floor in front of everyone. Darling Dana pretended it was a purposefully executed dance move and threw herself down too; then with one swift swoop pulled me back up on my feet as we roared in fits of laughter.

Our final port of call was a grungy club called Aces and Spades. We joined two of Brain’s guy friends there and the five of us downed cocktails and tequila shots as we hit the dance floor hard. The music was great so I was all over the show. At one stage I gained an appreciative audience whilst side-planking in the air on the DJ’s shoulders! Yes, this was the fun old Tess I think I lost a little in my years of sequestered spirituality. This was me in my element – expressing my jubilant silliness and dancing like no one was watching. Soon, everyone would be watching, as what happened next took even me a little by surprise…

I had scanned the bars for any potential hotties, but alas, Cape Town wasn’t showing off at all tonight. And Dana and I had hit it off so well that I started to look at her with a sparkle in my eye. I’ve always admired the elegance of the female form and found that certain women exude a subtle sensuality that I find alluring. As Dana and I were grooving together on the dance floor I realized I wanted to kiss her. I mean, maybe it was the tequila that wanted to kiss her. Either way, this dark and grungy club was the perfect place to let go of inhibitions and surrender to such sensibilities. She pulled me off the dance floor to a corner of the bar where we made out with each other between bursts of giggles and tender arm strokes. The guys, thinking that we were buying drinks, came to find us… they found a little more than they had bargained for;)

This was definitely not how I envisioned the night unfolding a few hours ago when I agreed to get out of bed and join them for a few drinks, but it was surpassing my wildest expectations and I could not stop laughing. I hadn’t kissed any girls since my teens and early twenties and I was loving reliving my youth! It was 3am and the music stopped too soon. The DJ high fived me and Dana kissed me and we all stumbled out onto the streets together like a bunch of drunken teenagers. It had been an eventful night to say the least.

The funniest part of this story is the love triangle – or whatever awkward shape it was: New Zealand had wanted to get with Brain but threw a tantrum because she saw Dana and I as a threat; then Dana had frankly asked Brain if she could hook up with him but he had just as frankly declined her; then I ended up getting together with Dana, who actually happens to be married but in a very complicated, open relationship with her bisexual husband who thinks he may be gay and whom she’s given the space to explore… so on a night that I had planned to be in bed reading a book about flaccid penises, I ended up going out to four different bars with two people I hardly knew and making out with a married woman (insert any number of consecutive laughing emojis here. And maybe also the one with the two women hearting).

OMG. I guess I’ve got a story to write.

It didn’t exactly fulfill my notion of romance but I suppose I got the spontaneity I’ve wanted… impromptu parties often end up being the best fun and suffice to say that things did happen organically throughout this ridiculous night (wo/ man am I glad I got out and lived a little!).

But kissing guys who have girlfriends or who turn into ghosts or who live on the other side of the world – and kissing girls in general – is not exactly helpful to my dating life. Quite a few weeks have passed since then and I still haven’t found the impetus to start going on Tinder dates… until now.

I think I might have finally melted the ice and relinquished my resistance to the pink flame. It’s nearly winter so I’m going to throw myself into that fire. Maybe I’ll meet some decent men. Maybe I’ll score some free meals. Or maybe I’ll just come out with some more stories to write… 😉

A year of MAGIC! Also, some realism. Twenty Seventeen allowed me so much introspection and reflection on life – glorious physical, mental, spiritual LIFE! Also, death. Not so glorious physically or mentally, but spiritually: a profundity (RIP to the many souls I knew who departed our physical space in that time).

TIME: what a gift! I was afforded much of it last year… time to explore countries and hop over continents from east to west and north to south; to seek truth and experience growth towards my higher self. Time to spend with beloved family (as I write this, I’m watching over my dad while he exercises in the retirement home’s mini gym, diligently climbing onto each machine in a clockwise direction with the orderly fashion of the civil engineer he used to be and the discipline of the brilliant hockey player he once was). Time to spend with old friends who long ago moved out of South Africa (I arrived armed with boxes of Rooibos tea and Ouma rusks) and time to make new friends around the world (I’ve come a long way from the painfully shy Sub-A girl who used to really not like it when the teacher asked me to bring a note to another classroom for fear of getting lost in the corridors…)

My mind keeps wandering back to Bali, where my travels began. I don’t know why exactly I went there – I just felt drawn to it. And I’ve learnt to trust my inner compass, for what I found on that magical island was LIFE-CHANGING…

Those are bold words, I know, but at a cacao ceremony in a treehouse somewhere (and those are odd words, I know), I discovered a place filled with more love and grace than I think I’ve ever experienced – where a tribe of strangers helped reveal the very essence of this life on Earth.

When I went to seek out the traditional healer Wayan (of Eat, Pray, Love fame), I met a girl in her shop who invited me to a cacao ceremony the following Monday night. I didn’t know what a cacao ceremony was, but my first thought was that it sounds like we get chocolate there so naturally, I’m in! Two days later I made my way through the bustling streets of Ubud, map in hand and curiosity brimming as to what I would discover on this balmy night… (It turned out that my first discovery would be just how much sweat I could produce from climbing up endless stairs and winding pathways, sometimes narrowly missing traffic that rushed past the almost non-existent pavements. And how ridiculous I’d been to pack jeans for this island trip).

As I rounded one of the last corners on the map I must have looked a little lost. A beautiful olive-skinned girl with brown wavy hair arrived on the back of a scooter taxi; a shiny stud adorning her nose and a frangipani tucked behind her ear. She hopped off the bike, smiled at me serenely and asked if I was looking for the cacao ceremony. She had a peaceful radiance about her and seemed to float with the grace and wisdom of someone who knew an ancient secret… I nodded as I scrambled after her, sweaty and disheveled from my long walk; eager to learn of this transformative power that had bestowed her with such presence. She explained that the place we were about to enter was “like church, but for spiritual people.” Oh thank God, I thought.

My long physical journey to get to this place (both the island and the treehouse) was a prelude to the sublime spiritual journey on which I was about to embark…

We arrived at the most beautiful wooden treehouse nestled in a jungle of lush greenery. I watched as she took off her sandals and presented herself at the doorway, arms outstretched so she resembled Jesus on the cross while she received a ceremonial smudge wand. The smoke from the burning sage was waved around her whole body from fingertips to toes, and then mine, to cleanse our auras before we entered the sacred space. This special home made of bamboo and thatch opened out to verdant green vegetation that seemed to overflow with magical life energy; a dense jungle befitting of Mowgli. Two big round gongs stood statuesque in their golden glory and made me think of something you’d find at a Buddhist temple. Behind them a bunch of multi-coloured scatter cushions were strewn across the floor and in the centre of the airy shelter was the most magnificent mandala made of flowers, arranged with intricate detail in the shape of a heart – a burst of intense colour in the literal heart of the room!

Candles and incense added to the dreamy feel of this intimate gathering of around thirty people. I wasn’t sure exactly what to expect from this evening but I felt a curious sense of anticipation. I went to find my seat on one of the scatter cushions and sat cross-legged and wide-eyed as I observed…

I observed the small group of people who would lead this ceremony: two girls in white flowy tasseled dresses that made their tanned skin look even darker; their faces decorated with nose rings and framed by dreamcatcher necklaces and earrings; fine ankle bracelets adorned their bare feet. Real feathers and tattoos of feathers were embedded in the hair and on the bodies of these elegant girls. One held a wooden tambourine with a picture of a dragonfly etched into it and the other sat in Lotus position in front of a mic. Next to her was her friendly-faced fiancé; his long dark hair falling down nearly far enough to reach his guitar; and next to him another bearded man with a box drum between his hands.

I observed girls in beads and boho dresses with tie dyed prints; guys wearing harem pants and headbands. One man wore a black shirt with the words ‘VEGAN IS PEACE’ boldly written across his chest in white letters. A mozzie landed on my arm and started to suck my blood so I swatted at it with my right hand, but as I did so I suddenly felt self-conscious and hoped the vegans hadn’t seen me do that… I was relieved to see that I had missed the insect and resolved not to intentionally kill any of them (at least for the rest of the evening).

The quartet welcomed us warmly and introduced themselves as Elah, Ausierra, Sebatierra and Reggie Riverbear. They began the ceremonial singing accompanied by their earthy instruments. The songs were simple and repetitive enough to grasp quickly and I started to sing along with the others, quietly at first. I was acutely aware of what a wacky, hippie crowd this was (by normal societal standards), as Ausierra lifted her hands up to the sky to give thanks to Great Spirit and then bowed down to Mother Earth. With her strong, soothing voice and American accent she furthered her thanksgiving prayers:

“We give thanks to the East, the spiritual yellow fire direction, may you fuel our determination and illuminate our spirit to enlighten our brothers and our sisters…

To the South, the emotional red water direction, show us how to balance the lessons of life and trust in the plan that you have chosen for us…

And to the West, the physical black earth direction, give us the insight to be aware of the sensations of our bodies so that we continuously send positive energy throughout this good Earth…

To the North, the mental white wind direction, we look to you for the logic and the wisdom to create a sustainable existence upon this planet…

To the sacred cosmos of infinite knowing, infinite being, infinite connectedness, we see you; we ARE you. And to our within, may we manifest a path of self-realization and initiation upon the mysteries of life to lead us to the very core of our BEING!”

The people gathered here were humming quietly; their eyes closed and their bodies swaying from side to side. At first I laughed at the thought of others seeing me here at a crazy hippie gathering with this bunch of nutters; next thing I had tears streaming down my face as I felt a deep presence wash over me. It reminded me of a saying in the Christian tradition that goes something like: ‘When two or more are gathered in my name…’

I could feel Great Spirit right here with me. Or Yahweh, Universe, Allah, Being, God, Source…. whatever you want to call the life force that dwells within each of us and every living thing; the omnipotent, omniscient, omnipresent energy field that is greater than us and also a part of us.

I was handed a glass of the darkest, richest, silkiest cacao that I’ve ever tasted. If there is a NECTAR OF THE GODS, this must be it. I wanted to down it all in one shot and ask for more but instead I allowed the warm velvety liquid to linger on my tongue as my taste buds delighted in their most superlative discovery yet. Bursts of chocolate and orange and cinnamon flavours danced down my throat and warmed my entire body. Not bitter yet not sweet, this magical elixir was pure decadent PERFECTION. Ausierra called on the beautiful benevolent cacao spirit to fill our hearts and to heal our relationships with others, with the land and with ourselves. (I think my relationship with anything and everything had just been healed;)

We continued to sing songs about life and love and healing. Ausierra led the ceremony and declared that we were going on a journey with the soul of this medicine; to align ourselves with original BLISS. We sat with our hands open at our knees and sang about our cups and our hearts and our lives being filled with grace. We released resentments as we sang a slow song about letting go of what no longer serves us; we gave gratitude as we sang: “Thank you for this opportunity to breathe in… thank you for this opportunity to breathe ouuut…”

We clapped our hands to an upbeat tempo and chimed: “Don’t worry, don’t worry, don’t worryyy, you’re being taken care of by the Univer-er-erse!” I smiled as we sang more lyrics like “open your mind, cultivate your soul”, “say YES to life” and “with the power of intention you create your reality” and I thought about how this stuff should be taught in schools, THIS stuff right here should be mainstream education for kids and accessible to all adults… if everyone were doing this the world would be a better place! (Chocolate and songs and songs about chocolate could literally save us.)

By now we were all humming loudly with the drumbeat and my body felt like it was vibrating. I stood up to dance around the room, oftentimes looking up at a cluster of stars in the dark night sky and thanking Source for leading me to this. THIS! Then closing my eyes again to feel the rich love that was present here. One song ended with whistles and giggles and bird calls as we started to chant into the next one. We all stood in a circle holding hands and I laughed as I wondered if we were about to sing Kumbaya… Instead we sang “I am a song, I am a light, I am a heart, it beats with life…” I was happy to notice that some people were as tone deaf as me; sometimes I heard angels singing but at other times I thought we sounded like a bunch of dying cats. But it was beautiful and I felt euphoric. (Elah did assure us earlier that there were no psychedelics in the elixir we’d imbibed – he said it’s made of pure cacao, water, cinnamon and orange essential oil.) Whatever I’d had, I raised my hands to the Universe and sang “…from the seaaa… to the treeee… to the flower of this life… to the lo-ove, to the lo-ove, to the love that you are…” We were all swaying now, eyes closed, faces and hands up to the sky, drinking in the loving forces that we felt around us. These beautiful melodies filled the air and I stared at the stars above with wonder… so far away and yet part of us all.

When I first joined this group I felt like an observant outsider. Now I felt like I’d found myself; like this IS me. I looked at the girl who had told me about this place and chuckled, knowing that she’s a banker back in Denmark and seeing her so far removed from that environment here – wearing a dark green and purple boho dress and singing hippie songs in a treehouse in Bali. This is fantastic, I thought.

Three hours later we were still singing and I realized just how fast time passes when you’re doing something in a state of immense LOVE. I felt like we were all vibrating at a higher frequency; like we could have easily continued for another three hours. We were led into a collective “OHMMM” followed by closing thanks given again to the East, West, North and South. It was now late in the evening and we lay flat on our backs in Shavasana. The flames from four white candles surrounding the flower heart flickered in the darkness as our ears were treated to the soulful sounds of a Native American flute being played over our heads. Someone sounded the golden gongs and their reverberations moved through our cells as we lay still in our spiritual trance.

Some time later we were invited to a vegan feast downstairs. A doorway in the floor was opened to reveal a spiral staircase that descended to a cosy kitchen and lounge area where a light home-cooked meal of delectable plant-based food awaited us. Every now and then some people would break out in song during our meal, as if we hadn’t done enough singing already! Energy was literally overflowing here. I felt so lucky and grateful to have experienced this and I was already looking forward to coming here every Monday night for the rest of my month in Bali. What joy! What catharsis! What mesmerizing magic! (What delicious chocolate!!)

It has made me more aware of veganism – not just the idea, but the type of people who practice this lifestyle. If love and compassion, gentleness and generosity are the cornerstones of such a life, then I want to be a part of it. It has also made me think that vegans may be a largely misunderstood bunch, as I’d personally discovered through my immediate reaction of guilt when I’d tried to kill the mozzie earlier that evening and wondered if “the vegans” would be angry with me. I realized the stigma with which their ideology is perceived – that they can sometimes be seen as critical people who pass judgement from an elevated stance of self righteousness. I think where things may have gone askew are in the ways in which they share their ideas with the world…

Most vegans are vegan for ethical reasons and I’ve observed their intense passion for this cause; and it is this very PASSION that can sometimes be channeled in a way that unwittingly offends the unassuming meat eater. Ultimately the vegan’s attempt at championing their cause may backfire and create a sense of hostility – the antithesis of the very values for which the ideology stands. (If veganism errs it is when it unintentionally parades as a dogmatic religion instead of leading by example through gentleness and kindness.)

MY understanding is that veganism is about conscious living and awareness; being thoughtful about our choices and aware of how they affect others and our Earth. It’s about showing respect and extending kindness to every living being and thereby creating a more compassionate World. It’s about a SPIRITUAL revolution. What I love is that it has made me so much more aware of where my food comes from and what a massive disconnect there has been between what I put in my mouth and the process whereby it has reached my plate. I think most of us don’t even want to give that process any thought – we’d rather turn a blind eye and remain within the comfortable parameters of our habitual tendencies, without questioning it…

But what if we did question it? What if we question everything that has become mainstream in society? What if people who eat animals were the odd ones and we thought the concept of displaying dead flesh in shop refrigerators for people to consume seemed totally bizarre? (Which is the way it’s starting to look to me…) I love the thought of eating of LIFE and not of death. I haven’t managed to make a full transition to veganism (yet), but I feel happy in the knowledge that I’m doing my best right now. It is a process; a very personal journey that should be taken and shared with care.

(I’m proud of my brother who recently started to embrace the lifestyle of a ‘weekday vegetarian.’ What if the successful Meat-free Monday campaign that was started by the McCartney family [of Paul and Stella fame] were even just extended to all weekdays… can you imagine the compound effect worldwide?! And the potential transformation thereafter…)

All I know is that that night in the treehouse (and the subsequent evenings I spent there) gave me an overwhelming sense of love and awe. THIS introduction to veganism was the most beautifully evocative and touching experience. It opened my eyes and mind and heart – literally – the girl who led me to the ceremony told me that raw cacao makes your heart muscle beat forty times faster, making it a powerful heart-opener. It is a healing medicine that assists in our awakening. By channeling the wisdom of cacao spirit we’re able to undergo deep transformative realization; a spiritual alchemy. In gratitude we gathered; and with gratitude I continue my life’s journey with those songs ever-present in my head and their effects permeating my heart.

Now what if the feather-wearing flute-playing vegan hippies who sing happy love songs at cacao ceremonies in treehouses weren’t the weird ones but rather the norm? (What a different world it would BE!!) 🌱