Gonubie

My husband is driving and my kids are in the back seats. I am in Gonubie for the first time in over twenty years. The last time I was here I was still a teenager, and my grandparents were still alive, living in the house they built. I am about to drive past that house now, just to look. Someone else lives there now; I know that. I just want to see it, and to show my family the picnic spot at the river at the bottom of the road. I want to see the black mud pitted with mud-prawn holes. I want to see the river that holds so many memories in its murky brown water, and look across to the other side. There used to be monkeys there, in the bush on the slopes of the opposite bank. 

I find I know the way, even though I have never driven here myself before. I direct my husband as we make our way down the winding hill. We are almost there.

We turn the corner and there it is. And something wells up in me, something heavy and buried deep. I cover my face and cry. Sorry, I say to my startled family. I didn't expect this. This pile of bricks and mortar, or rather the memory of what it once contained, has undone me. The tears flow, my husband stops the car, and I lift my face to look again.

This house was a constant throughout my childhood. We moved houses and cities but this house remained the same. A thousand kilometres from home, it was another landing for us. Every year we made the journey, squashed together in a hot car for ten hours, eating sausages and egg sandwiches at quaint concrete tables on the side of the N2. My younger brother would fall asleep between me and my other brother, and we would shove his lolling blonde head back and forth between us. The dog, patiently sitting at Mom's feet in the front, would pant loudly, her tongue dripping. The scenery would change and eventually we would be driving through the sub-tropical bush. When we spotted the enormous Humpty Dumpty outside the farm stall we knew we were almost there.

Then we would be there, stretching our legs at last on the green lawn, running to hug Granny and Grandpa. The dogs would greet each other, rolling around on the grass. I can trace the path we ran even now, up the stairs, past the London lamp, through the front door onto the cool, dark floor.  Past the drinks cabinet with its crystal decanters, through the sun room, out of the huge doors to the verhanda. I can see it all: the cane furniture, the jars of shells on the windowsill. The cigarette boxes with Granny's shopping lists written on the back, the ashtrays on every surface. Granny's knitting beside her chair, her cross-stitch framed on the wall behind it. Her funny-shaped Rubik's cube. The old radio.

And the verhanda, with its magnificent view of the garden, the neat beds, the steep steps, the perfect grass and of course the river at the end, far enough away that the jetty was hidden behind the trees. My granny has a river at the bottom of her garden, I used to tell my friends. Wasn't I lucky.

I stare at the house from our car, knowing my kids are tired and probably hungry and just want to go to the beach. But I am walking through every room in my mind. Even if I could, I wouldn't want to go inside now. I will remember it as it was. I will remember the pink carpet in the guest bathroom and the china dish with strong-smelling pot-pourri inside. I will remember Grandpa's blue chair with the holes in it from where he dropped his pipe and nearly set himself on fire. I will remember the china chicken on the dining room table and the little woolen pompom chicks inside. If it's all been renovated inside, if there are stainless steel appliances and granite counters, if it's open-plan now and there are someone else's books on the shelves and pictures on the wall, I don't want to know. It probably doesn't even smell of cigarette and pipe smoke any more.

I wipe my eyes and try to pull myself together. There is no more gold Mercedes in the garage. The couch Granny sat on to watch the news is in my house now, recovered and broken from where my brother sat on the arm. The oil painting done by a distant relative is in my mom's house and the straight-backed dining room chairs are at my aunt's. The bits and pieces of the life they built, the life they shared with us, the treasures they collected, are scattered now, like their ashes. I wonder what happened to the blue canoe, to the funny phone number index that popped open at the letter you wanted, to Grandpa's bowls that he polished in old stockings, sliding them back and forth while we watched from the steps. Where is the map of Malta? Where is Michael Monkey, who lived in Grandpa's cupboard? It's grief that is hurting my throat now, making me want to sit down on the pavement and spend an afternoon right here, alone, remembering.

It's all gone. We drive away and I show my kids the river from the picnic spot. There are thorns and my son is crying; I need to get his shoes from the car and stop the others from getting black mud all over their feet. But all the time I am fighting back tears. Being here is a reminder of a heavy truth: they built a life, it was rich and full, and now it is gone. I can walk through every inch of that house in my memory, but its substance has dispersed. Like dandelion seeds. Only an empty husk remains, minus everything important.

Later, we drive five minutes down the road to the beach. There are more memories, of Grandpa coming for a morning swim in the tidal pool, of the lucky packets and pink sweets he would buy for us on his pre-breakfast shopping trips. I swim in the waves with my children, still feeling blindsided by the intensity of my nostalgia. This is the best beach ever, they tell me, their eyes bright. Can we come here again?

I put it aside, the weight of the loss I feel today. I buy groceries at the shops that weren't here in the Gonubie of my childhood, and make lunch for my family. I will make new memories with the precious family I only dreamed of when I was last here, when I was an awkward teenager wondering what kind of life waited for me on the other side of adulthood. One day the life I am building now will be as scattered and lost as what I mourn today.

My son needs a towel, I find it and help him get the sand off his feet. We get back into the car. I am tired, and sad, and grateful. My husband drives, his hand affectionately on my knee. I close my eyes as we leave, and in my imagination I am walking down the steps, through the garden towards the jetty. I pass the rosebushes and the tree with the blobs of gum, the wrought iron bench and the boggy patch. I walk along the snake path and I can see the upturned boat, the grass growing long against its sides. I walk to the edge of the jetty and sit down, my bare feet in the water, not minding the sliminess on the dark boards. The water laps against the shore and the poles of the jetty, the birds call, something rustles in the bushes, and I remember. So much has been lost, but I am still here. I am still here, and I remember.

Genre!

The advice out there is that when you are writing a novel, you should find other books in your genre to get a feel for what is out there and where your own story fits in. I found this a difficult task! In fact, the genre of my book was one of the reasons I didn't even try to pursue traditional publishing. Young Adult, yes, although ... not necessarily a teen story. Half of it happens when the characters are in their twenties. It's South African, and it's a Christian story. I never found something that fit all those categories; maybe I still will.

The closest I came was a book by Katherine Graham called Lifeline for Lee. It was about a young girl who was a lifeguard on Fishoek beach. I especially enjoyed the local flavour of it. There's something special about recognizing the setting of a book you are reading. I had only just begun writing Alex on the Edge, and although it was not overtly Christian, reading this book really encouraged me to keep going.

When I searched Young Adult Christian fiction on Amazon I mostly found American books about Amish girls falling in love. I was glad to find this series by Canadian author, N.J. Lindquist.

It is about a young guy navigating a complicated friendship and finding some spiritual clarity along the way. The main character was so endearing. Also, the author is, like me, clearly not a young adult! I found the story a little old-fashioned but still relevant and fun. And the first of the series is free on Kindle.

Another helpful discovery was 18 hours to Us by Krista Noorman. It was so good to read a book where there are characters who are unapologetically Christian but the story isn't preachy or overly sentimental. I have read some other popular contemporary Christian fiction authors and cringed at the way they write about faith. This book was not cringy at all! This is my aim - to write about the Bible and the Christian life in a fresh, unaffected way.

I can't not mention Robin Jones Gunn. It seems that her name is synonymous with Young Adult Christian fiction. Her best known is a series about a girl called Christy, following her romance, marriage and baby years. She has written over a hundred books! My favourite of the few I read was a spin-off, Finally and Forever, which was set in Kenya. I think they are great reads for young girls.

So I picked an unusual, rather tiny genre. I have plans to branch out in the future (I am a Robin McKinley fan forever and one day I'll get my fantasy novel together) but this is my spot. It's a fairly insignificant one for now but here I am. If you come across anything else like my stories, I'd love to hear about it!

Lesotho

Tell us one thing that is different about Lesotho, we said to our children. We were sitting in the dim evening light in the small classroom that was our home for the week. The paint on the walls was peeling, the floor bare, cracked concrete. There was a partition made of raw, untreated plywood, a badly fitting door, and a creaky old security gate between us and the dusty, rocky landscape outside. The teacher had kindly moved his piles of papers and books into corners to make space for us. We sat on the floor, on the pile of mattresses and sleeping bags that took up most of the space.

Our team had been in Teyateyaneng a little over a day, guests of Calvary Hope of the Nations Church for a week-long visit. We had all been restless the night before, disturbed by the preparations being made outside for a feast that was happening at the church the next day. There was talking and rustling movement all night, as women prepared great tubs of meat and cooked it in a huge pot over a fire a few metres from our door. We had woken to the smell of mutton, to people all over the place dressed in their finest, ready for the church service and the celebration that was to follow afterwards. Our kids went to church in a great striped tent for the first time, and heard the shrill, ear-splitting blasts of whistles blown by eager worshipers during the singing.

One different thing: for me, taking care of my family and helping to feed the team of young people we had traveled with, one very different thing was the water situation. There was one tap outside, and one in the kitchen. I carried water and sent my kids to the tap countless times with a five-litre plastic bottle to fetch water for hand washing and cup rinsing, for our baths in a plastic tub, and later in the week, to wash underwear and T-shirts when we needed them. And when the water was dirty, I carried it on my hip to a small sloped patch of ground and threw it away. No drains. That was my one thing.

The older children said it was different not having a real toilet, only a line of long-drops used by the church and the school. The language was different, the weather was different, there were few tarred streets. But our youngest, about to turn seven, answered without hesitation. By the evening of the first day all the local children knew his name, and he spent most of his time surrounded by children who appeared from every door in the scattering of homes around the church and followed him, pied-piper style, over the uneven, rocky landscape. There are no walls, he said, wide-eyed, thinking probably of the electric fences and automatic gates we have at home. Lesotho has no walls.

As the week progressed, we learnt just what that meant. No walls meant community. It meant children at our door, wanting to play, before we had even woken up. It meant a whole village turning up for a church celebration. It meant more children than we could manage for the daily puppet show, Bible lesson and games we brought, without a single flyer or advertisement. It meant a crowd for evening screenings of the Jesus film. It meant warm welcomes into stranger's homes to share our faith.

Of course there are walls in Lesotho, walls that my small son cannot see. For the smart high school student who translated our puppet shows into Sesotho, there are tall walls to climb before he can realize his dream of studying law at university. His widowed dressmaker mother, raising her sister's children as well as her own, faces barriers to the health and happiness of her family every day. The pastor of the church cannot pay his staff what they need to live. The work of the church and the school is frustrated by poverty and unemployment, although God's spirit still moves powerfully, changing hearts and lives, unhindered by such human obstacles.

Lesotho blessed us, for the week that we were there. The experience was invaluable for our family, and a necessary one for me to finish Alex on the Edge. Back now behind our walls, I remember the expanse of hills we could see from the big rock overlooking the unfinished church building. Alex, although he exists only in my imagination, found a new perspective in this different landscape, in an unexpected step away from his ordinary life. I think that our family did too.

Lesotho

(A poem from Alex on the Edge)

Snowy peaks and icy skies

Hills bursting folds of green

Lines and lines of flapping clothes

With houses in between

Huts of stone, walls of brick

And little shacks of tin

Thank you, land within a land

For welcoming me in