Memory Lane - Srebrenica

 

Today is the anniversary of the Srebrenica massacre, the worst war atrocity in Europe since World War II.

An estimated 8,000 Bosnian Muslim men and boys were murdered during the Bosnian War.

Hearing this on the BBC News today took me back to a sad glimpse I had into the ravages of this war.  We think of war as a mass of bangs and crashes.  Hollywood shows us valiant soldiers armed with top flight technological weaponry, generals strategizing, heroes triumphing against all odds.

But that isn't how the average person experiences war.  I learnt this in 1997.

I was between jobs, and took a secretarial gig at a law firm.  The firm specialized in helping people seeking political asylum.

Every day I had to type up the statements of young men sent by the families, at great risk and expense, to England.  The statements were dictated by the lawyer, after meeting with these boys and a translator.

They were always boys - because it was young men that were the key targets of the ethnic cleansing.

They'd sit in the reception area waiting for their appointments, confused, pale, scared.  I felt like hugging them.

And then, an hour or so later, I'd hear their stories.  They were all strikingly similar.

They'd tell of how thing deteriorated slowly in their country.  They took part in a march and were teargassed or caught by Police and beaten, but still believed they could change things politically.  

Then, one day, men would come to their house and say that they had to take the men in for questioning.  The father of the house and any boys in their teenage years or older would be taken away.  They'd be interrogated, asked where they were hiding guns, and beaten, for days.

When they got home, the parents would hear that this had happened to other families and that the next thing that would happen was that the men would come again, and say that the males in the household had to come and join the cause.

They never returned.

And so the families somehow found coyotes and gathered all the money the could to smuggle the young men in the household out of the country.

What struck me about this was how insidious it all was.  Things start to change in your country, a tide starts to rise.  But you think that it's just politics, you protest, you organize a march.  But it gets worse, in little ways, and people start to disappear.  

At what point do you realize that you are in real danger?  At what point does the man who was your neighbor or customer or bus driver become the man who comes to "arrest" your son?

Hollywood likes to make it seem that things are cut and dried.  War is contained in a "theatre" and we know who our enemies are.  But real life isn't like that.

Day after day, no matter how many I typed, I cried as I transcribed those statements.

Always baffling and incomprehensible, man's inhumanity to man.

To read more in this series, click here.

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• A question of time
• My mother

Memory Lane - Dad to the "rescue"

I've written about my mother more than once on this blog, but seldom about my father.  It's because, I suppose, my relationship with him was more complex and problematic.

But today I was catching up on the 2nd series of HBO's In Treatment, and watching a character called Walter, a high flying CEO, talk about having just gone to Rwanda to try to convince his daughter to come home.  He felt that they had a special relationship, they spoke every day, he was so proud of her.  But she'd started emailing her mother instead of him, so he suspected a problem and took six flights to go and get her to come home.  

She was furious that he had come, and refused to leave, then sent him an email once he left the camp she was working and living in, which he read back at the hotel in Kigali.  

The email said that he was domineering, obsessive, the cause of all her anxieties, that it was impossible to grow or thrive around him, that she had to get away from him and now he was ruining her only chance to free herself from him.

In Treatment is never an easy show to watch, but I am fascinated by psychotherapy - I intend to make it my second career - and watching the characters go through the process of self-discovery is gripping.  But there are times when the show reaches in and rips my heart out, especially when a scene resonates with my own life.

And this one did.

It reminded me of the time my father came to get me from Johannesburg.  

I grew up in a podunk town in South Africa and I moved to Jo-eez to study.  After that I was a bit lost, couldn't find a job and ended up taking an admin position in one of those pyramid scheme places.  It was a crap job, but it paid.  I became good friends with the other admin - let's call her Cassie - and she found us rooms to rent in a flat.

We inherited the third tenant, who turned out to be a bit of a weirdo.  He'd shower in our bathroom instead of the en suite in his room, and then walk around naked.  We just ignored him, and made sure we were never home with him without the other one present.

So one day I come home from work and, sitting on the stairs in front of the flat are my father and my cousin.  It was late, and they totally freaked me out.

My father looked like he was at a funeral.  My cousin looked exhausted.  They had driven 8 hours to get to where I was.

They took me out to dinner and I was completely stunned.  Why were they there?

My cousin told me that he had come to the flat a few weeks before, when he was on a business trip.  This was long before cellphones and we didn't have a landline in the apartment.  He hadn't left a note or anything, so I had no idea he had even been there.  

My cousin said that our flatmate had let him in and told him that me and Cassie were smoking (that was true), taking drugs (that wasn't) and that we took turns to use our shared bedroom to sleep with random men (that definitely wasn't).

My father didn't say a word throughout the whole thing.  He just sat at the table, crying softly, refusing to eat.

Instinctively, I knew that this was a defining moment in my life and that, if I went home with them, I would regret it for the rest of my life.  I would be like a broken colt, forever tamed, forever a pet.  

I explained that our flatmate was a bit nuts, told them about the naked thing, said I did not take drugs (that experimentation came much later) or sleep with random men and that, in fact, I was starting to date a really nice young guy who was an architecture student.  He worked nights at a local record store and, if they liked, we could go there together and I could introduce him to them.

(He's the only guy I ever broke up with, and it broke my heart, but that's another story.)

Frankly, I have no memory of the rest of the whole thing.  I was so stressed out until I started therapy at 25 that huge swaths of my memory are a complete blank.  My first therapist told me that that's a sign of the brain's way of coping - repression.

What I do know is that I didn't go home with them.

Oh, and one more thing.  My father refused to overnight in a hotel so he made my cousin drive them back home and I was worried that they would have an accident because my cousin was tired.  

Oh, there's another thing too.  I thought my cousin was a total Fuckwit.  

He is one of those men who likes to give other people advice in hushed tones.  Until then, I had thought that he was a good person for people to seek out when they needed mentoring, because his calming demeanour and Catholic-inspired advice may really be of help.  But I saw another side to him in that moment.  

He didn't just deal with drama, he created it. 

At no time had he given me the benefit of the doubt.  He hadn't told me he had visited, he hadn't told me what Nutjob Flatmate had said, he hadn't asked for my side of the story.

Instead he did the worst thing he could possibly do under the circumstances: he told my father.

My father, the man who told me that I would get raped if I went to the beach with my friends to watch the boys from our school surf on a Saturday.  My father, who managed to find a reason to get overemotional and cry at every family gathering, subjecting us all to some ridiculous speech about how he loved us (yes, yes, it sounds sweet, but wait till you've heard it for the 10th time).  My father who, after watching an episode of McGyver where Richard Dean Anderson went into Russia to rescue a young girl, came into my room in tears to tell me he loved me.

Now that I think about it, that was one of the very, very few times I ever challenged him.  I asked him to tell me what subjects I was taking at university at the time, and he couldn't answer the question.  Yeah, he really loved me.

My cousin reported this utterly implausible rubbish to my father, a man who watched cop shows and believed that the carnage of the streets of New York was just outside our door.  A man who shook with fear at the thought of his daughter on a beach with 15 year old boys in broad daylight.  

My cousin was a pathetic little tattle-tale.

Unbelievable.

As I write this, I realize that he deserved to have the hell of driving 16 hours with my father sobbing next to him.  He caused the situation, and it's absolutely right that he should suffer the consequences.

The only regret I have is that my mother may also have believed the ridiculous accusations made against me, and been really worried.  And even if she knew in her heart it was all bullshit, she would've been worried about the 16 hour round trip, just like I was.

So I guess I am most angry about what this trumped up drama did to my mother.

But I also know that, when they got home and she saw that I wasn't with them, her heart must have leapt.  She brought me up to fight, to get free of the tyranny of my father's strict and sexist attitude, and she must have known that my refusal to capitulate was a victory not only for me, but for her, too.

I didn't write my father an email saying the things that Walter's daughter wrote.  But each and every one of those words rings true to me.  

I ran away, like so many daughters do, to get free of my overbearing father.  It's not a particularly original life story.  Men of my father's age were "of their generation" (part fact, part excuse), but I suspect that, until we have more gender equality in our society, girls will still feel they have to run, even the ones who are young today.

Young women in my family have run into the arms of other men (marrying far too early), into the arms of volunteer organizations accross the country and even, in one case, into the arms of an aeroplane that took her to study half a world away.

Perhaps there are some boys who have to do this too.  But I think it's mostly girls - and gay boys.

We have to find a way to escape, to get out of our father's negative shadow, so we can find the sun, and blossom.

To read more in the Memory Lane series, click here.

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• Getting out of bed
• Cancer don' come wid no GPS, Baby

Memory Lane - At Dad's Office

  

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

   

 

 

 

When I was a kid, we only had one car so, if my mother needed to go shopping or whatever, dad would drive to work, and then she'd take the wheel.

 

Indulge me in a little tangent a moment because, as I wrote that first sentence, a related memory surfaced.

 

My mother was pint-sized.  

 

Our car was massive.  

 

I know it was an Austin something-or-other and, having done some Googling, I suspect it was a Cambridge Countryman:

 

 

 

Basically, my mother wasn't tall enough, even with a cushion, to see over the steering wheel.  She drove, literally, imitating an old lady waving her hands from side to side above her head at an exercise class, to enable constant course correction.  It was like a drunk captain driving a boat.  Even as a toddler, it used to scare the living shit out of me when dad got out and mom got into the driving seat.

 

Right, digression over.

 

So we'd do the shopping, run errands, bla bla bla, and head back to the office to pick up my dad.

 

I thought his office was such a big deal.  The professionally dressed people bustling about, the imposing  foyer, the over-friendly secretary, my father's huge desk...

 

And in the top left hand drawer, he always - always - had Imperial Mints, and I was given one, and never more than one, as a treat.  I distinctly remember the green and white box and the taste of the saucer shaped sweet as I gobbled it up, the mintiness hitting the back of my tongue.  

 

 

 

So, one day, we're waiting for my dad to finish work.  His office building was built around a central courtyard, which had a rectangular fish pond in the middle.  As per the style at the time, it was surrounded by grey slasto.  There was a little wall thingy around it, probably about a 30-40cm high, with a top about the same width.  And, of course, bored as hell waiting - the 5 minutes worth of distraction provided by the mint over and having been told that I was not allowed to put my fingers in the water to poke the fish - I began walking round and round the pond on the little wall.

 

 "Stop that!" my mother cautioned.  "You'll fall in!"

 

I don't have to tell you - do I? - that I didn't listen.

 

Quite the opposite.  I increased speed.

 

And I fell in.

 

Yes, I know you saw that one coming.

 

My mother tut-tutted, and went into dad's office to borrow his jersey, take off whatever I was wearing and cover my dripping 4 year old body in a piece of clothing that was 20 times too big for me.

 

Word spread, as it does in any office, and it didn't take long for ladies from the typing pool (yes, this was a long time ago...) came over to "console" me, patting my sodden hair while choking back giggles.

 

I was completely and utterly humiliated.

 

And my mother, in that way that only mothers can do, wasted no time in telling me that she tried to warn me, and that next time, hopefully I'd listen!

 

Yeah, fat chance.

 

Ah, the things we remember...

  

 

 

To read more in the Memory Lane series, click here.

 

You might like to read more about my mother.

 

 

 

Memory Lane - Cancer don' come wid no GPS, Baby

 

My mother died of breast cancer after living with it for seven years.

I remember distinctly the day my parents called me to tell me the news.  I was renting a room in a house in London, living by myself for the first time, and trying to navigate a new country, a new job, finding new friends.  They told me my mother had found a lump under her arm and received that oh-so-feared diagnosis.

When I hung up the phone, I felt completely confused, shocked and very, very alone.

But never mind all that.

The story of my mother's disease isn't about me.

It's about my mother, the star of the tale, who kept living her life as best she could, made brave decisions about what treatment she would tolerate, and integrated alternative therapies where she could, like massage with Arnica oil to help with the pain.

When Cortisone injections numbed her left arm, she drove one handed (she had no choice - there was no public transport where she lived) and still got out to the charity meetings that were a big part of her life.

She helped me with my wedding, arranging for her friends to bring flowers for my bouquet, cutting single hydrangeas from her garden for my bridesmaids, and arranging for us to get our hair done.   At the reception she sat, unable to dance, smiling and talking to friends and family, cradling her left arm with her right.

My family - key co-stars - gathered around her, cooking meals to bring to the house, driving her around once she could not longer do it herself, massaging her arm when she ached.

My sister went to my parent's house every day, checking in on them and, throughout all the years of the disease, taking on more and more tasks to help.  My brother drove up to help too, keeping everyone's spirits up and emailing me regularly to keep me up to date.  My cousin, a nurse, helped in all sorts of ways, bringing her expertise and constantly showing how big-hearted she is.  My father stood by my mother's side, this woman he had shared over 50 years of marriage with, keeping things going in as normal a way as he could.

Cancer is a strange disease, different to the other common illnesses that involve a slow decline.

Unlike Alzheimer's, the Cancer patient doesn't forget who you are or become difficult to manage - they are just sick.

Unlike AIDS, there is no stigma attached, no sense of shame or guilt that you brought this on yourself (a fallacy but, nevertheless, people do feel that) or that there is someone else in your life who is to blame for giving it to you.

But Cancer does have two things in common with the two diseases mentioned above - there are all sorts of side effects that come with treatment, and it is difficult to manage all the various doctors, options and medications out there.

So I was so pleased to learn about a new site for people on the Cancer journey.  

It's called Navigating Cancer and you can find it at www.navigatingcancer.com.  

As the site says, Cancer is a journey, and, I would add, it don't come with no GPS.

So, if you know someone who is fighting Cancer, or supporting another person who is, tell them about this site.

Because everyone touched by this illness can use a little help.

Memory Lane - Varsity Engineers

 

Ah, Varsity Engineers...

We're catching up on Greek, and a dorky Engineering student opens the door of Spitter's apartment to find Casey there.  Like Raj on on Big Bang Theory, he freezes at the sight of a pretty woman unable to speak.

This took me back to the Engineers at my University, back in South Africa.

I don't remember them being as dorky.  A lot of them had come through the Civil War in Rhodesia's conversion to Zimbabwe, had suffered the stress of a strange war, and were very, very into partying.  They were in a different country, literally footloose and fancy free.

And - boy! - could they drink.

The only thing they did better than drink was be pigs.

Disgusting, revolting pigs.

You could always spot an Engineering student - the bloodshot eyes, the stale hangover-breath, and the smelly clothes - courtesy of the same shorts, shoes and slops (thongs/flip flops) for at least a week.

The Engineers brought out a cheap-ass publication (photocopied at the Library and stapled together) every year full of dirty, sexist jokes.  Yes, it was funny, but it was also vile.

There was a woman Engineer in our res (dorm/residence) who took shit every single day of lectures.  

But there's always another side to the story.

Many of the Engineers were hot.   And their devil-may-care attitude was seductive.  

If you could find one on the day of the week that he'd actually showered, you were in for a good night of - as the slang was that year - "Shaping" with him.

So, yes, I schtuped an Engineer.

And, a few years later, I married one.  Except this one bathes.

Thank God.

Memory Lane - Getting out of bed

I have no idea how or why, seeing as my parents were both early risers, but my siblings and I - back when we were living at home - liked to sleep, especially on weekends.

I have two alarms and I can reset them every half hour without any memory of doing so. It's my own particular band of sleep walking.

Only two things can wake me on a weekend morning these days: Fluffy Bear jumping on top of me for a tickle fest, and Puppy Dog licking my face.

When I was a teenager, I remember my father deliberately mowing the lawn on Saturday mornings right outside my bedroom window, with the gas mower, which sounded like a continous series of mini thunderbolts. I swear he went back and forth below my window for ten minutes. The grass in that patch was always veryshort. I had no choice but to take the hint.

My brother, when told by my mother to wake me up, had his own, unique, and very effective method. He'd pick up the entire mattress, turn it over and dump me on the floor. He was much bigger than me and no amount of squealing would stop him. I had a parquay floor with no carpet. Kissing that head first will wake up the dead.

But I had the odd moment when I could get revenge.

My sister was sleeping late once and I was bored, so I went into her room and started singing:

Wake up, wake up, it's a lovely day

Oh please wake up and come and play

The birds are singing in the trees (I never hit that high note right)

And you can hear the buzzing bees

Wake up, wake up... etc.

My sister had very long, expertly manicured nails. I'm surprised she didn't scratch my eyes out.

My mother was kindest about waking me up (except for when she despatched my brother). She'd come in at about 10, and softly say it was time to get up. Then she'd come again at about 11. At noon and softly tell me it was nearly lunch time. She knew exactly what motivated me.

Will move for food.

Memory Lane - My Mother

 

I miss my mom today.

I don't know why.

My mother died - many years ago - from a seven year battle with cancer.

She was an extraordinary woman and, I am very pleased to say, I realized this before she died and told her so.

My mother did many things that made me into the woman I am.

Making me well-rounded

My mother encouraged me academically, but also taught me an appreciation for the arts and for sport.

We would to go the theatre, to film festivals and to the public library twice a week.  She made sure I took part in team sports at school, but also took me to swimming lessons, dance lessons, speech and drama lessons, tennis lessons. 

The tennis lessons finally stopped when the coach took my mother aside and said:

"I can't keep taking your money, Mrs ---.  Your daughter will never be a tennis player."

Making me open-minded

My mother made sure that I experienced as much as possible in spite of our conservative, suburban surroundings. 

When it came to the issue of age, she took me with her when she volunteered at the retirement home, so I learnt respect for the elderly.  She made sure to introduce me to people there, and leave me alone to talk with them.

One year she sent me to a film festival with her friend - let's call her Sally.  Sally would buy two tickets for every film she wanted to see as soon as the festival program came out, and then try to find people to go with her.  She'd always ask my mom because Sally knew she loved that stuff.  I don't know why, on this particular day, my mother sent me instead of going herself.  Maybe she was busy.  Maybe she was tired.  Maybe she saw what the film was about and sent me on purpose.

The film was about gay women, and it was graphic.

Sally was mortified in the car on the way home, apologizing to me and saying she would have to apologize to my mother.  I told her my mother wouldn't mind, and I was right.  But I also learnt how much my mother wanted me to learn and be open that day, when I heard her tell Sally:

"It's OK, really. She has to learn about these things.  It's real life."

With the then-thorny issue of race, she taught me to treat the only black people I was exposed to - the servants in our house - with respect. I was never allowed to talk down to them or order them around like I saw some other people do in South Africa back then.

My mother had me take tea and lunch out to the man who worked in the garden, and gave me a duster to work alongside the woman who, throughout my childhood and teenage years, cleaned our house.

Although we were classified as white, and lived with all the attendant privileges, my mother made me understand and be proud of our family's mixed background.

"We," she would tell me, in that excited tone of voice you might use with a child when describing Disneyland, "are a Russian salad!  We are all mixed into a lovely dish!  We have all sorts of backgrounds in our family.  Do you know that you have a great-great-uncle who is Chinese!"

To me, it sounded like the most amazing, exotic thing in the world.

The value of friends

My mother led by example.  She had old friends and new friends, Jewish friends, Christian friends, Atheist friends, elderly friends and young friends, friends nearby she could stop by and have tea with, and friends afar she regularly wrote letters to. 

She would visit an old couple from our church who couldn't drive anymore, and take them to the grocery store with her.  She would invite an widowed friend - who was lonely and lived far from her children - to stay at our home for weeks at a time.  She held a back-to-school celebratory tea party with the local mothers when vacation was over.

Like me, she was an immigrant, and far away from her family.  Following what she showed me, I have been able, in both the UK and the US, to make a family from my friends.

Teaching me independence

My mother taught me how to stand on my own two feet.

It would take a lot for my mother to come to the school and fight with a teacher or the principal on my behalf. 

"You fight your own battles, my girl," she'd tell me.

But, if I really needed her - like when I hated my science teacher and asked to change classes - she and my dad always had my back.

Part of teaching me independence was to shatter the White Knight Myth for me.  Perhaps not so much anymore but, back in those days, women really did think that all they had to do was be good, kind and pretty and the white knight would ride up on this big white horse and rescue them, paying for everything as they galloped, together, to their castle in Suburbia.

When I went to university, a high proportion of the female students studied non-marketable disciplines:  art, speech and drama, languages, social science.  They used to call it "BA Mansoek" in Afrikaans, which translates as Bachelor of Arts in Husband Hunting.

"Don't listen to your friends' mothers," she told me.  "You don't need a good man.  You need a good job!"

The secrets of marriage

My mother taught me two fundamental things that help me, I think, to maintain a healthy marriage.

Mantra No. 1:

"Marriage n'est pas badinage!"

It roughly translates to "Marriage is not a joke."  What she meant was that marriage takes work, and any of us in a long term relationship of any kind know that to be true!

Mantra No. 2:

"Marriage is compromise!"

Well, that doesn't take a genius to figure out.  But we could all do with being reminded of that sometimes. 

If I want to drive half an hour out of town to go to a dance lesson, then it isn't too much for Fluffy Bear to ask me to drive him to a drinks get together some of his friends are having.  And no, I don't have to go with them - they have a hobby that I don't share.

Compromise.

The only thing I didn't learn

My mother tried to teach me how to cook, but I didn't listen.  She'd invite me into the kitchen to help her, to watch, to learn, but I was too lazy, or perhaps too stupid, to take her up on the invitation.

I never realized that she had an exceptional talent in the kitchen.  I thought all mothers were like her. 

I passed on the chance to learn how to make some of the best food I have ever had in my life.

My mother made:

• Cheese soufflé
• Prawn cocktail
• Chicken curry
• Briyani
• Creme caramel
• Macaroni cheese
• Marinated ribs
• Smoked ham
• Pepper steak
• Chinese beef with green pepper
• Venison
• Guinea fowl
• Sweet and sour pork
• Chicken with cashew nuts
• Tripe
• Chocolate cake - the best you have ever tasted.

And these are just the things I remember off the top of my head.

Even with her old recipes I am useless in the kitchen.  What is written on paper doesn't include the pinch of this and the sprinkling of that which she added to make a dish superb.

The only thing I can make well is the chocolate cake, and I'll share the recipe, below.

To sum up, my mother taught me well, and I will always be grateful to her.

I hope she's up there having someone cook for her while she sits and exchanges stories and witticisms with Daphne Du Maurier, Lawrence Olivier, Grace Kelly and the other people she admired.

Ittybittycrazy's Mother's Chocolate Cake

Mix together one cup of boiling water with half a cup of pure cocoa and leave aside.

Sift together 1.5 cups flour, 1.5 cups sugar, 3.5 teaspoons baking powder. 

In the middle of the dry ingredients, make a well.

Put in 4 egg yolks and set the whites aside.  Add half a cup of oil and the chocolate mixture and stir it it all into the dry ingredients.

Beat the egg whites to a soft peak, then fold into the mixture with 1 teaspoon of vanilla essence.

Bake in oven at 400 degrees farenheit (200 celcius) for 25-30 minutes.

Thank you, Mom.

Memory Lane - Playing the little doll

My sisters are much older than me and, when I was a little kid and had long hair, they used to like playing hairdresser with me, especially on Sunday mornings when we were all a bit bored.

I remember them standing, one on each side of me, plaiting my hair.  When my Princess Leia hair do was complete, I was sooooo proud of it, and pranced around the house feeling the round plaits flap against my ears.

Thank God there's no photographic evidence!

Memory Lane - A Question of Time

A funny little childhood memory popped into my head today, so I decided to start this series called Memory Lane.

I was about two months past turning four, and we were at a picnic.  I was chatting to another adult - I don't remember who - telling them a story about something I did - I don't remember what.

"And when was this?" he asked me.

"Oh," I waved my hand and rolled my eyes, "it was long, long, loooooong ago when I was three."

I remember being annoyed and confused at why he started to laugh.

Wish I could charm men that easily these days....