Selling memories

My old home, where I grew up, is finally being sold. The house was brand new in 1954 when my parents moved in. It was home to three children, but my sister died at just 5 years old, before I knew her. My paternal gran (Nana) lived with us, as did my maternal grandfather. 

 

It has been an epic journey sorting out 50 years of ‘stuff’. My father was a hoarder of note, buying just one of something was not an option for him. 

He had two workshops and a workroom, and all were filled to overflowing. There is still so much to sell, dump and get rid of, and I’m finding it both painful and cathartic.

Sitting in the lounge on a plastic chair, I think of how it was. How the Bluff was when I was a child and how our house was filled with things and love and arguments and some hard times, and how, when I was very young, I thought that what was just a middle class home, was actually a palace. My mother was always there to calm the storms and keep us together. She sewed, and cleaned and would  give me the last piece of crackling from her Sunday lunch. She is 90 now and I take care of her instead.

My oldest friend comes into my thoughts. I can see her clearly in my mind’s eye, her dark shining hair in a bob and her beautiful eyes. I recall our first meeting, she just four years old, and I five. I stood on the little verandah at the back of my house and she stood below in her driveway. I was stricken and painfully shy, and she was relentless in her greeting. Eventually I managed a “hello” and the rest is our history. We ran and hid and swung high on swings, had tea parties at a little table and chairs made by Zulu craftsmen. We drank Oros out of tiny cups and laughed until it spilled over like our joy. We made mud pies in my driveway with Bougainvillea flowers, that sat like butterflies on their tops.

 This one's for you Z, decorated with the flowers from the shrub at the gate, it's still there.

We sat on the pavement and ate ice-creams that dripped down our chins and between our toes. She would run over to my house to play and her Ouma would scream for her until she returned home, but my friend always won in the end and as soon as Ouma looked the other way she would come back and we would play until we disagreed, enemies until the morning. We fought and played daily, but it is the play and the uncontrollable giggling and just knowing she was there, that I recall.

It is bitter-sweet sitting here in the silent lounge, imagining shouts and laughter and jazz on New Year’s Eves. Those New Year’s parties were legendary. I can see my father with his arms around his double bass, he would sweat from both effort and joy and the heat of our Durban summer, and by the end of the evening his fingers were all in plasters, not used to the strings that were a daily part of him in his youth. At midnight we would go out onto the lawn and form a circle, arms interlinked and sing Auld Lang Syne, and standing between two adults my small arms would be stretched to the limit. The ships and tug boats on the bay would sound their horns, and they bellowed and sighed mournfully for half an hour after midnight, calling in the new year and all it had in store.

I recall so clearly, my father, on a whim, decided he wanted a grand piano, and once decided it was a sealed deal. I look over to where it stood, an achingly empty space. It had to be sold as there was no space for it in my home. My daughter (the musician) cried to see it go. She had grown up knowing it well, practising on it and passing her piano exams with distinctions, and the “Grand” was always there for her. It was part of her grandpa and his dreams for her. I remember all those times that my father’s friend, a master of the Fats Waller’s slide piano style, rocked the house with “Your Feet’s too big”. Oh, for just one more time.

The old sofa is still here and I look at the worn fabric. I remember sitting on it with my late husband when I was just 14 years old and he 18. He would run up from the Naval camp (Salisbury Island) to see me. We would hold hands and kiss and listen to the clock ticking and striking until way past midnight, because it was just too hard to say goodnight.

I remember so much of the pain and joy of growing up there. Sometimes feeling like an outsider, not quite fitting in, other times at home in my skin and in my little world. I remember cycling all over the Bluff, taking buses into town and walking home from Bluff Road. I remember the canal and the bay, and the smell of death from the whaling station. I remember chameleons and legless skinks and the warm sand in my hands as I tried to capture ant lions at the bottom of their little sand funnels, teasing them with blades of grass. I remember dogs I loved and lost and my friend’s dog who had a “J & Z” haircut, very short and in steps, produced by little hands and blunt scissors on a workbench in my Dad’s workshop. I remember two little girls who were in big trouble. Ticky didn’t seem to mind though, and it all grew back.

I remember walking to the corner tearoom and buying so many sweet treasures with my 20 cents. I also remember ‘whites only’ entrances at bottle stores and ‘whites only’ bus benches and buses, and I am so sorry things couldn’t have been different for South Africa right from the start.

I recall stories from the neighbourhood, some tragedies and some scandals, friends living there and then leaving. There were the boys who broke my heart, and those close friends, made in both childhood and in adulthood, who are always with me. None of those I grew up with are there now, all of them re-invented and fitting into their adult skins with all the pain and loss and great joy that comes with the growing years. Although they are no longer in my neighbourhood, the few I’ve kept contact with are strong, courageous and compassionate women, and I love them all.

I thought I’d take a drive around the Bluff and take some photos of the homes of a few of the friends who have left, their homes now in far off places that I know I’ll never visit. 

Fiona's house

I feel their memories are in some way held in those homes where they lived and loved and fought their wars. They lived in neighbourhoods like mine, and their neighbours also had secrets and stories and real lives lived or lost. 

View of the lighthouse from Gray Park Road, a butterfly popped in, he looks as big as the lighthouse top!

 Lieutenant King Crescent, I know it as "the circle"

I go out to my car, locking the back door, out through the gate with the 'beware of the dog' sign that hangs rusted from just one hook. This empty house is a little tired and in need of young laughter. My thoughts and all those young dreams that were so much bigger than I will ever be, will no longer be held here, it is as though it is waiting, breathless, for a new family who will begin their journey here.

“Everything flows, nothing stays still.”  – Heraclitus