This door is never closed

While sitting waiting in the car while my husband went into the electrical store, I watched customers going in and out. From the outside, the shop looked closed: the storefront was high and covered in advertising. The tall set of front doors too were opaque, each side advertising a different brand of high-end plug- and light-fittings.

Despite the appearance of being closed, the doors slide open whenever a customer approaches, giving a glimpse of an expansive interior before sliding together again to reinstate the “closed” look.

A well built man strides up to the doors, a young boy trailing behind him. He can’t be older than four; Dad looks to be in his early thirties. As the doors open, he steps into the store without looking round. The boy hasn't yet stepped up onto the small raised porch in front of the door and I shift uneasily in my seat: will he catch up? As he reaches the doors, they slide closed - close enough to him to make me catch my breath anxiously, anticipating them closing ON him.

My hand moves automatically to the car door handle - what will the boy do? I hear his plaintive cry, “Papa!” He is so small beside the tall, high doors. He cannot see in - cannot see where his father has gone. “Papa!” - more urgently now. Where is his father? How could he just walk away without checking on his son?

I am about to get out of the car to reassure him when the doors open, and the father scoops him up and carries him inside. I sit back, relieved.

Each one of us is like that little boy, completely cut off from the love and fatherhood of God. 

BUT scripture tells us he has not left us as orphans; there are countless stories and parables about how God seeks us out, rescues us, sweeps us up in his embrace. We have only to recognise his absence from our lives and cry, "Papa!" and he will race to our rescue.

“Is anyone crying for help? God is listening, ready to rescue you.”

‭‭Psalms‬ ‭34‬:‭17‬ ‭The Message version

"How great is the love the Father has lavished on us, that we should be called children of God!"

1 John 3:1

"Who shall separate us from the love of Christ?"

Romans 8:35

Looking it up...

 The classroom is very like the ones I taught in 15 years ago; the desks, in particular, have not changed. Each one comprises a  wooden bench seat, a wide, single-slatted wooden back, and wooden lidded desk. A metal U-shaped support curves from the front of the desk on each side, down to form the front legs, backwards across the floor, and up to form the back legs and provide a place to attach the backrest. I wonder if the desk lids are nailed closed, as in every other school I know, the authorities having given up trying to keep the insides clean of half-eaten sandwiches, staples, and crib-notes. (I make a mental note to check.)

The class - the learners - are very different to most of those I've taught before: a small group who have chosen this extra, after-hours English Literature class. They take an interest, join in discussions, aren’t hesitant to offer ideas. And they don’t hesitate, either, to use their phones to look up anything I or they are unsure of. This includes the meanings and connotations of words.

In one session, "esoteric" (understood by a few people with specialised knowledge) comes up and I reach for the dictionary. It is in the cupboard behind me, and by the time I’ve got it out, someone is already offering a definition found online via their phone.

I hand someone else the thick, heavy book and insist we use it.

I don't think my choice is just based on "tradition". There is real merit in opening the actual book, rather than using a search engine. But what are the differences? Why does it matter?

Before even the act of turning pages or typing, there is the engagement of the other senses: the scent of the printed page (and dust!) versus no scent at all; the weight of the book (my Concise Oxford Dictionary is 1.58kg) and how it must be held or supported, versus the weight of the phone; the sound of rustling pages versus tapping (or no sound at all).

Then there is the act of turning the pages versus typing or tapping a word into a device. The eyes and hands work differently, requiring diverse skills. As you turn the page, eye and brain must coordinate: is this the word? Have I paged too far (scanning not just the head word, but others on the page, checking the alphabet)? In the digital version, you see only a pop-up list of instant, almost identical options. Some selection might be required: do I choose the Wikipedia definition, or might Britannica be more reliable? Whichever I choose, it will only give me one word, not two columns (four, if I glance at the opposite page) that show off the variety and flexibility of the language.

Opening my tome now to look up "flexibility," I open on fuchsia / fuliginous and realise I've always spelt "fuchsia" incorrectly and have no idea what "fuliginous" means ("sooty, dusky"). I page back to find fluvio / flysch (the spellchecker on the laptop doesn't recognise "fluvio") and finally fleshy / flinch: the page I need. I am distracted by some writing on the inner flap of the dictionary's cover, with an arrow pointing to some regular small gaps in the edge of the cover. They are teeth marks from a long-departed pet rat (his cage was on the shelf next to the book, at least until the gnawing incident.)

Back to "flexibility": first comes the verb "flex," then the noun; then the adjective "flexible," with "flexibility" (ability to change readily to meet new circumstances) as one of its derivatives.

Where an online search would have taken a few seconds, this has taken a minute or two, and been so much more enriching and enjoyable. It makes me want to stage a protest in support of the printed word, and dictionaries in particular:

        Viva print dictionaries, viva! Long live print dictionaries, long live!

I hope you will join me.

Where were you?

 Where were you on April 27th 1994? Take a moment to think back...

Did you stand for hours, first in the pre-dawn chill and then in the sun? Did you brave the rain? There was provision for some to cast their votes the previous day: the elderly, and those with special needs, and those who had to work on Election Day. There was even an allowance for "overflow" voting the next day.

Did you queue with excitement, or with fear? Times had been tense - threats of violence in some places, actual violence in others, with protests and riots and old-style police strong-arm tactics. The assassination of Chris Hani the previous year was fresh in our minds. 

Perhaps we all approached the day with a cocktail of feelings: hope as the base, joined by a sense of justice, with a swirl of trepidation and a dash of cynicism, and maybe a slice of bright excitement to top it off.

I had the privilege of working at a local election station. We were trained beforehand in how make the ink mark on the thumb and how to use the ultraviolet scanners to check for those marks. Only a select group of volunteers were permitted to stand at the actual voting boxes where the folded ballot papers were pushed in with rulers; only some were allowed to check the voters' rolls and people's IDs. But we all had a role to play. 

I remember doing door duty, and handing out ballot forms. It was quiet, just a low murmur of brief exchanges between the waiting citizens, instructions from the officials. It was humbling and rewarding to see every person allowed through the doors, welcomed with a smile, and finally allowed to step up and make their cross, many for the first time in their lives. No matter how different we all looked or the languages we spoke, that day we were simply all South Africans, and proudly so.

Courage

 A woman sits before us, dressed in a white and blue printed shirt-dress and leggings, hair artfully pinned up, colourful glasses framing a wide-eyed, intent, focused gaze. She is next to a portable whiteboard; we are ranged around her in a circle in the room where we have met for the past ten Sunday evenings as we explore "The Artist's Way at Work".

She tells us of her hesitation about joining  us tonight; how she thinks she’s done the assignment/ task all wrong; how, that afternoon, she was facing her blank collage page - thinking of leaving it blank; and then deciding to fill it. Choosing too to fill it with the reality of how things are, with what really is: the way she feels, the labels she puts on herself, the terrible weight of depression that has kept her submerged on so many days… And also to add what she hopes to become: creative, brightly colorful, focused… The muddy river she has painted becomes lighter, wider, reaching up and across the page to the pictures and swatches of fabric that represent those vivid future things.

And because she has come, because she has filled the page with her reality, we in turn can tell her that she is in fact already all those hoped-for things, and so much more.  We can tell her how we see her: bright in every way, creative, strong, daring to stand up and stand out. We weren’t aware of her struggle; but now that we are, she seems to us even more luminous and vital, as she continues her journey.

And now we journey with her.

Hello?

The other day my phone travelled to work with my husband. I was already AT work, had left it at home where he still was, and he was to drop it off on his way to various sites. Distracted by calls as he drove, he forgot to come past and drop it off.

After an initial burst of irritation, I realised it was not really his problem. After all, it was me who'd forgotten my phone in the first place. True, he offered to bring it when asked; but it was still "my problem", not, as my son William taught me a few days ago, "SEP" - someone else's problem. I know you will want to know that the phrase "someone else's problem" comes from the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy (we aren't sure, William and I, from which of the four books in the trilogy* it came).

I needed my phone to facilitate payments from clients at work - but I could use my employer's phone (and she got to practice leaving it with me like she's supposed to do. My two employers are doctors, and the phone should be with me while they consult. They each manage this in different ways - a story for another day.)

The only message on my absent phone that needed attending to was one about collecting a carpet to be cleaned. Steve organised for the carpet to be got ready, but forgot to reply to the message; the carpet simply waited until the next day to be collected. (I'm remembering E.E. Nesbit's tale of The Phoenix and the Carpet, where an old rolled-up carpet bought on a sale turns out to be magical... The magic in our case will be to have a clean carpet once again!)

I'm sure if I ran a business I'd be writing in a different tone, saying how much I'd missed out on with my phone not to hand. As it is, I have to report that I managed perfectly well without it. All the experts who write about screen time and cell phone use advise "time off" - devices turned off or put away, down-time. Take it from me: this is not nearly as scary or difficult as it sounds.

Step one: leave your phone at home...

* if you think this is a mistake - four books in a trilogy - it means you have not encountered the author Douglas Adams. You have missed out.

Elgin Railway Market

 The buzz and hum of talk is punctuated by by the odd clink of cutlery; a cool breeze comes fitfully through the large sliding window that the man at the next table has just opened. The big wooden refectory tables with their benches can seat 20-plus; the space is filling up as visitors arrive to see the approach of the train. Will today be steam? It’s what they have all come to see… the tame dragon from a past era, that demands coal and water and constant tending as it hauls its passengers up the pass to these upland apple orchards with their surrounding forests and hills. Beyond the old station yard are more sheds, then hills, then higher, pine-forested hills beyond them. Today they are dimmed with a fine mist.

A shrill child's voice breaks into my thoughts, and the musician downstairs is starting up again (not Country and Western this time, please!). We are sitting in the upstairs level which forms a gallery around three sides of this old market building. Two of the three sides are filled with tables; the other side contains boutique shops of different sizes; and along the fourth side, an arched walkway connects it all, inviting exploration. Several staircases, each in  a different style, lead between this and the floor below. The focus of the shops and stalls around ground-floor perimeter is on food - wine, coffee, sweet treats, curries, sushi, pizza, Middle Eastern (Petra is the name)… every taste catered for. The huge tables occupying the central area are almost all occupied. The specialist gift shops offer African and more local Western Cape clothes and jewellery and scarves and kitchen ware and there is a Gentleman’s Emporium… and the guitarist has just started a Christian song. We finish out coffee and go out onto the upper deck into the drizzle, gazing down at the platform where the train is due to arrive. But no train can be heard. Steve goes off to enquire. "The wheels are slipping in this wet weather, unable to get up the pass," is what he hears from the barman, who seems to know. Suddenly I'm five years old again, hearing the steam engine straining to chuff-chuff-chuff its way up Field's Hill, the screech of brakes as it tries to find a foothold on the wet tracks... It seems the problems with steam have not changed since then.

But we came for the outing, not specifically to see the train, so we turn back inside out of the wet and thread our way through the jostling families and out of the rising noise. My eye is caught by a bright orange glow of beads on a wire hoopoe bird. He reminds me of the birds in my childhood garden; we wait while the artist affixes beady black eyes. He explains that some people don't like the birds to have eyes, so he waits until the purchase to add them, if wanted.

Now the bird sits watching me as I write, poised on tip-toes, beak lifted as if ready to take flight, with the look of a toddler about to run off on the next adventure, giggling.

Jewels

After my mother died, we sold her pearls.

Actually, over several years, we have gradually sold most of the jewellery she left me.

When I first went through all the jewels - and I use the term advisedly - it was quite overwhelming. There were things I'd forgotten she owned - and things I'd never seen. There were more rings than one person could reasonably wear, all set with precious gems (mostly sapphires, either blue or yellow). There were earrings to match, along with a string of glowing amber beads, watches and gold chains, and the pearls. 

"Why have all this stuff if you never wear it or enjoy it?" This was one of my indignant questions, feeling angry, baffled and saddened all at once.

Some of the things were familiar. She wore them often, and they reminded me of her and of her love for showy jewellery. Some things were old, like her engagement ring and a small, pale purple amethyst pendant I remember her receiving one Christmas when I was a child. Others came from the years she and my dad spent in Saudi Arabia - flashy settings, heavy with the gold that everyone bought on an almost weekly basis. It was what you did: you visited the Gold Souk [market] on a Friday night, spending the dollar-based salary you were earning. It was generally seen as an investment. For my mother, her gold was a kind of insurance policy, making sure she got her share of what my dad was earning.

It was also her way of showing the world that she'd arrived, that she was somebody. I could see a pattern to her buying: she'd start out with a small version of what she aspired to - tiny tanzanite earrings, for example - but then buy a larger, more expensive version as soon as she could afford it.

This need to "show off", to display her wealth, was in constant conflict with the fear of being burgled or even attacked on the street and robbed of her jewellery. As time went on, she wore less and less of her jewellery when going out. It remained in a safe-box in the bank. I think even my mother forgot some of what she owned.

It has taken us several years to gradually sort through what I inherited - first getting it valued; then finding out how little of that value it can actually realise if sold; and then finally finding reliable buyers.

Each time we sorted, it was a process of keeping what we love, giving some away, selling some... Each time there was a loss, a connection gently untied, a goodbye said. Each time I grieved for the woman who owned it.

And with each piece I keep, each time I wear it, I remember her.