looking back

In many ways I find the old year vs. new year principle a little bit ridiculous. I mean, it’s one day, we go to bed and wake up to another day, but all of a sudden it’s different because it is a new year. Nothing has really changed, but yet millions of people, including myself, can’t stop themselves from using it as an opportunity to reflect and make decisions about what we would like to change in the next 365 days.

I’m not big on new year’s resolutions. With my track record of non-ability to stick to anything, I find it easier to make no resolutions in order to avoid disappointment and not feel any guilt about what I failed to achieve. I do like to reflect though and 2015 has been some year for reflection.

I have learned a lot, mostly about living with less. It was a year of fewer friends, fewer family, fewer “things”, less support, less money. In contrast with that, it was also in many ways a year of more. More new experiences, more opportunities to recognise and appreciate the smaller things in life, more learning, more adventure.

It’s easy to look back on 2015 and “feel sorry” for ourselves, because it’s been such a tough year. But if you look around you, how many people do you know that really had an “easy” year? I know people who have lost jobs, lost loved ones, went through divorce, received the dreaded call from the doctor saying that the test results are unfortunately positive. There are pain and hardship wherever you look. However, we all have reason to be thankful too for 2015. Some people may have to look a bit harder, but I believe everyone must have something to be thankful for, however small it may be.

So my signing off message is simple, forget about the tough lessons of 2015, take the good ones with you in 2016 and may the year treat you better. Even though tomorrow is just another day, may it be the start of something new, be it a mind-set, a dream, a new goal. And may you not be too afraid to venture outside of that which is comfortable and enjoy the reward of taking chances. It will be painful, but so worthwhile. Trust me, I speak from experience!

my own red happiness

The legacy of my dad’s green thumb continues in my garden. The tomatoes we planted in September has exploded thanks to all the lovely sunshine and just maybe because of all the TLC they’ve received from me. I am superproud and so happy to have these little gems in my garden.

Now if I can just get the boys to stop picking them one by one, I might get enough together to make a decent salad!

in this house

 

We used to have this quote on our wall in our previous home. When I first saw it, I liked it immediately because I thought it to be true about our family in many ways. But if I think about it long and hard, I have to be honest and admit that this quote is most probably like a photo-shopped version of the truth. The unedited version would have to look like this:

In this house… we are real, except on rental inspection days. We sadly make more mistakes than we would like to admit. We say we are sorry, even though sometimes it happens days later or a little begrudgingly. We give second chances and too often third and forth ones too (that means little terrors sometimes get away with murder) Apart from the days we are lazy and boring and walk around in our pj’s until lunch, we do try to have fun. We give hugs, sometimes spontaneously, sometimes under bribery. We forgive. Eventually. It takes us ages to forget. We don’t just do really loud, we do really, really, earsplittingly loud as all the  neighbours we’ve ever had will be able to tell you. We are almost never patient. But we try every day. Most importantly: We do love. We love in ways that doesn’t make sense, that can not be explained. Some days we don’t like very much, but we always love.

I think people will forgive me for sticking with the photoshop version, our walls were simply not big enough for the whole truth!

 

which wolf are you going to feed

I am sure you are all familiar with the old Cherokee proverb that tells of the two wolves that are battling inside all of us. One represents evil and the other one good and whichever one you feed, will win.

I have learned in the last almost 11 months that there are another two wolves battling it out inside of me. The one is a combination of homesickness, negativity, doubt, and even a little bit of anger sometimes. The other one is hope, acceptance, excitement, contentment, happiness.

Every day I get to choose which wolf I am going to feed and though you would think it will be easy to only feed the one I mentioned second, the simple truth is that it’s not. There are days where the first wolf is served a veritable feast.

I am determined though to keep the “bad” wolf in an anorexic state, with only a feeding binge every now and again while the “good” wolf is getting well on his way to become a contender for The Biggest Loser.

In the end, like with all things in life, it is all about attitude and hopefully in the long run the bad wolf will stop fighting back altogether.

a sudden epiphany

The other day as I was struggling to herd my boys to the car (they sometimes remind me of a flock of sheep, one always wandering off) a sudden epiphany struck me and it made me such a happier person. I realised that they are boys, who will turn into men one day. Their inability to listen properly, obey basic instructions and to remember what I said 5 minutes ago is not a reflection on my mothering abilities, but rather on their genetic makeup.

I will continue to try my best, but seeing as I am surrounded by Y-chromosomes, I have for now resigned myself to repeating everything at least 3 times (if I’m lucky) I will fully embrace using testosterone as the scapegoat for any bad behaviour. In the same way they find farts funny, use sticks as various weapons and are totally in love with a certain appendage in  the nether regions, they simply cannot listen. They are little men and against certain things, mommy just doesn’t stand a chance.

 

 

ps. this was written with my tongue stuck firmly in my cheek. Any male readers, please don’t be too offended!

 

tricky questions

There are three tough questions I get asked on a regular basis. You would think that by now I would have my answers ready for them, but it still regularly trips me up and I’m not always too sure how I should respond. They are as follow:

• Why did you leave South Africa? This gets asked by Australians as well as South Africans back home. I don’t even know where to begin to answer this. It’s not as clear cut as one would imagine. We were happy in South Africa, we had good jobs, a lovely home, lived in a little town as close to paradise as you can get, had wonderful friends. We were relatively unharmed with regards to crime and certainly never lived continuously in fear. We had a lot going for us. For years though we have been talking about taking the leap, getting another passport, opening our possibilities. And once our children arrived we started feeling more strongly about it. Simply put, we looked at statistics; economy wise, safety wise, opportunity wise etc. and decided that we wanted to raise our children someplace where they potentially had more going for them. That is the short answer. It’s far more complex than that. It’s equally difficult to explain our reasons to Aussies who don’t know the first thing about SA (and I don’t blame them. The only SA news this year to have reached the Australian shore was anything and everything to do with the Oscar Pistorius saga) as well as South Africans that simply don’t feel like we do.

• Will you ever go back? A very unfair question to ask seeing as we’ve only  been here for such a short time! The easiest answer to this is simply to say I don’t know. We don’t know where life will still take us in future and therefore have decided not to make plans very far ahead. For now we are here and we are living like it will be permanent. We are doing our best to integrate into life here and to give our children a sense of “forever” in Australia. I simply can not afford to live with a “5 year plan” and dreaming about a day I can go back to South Africa. I have to call this home now and I have to put in every effort to make Australia my own.

• What do you miss the most? This is such a hard one! Some days it is a dear friend, some days it is my mother. Some days I long to see a mountain top covered with snow in the winter, other days I long for that nondescript smell of “fynbos”. I miss the old haunts we used to be regulars at, the grocery store where I knew all the cashiers, the petrol station with the friendly attendant. I miss  hearing a lot of Afrikaans, the humour of my mother tongue, laughing with friends over silly jokes until the coffee spurts out my nose. Mostly what I miss is a feeling. One that can’t be pinpointed exactly, but is a mixture of belonging, familiarity, history and contentment.

So if you ask me one of these questions, don’t expect the same answer every time and don’t expect me to know how to respond. I will try my best, but it seems as if some questions just don’t have definite answers!