Davit seemed to have a knack for catchy names and phrases. One of his last marvelous inventions was: The 13th Year. What to do with all the teenagers graduating from Blue Mountain College? Where were they to go? How were they going to invest their time and energy? University seemed to be off the table…
For the next two years, to the naked eye, life was surprisingly uneventful. A simple succession of predictable events all strung together by weeks and months of regular routine. Davit and Sara would whisk on and off the farm two or three times annually and sprinkle some colour into the lives of their patrons. Once…
My thirtieth birthday came and went without much fuss because everyone forgot about it. Everyone except Anton. I should have been grateful for that at least seeing that I’d forgotten his, only months before. Not having a big hoopla for your birthday when you’re an adult shouldn’t be a huge deal, but awkward, sad birthdays…
Petach Tikvah, Cape Town, was our summer residence and over time our roles there evolved. For some years now, Anton and I had been responsible for a troupe of teenage girls who were shipped off from the farm to spend the entirety of their school holidays at Petach Tikvah. They were all provided with holiday…
I DON’T LIKE IT. LIKE WHAT? YOU KNOW WHAT. I looked up only to realise I was in Anton’s line of sight. He was watching me manically texting away to someone. Clearly not him. It was a Saturday and we were both working at Mosaic where a private wedding event was underway. The wedding had…
Everyone needs an outlet. Or an escape. Sometimes both. For a long time, mine was prancing around on stage for our annual shows. I’d fallen in love with performance by chance when I was ten, scoring the role of ‘the fat, ugly princess’ in a school play. I surprised myself as much as I did…
“I would marry you.” He was speaking to Lia and looking at me with a sideways glance, silently observing my reaction to this random remark while I stood at the counter waiting for my coffee order that Lia was making for me. “You would totally be my second choice.” Doing my best to pretend that…
Everything was by design… nothing happened by chance. Life was a careful dance of politics and the Ben-avis pulled the strings. Following close behind them were the deputy leaders intertwining their fingers in the goings on of their underlings and so it continued. This dribbling pattern trickled down from the very top all the way…
What happened was that one day I was in and the next I was out. It’s not inexplicable. I know exactly why it happened. The ‘when’ and the ‘how’. The entire order of events. It’s one of those moments of acute clarity. Many memories are smudged and blurred, but this one, it’s burned into my…
Life was a blur of housework, meetings, meals, pregnancies, baby showers, weddings, comings and goings, babies, babies, and more babies. The circle swirled and swelled with little bodies zooming around the fountain on plastic motorbikes. The noise was terrific and of course, we were always on tenterhooks wondering when it was appropriately or inappropriately noisy….
