We
all have places so familiar that our feet instinctively know where they’re
going. Places where if you were blindfolded you could probably still find your
way. Without looking at the street names, or taking notice of landmarks, you
get to where you need to go. You don’t have to pay attention because you’ve
walked those routes so many times. They’re as familiar to you as your own home
is.
I
have three places like that. I’ve lived in them long enough for their streets
to feel like long lost friends to me every time I return. One of them I live
in, the other I return to on a regular basis, the third I visit far too infrequently.
There are other places in between. Places where I know the street, the fields,
the woodland. Places where we lived for a few months or a year or two, long
enough to have a familiarity with their streets, but not long enough to feel as
if those places were home. The three places that I hold close to my heart are
Cape Town, Cambridge and Leicester. The place of my birth and early childhood,
the place I grew up and the city where I began to learn how to be who I am.
I
was born on the 4th January 1986. It’s not a particularly important
day, historically. A fair bit happened soon after: the Challenger Disaster,
Chernobyl, never mind the fact that the 1980’s were a time of political
upheaval globally. But on that day, across the world, nothing much was
happening. I was always a little disappointed by that, mostly because I really
love history and I was a bit of a precocious little brat who liked to sprout random
facts and useless bits of knowledge to anyone who would listen to me. I just
know I would have loved telling anyone and everyone what had happened on my
birthday.
I
was born via emergency C-section, after about 26 hours of labour. A fair bit of
this time was spent by my mother trying to convince the doctors that I was the
wrong way round. I don’t know too much about what was available in hospitals
around South Africa at that time, but I do know that my mother never had an
ultrasound with me. I don’t think they were available. All they had to go on
were external and internal examinations. My mother was adamant my head was by
her ribs. The doctor was equally adamant that I just had a large backside and
that’s what my mother was feeling. I mean, it’s not like she’d been carrying me
around for 8 and a half months, getting familiar with how I behaved and which
direction I was. She was also toughing it out with gas and air. As my mother
tells it, the doctor proceeded to tell her how sweet it was that I had my hand
on my head (to this day I always wonder how I would have managed to come out
with my hand on my head, but hey, doctors know best, right?). What happened
next was…my foot came out. That cute little hand on my head was actually my
foot tucked up against my backside.
Mother
1. Doctor 0. What the doctor didn’t know, and what I’ve subsequently learnt
over the years is that my mother is always right. Even when she isn’t. I would
like to thank that doctor, not only for telling my mother I had a big backside
before I was even born, but for being the reason I was born with dislocated
hips.
There
was no anaesthesiologist in the hospital. I mean, I’m sure there were a few,
but they were all busy. The particular anaesthesiologist for the maternity ward
was nowhere to be found. As I said, my mother was toughing it out. No epidural,
which would have made the whole process a lot simpler, just gas and air. 4
hours later they managed to find someone to put my mother out and get me out. It
wasn’t the anaesthesiologist on call, it was someone else. The guy who was
supposed to be there turned up the next day, wandering around in his slippers,
and made some quip about my mother having a bit of a difficult time of it the
night before. He’s really lucky she didn’t punch him in the face. My mother is
a pretty formidable woman. It was probably the drugs wearing off and the
stitches that prevented her from venting her feelings.
She
wasn’t conscious when I was born. I was her first child, and I think it’s
always been a bit upsetting to her that she wasn’t conscious. It’s why she’s always
touted the benefits of an epidural to me. I usually respond with the fact that
there are ultrasounds now, and anaesthesiologists who actually do their jobs.
My father met me first. There’s a picture of me, dummy in my mouth, scrunched
up face barely visible in the blanket, tiny in the arms of my father, with his
80’s hair and moustache, looking tired but pleased as punch, winking at the camera.
When my mother woke up from the operation he asked her if she wants to meet her
son. My mother told him to stop being stupid, she knows she had a daughter.
Like
I said, my mother is always right.
I
suppose the reason the doctor scoffed at her insistence that he was wrong about
the position I was in was partially because she was so very young when she had
me. She was 21, a week and a half away from turning 22. My parents had been
married nearly 2 years. As I write this, aged 28, unmarried and childless, I
can’t quite fathom just how young they were. They’ve never regretted it. It’s
just how it was done in their generation, particularly in their community. You
found someone, you married them and, as they were Catholic, unless the priest
told you you could take contraception, you found yourself with a child not that
soon afterwards. Apparently they did try the calendar method (my parents are
quite open about things I sometimes wish they weren’t open about). I am one of
many people who are proof that the calendar method doesn’t work.
They
met when they were children. I can’t say that they were childhood sweethearts,
because they weren’t, really. My mother was friends with my father’s sister. They
went to the same church, and vaguely knew the same people. My father grew up in
a large and loving family. My mother grew up in a large family, in a house of
neglect and emotional abuse, with two alcoholic parents. Over time my father’s
family became more her family as she was welcomed into their home. At the time
my mother found my father rather annoying, but, as I said, she was friends with
his sister.
They
had various other boyfriends and girlfriends. My mother was in one long term
relationship before my father, with a guy she liked but didn’t love. I suppose
she was 16 at the time, and it was a way of getting out of her house. I don’t
really know about my father. Around the time that my mother was 17/18 her and
my father started going out. I don’t know too much about their relationship
before their marriage. I do know my father (who has always slept talked and
slept walked) had to be physically dragged out of his car in the middle of the
night, in nothing but his pants, by my grandfather, as he tried to sleep drive
his car to my mother. Which is both a sweet and terrifying story.
As I
said, back in my parent’s day, in their community, you met someone, you fell in
love, you got engaged, you got married. So my parents got engaged. They were
due to get married when my mother was 19. The wedding was planned, the dress
was bought, the church booked and reception organised. My father went to work
somewhere else in South Africa for a few months before the wedding. Three
months before he was due to come home and marry my mother he broke up with her.
My
mother has had 4 engagement rings. She has only ever been engaged to my father.
The first one she threw at him when he came back from wherever he was working.
For
6 months my parents were apart. My mother was in another relationship 3 months
after they broke up. She tells me now she had no feelings for this man, she
only wanted to get back at my father and have him come crawling back to her.
Her words, not mine. It worked, they got back together and the wedding was back
on. My mother’s parents refused to pay anything towards this wedding, as they’d
paid for the other and had lost out. They managed to sort something out and, on
the 30th May 1984, they married. My mother was at teacher training
college, my father was a manager at a supermarket. As I’ve said before, less
than 2 years later they had me.
In
contrast to England, January is a glorious month to be born in South Africa.
The sun always seems to shine on my birthday. The temperature is perfect. I
honestly can’t remember it ever raining on my birthday. Instead it’s all blue
skies and white fluffy clouds. I was born with new-born jaundice, a little bit
more than is normal. The perfect January weather mean that instead of being put
in an incubator with the light on, they could just place me in the incubator by
the window. I think my love of feeling the warm rays of the sun possibly stem
from those first couple of days. Three days after I was born my mother and I
headed home.
I
was never really a Mommy’s girl. My mother struggled to breastfeed me. At 6
weeks old, with the doctor rather concerned for my weight, my mother switched
to bottle feeding. From about that same age I started sleeping through the
night. Great for my parents, right? The difficulty came in getting me to sleep.
Each night my mother would walk me around the area in the pram. She’d push me
up and down the corridor of their flat, trying desperately to get her screaming
baby to sleep. There were times that she would take me out for a drive, hoping
the motion of the car would sooth me to sleep. At her wits end, on the verge of
tears herself, she’d hand me over to my father when he’d come in from the pub
or wherever and tell him to get me to sleep.
5
minutes later the flat would be silent. She’d look through into the living room
to find my father fast asleep on the sofa, me curled up on his chest.
She
got her own back when I started to talk. She was an early years teacher,
primarily focussed on teaching pre-school children. So she knows a fair bit
about childhood development. She knew that there was a strong chance my first
word would be Dada and she wasn’t having any of it. Instead she taught me
bye-bye. She was determined that that would be my first word. It was.
Dada
was my second.
I
hit all my developmental milestones roughly when I should: sitting, crawling,
talking, standing etc. I was taking a long time to walk. My mother took me to
the doctor. From the sounds of it he decided she was a panicky young mother,
didn’t give me a check-up and dismissed her concerns by telling her that I was
just a slow learner.
A
slow learner with a big arse. Thanks doctors!
I'm feeling very justified in nagging you to write :)
ReplyDeleteYou might regret that after 30 days of 2,000 word blog posts!
DeleteAlso, I don't see it as nagging, I see it as enthusiastic encouragement :-P
Love your writing x
ReplyDelete