From 28 Dec until 2 Jan, Karen and I were joined by our daughter Kate and her husband Alan at Blue Bay Lodge in Saldanha Bay. Also, there was, of course, Elias our grandchild. The first afternoon we spent time down at beach, literally ten yards from our chalet. It was lovely to go into what Elias was calling “Wa..” the warm seawater. Then, that night, President Ramaphosa had a “family meeting,” as he rather cutely calls his addresses to the nation during this pandemic. At the “family meeting” he told us that all the beaches in the Western Cape (including Saldanha Bay) were closed. So, although Elias could point to the sea water ten yards away and say “Wa…” we could not take him down to it.
The resort’s swimming pools were still open but for an eighteen-month-old, it meant someone had to get into the pool with him and if slightly older children came to the pool and splashed about too much, he was not so happy. That meant we had to entertain him with the toys he had brought from home but also with the numerous toys he made himself from the pots and containers filled with tap-water or “Wa…” being poured from one container to another, being mixed with sand from the beach and making mud pies. These makeshift toys seemed to be much more fun that expensive toys he got for Christmas.
All this made me think of a time our family was at Holy Redeemer, Sea Point and I wrote this poem:
Urban Street Scene I
I saw a man
Going through our rubbish-bin today.
At the very bottom,
Amongst the potato peels and empty cans,
He found…
A yo-yo.
He took it out and looking at it closely,
Letting his fingers run along the string.
He carefully wound it up,
And then, looking up and down the busy street,
Hoping no one was looking,
He tried it out.
Down it went.
But there it stayed.
Refusing to come up again.
He glared at it,
Then threw it back,
And moved off to the next door’s bin.
The child in us never dies.
The joyful desire to see a yo-yo
Dropping and rising
At the tweek of a finger,
Is as present in that old man
As it is present in me.
I wanted to run out to the pavement
And dance with him around the rubbish bins,
Those magic toadstool in the garden of urban and eternal youth….
But the Adult in me said ‘No!’
23 February 1996.
