And the Winner Is ...

Luky;
There was a time when psychologists strongly disapproved of parents quarrelling in front of their offspring. For all I know, they still do. My parents often quarrelled in front of us. That is, my mom quarrelled and my dad held his peace. When I was little, he used to give back as good as he got but later in life he grew philosophical and let my mom have the last word.

Staying together
It taught me a great deal about staying together. When my husband used to make me angry, I thought: "Well, I suppose that's the way it goes in every home," and eventually I learnt enough sense to let him have the last word quite often, although he used to say I'm the fighter. Once when Christmas was just around the corner and I was feeling tired and edgy, I was often less than tactful and diplomatic. One day my husband and I were having it hot and heavy when I heard two of my daughters holding a running commentary on our dispute, much in the way of those television table panels at world boxing fights. They were were calling us "Ireland" and "Holland".

Ireland and Holland
Their discussion first caught my ear as I was pondering a way to floor my husband with argument. "Holland is plotting her strategy", I heard. "Don't be fooled by the momentary calm. She will return to the fray bloody but unbowed."
"Ireland is getting the worst of it," was the reply. "He is sitting quietly in his corner wondering what brought him to match his fists with so formidable an opponent."

Just then I thought of a great come-back to my husband's previous remarks and proudly dealt him a resounding verbal blow. He visibly wilted, momentarily at a loss. "Holland is not keeping to the Queensberry rules," one commentator remarked disapprovingly." "That's because she makes her living writing stories," the other countered. "Didn't you know the pen is mightier than the sword?"

And the grim Dutch gunners eyed them well
I was staring challengingly at their father, my arms akimbo. "Holland should be careful about her stance. Ireland seems to be preparing for the Heimlich Manoeuvre," one daughter said. "What's the Heimlich Manoeuvre?" I asked, deflected from my firm purpose to win this argument. Within minutes, all of them, including my opponent were displaying and demonstrating the ploy and the quarrel was forgotten.

I do not advocate physical violence. This is totally repugnant to me, because men are often physically stronger then women. It's like matching a heavyweight with a bantam weight. However, a little verbal sparring wil sometimes clear the air. Married people should never be so insecure and afraid that they cannot allow their partners or their children to take a look into their own heartaches and frustrations.

Judging from the evidence, it did little harm to my children.

Catherine Nicolette;


Whenever Dad and Mom had a falling out, Dad's joie de vivre used to be temporarily quenched. He would repair afterwards to the kitchen and mope around there. I would follow him to console him, and Dad would be grateful for  the company. If Mom had won the argument, he would raise a toast to his feisty Dutch wife - he with a nerve-restoring whisky and I with an equally nerve-restoring diet Coke - and he would recite Aubrey de Vere's Ballad of Athlone - how he, Sean Whittle, was the courageous Gael in the face of certain death, and Mom the grim Dutch gunner who eyed him well. Once when Mom swept regally through the kitchen and heard him reciting the poem with his eyes turned meaningfuly towards her, she told him she could sweep him from the seas as easily as Admiral Tromp would.

Dad then went to the lounge to nurse the last of the whisky in peace, and I was left sitting next to him reflecting that when Mom and Dad had a real falling out, it was better than a history lesson.

Photograph was taken by Rev. Catherine.

I remember big little Opa

Luky;
KUNEGONDE, he called me, my tempestuous little grandfather with the loving heart. He and my grandmother lived opposite the primary school I attended, and many were the times I scaled the four flights of stairs to their apartment to bask in the warmth of their home, humour and love.

In those days Dutch churchgoers said lengthy prayers before and after meals - an Our Father, a Hail Mary, prayers to the Sacred Heart ,  the Immaculate Heart of Mary,  one's patron saint  - nobody was forgotten.
"Saint Kunegonde",  Opa would pray piously, casting a stern glance into my direction in case I giggled. "Pray for us", I'd answer meekly.

Mind made up
Opa was an avid reader of newspapers and a reluctant payer of taxes. A blacksmith by trade, he grudgingly paid his taxes until he felt that it would pay him better to go on pension. Then he popped the key of his smithy into a registered envelope, addressed it to the Receiver of Revenue, and went into retirement forthwith.
He derived a good deal of gloomy satisfaction from imagining the guilt and embarrassment of the revenue officials upon receiving the key. "They got their just deserts, Kunegonde", he said darkly, and although I doubted whether they gave two hoots, I nodded sagely.
He liked long hair. "Who was the hairdresser that cut off your beautiful plaits and where does he live?" he asked me. After I had explained, he nodded in a satisfied kind of way and went back to his paper.

Caught
"Opa", I said urgently. Inquiringly he looked at me over the top of his glasses. "Why do you want to know all that?" I asked. "I want to go and put a stone through his window", Opa said. Three times he caught me that way.
When we emigrated to South Africa he was exultant for our sakes. a card from him, addressed infuriatingly to "Die Hollander Bakker"   instead of my dad's name, bore three words: "Leve de Vrijheid!" (long live liberty).

Foreign land
I wrote to him from boarding school. "The girls here have such foreign names", I wrote, knowing that the ethnic implications of that would interest him. "There's one in our class called Flora Vettini  and another called Joslee Nirinsky".
I was disappointed that he didn't refer to this in his reply, but four years later when I was due to sit for my Matric   examinations my grandfather wrote:
"I trust Flora Vettini and Joslee Nirinsky are confident concerning the exam. Give them my best."

Lost in time
In later years he sent me pamphlets about hydroponics so that I could get rich by growing lots of tomatoes on a tiny plot of ground, but by now I was rather  neglectful of my faithful old Opa. Even when he sent a magazine reproduction of a painting depicting himself as a child of three watching a puppet show on the Dam in Amsterdam, I allowed it to get lost.
When one of my sons was three, he was the living image of the boy in that picture. At times people asked me whom he resembled. I told them I didn't know, and left it at that.

Catherine Nicolette
* Sacred Heart - another term for Jesus Christ, denoting His love and care for all humanity
* The Immaculate Heart of Mary - another term for Mary of Nazareth, Jesus' mother
* Patron saint - holy person or person who lived a godly life, and who is accepted as a spiritual example in one's own life worthy of imitation
* Saint Cunegonde (Kunegonde) was an Empress and a woman who lived a life devoted to God. Cunegonde was the daughter of Sigefride, the first Count of Luxemborg, and Hadeswige, his wife. Cunegonde founded bishoprics and monasteries to enable the evangelisation of the Gospel of Jesus Christ, and assisted the poor. Cunegonde went to heaven on 3^rd March, 1040.
* Die Hollander Bakker - Dutch words meaning 'The Dutch Baker'
* Names have been changed
* Graduation

Photograph of flowers taken by Rev. Catherine Whittle in Ireland. Please feel free to use the photo copyright free for any Christian, educational or spiritual purpose

.

 Catherine Nicolette Whittle and Dr. Luky Whittle 

Water spray and the Seven Geese

Stories from South Africa
Catherine Nicolette;

We were complaining to Dad and Mom that we had no-one to play with. It was holiday time, and our friends in the neighbourhood were away at the seaside. We were stuck in Welkom, an area with much veldt* between towns, and longed for the sophistication of the water, the sea, and the elan of being a travelled junior school Free Stater. Our friends used to come back from Port Elizabeth and Cape Town. They would give us gifts of polished semi-precious stones while commiserating with us that we never seemed to go to the seaside. We relayed all this with gusto to Dad and Mom. Mom sat there looking worried, as she always did at our family conferences. She went without so much in order to be able to put us all through private school with extra tuition such as music and art, and Dad laboured away at the mine for the same reason. Dad's work at the mine involved him nightly going down into the pits and risking his life to mine gold. He had
survived being pinned under a rock fall which left him with a chronic back injury which at times caused him agonising pain. However, to our young minds, we were hard done by. As I look back now, I realise how much my parents worked and did in order for us to have a secure and protected childhood. Yet, at the time, I was not able to appreciate this. So; I wanted to go to the sea, and my siblings with me; and we wanted water and water animals - right now!

At the end of the conference which the Whittle siblings and myself had called, Dad stood up with his authoritative and calm presence, and said, 'Right! Water and water animals you want, and water and water animals you shall get! No one will ever be able to say that my children did not have exactly what all the other children in the neighbourhood got.' And Mom followed him out the diningroom, saying plaintively, 'But Sean, we don't have the money to go the seaside with all the expenses we have to pay.' Much we cared, sitting around the diningroom table. We had got our way; in our own minds, we were well on our way to the seaside.

Yet again, I had underestimated my canny Irish father. The first sign that something was rotton in the state of Denmark was when I came back from school the next day in the bright African sunshine, to be met by seven streaks of white feathers coming around the corner with a distinctive honking sound, and my father's voice in the rear chivvying them jocularly along. He couldn't have... he had! Dad had gone out and bought seven geese and was herding them towards the large water spray strategically placed in the middle of the garden under the massive overhang of the yellow-pollened mimosa tree. He herded the geese towards the water spray which, by a miracle of African technology veered first to the left, and then to the right. The geese honked, and then waddled through the spray. Next to the spray was a large plastic slide. Nearby a red and white blanket was spread out with, as the folks (our name for Mom and Dad) would say, 'all the blessings of God on it.' A party had been organised for us under the tree. Dad's motto was you only live once, so you might as well enjoy it.

The next week the neighbourhood kids, returning from the seaside, stared enviously as we ran whooping around the garden, jumping through the veering waterspray and throwing ourselves with abandon on the waterslide on which we would skid squeakily along, laughing like mad. The geese would run up and down, honking noisily, and then waddle through the spray. All of a sudden, neighbourhood children were lining up outside the Whittle gates with their cozzies* rolled up in towels, and their parents asking permission for them to join us. We became the toast of the neighbourhood, and my siblings and I basked in the glory.

However, eventually the worm began to turn. The goslings grew into fat geese, and a sinister and cold glint entered their eyes. It is well known in South Africa that geese are fiercer than watchdogs and, indeed, are used to some effect on some farms for the same purpose. The geese fawned over the alpha male of the house, our Dad. But they grew to loathe my brothers, sisters and myself - for no apparent reason. The real standoff came when, after a few weeks of chasing us, and frightening us by nipping our heels painfully, they stood hissing malevolently at our gates and refused to let us in to the grounds. It takes a lot to cow a Whittle girl, but I had several red marks on my arms and legs from surprisingly painful nips from beaks, and I wasn't going in for more.

Mom and Dad surveyed the situation. Things came to a head - if I recall after so many years and with a child's memory - when an anonymous complaint was lodged that Dad was keeping livestock in a residential area without a permit. After some official to-ing and fro-ing, it was established that according to bylaws geese are in fact not pets, but considered as livestock. Dad, with Irish grace, bowed to the inevitable and we came home one day to a geese-free zone with easy access to the house. Where were the geese? We did not know. Years later I heard that Dad could not bear to have anything happen to the geese of whom he had grown fond, and gave them into the keeping of a friend who had a local smallholding farm. The son of the friend was somewhat bitter that the Whittle geese were destined never for the cookpot, but lived to terrorise him when he was on the farm outside of school hours. A Free State smallholding farmer's son to his very soul, he considered animals to be sent for the reason of gracing our tables after visiting a cookpot, and it galled him to see the geese living - exempt from any such fate - to a ripe old age.

And thus ended the saga of the water spray and the seven geese.

Luky;
Actually, the geese were ducks. Sean got the ducks from a mining friend of his who had a smallholding. It was the mother duck and her six little ducklings. They used to follow their mom in a totally straight line wherever they went, and I used to wish that my kids would do the same. One of my sons as a toddler used to throw himself off the kerb into the traffic when we were walking along, and I had to put a protective harness on him so that when he jumped unexpectedly, I would be able to haul him out of harm's way as he used to pull his hand out of mine every time. Eventually he stopped doing this, and I was able to leave the protective harness as a thing of the past. One day we were walking in town, and he saw a harassed mother carefully holding onto the straps of the harness in which she had her child. My son said, 'Look at that wicked mother! She's put the child in a dogleash!' I told him that he had also been in one, and he was outraged.

*veldt - Afrikaans word meaning dry fields
*cozzies - South African childrens' name for swimming-costumes

*Photograph taken by Rev. Catherine. Please feel free to use the picture copyright free for any Christian, educational or spiritual purpose.

Love at first sight

Catherine Nicolette
I was on another of my hobbies; to research family history and record our wondrous happenings and interesting personalities for posterity. So I got hold of Dad on a Saturday afternoon, armed with pen and writing pad, and a tape recorder with a little microphone. Dad looked at me, 'What's this?' he enquired mildly, his bushy eyebrows jutting over his shrewd Irish eyes. Dad knew me too well. When I was up to mischief (more often than not), he invariably knew it. I could always hide my facial expressions from others - never from Dad, or from Mom. That is the difficulty of being with people who have known you from the moment of your birth. Ah well.

Anyway, I said brightly to Dad, 'Oh Dad, please you won't mind, I need to take a tape recording from you because I am doing our family history'. Well, Dad flew so quickly out of the kitchen into the back yard I had to run out after him. 'Not on your life,' said Dad. 'I'm not telling you anything. And I'm certainly not going down on tape, that's for sure'. Well, I coaxed and pleaded. One thing the three Whittle girls know, is that Dad had a stern exterior which covered the softest of hearts. If Dad said no, absolutely not, and you coaxed and pleaded, and hung on his arm, and reminded him of how happy he was when you were born (Dad absolutely adored his children), and opened your eyes wide and looked helpless and sad, Dad's heart would melt.

So I pulled out all the stops. Eventually Dad graciously assented to be interviewed and his words written down. However, he resolutely declined the tape recorder. Our negotiation completed to the satisfaction of both parties, I trotted after Dad as he did the garden, writing down his comments. Part of the terms and conditions was that Dad was certainly not going to sit down and be interviewed, I would have to follow in his footsteps as he continued his usual Saturday afternoon work. As one of my questions, I asked Dad, 'How did you meet Mom?'

'Well it was like this,' Dad said. Now that he had decided to Tell All, he actually started enjoying himself. 'I was in South Africa, on my way back to Europe. I went into a library in Springs with my friend John.* As I entered the doorway, I saw the most beautiful woman I had ever seen. She had blonde hair shining like gold in the sunlight coming through the window behind her. She was looking down, stamping library books.  I grabbed my friend's hand and pulled him out of the doorway. I said to him, 'If that woman were Catholic, I'd marry her.' John said, 'Well, you're in luck. She is Catholic.''Dad looked at me, and his face was radiant. 'That is how I met your mother. And she is still as beautiful as the day I met her.' As I looked at  Dad, his face was soft with remembrance.  I realised that, for him, it had been love at first sight.

Today I was on the phone to Mom, the two of us catching up on news. I mentioned to her that I wanted to write a blog post about their meeting. 'Oh yes,' she said, 'Did Dad tell you the rest of the story?' Intrigued, I asked her to continue.
'Well,' Mom said, 'Your Dad wanted to meet me. So he went to Mass at 6 o' clock in the morning on Sunday;  I wasn't there. Dad then went to Mass at 8 o' clock. I still wasn't there. Dad went to 10 o' clock Mass, and there I came, together with my Dad and Mom and my brother and two sisters.' And Mom laughed, a young note in her voice.

And I realised that, all these years later, Mom is still as in love with Dad as he was with her when he went to heaven.

*Name has been changed
*Photograph was taken by Rev. Catherine. Please feel free to use the photo copyright free for any Christian, educational or spiritual purpose.

My teenage dreams

Stories of France
Catherine Nicolette

I went through many stages in my childhood and teen years. Every year I planned for the future, the wondrous unknown time still ahead of me. One year I was going to choose the career of archeology. I spent the year in the boot* of the car any time Dad or Mom took us for a drive reading everything I could about Egypt, digs, archeologists, Tutankhamon, the Valley of the Kings. I saw myself in my mind's eye looking svelte and glamorous in khaki, turning up wondrous new archeological finds in hitherto unknown sites and becoming the toast of the archeological world and fabulously wealthy from my career to boot.

That was before I discovered the existence of the Penny Black. I became an ardent philatelist, and had beautiful books with stamps arrayed in different countries. I really wish I had those albums now - they were absolutely beautiful. I gave them away after I completed Standard 5 and had then decided that I was going to be a doctor. Around the same time I was furious when Mom had one of her celebrated Dutch springcleans and gave away my dictionary at the back of which I had hidden my two great treasures - two rare stamps I had been given by a missionary to the country, and which were to pay for my post graduate training upon their being sold. I actually think that they were that rare, and to this day wistfully think of the assistance that cash would have given. However, maybe they weren't that valuable and I got the story wrong... truth to tell, no-one can really blame Mom. I was the inveterate hoarder, and could not bear to give anything away at that time. I suppose it was a case of clear out the cupboards and the room, or there would have been no space left for a little girl and her bed to sleep in at night.

So; I digress. I was going to be doctor. In the boot I earnestly studied anatomy because I figured that if I knew all the names of the bones, and how the body worked, well I would be a step ahead of all my fellow competitor doctors at university and become a world famous surgeon before my thirties. I'm not sure how long the doctor theme lasted, but I became pretty knowledgeable about the humerus, the femur and the other bones.

Then I discoved fashion design. I littered the house with pictures of (to my mind) fabulous designs, marvellous coats, amazing dresses, jeans and top ensembles. This was all on the way to the next step; I was going to become the world's most famous supermodel. I loved one of the seventies supermodels, and searched out every picture I could of her. This gracious lady epitomised for me elegance, good taste and refinement. I was going to stand around in beautiful brocades and fabrics against artistic backdrops, and appear on the covers of international magazines.

Then I fell in love with the written word. Books, plays, autobiographies, even encyclopedias held me in their thrall. And that made up my mind. I was going to be a world-famous author. I would bring the written word to all, and the benison and wisdom of my words would help the entire humanity to wake up each day to a new and better morning because of my efforts, because of 'passing this way but once' as Mom always says.

The final upshot was that when I went on pilgrimage at seventeen years of age to Lourdes in France,  I saw a deeply disfigured woman who was so disabled she was unable to go into the healing waters there. She lay at the Piscines,*
making feeble movements with her one finger towards the water. Helpless tears streamed from her disfigured and blind-looking eyes. The attendants looked helplessly at her, she just was too disabled due to her contractured limbs to fit into the contours of the stone bath. The woman opened her mouth, and her vocally dumb state prevented her from making the cries of despair and sadness that shook her entire crippled being with emotion. All that poor woman had wanted after making that long journey was to have the emotional comfort of being dipped in the waters that came from the spring at Lourdes. And even that comfort was denied her.

No physical cries came from her mouth, but my soul heard those cries of inner pain and despair within as clearly as if she had uttered them and I had heard them with my ears. In that moment, my somewhat self-absorbed teenage soul was touched with the unbearable pain and pathos of the suffering of the human condition. And the reason why I came on pilgrimage to Lourdes, to find out what God would like me to do as career with my life, was made plain; I became a nurse in order to learn the craft of healing.

*boot - the back of the car which was open, much like a extra partition in the back in which two small children could sit. I invariably sat in the back because in those days I was so petite I fitted there very well. In Whittle tradition, the boot eventually became known as the 'doggie box'. Not sure why.

*Piscines - French word meaning pools

*Photograph was taken by Rev. Catherine. Please feel free to use the photo copyright free for any Christian, educational or spiritual purpose.

An open hand is never empty

Stories from South Africa
Luky
It often surprises me how stingy some people are about sharing their talents with others. If you ask them for their granny's cherished milk tart* recipe they will surprise you with their attitude of:'That's for me to know and for you to find out!'

One of my daughter left home at the tender age of seventeen to study nursing in Port Elizabeth. I was terrified of what the future held for her and tried to counsel her all the way to the airport. Years later she told me that one of the things she had remembered about that conversation was that she should be generous to others, whether money was involved or whether she could share her own talents and skills in order to empower others.

I can well believe that I did tell her something of that nature. I hate the attitude of those who, while knowing the intricacies of a machine in the office, refuse to show newcomers how to operate it. Have they forgotten how frightened they themselves felt when they first started their jobs?

Admittedly some people's attitude in answer to one's generosity can disappoint. A newly married neighbour in my flat days in Welkom in the sixties requested me to introduce her into the mysteries of the cuisine as far as these were known to me. Our husbands were what was known as 'day's pay men' and were friendly at the mine. She was not shy to borrow ingredients from me, and being a stringent money saver, would only return these on pay day. Far from appreciating my help, however, she dropped us from her circle of acquaintances when her husband was promoted. Although glad she had stopped borrowing, I could not help but feel I should have let her eat slap chips* instead of teaching her to cook.

But then I'd remember my boarding school days. Our principal and the standard three teacher showed the boarders a movie every second weekend. It would arrive by train in a massive parcel, containing several large reels containing film which every so often came off track. And a complex job it would be to get it to go again. In addition, every half hour or so the reel stuttered to a halt and had to be changed for the next one.

In the months that followed the departure of the old principal, her successor soon became adept at working the projector, thanks to the standard three teacher's unflagging patience. One day the latter arrived late at the hall. The principal said,'I wonder what has happened to my assistant.' Just then her preceptress walked in and heard the arrogant comment from one on whose development she had expended so much time and energy. For a moment her face whitened. Then she started helping, smiling but quiet. Her humble attitude taught me never to expect gratitude and that knowledge served me well in the cooking experience.

Our allotted span is but limited and as the Humanists say, 'I shall pass through this world but once. Any good that I can do, therefore, let me do it now. Let me not defer nor neglect it for I shall not pass this way again.'

If, as often happens, people misunderstand and take advantage of our generosity, ridiculing us for our pains, we should not allow them to throw us off course. When we share what we have with others, we are only giving that which God gave us first. Moreover, if we do so we in turn will never want either. For in the words of a dear friend of mine, 'an open hand is never empty.'

*milk tart is known as 'melktert' in Afrikaans. It is much loved South African dessert often used as a cake with a cup of tea, especially when visitors come. South African hospitality is famous, and the visitor - even if unexpected and unannounced - will immediately be seated in the place of honour in the lounge, and offered a choice of tea, coffee, juice, soft drink if available, or water as well as biscuits, tea, or cake. Milk tart is a sweet pastry crust containing a creamy filling from milk, flour, sugar and eggs

*slap tjips - an term from the Afrikaans language in South Africa meaning 'french fries'

*Photograph was taken by Rev. Catherine. Please feel free to use the photo copyright free for any Christian, educational or spiritual purpose.

MISS MARK'S LAST DAY AT THE OFFICE

Luky;
When my sister was a young girl working in a mine office, she had a colleague due for retirement.  
  Miss Mark was an elderly immigrant spinster who set a perfect example of professionalism and personal excellence.
  She had held the same job for over thirty years, controlling the office with a lift of her eyebrows.

You no longer meet people like Miss Mark today, but in the nineteen fifties they abounded in Britain and Europe.  
  They were the women who had remained single after two world wars had mown down the men they would have married and destroyed their chances of motherhood.

There is a passage in a poem called “Drafts” by Nora Bomford, which would well describe the silent, enduring and lonely despair of women like Miss Mark during the wars when the men in their lives had left for the Front:

So dreadfully safe! O, damn the shibboleth of sex!
God knows we've equal personality.
Why should men face the dark while women stay
to live and laugh and meet the sun each day?

After the wars, some of those whose love had died in the fray went into an existence of suspended animation, carrying on doggedly keeping body and soul together.  
  There was no chance for them of a satisfying career in the commercial world, for the best jobs went to men.  

So the Miss Marks lived out their working years, typing, filing or keeping books, and completing the remainder of their allotted span while subsisting on a pension and their savings.

My sister, barely out of her teens, had a great appreciation for Miss Mark despite the latter’s lack of obvious charm.  
  When she found the odd chink in Miss Mark’s armour of disciplined remoteness, she’d say: “We actually made her laugh today.”  

Unlike some of their colleagues, rather than resent the old lady’s personal brand of individuality, she honoured her for it.

When Miss Mark reached retirement age, she received no mercy.  
  Passing the boss’s office, accompanied by the older woman, my sister heard an interchange between him and a colleague that shocked her.  
  As the door was ajar, they could clearly hear him pronouncing his epitaph on Miss Mark’s thirty years of dedicated service: “Thank goodness we can decently get rid of that old bag at last.  That sour face of hers would curdle the milk.” 

Though Miss Mark gave no sign of having heard his words, the fact that she must have done so became clear on her last day at the office.  
  Due to depart at noon, she worked as on any normal day.  

At a quarter to twelve she put away her last filing before emptying out her desk.  
  And at twelve when the boss came in for the presentation and farewell speech, she could not be found.  
  The garage attendant said she had pulled her car out on the stroke of noon. 

My sister was sent after her with the present.  
Miss Mark opened the front door of her flat in a neighbouring town and accepted the gift with polite thanks.  
  Since she was not invited in, my sister said goodbye and returned to the office, where the sight of her former colleague’s abandoned desk suffused her with a sense of infinite pathos.

The story of Miss Mark's bleak last day at the office impacted on my own life.
  Though I worked for many years, cometimes for long stretches, I never allowed pension or other considerations to prevent me from resigning and looking for a different job whenever I felt my welcome was outstayed.
  But then, unlike Miss Mark, I had a husband's pension - not to mention his emotional support - to fall back upon.

MARY, JOSEPH AND THE HUMBLE STABLE

Luky
I was miffed halfway through October when signs of Santa Claus in his sleigh all the way from Lapland started to be displayed. 
  Here we were dying of heat in the Free State Goldfields and there was St. Nick, muffled up to the white bushy eyebrows, circling his whistling whip into the air and calling cheerily: “Ho ho ho.  Come Dancer, Prancer and Vixen!”  
  I hesitate to add the other reindeer names I remember because they are swearwords in Afrikaans. 

I get seriously unhappy when Christmas is preceded by glee so long before the time.
  I'm always afraid theparty will be over before it starts.
  At home it is the same thing.

  The other family members want to put up the Christmas decorations early in December and I fight them tooth and nail until Christmas Eve.

To me, Christmas is the gloom of the bitterly cold late afternoon in Bethlehem.
  Mary, in the final stages of pregnancy, is being jostled uncomfortably on the back of a donkey.    Joseph, staff in hand, leads his precious cargo through the cobbled streets.  

The rich are housed in the comfortable inns, but there is no room for the King of kings.
  Yet there is a wealth of consolation implicit in that most beautiful of true stories.  
  Who would have shown the huMble little couple to the stable?  

Did Joseph feel powerless and guilty for not having been better able to take care of the Son of God?
  Did he fear for the safety and wellbeing of Mary and the Messiah she carried in her womb?  
  Was there clean straw in the stable to provide some warmth?  

I have a mental picture of Joseph, rolling up his sleeves and sweeping out the worst of the straw before burying it outside because of the droppings of the ox and the ass.

Joseph and Mary must have been grateful indeed for the shelter from the falling snowflakes, so picturesque on postcards, yet so cruelly cold in reality.
  When Jesus was born, surely Mary cradled him in her young arms and hugged him?  
  And surely Joseph, his fatherly heart overflowing with tenderness, lovingly caressed the tiny baby’s face with a delicate touch from his carpenter’s hands? 

Would Mary have allowed the rough shepherds to hold the Messiah?
  Despite their poverty, did these manage to bring the little family some much-needed cheese, bread and milk, and perhaps some sheepskins against the bitter cold?

Was there a small fire made in a cleared patch in a corner of the stable, placed well away from the straw, and did the shepherds warm their hands there?  
  Were they able to hear the angel song inside the stable?  
  Were Mary and Joseph embarrassed about the poverty of their surroundings when the three kings arrived?

I have other questions about Christmas more pertinent to today.
  Why do I always feel touched when the first Christmas card arrives in my post box?  
  Why can’t I hear a Christmas carol at Christmastime and retain my composure?  

Why does every human being on God's earth suddenly become important at Christmas, especially the poorest among us?
  Even the very commercialism of Christmas itself brings benefit. 
  The money we spend at Christmas provides jobs for many.  

Mary and Joseph were ordinary people, as we are, and Jesus must have learned at His mother's knee that when Joseph was out of work, they had no food.
  So the advertisement of Jesus' Birth celebrated at Christmas helps to provide many with their family shelter and food.

My father, a baker in Amsterdam, would seldom see his bed in the forty-eight hours preceding Christmas, but the Christmas sales made the extra effort worth while.
  As for my mother, one Christmas Eve, serving the customers, she realized she was about to give birth.  
  She phoned her sisters and a sister-in-law to serve in the shop before contacting the doctor and the midwife.
  Then she went up to the first floor where we lived, and ninety minutes later gave birth to my brother. 

When he was born, she hugged him, handed him to the midwife and swung out of the bed.
  “Hold on!  Where do you think you’re going?” the doctor asked.

“Downstairs to the shop.  My husband’s terribly busy!”

“Don’t you worry about him.  He’ll be all right,” the doctor said.  “You just enjoy your new baby and go to sleep!”

My brother's birthday was always celebrated by us on Christmas Eve.  
  He was a lovely guy, a retired school teacher, was happily married and a father of four.    But he was the most down-to-earth, practical man you could ever wish to meet.  
  Would the circumstances of his birth have had something to do with that?

Despite the hard work before Christmas, my parents took us to church first thing on Christmas day, even if my dad did tend to drop off from exhaustion during the sermon, and my mom had to keep bumping his arm in the middle of a particularly audible snore.

He’d wake up during the carol singing and you could hear his voice – not a particularly melodious one – above all the others during the “Oh come all ye faithful”.  
  Only he sang: “Christus geboren, zingen de engelenkoren!”

The Christmas labours brought their own commercial reward.  
  For three or four months afterwards, our accounts would be up to date and we’d be ahead of the game for a while.

All this, and the Christ Child too.

ZOUTE DROP WITH IRISH STEW

Catherine Nicolette
The joys of mixed parentage! 
Dad was from Tramore, Ireland, Mom is from Amsterdam in Holland. 
  They met and married in South Africa. 
Thus I grew up in a mixed household, a veritable blend of cultures.

How it worked was like this; sometimes we ate Irish. 
  Dad had a say in the cooking,  and often got behind the stove himself. 
  He was a veritable chef, I his willing acolyte. 
We would work away in the kitchen with Dad dispensing nuggets of Irish wisdom as I peeled the potatoes and tended the humble cleaning duties.

Jack of Diamonds
Dad measured, whipped and concocted fabulous dishes we all ate with absolute relish. 
The tapedeck would belt out Dad's favourite tunes.   To this day the older of my siblings and I amaze people with our word perfect knowledge of 'Jack of Diamonds,' 'Solitaire,' the Platters 'Only You,' and all of the Al Jolson songs. 

In winter we children would walk home while viewing a plume of smoke against the sky from the Whittle chimney.
  At that time South African households enjoyed central heating and electric fires or radiator
  Our Celtic influenced home boasted a coal fire, around which we would sit.
  Sometimes we toasted marshmallows on long forks at the fireside, and ate toast with dripping butter.
  Dad would indulge in the old fashioned tradition of story telling. 

And what stories they were, 'It was a dark and dreary night, and the wind was howling around the eaves...' 
  We would settle around the fire, looking into the coals. 

Sometimes I was lulled to sleep by the sound of my parents' voices quietly chatting while Mom knitted for the family's latest baby.    Such total safety and security... 
Next morning I would wake tucked up cosily in bed, never sure how I got there. Such were the Irish evenings.

Windmill spring clean
The Dutch days ... ah, the Dutch days. 
  When Ouma, my Dutch grandmother) would announce an impending visit, a whirling Amsterdam spring clean would take place. 

Windows would be washed until they sparkled.
  Zoute drop, butter biscuits, percolated coffee and thick slices of delicious bread with Gouda cheese would grace the table. 

The aroma of fabulous Dutch meals would waft through the air as Mom bustled around the kitchen.
  Everything had to be perfect.  
The beautiful little blue and white Dutch ornaments would sit cheek by jowl with Irish Waterford crystal.

Dutch art books would line the bookshelves, while the wooden kitchen dresser had six Delft plates.
  I simply loved the beauty of the home with its Celtic and Dutch traditions.

Cultural influence
I continue to be influenced by multiple cultural influences.
  I am thoroughly South African in upbringing. My accent still gives me away in Dublin.

When I visit my friends, it is open culinary season.
  Afrikaans friends ply me with pap, onion tomato sauce and melktert.
  Portuguese choir members cook fabulous Mediterranean cuisine.
  South Sotho friends place samp, beans and putu pap before me.

The only South African dishes I ever struck out on and declined to eat were mopani worms and fried locusts. 
  My friends thought I was a wimp.

Beating the system
As a child, I was smart enough to use the system.  When a Dutch gathering took place, I would wear the blue dress Ouma had sewn for me.
I would liberally sprinkle phrases like 'Dag,' 'Dank u, and 'Nee' or 'Ja' to show I was one of the gathering. 

  As Sint Nikolaas day rolled around,  I would be more Dutch than the Dutch.
 I would leave newly bought socks on the chimney in the hope that Mom would put oranges and sweets in.
  She always did.

Turncoat
Turncoat that I was, when St. Patrick's Day came around, I would become more Irish than the Irish.
 I would wear my green and gold dress and run around loudly talking about St. Patrick and the shamrock. 

  I would feast on Irish stew and watch in awe as Mom made Irish coffee.
  Her services were in great demand until she came back, now teetotal, from a Lourdes pilgrimage.    Everything else in the Whittle household except for the sherry trifle then went teetotal too.
  Including the famous Irish coffees.

As the Welkom Irish contingent remarked one memorable St. Patrick's Day years later, it was a sad day indeed.

International
The upshot of all this is that I am as at home in Holland as in Ireland; in South Africa as in France. 
  I love visiting India, England, Italy. 
I see a unique beauty in all countries, and enjoy the wondrous diversity of different cultures

I have been the beneficiary of a multicultural upbringing - a mixture of Dutch zoute drop and Irish stew. . .

FASCINATING MAUD GONNE

Luky

Less generally known than many celebrities, though familiar to students of English literature, is a character whose story is one of great interest. 
  She is the beautiful and fascinating Maud Gonne, a colourful Irish patriot and political activist of the nineteenth and twentieth century.  

She was immortalised in the work of a Nobel prizewinning poet, who not only yielded to her political convictions and made them his own, but who loved her unavailingly and hopelessly throughout his life.  
  Since William Butler Yeats celebrated her beauty in impassioned lines in which he likens her to Helen of Troy, students of literature have thrilled to his unreciprocated worship.  
  Was it also Maud Gonne he was addressing in “A Deep-Sworn Vow”?

  Others, because you did not keep

  That deep-sworn vow, have been friends of mine;

  Yet always when I look death in the face,

  When I clamber to the heights of sleep,

   Or when I grow excited with wine,

   Suddenly I meet your face.

Nowhere else is an indication given of any deep-sworn vow between herself and the poet.  
  Though she sat with Yeats on political and cultural committees and took the lead in his patriotic play Cathleen ni Houlihan, she turned down his repeated marriage proposals.  

Even after she married a military man to become Maud Gonne McBride, this was not the end of the doomed one-sided love affair, for when she was widowed, the poet again proposed in vain.

The power of her fascination over others, not excluding himself, is thus described in Yeats’s autobiography: “Some portion of (her) power (over crowds) came because she could still, even when pushing an abstract principle …, keep her own mind free, and so, when men and women did her bidding they did it not only because she was beautiful, but because that beauty suggested joy and freedom …  Her beauty, backed by her great stature, could instantly affect an assembly … for it was incredibly distinguished, and if …her face, like the face of some Greek statue, showed little thought, her whole body seemed a master-work of long, labouring thought.”  
  Yet, “while she but rose partially and for a moment out of raging abstraction; … she hated her own beauty.”

So what became of this fascinating and captivating woman?  
  As fate would have it, the one to tell me this was my husband, whose parents entertained her in their home on the Irish east coast when he was small. 

When I showed him in a book of Yeats’s poetry and in a biography that she had been a celebrated beauty, he was very surprised indeed.    
  So what did he remember about her?  
“Very little.  Just a face, hands and a voice.  An old lady, dressed all in black, head covered with a veil, seated on a wicker chair, a massive black and white dog at her feet.”

This elderly lady had inspired the most tender feeling in a great Irish poet by her beauty of mind and soul. 
  A welcome visitor in the Whittle household, she was then nearing the end of her life's journey - still as lovely within as ever she had been in the days when Yeats' deep love for her inspired the proposals of marriage which she had declined, but which must have remained in her mind as the greatest compliment he could have paid her. 

I REMEMBER PAPA

Luky;

One of the most unforgettable characters I have met during my life is my father.  
  Though he died over thirty years ago, the memory of the shining look of love for me on his face comes to mind in shops overloaded with  Father’s Day gifts.

Papa, as we called him, was a humble man.    Though brought up as the son of wealthy parents, he never achieved riches in his own right. 

He had a heart as large as a church and would give his last cent to a needy person, of whom there always are many.  
  As a baker, he met people who could not afford the price of a loaf of bread but whose children nevertheless had to eat.  

My mother who always worked for him and saw behind the scenes believed that in hard times many were kept fed because of his generosity.  
  I don’t know if the story is true for his left hand never knew what his right hand did.

He was the humblest man on earth.  
  “Do you want to become a b... fool like me?” he’d ask us when our reports weren’t up to scratch.  

He had been offered every opportunity for study and advancement.  
  One of his brothers was a doctor, another a priest.  
  My grandfather had hoped that my dad, a brainy person, would go in for law, but he opted for the baker’s trade instead – and lived to regret it. 

He was determined we’d make our living sitting comfortably at a desk and using our brains, rather than having to rise at three each morning and physically labour from dawn until dusk as he and my mother did.  
  He was prepared to leave his country and all it meant to him behind and travel halfway across the world to make this possible.

A striking example of his humility is illustrated in a story about my sister Elly which I overheard him telling my mother about.  
  At the time she was attending an exclusive secondary school in Amsterdam, which taxed my parents’ financial resources to the limit.  

To pay for it and other needs, my father, after a hard day’s baking, had started delivering his own bread in a cart propelled by a bicycle.    
  Pushing this uphill was physically taxing, even to a man of his iron strength.

I would mention in passing that my mother was as different from my father as chalk from cheese. 
 Exceedingly self-possessed, she always demanded, and received, the utmost courtesy and respect. 

People seemed to think my parents were an ill-matched couple.  
 But with a lifetime’s experience behind me, I now  believe my father was able to be the gentleman he was because my mother protected him against all comers, though her fierce defensiveness on his behalf sometimes seemed to disguise the profound love for him which inspired it.

“I was pushing the breadcart up the bridge this afternoon,” he said, “when who came cycling up on the opposite side but Elly, a bike-riding male teacher on either side.  
 She was talking nineteen to the dozen, and they were laughing away.  
 I tried to hunch my face into the collar of my raincoat so that she would not be obliged to acknowledge me.  
 But as soon as she spotted me, she rode across to me, calling: ‘Papa! Hi!’  
 She got off her bike, threw her arms around me and gave me a big hug.  
 Both teachers smiled delightedly, saluted us and rode on.”

My father died in the late sixties.  
 He suffered for two years from cancer, but he died as he had lived, without fuss.  
 I still think of him and praise his example of Christianity, generosity, humour, warmth and personal meekness to this day.  

That the memory of so self-effacing a man can cast such a large shadow, or rather patch of sunshine, constitutes one of life’s enigmas to me.  
 The fact that I have always felt very comfortable with members of the opposite sex I ascribe to his shining integrity.

Before her passing, my sister Elly, then in her sixties, read a poem a woman had written about her father which reminded her of our own dad.  
 She phoned and read it out to me and I reminded her of his delight when she acknowledged him before her teachers. 

My younger sister sings my parents’ praises each time we meet.  
 One time I visited my brother, I overheard him telling another guest about our dad’s good looks, his great build and his magnetic personality.  
 “He was my hero and my role model,” my brother, a retired deputy principal of one of South Africa’s oldest boys schools, concluded. 

His hero and role model?  My humble Papa surely would have had difficulty believing that!