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| Outside beautiful Welkom |
Luky;
I regret very much that I destroyed or lost so many of my children's letters to me. One Sunday my youngest was labouring away in the bedroom, making me spell out words for her. In the end she showed me the masterpiece that had taken the best part of an hour to complete, a picture of two little girls having a picnic, captioned by the words: "This was my momy when sh was smol."
How easy it would have been to have kept a scrapbook of all their literary and artistic efforts, I reflected, a box file would have done the trick.
The love letters might have served as a good form of blackmail when rebellious teenagers got out of hand, come to think of it. Until they were twelve, all my children thought the sun shone out of their father and me.
Two hearts as one
Still, I did keep some of my favourites. How do you like this one from one of mine in standard three (I forget which one);
"To Mom: People need to be reminded that they are loved. And I'd like to tell you that you're loved by ME!" followed by a picture of two hearts, captioned "Your heart" and "my heart".
My youngest daughter and eldest son were my two best artists. When my son was three he drew a yacht that looked like a yacht, and when he was five, there wasn't a thing he couldn't draw.
I do a picture of a helicopter which draws much applause from children under five, but by the time he was five he could draw any vehicle from a wheelbarrow to a moon rocket, and you would have recognised it.
His vocabulary was not as good as it might have been, because he only spoke his first sentence at three and a half. When he was lost for a word he'd simply produce a pencil and paper and draw the item and you'd be on his wavelength.
Whole scene
My youngest was gifted in the drawing line, although her talent came to the fore at a later stage.
Travelling from Johannesburg to Welkom in the car, she doodled on a piece of typing paper, and when we were halfway she showed me the result. It was an American scene; Indians, campfires, wigwams, settlement, swinging doors of a saloon, cowboys, marshal complete with spurs and star, even the saloon girl with the big hairdo, the short crinoline skirt and the halfboots.
But what I liked best was the picture of the back of a horse, tied to a fence, but turning its head so that it was looking right at you. How I laughed over that horse. Alas, I lost the paper and the picture remains only a memory.
My children have had much joy out of their drawings. Their paternal grandfather proudly claimed that they took after his brothers and their maternal grandmother proudly claimed that they take after her brothers and my father's sisters. All I can say is that their drawings have kept them quiet for many a long hour.
Some of them wanted to become authors and they ilustrated their own stories.
Some of the stories were absolutely priceless to this fond mother's eyes.
I found one done by my second daughter:
"..Jane's muffeld sobs could be heard at the end of the street . . ."
My daughter's spelling was not of the best, and her handwriting was downright poor. She also had a disconcerting way of putting in capital letters midway through a sentence, but true genius is not hemmed in by mere syntax, punctuation and spelling.
Never at a loss
"Correction", I said to her; "if Jane muffled her sobs it meant she held her hand to her mouth, so how could they be heard at the end of the street?"
If my daughter was flummoxed, she gave no sign of it. Smiling sunnily, she replied:
"If her sobs could be heard at the end of the street when she muffled them, can you imagine how they would have sounded if she hadn't?"
One day I'm going to have the last word with my children, but that day hasn't arrived yet.
Catherine Nicolette;
How well I remember our literary efforts. My first book was written at the tender age of six.
It was "The Totas and the Hair".
I had been deeply inspired by Sr Juan's reading of the tortoise and the hare at school.
I saw myself as the tortoise toiling along, trying to learn all I could and battling away. It might have had something to do with the fact that I often fell behind during lessons.
This was because every now and then I used to leave the class while Sister was writing on the board.
Sister would then collect me from dreamily going backward and forward on the swing, looking up at the Welkom clouds. "What are you doing?" she once asked me.
"Talking to God," I said. "Well, God is going to have to wait, "she said, "It's class now."
And she firmly led the way into the Sub A class with me gloomily trailing behind her.
Anyhow. I wrote the book, drew page after page laboriously with Mom's ballpoint pen and her paper. Once the book was completed, I was at a complete loss how to stick it together.
So I raided Mom's sewing box and sewed the ends of the book together.
I was very proud of it, and Mom kept it for many years afterwards.
When I was nine I wrote my first love story.
The storyline ended with my heroine falling and breaking her leg. the hero carrying her home clasped against his chest. There he tenderly and respectfully placed her on the settee, knelt before her and declared his undying love for her.
I considered the whole story a beautiful Masterpiece of True Love.
I hid the manuscript in the piano stool because my brother had the annoying habit of reading anything I wrote.
I came home from school one day to find Mom - who had been on one of her unannounced Dutch springcleans - with my book in her hand and tears rolling down her face in mirth.
I was indignant as I asked her what she was doing.
"Reading your story," she said.
"Well," I said with asperity, "It's meant to be a romance, not a comedy."
And at that Mom, who had been trying to stifle her laughter, went into peals of mirth.
I could see that the work of a True Artist was lost on her, and lost no time in removing my work of literary genius from her unworthy hands.
This did not stop me, however. At thirteen, I wrote a book about sparrows living in a hedgerow in England, and decorated the book with illustrations of birds in little caps and jackets among holly and the wheaten cornfields of Britain. This was when I was being inspired by Beatrix Potter's immortal works and the beauties of the books of Miss Read.
I was convinced that this was the book that was going to make me a millionaire, allow me to live in comfort all my life, and buy my parents and each of my siblings their own house.
I got the postal money together and quietly posted off the manuscript to a British publisher. I waited for the book offer to arrive.
I received my manuscript and illustrations back some while later, with my first rejection slip.
It was a courteously worded slip apprising that the book was not quite what the publishing house was looking for. Also, the slip pointed out that it might be best to practise my drawings while looking at nature in order to be authentic.
I looked about me at the veld, the long dry grass and the solitary hill in our area - Koppie Alleen - (Alone Hill) and then back at my drawings of lush British countryside in the hedgerows as I imagined it. Hmmm. They might have had a point. The British countryside I had drawn existed in my imagination alone.
However I certainly was not daunted. At fourteen I wrote my next love story and sent it in to a magazine. I had worked out that a little pocket money would be most helpful, and was sure that I would be able to earn the same from articles to magazines. Alas, it was not to be. My second rejection slip arrived back, with a warm letter from the editor explaining to me that she saw some merit in my writing. She advised me however, to give myself time to gain some life experience. "Then I consider that it is possible if you continue writing, that one day you may well be able to write articles that will be accepted."
I sat sadly in the dry grass of our backyard holding the brown envelope which I had so lovingly encrypted with my neatest handwriting, and watched the bubbles of my dreams pop into nothingness over my head. No pocket money. No fame. No wealth. No houses for my parents and siblings. Then my dog came up and rubbed his head against my knee with absolute affection. I brightened as I patted his head. Oh well. There were different kinds of wealth. One day I would write my bestseller. But not just yet...
*Photograph taken by Catherine Nicolette
