LUKY
MY matric daughter came home after her last school day, covered from head to toe in mud, egg and shaving cream.
"I was the undisputed queen of the road today," she informed me smugly. "Everyone stared!"
She was a very thoughtful little lady the next morning, however.
It is one thing to be sporting a school shirt with Garfield holding a little bear on the back, reading: "I can't bear to leave".
It's quite another to be hauling out the books in preparation for your matric.
I have seldom hammered my children about their lack of academic achievements..
I do not wish to be the kind of parent who drives her children to drink, demanding ever-higher marks so that she can bask in the reflected glory.
I counted my blessings if the children at least managed to stay afloat academically, and I refused to do their homework or their assignments for them.
I can't carry them; I could only provide the wherewithal.
What is important to me is that they stay sane.
That year my matriculant and I freuqently discussed the fact that so many youngsters attempt suicide before writing their finals.
It horrified us both.
I told her it was not important if she failed.
She could repeat her standard, even though her school had not had a matric failure for over a decade.
But her presence and her life are priceless to our family.
Nothing could ever make up for the loss of these.
What do I wish for our matriculants: yours and mine?
I want them to become the kind of people who say yes to life, to anyone who needs a favour or a helping hand.
It is not important to me whether they become blue collar blokes or chief executive officers.
How they handle their respective positions is what counts.
Success and fortune can change or dwindle but the essence of man persisits.
It shows in his bearing, his eyes, his smile and his attitude.
It shows when he knows something to another's disadvantage and restrains himself from being king for a day by telling the world.
It shows in the lives of his wife and children.
To all matriculants including my own little one at the time, a word of advice.
Do your very best with your studies and leave the passing in God's Hands.
If you fail, the worst that can happen is that you may have to spend another year at school
And just think how many distinctions you'll get the second time around!
The wonderful Roger Miller 'King of the Road'
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OmOe27SJ3Yc
LUKY
MY YOUNGEST DAUGHTER had to undergo a test, conducted by the local child guidance clinic, to see whether she would be ready to start school the next January.
When the big day arrived she and I had a big argument about whether she should wear my second daughter's sub A uniform (her choice) or her Sunday dress (mine). I won.
Sean, who was free that day, took her to the convent, where a woman told him I would have to fill in the questionnaire.
Slightly inflated by the knowledge that he is as good a cook as I am or better and had been doing the shopping and much of the tidying over the past few years, he assured her that he could answer the questionnaire on my behalf.
In for a surprise
He was in for a surprise.
"How old is your child?"
"Moedie," Sean whispered, "how old are you?"
"I don't know, Dad, five I think, or six. I'm not sure."
"That's all right, love."
Next question:
"Give the child's date of birth."
"Moedie," Sean whispered, trying not to draw the attention of the other parents who had heard his bold assertion, "remember that big party you had with the presents and the cake? What date was that?"
"I don't know, Dad."
"Never mind, love."
Time for help
Next question: "Did you have a normal pregnancy. . . what kind of a confinement did you have. . . did you suffer from kidney trouble. . . was your blood pressure normal?"
Sean fled to the telephone, only to be told I was already on my way.
After my arrival, Sean left for his job and I stayed on.
There was a little Afrikaans girl in the entrance hall, aged two and a half, who had us all in stitches with her precocious expressions.
One of the inspectors took our little daughter away and we parents, united by our laughter at the little girl, started chatting.
I blessed the fact that my second daughter had gone to the librarian some months previously, and asked for her advice to prepare her little sister for the tests.
Clued up
One week the librarian gave her a book on colours.
When my youngest knew them all, my second daughter took out a book on numbers.
The next week she taught her sister the days of the week, and so on.
The little Afrikaans girl was becoming obstreperous when my youngest and the girl of the pink ballet slippers arrived back together.
My youngest, looking adorable in her Sunday dress, her plaits done in Pippie Langkous style, took one long leap from the door and landed on my lap, her arms tightly around my neck.
"Mommy, I knew everythink he asked me", the ballet girl said to her mother.
My youngest, who was shy in company, whispered into my ear: "Mommy, I also knew everythink he asked me."
Flounce
The little Afrikaans girl was getting irritable and her dad was getting hot under the collar.
He was evidently English-speaking, and mixed his languages.
"As jy nie dadelik stilsit nie gaan jy in die moeilikheid beland!"*
The little girl looked at him in shocked disbelief at such vulgarity.
"Sies!"* she said, and walked out into the courtyard, to dissociate herself from the motley crowd in the entrance.
I was still giggling at her magnificent exit when the door to the parlour opened and the child guidance inspector called me in.
His boss, to whom I am well known, introduced the two of us and asked him to tell me what he had just told the others.
The inspector made a flattering comment about my youngest's brightness and his boss added: "It gives us great pleasure to inform you that she is quite ready to go to school next year."
Amid smiles and kind words I took my leave.
Suddenly I was all for the idea of having one's kids tested to see if they are ready for school, though I had been violently opposed to the idea.
That's human nature for you.
Poor Dad
I told my youngest and she was very proud.
Her dad was put out when we told him that night.
"I'm going to be feeling lost next year", he said.
"Now I'll have no one to play with any more."
But I felt so happy to think that my youngest child was to enter school.
I was not getting any younger myself and I like to see progess.
Still, I made a special fuss of my youngest that weekend, and even though she was now almost a schoolgirl she was not above sitting on my lap when we watched the feature movie that Saturday.
Schoolgirl or not, Moedie proved once again that she still knew how to make us laugh.
Pointing at the screen when the tall girl in the circus kissed a short clown at his earnest request, she said: "Now he's gonna grow."
*If you don't sit still, you're going to get into trouble
*Horrible
LUKY
We make choices, aware of the limitation they impose upon us, and in later years chafe at these self-imposed restrictions.
To my mind, this is a luxury one shouldn't indulge in.
Once we have put our hand to the plough, we don't look back.
Don't like our spouse?
How is it possible to grow tired of the person we loved most in all the world in the days when we were footloose and fancy-free?
As for leaving the spouse, let's not forget the holy vow sworn at the altar.
Don't like our in-laws?
We married our spouse in the full knowledge that (s)he came fully equipped with the accessories of parents and siblings.
If we can't love them, at least we can go through the motions of affability for goodness' (and our spouse's) sake.
Don't like our job?
When we first landed it, it seemed to be the best move we ever made.
If we place ourselves back in time, we'll soon recall the attractions and benefits the vacancy seemed to offer when we applied for it.
Don't like paying the money our children cost or the cheek they give us?
They didn't ask to be born
Having been instrumental in giving them life, we cannot renege on them.
Even if they (as one consequence of not heeding our advice) end up with brain damage, alcoholism, a motorbike injury, Aids or syphilis, they remain our offspring who should always be able to count on us for our support and our prayers.
Don't like our car and can't afford another?
Let's be grateful we have a car.
Many people all over the world have to foot it until death.
They'd give their eyeteeth to have any kind of vehicle at all to take them from A to B.
Don't like ourselves?
We all know that feeling.
We can forgive others most of their faults, especially when we love them, but we re-live our own mistakes
ad nauseam.
Why not be as tolerant with ourselves as we are with others?
Sometimes, looking back, one thinks if one could live one's life over again one might have made different choices.
However, we should not forget that the changes in taste we experience as the years go by are the result of an evolutionary process in our minds and circumstances.
At fifty we are no longer the people we were at thirty or forty.
Life teaches us many lessons to which we adapt in preference to facing the morbid alternative.
If God had put an old head on our shoulders when we were young, however, would we have dared to tackle a career, marry and bear children?
The wild oats many of us regrettably sowed put us on the way to discovering, albeit in the hard way, that the only way is the right way.
Every single ideal one strives for imposes its own set of obligations, heartaches and disappointments.
Fortunately there is a great deal of laughter tied up with the sorrow.
In old age when the leaves start falling off (relatives, hair, teeth, hearing, sight, mobility) it will be good to recall that we were sufficiently courageous to put our hand to the plough the Creator designed especially for us.
It will be even better if on that day we were able to recall with perfect truth that, having once done so, we never looked back.
LUKY
SADLY contemplating the collapse of my most recent Lenten resolution, I have come to the conclusion that it is far easier to make efforts to improve one's artistic, scholastic, material or athletic prowess than to make them in order to become better schooled in a spiritual way.
On the way to my husband's work there was a golf course.
Often on a rainy day my husband would laugh when I spotted a golfer gamely handling his clubs or taking his endless walks in the pouring rain.
"Look at him", I would say. "Have you ever seen such dedication in your life?
There he is, poor man, dripping from head to foot, but does he run for shelter?
Not he!
If he were to make such sacrifices for God, his soul would shoot up to heaven like an arrow at the moment of death."
I felt the same way when I used to be a paying guest at the meetings of a group of obese ladies who were trying to reduce.
Some of them really did succeed in becoming "a slimmer, more youthful you".
Regrettably, their number did not include yours truly.
I might have lost weight too, but my trouble was that I never really entered into the spirit of the thing.
As I watched with scepticism the tremulous delight displayed by swiftly-shrinking star pupils while merit badges were being pinned on to their voluminous frocks, I'd be thinking:
"Why are we spending money to learn not to eat too much?
Why don't we rather stop overeating just because it's wrong?"
A lesson which every model, actor, student and athlete knows is that the only way to learn not to continue overdoing things which impede his progress in his field is by doing without them for a while.
Many centuries ago, the saints taught their followers the same thing.
This is why in Ireland during the months from April until September thousands of people make a pilgrimage to the island of Lough Derg.
When their boat arrives at the island, the pilgrims prepare to remain barefoot and fast for three days.
They recite the Stations walking along ruinous circuits on the island.
In front of the basilica, many crosses are erected.
Each pilgrim recites the Creed with arms extended in front of a cross.
Confessions are heard throughout the day.
The menu consists of black tea and hot water flavoured with salt and pepper.
To those who feel faint from hunger, dry bread is served.
During the first night no one sleeps. A vigil is held throughout the night in the Basilica.
The Bible is read and prayers are recited.
Early in the morning, the visiting priests begin celebraing their Masses for the day.
On the second night, the pilgrims get eight hours' sleep.
On the third day, still barefoot and fasting, they prepare to leave the island, having - in most cases - promised themselves a return visit.
The boats bringing the new pilgrims take those who have completed their visit back to the mainland.
With true Irish humour the Christian Brother who told us about Lough Derg concluded his story as follows:
"The incoming pilgrims are silent", he said. "Those that are leaving are singing hymns. . .and you don't have to ask why!"
LUKY:
WHEN my eldest child was working during the holidays, I asked her to remember me to one of her colleagues whom I'd known for many years.
"Let me see, now", the woman said. "I can't remember. . .yes, now I recall, that was the woman who had a baby not so long ago, and was so distressed about it she almost wept."
"That's not my mother", my daughter said sturdily, but she was much shaken.
It took two months before she told me about it and I couldn't believe my ears.
"Wept?" I said. "For joy, perhaps, but for no other reason.
I was so excited when I found out about your sister that the sun shone more brightly, the flowers had prettier colours, and the birds sang a completely new tune.
"As for your father, he was so thrilled that despite my swearing him to secrecy, he was telling people about the baby from the word go."
Reassured
My daughter felt relieved.
"I knew you'd never have said anything against having any one of us", she assured me.
"It shook me rigid that anyone could even remotely think you had rejected one of us, even only verbally."
A few months before I knew we would ever have our last little daughter, someone asked if I'd be upset to be pregnant again.
Though I didn't think it a likely contigency, I'm eternally grateful that my answer was: "I wouldn't like to say; you never know what can happen."
I'll always say that. I never cared how many children I would have; each one is as precious as the first, a completely unique human being, made in the Image and Likeness of God.
When I told my mother about the baby, she told me a story about a friend of hers whose husband was a qualified lawyer by the time his mother had her youngest child.
They were a very large family, fifteen, I think.
When the baby was born, the parents sent cards out to their relatives and friends, a common custom in Holland. On the card the parents listed the names of all their children, in addition to that of the new baby.
Then a single line was printed below: "Which of these children will offer the greatest homage to God?"
An honour
I come from an environment where the large family was not derided as it so often is now.
In our family it was an honour to bear many children.
I have at least sixty-one first cousins alive in different parts of the globe, and those whom I've met again were people you'd be proud to know, for all that some of them had to wear their bigger brothers' and sister' hand-me-downs as they grew up.
My youngest, our laatlammetjie,* is the joy of all our lives.
We may get annoyed with one another and disagree about every topic under the sun, but one thing we all agreed about: "There's no baby more adorable than ours."
One day a girl and I were talking when an untidy-looking woman passed by.
"Look at her," the girl said.
"Slovely, untidy, stupid-looking; I bet she's the type that has at least six children."
I didn't like to remind her that I'm in the same boat myself, but I marvelled at the contempt for mothers of large families she so frankly expressed.
Knowing how much effort, money and sacrifice a large family entails, I always respect such mothers, even though they may be untidy at times.
Surprise, surprise
There comes a time in all parents' lives when they feel past the age of bringing up children.
"Nice", they decide, "all the children are at school. We only do the laundry once a week instead of every day. The house is tidy. We live like civilised human beings. It's good to know there'll never be another little hurricane to disrupt our well organised existence."
And yet it is at this stage, very often, that the mother becomes pregnant again, making a mockery of all her careful planning.
So many of my friends had babies in their late thirties and early forties.
And what was their answer if you asked about the youngest?
It seldom varied, and ran along these lines: "Oh, I'm so grateful for that little after-thought of ours.
She helps to keep us young."
*Laatlammetjie - Afrikaans for 'Ewe lamb'
LUKY
DID YOU ever listen to Earl Nightingale in the early morning Springbok Radio show?
We did, and it always amazes me that this man could think up something new in the line of encouragement and inspiration each day.
One morning I missed him, though my husband, driving home from night shift on the mine, picked him up on his car radio.
"You'd have been very cross with Earl Nightingale this morning, Ma" he told me, struggling to hide a smile.
"How come?"
"Well", my husband said - subconsciously straightening himself - "he was saying how men of forty-five are lithe and trim, youthful-looking and at the peak of their professional careers, while their wives are overweight, dowdy and. . ." - his voice died uncertainly away.
"You know how it is", I said, shrugging, "Some people are utterly obsessed with weight and the body beautiful.
I saw a photo of Bette Davis last week and she looks like my teenage daughter, and so does Marlene Dietrich, although she was already a granny when I was in primary school.
You can't compete with them."
Funny how things happen in sequence.
An hour later I met a woman with a little boy of two or three.
He had a cast in one eye and she was trying to coax him into wearing his glasses, one lens of which was shrouded in plaster.
"He is so self-conscious about wearing his glasses", she said nervously, trying to smile.
"He thinks they make him look ugly."
And so this little chap of two or three already felt that he was looking ugly and trying not to.
I couldn't help feeling sorry for the child, because I have spent many years of my life worrying about weight and other beauty problems.
That little kid of two or three had more time on his hands than I did, but if he'd got any sense he would have put those glasses on his nose right away and forgotten about them.
There are very few beautiful women who would not lose some of their appeal if someone turned a garden hose on them.
Each of us has got something wrong with his looks.
Some people have bandy legs, and I often think that's why slacks made such a big hit with the female population.
Other people have cauliflower ears or square hands, buck teeth or blonde eyelashes.
I have heard girls crying about the shape of their noses and the colour of their eyes and hair.
And in the midst of that I always remember my mother's voice raised in warning:
"How can you be so ungrateful, moaning about your appearance when God gave you such good health?"
At the time we just sighed:
"Oh Mommy! You don't understand!"
Just as my daughter used to say to me: "Oh Mommy! I couldn't even begin to explain to you how I feel."
But I do know, and she didn't have to explain at all.
However, though I think it's important for everyone to be scrupulously clean and to try to make the best of personal looks, I'd advise anyone who has beauty or weight problems to stop worrying overmuch and to concentrate on his or her personality instead.
Because though I've seen that looks can attract friends, I've always found it was personality that keeps them.
Catherine Nicolette
I rather think it was myself who used to sigh from the depths of my teenage South African soul that Mom didn't understand how I felt.
Really, teenage years were not easy at all.
But the funniest thing I remember from that time is when I, in all seriousness, asked Mom;
"What is the difference between mere prettiness and true beauty?"
And Mom, without raising her eyes from her newspaper and cup of coffee, replied without missing a beat;
"Estee Lauder."
The Wonderful Earl Nightingale
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D5CrZ7lIO58
LUKY
I HATE young children to address me by my first name.
It seems to be a habit among the people I know to call everyone John and Mary, no matter what the age difference.
It certainly isn't a Dutch custom, or wasn't when I grew up.
I consider myself old enough for youngsters to have some respect for me.
For instance, a visitor came the other day with a little girl who at length asked a second cup of tea.
"Mommy, may I have another cup of tea?"
"I don't know, dear - ask Luky."
"Luky, can I please have another cup of tea?"
Why Mommy but not Mrs Whittle? I can't see it.
A Little Respect
I even called my own husband Mr Whittle for nearly two years before I started calling him by his name.
My own children aren't overly respectful to their elders.
If they can get away with calling an older person by his name, they'll do so, especially my youngest, because her own brothers and sisters are so much older than she that she doesn't have that natural feeling of awe most of us grew up with.
But when I'm present they don't get away with it.
A little respect for one's elders has never harmed anyone.
Even if my husband never minded being called Sean, or more popularly Paddy, his children were far more respectful of him than they are of me.
He was rather short, though this never worried him unduly, as he confided to me once.
"In my heart I feel ten feet tall", and his personality more than made up for his lack of height.
When I brought my eldest son home from the hospital as a babv, and we were admiring him, his father said: "He's going to be a very tall boy."
Then he laughed.
"Just imagine, Ma, when he's fifteen and I'm laying down the law to him, I'll be shaking my finger up at him.
Then he'll look down sheepishly and answer: "Sorry, Dad."
Funny
To me it is a pantomime to see how differently the children treated him from the way they treat me.
I'm good old ma, the one you can take for a ride, mostly.
He was pa, the unpredictable keg of dynamite who on his own admission "doesn't give tuppence" whether the neighbours heard him yell when the children drove him too far.
One day something happened between my son and myself which I described to his father that evening.
His father called him in.
Prophecy fulfilled
"What would you do", his father asked, "if your mother died and someone were to tear up her photograph?"
"I'd fix him", my son said, glaring balefully at the very idea.
"Well, that's the way I feel now since your mother told me. . ." and my husband continued, confronting him with his misdeed.
Suddenly his prediction of 19 years before came true.
His son, fully a head taller than himself, sheepishly muttered: "Sorry, Dad."
Never one to push his advantage, his father moved off majestically.
Retort
But you can't keep a good man down.
No sooner had he closed the door than my eldest son turned on me.
"You traitor," he hissed, shaking his index finger under my nose, "you went and betrayed me to Dad after the way I trusted you.
Just for that I'll let them tear up your photograph."
He strode huffily from the room, careful to take a different direction from the one his father had chosen, as I collapsed on to the nearest chair, helpless with laughter.
No wonder they don't respect me.
