It's many years since we met

Luky and Little Guinea Pig

Luky 

IT'S BEEN MANY YEARS since I first wrote an article for a journal.

The day that issue came out ranks as a red letter day among my memories. The thrill of seeing my thought in print eclipsed all other events.

I read that article so many times that I've never wanted to look at it since. I kept it, as I've kept most of what I've had published in a scrapbook.

Every now and then my kids read from the book and say: "Was that me who did this or that, Mom? Shame, I must have been cute."

Marker

Although I won't read that first article again, I know the date it must have been written, because I remember mentioning that my eldest child, nicknamed Little Guinea Pig by the Matron of St Mary's maternity home in Springs, was about to embark on her first year at school and that I was looking forward to learning from her.

  Lourdes job out

Years after the first article was published, my eldest was just about to go to university. Although I had made arrangements for her to go to Lourdes to work there, she wasn't accepted when I wrote to the authorities that year, so I planned to take her there during university vacation instead.

The day I broke the sad news to her that she might be going to varsity, she burst into tears:

 "I'm tired to death of swotting. Why can't I give up studying once I've got my matric?"

 "Would you like to work in an office instead?"

 "Work in an office? I'd hate it!"

 "It'll be thanks to my working in an office if there's money to further your education. What about nursing? In-service training, six free uniforms and a pair of orthopaedic shoes every six months. I should be so lucky that a child of mine opted for a career that would be so easy on my purse."

 "I'm not kind enough to be a nurse."

 "Do you like working with figures? What about the bank?"

 "No."

 "We might be able to get you in at the library. Would you like that?"

"I like browsing in the library, not stamping books."

 "How about driving a bus?"

 "I don't somehow see myself doing that."

 "Listen, Fussy, you'll go to varsity and like it."

"It seems to me, Ma, that you're trying to get rid of your own frustrated desire to get a degree by forcing me to go instead of yourself."

It's true!

A remark of this nature, which would have outraged her Victorian father, which in fact she'd never have dared address to him, only had the effect of making me laugh helplessly, because it was only too true. I had spent a fortune on extra-mural courses, but when it came to writing exams I would drop a line to the registrar, signing myself Yours Unfaithfully and asking to have my examination entry cancelled.

Uncapped 

I had picked up a certain amount of knowledge that way - well, to be quite honest, all I learnt from those studies was just how much I still needed to learn. At that time I had become resigned to dying without the thrill of stepping slowly up to a dais and accepting a scroll which pronounced me, if not a spinster, at least a bachelor.

Yet I could already visualise sitting up there as proud as Punch as our children received their scrolls. Like the time my mother attended a drum major competition which my brother won. She burst out crying, and said to the lady beside her - a complete stranger - "that's my son. I feel so guilty now to recall how many times I shouted at him for breaking my broomsticks."

More to come

In that first article I mentioned that I was looking forward to all the things my eldest would be able to teach me, and teach me she did. In addition to her school subjects the sisters taught her to type, sew, play four instruments, paint and knit, as well as a host of other skills. At home I taught her to clean, wash, iron, cook, bake and mind the baby.

I looked forward to learning from her when she went to university.

Catherine Nicolette

I remember an argument all right, the vague remembrance of which my teenage memory had filed as mom being somewhat unreasonable. Reading over the transcript left me amused. I do remember not being enamoured at the thought of further study.

What mom didn't know was that I had an argument with my dad when when I was in Standard eight and wanted to leave before matriculation. I had heard of a job going at a shop at the end of the street. 

My youthful judgement did not extend to reading the fine print which was that it was a holiday job and for the duration of six weeks. 

No, all I saw was a wonderful job with a massive salary (I hadn't thought to enquire exactly what the amount was) which gave me an excuse to leave the hard work of school study. 

I would work for about five years, then retire a wealthy woman. 

Something now tells me I hadn't really understood about taxes, loans or a mortgage . . . 

No more study 

I digress. When I informed dad that I was leaving school (I hadn't even applied for the job - I merely expected I would get it) he tersely told me; "I've never beaten you every step to school before, but this time I will. You'll go to school, if I have to lock the school gates to keep you in. You'll pass your exams, get a good education, and we'll never discuss this again!" 

Impressed and slightly disgruntled, I gazed at him. He finished off saying, "I won't have you unable to look after yourself if you land in a marriage where your husband is unable to care for you, or if you have children and need to put food on the table and a roof over your head. 

I nearly starved in Britain because I had no papers with educational qualifications, and I never want that to happen to my children." 

Observing my expression, he said more gently, "You mightn't believe it now, but one day you'll thank me."

I didn't believe that day would ever come, but politely I bowed my head and exited the room with as much youthful dignity as I could muster. 

He could say what he liked, but I considered him Cruel Not To Let Me Take A Job.

Sheaf of bills 

Fast forward many years later. A motorist ploughed into the car I was driving. The fallout damage necessitated years of specialist treatment as well as extensive dental work. 

Some months what came in the door in earnings seemed to almost all go out on medical bills. If I had not been able to earn a salary due to proper education, what would I have done? 

As I paid a sheaf of bills one day, out of the blue Dad's words drifted into my mind - one day you'll thank me . . .

Thanks Dad. 

Photograph by Sean Whittle

Let's make the most of our peace

Luky and Elly

Luky
YEARS AGO WE HEARD A LOT ABOUT DÉTENTE, and we all hoped for peaceful solutions to be found for the ills that beset countries.
It's all very well to criticise leadership. People are always doing it, but how would you like to be in charge of a country? You cannot wipe out injustice of centuries in five minutes even though some seem to advise just that. There are many people all over the world who feel that the only way to combat injustice is by violence, but I disagree with them. No mother wants to raise her sons for cannon fodder.
  I was born in Amsterdam near the time our petrol harbour was set alight, and until I was about to celebrate my fifth birthday my country remained under occupation. My father did not go away to fight, so we were more fortunate than most of the other children in the street, yet I remember those years with dread and horror.
  Whenever you heard the older people talking they'd begin with the words: "Before the war . . ." and then tell some fairylike story. Little girls got dolls and little boys motor cars. You could buy some delicacy called lollipops that tasted so good you couldn't believe it. There was some delicious white stuff called sugar that you could put in your tea, and while we're on the subject, what's tea?
  One morning my sister woke me, brimming with excitement.
  "The war is over . . . peace has come."
  "Peace?" I asked unbelievingly.
  Like people who cannot understand that God had no beginning because all earthly creatures have  beginning, I never having known peace, could not believe in its existence. 
  My sister laughed. "Look outside!"
  I put my head out of the window and saw then the flags, red, white and blue, some orange in honour of our royal house. Where had they come from in that impoverished country where we had thought that every spare centimetre of material had been used to cover its inhabitants over the past five years, and the very trees in the street had been chopped down for firewood by fathers of families, moving out stealthily at night? 

  What a day that was.
  Small though I was, I still remember the joy on people's faces. And then I made my first mistake: So that, I thought, is what i was like before the war.
  Of course, things soon changed back to normal. People loved and hated, started moaning again about prices, the weather, the neighbours - you know how it is. But to me the absence of war remains a glorious miracle.
  The author Beverley Nichols once wrote that for him, one vital ingredient of happiness is the absence of pain. How well I understand him, because for me one vital ingredient of happiness is the absence of war.
  Some time ago a young man remarked: "What this world needs is a third world war." And although he was not speaking to me, I broke the rules and interrupted, saying: "Oh please don't say that, don't!" 
  He stared at me in amazement, for never having experienced war, he never could understand its horrors.
  Let's make the most of peace. Now is the time to make friends with each other, and rather than pointing out injustices ad nauseam, let us pray and work that they  may be wiped out peacefully.

Housewives must pray as well as work

Luky
WOULD YOU DESCRIBE YOURSELF as a Martha or a Mary type of person?
  Years ago I tried to get someone to promise to say the rosary daily with her family. A friend and I used to obtain such pledges on behalf of the World Rosary Crusade for Peace. When I had used up all the arguments in favour of the rosary I could think of, the person tersely said: "You pray! I work!"

  Balance needed
  What the Marthas of the world don't always seem to realise, however, is that working and caring for the home are just not enough; you've got a pray a little too.
  "You tell me", another housewife said: "Do I drop everything at the busiest time of the day to recite my rosary with the family? What about my cooking, dishes, the children's baths? Which would you like me to skip?" I was amazed to hear myself answering: "None. You see to everything, but make sure our Lord gets His share too."

  Why?
  For what purpose are we washing nappies, serving meals, cleaning dishes, pulling out weeds, or playing chauffeur, chef and nanny, if these and our other daily chores are not backed by a meaning? Would you want to continue living if you truly believed that life were one continuous effort, terminating in the grave?
  Only prayer and meditation can give meaning to these seemingly meaningless tasks.
  Like all other human beings, the housewife has a contemplative side to her nature, although it may seem to sit ill on one wearing an apron, holding a baby and a broom or a duster. It isn't strange, when you think about it, because she has been used as an instrument in the miracle of creation, and that should make anyone thoughtful.
  When she hears words like: "My soul is thirsting for the Lord; when shall I see Him face to face?", the housewife may be moved to tears of longing. But then again, if her Doctor told her she had a fatal disease, she'd make straight for the Church, light a candle and pray for the joy of seeing the Lord Face to face to be deferred till her children were off her hands.

  I don't meditate
  I read with interest exchanges in letter columns about meditation on the rosary, and have come to the horrible conclusion that I don't meditate properly, either on the mysteries or on the words of the Our Father and the Hail Mary.
  I try to, honestly, but I fail time and time again. I've been tempted at times to leave off reciting the rosary, but can't because of my pledge.
  Fortunately God knows I've a lot on my plate, so maybe one day I'll learn to meditate properly as I pray.

  Simply beautiful
  And yet I wonder if perfection is what God demands of His children as much as the desire to become perfect. One of my children used to bring me a bedraggled bunch of veld flowers, picked daily on the way from school. The smile on the child's face would be so devastating that I'd arrange the flowers in a good vase, where they would flop gracelessly.
  I suppose my rosary, when it reaches Mary's feet, looks as bedraggled as those veld flowers. But I hope and believe that when she in her turn presents my bouquet to Jesus, it will look beautiful.

Catherine Nicolette
  Ah, perfection. That elusive goal. What makes perfection, I wonder? A good heart, I think. God knows that we are but small human beings, all trying to make the best of the deal we got. And some of us got a very raw deal in life. 
  However, God's Grace will never be outdone, and many are those who started small in life who made it big in heaven. (David the shepherd to David the King; Mary the village girl to Queen of Heaven.) 

  Why go to Church? 
  Just recently someone asked me the same question I have been asked since my childhood days; why should they go to church services to pray when they can pray perfectly well at home?  
  Why share church pews with people who are hypocritical because - although churchgoing - they don't live up to full expectation?

  I was very thoughtful. This question had always flummoxed me, because it is quite true; we don't always live up to the full stature of what it means to be a practising believer in God. But that, to me, is the whole point; we are all broken people. Sinners. Children of the Fall. People, who with the best intentions in the world, try to hit the high mark of what it means to be a dedicated believer in God, and often fail. 
(Sometimes spectacularly). But isn't this what it means to humbly take our hat off, and get back into the pew again at Church Worship, to try again?
  We know we are all mistake-makers, it's in our nature; but we want to be something more, someone better; so we go to church and bow our head and reflect on our shortcomings; and learn from the mistakes we have just made. So we don't make bigger ones. 

  After all, don't we go to Church because we need God's help? Precisely because we are sinful, broken people? If we wait until we are perfect before we step into the pew, we'll be passing up all that wonderful Grace and Blessing we receive from the Sacraments in Church, especially the Sacrament of the Eucharist.

  Needing a physician
  Jesus told us He did not come to call the righteous, but sinners, to repentance. "It is not those who are well who need a physician, but those who are sick." * 
  And so the answer to that recent query is that we all need the consolation and support of God's Grace in Church as spiritually in need; because there is not one of us who is perfect.

   But we will be. When the incredible work of God is completed in us . . . 


*Luke 5;31-32

Rosary Pledge to Pope Francis 
http://www.familyrosary.org/en/TheRosary/RosariesfortheWorldProgram/RosaryPrayerPledge.aspx

Mobile Rosary for Smartphones 
http://www.familyrosary.org/en/TheRosary/MobileRosary.aspx

Try the Interactive Rosary 
http://www.familyrosary.org/TheRosary.aspx

Pray the Rosary
http://www.comepraytherosary.org/

Help me, someone - I'm sinking

Luky
THERE WAS A NOVENA PRAYER I used to recite in preparation for the Feast of St Joseph the Workman.
I remember one small part in particular: "to help to develop, by means of labour, the gifts received from God." This prayer meant a lot to me in my early years as wife and mother, as I was becoming engulfed.
  When I decided to marry and have my own family, I bit off more than I could chew, though I had no idea of this. I had no experience, but possessed a tremendous amount self-confidence. After some years I had all the experience in the world, but no self-confidence.
  Domesticity is alien to my nature. Not that I don't love a shiny kitchen, a cheerful blazing fire, snowy linen in the bedrooms and window handles that could be used for an advertisement by a metal polish manufacturer.
  I grew up in a home which was so tidy that you could roller-skate from one end of it to the other. My mother believed that cleanliness was next to godliness and that an idle woman was an abomination before the Lord.
  Old habits die hard, and there are times when I regarded Maison Whittle with a jaundiced eye and wished myself back home. No amount of vigilance or hard work could stand up to the inventiveness of my offspring when it came to making a mess.

Yech!
  Take one morning, for example. A rubber doll belonging to the baby had been left outside too long and had begun to perish. Some joker filled it with water and, handling it like a lassoo, squirted some on to his big sister.
  The perished part having turned a rusty shade made the water red too. We now had an extremely artistic-looking ceiling, a study in rust and white, as most of the water went upwards.
  Henceforward I vowed I'd be terribly careful about perishing dolls - pardon the pun - but as the place had been painted only recently, I was faced with a choice: drop my standards even lower and laugh it off, or go out of my mind.
  This brings me to the question: Just how low can one's standards be dropped?
  It's not that I'm lazy. I bet I had some of the roughest hands in the Free State, but they just didn't move swiftly or dexterously enough to catch all those falling buttons before they dropped to the ground; and once a thing landed on my floors, someone swept it out.
  Then the search for a matching button was on. When this was produced, we had to empty all the cupboards for a reel of cotton and a needle, although I bought these items by the dozen.

See-saw
  I know what you're saying: "My dear, all you needed is just a little organization. Above all teach your children never to touch mother's belongings."
  But while I was organizing one room my kids were disorganizing the rest of the house, and I couldn't lock a thing away because the locks were old and the cupboards wouldn't close properly. The only way for me to create order in the chaos was by cleaning at night and patrolling in the daytime. The trouble was I was so sleepy at night.
  I just had to give my dwindling sense of humour full reign and rejoice in the fact that my children were healthy enough to make a mess.
  Anyone courageous enough to visit me was offered the choice of rolling up her sleeves and cleaning up with me, or of feeling deliciously superior because her home was so much better run than mine.

A Workman's Prayer to St Joseph
http://www.prayerbook.com/Devotions/Joseph/sjworkmn.htm 

With thanks to Prayer Book.com

Me and music. I can dream, can't I?

'Ik Hou Van Holland' - Elly with necklace

Luky
LIKE MOST PEOPLE I KNOW, I'm a music lover.
  Never having been educated very far in the line of music, however, I am grieved to admit that the finer points of classical music elude me. Yet I draw tremendous solace from the lighter varieties.
  I have a true ear. Listening to the most complicated music, I can pinpoint a dissonant, even if I have never heard the piece before, but that doesn't mean to say I appreciate the rest.
  My children took music at school, however, and I draw a vicarious enjoyment from their accomplishments.

  Compartmented
  At school we had a huge number of music rooms, each of which was big enough only to hold a piano and stool and leave some space for the player and her teacher to move around.
  Every afternoon after lunch the boarders used to practise their scales and pieces for an hour. Passing by the music rooms you'd hear an extraordinary jumble of chords but strange, when you'd go into one of the rooms, you'd hear only one person's playing!
  A somewhat larger room was Sister Veronica's domain.
  Sister Veronica was tiny, under five foot, and you never saw her without her brolly.
  
  Banished
  "This girl is trying to practise while you are doing everything to distract her . . . leave the room immediately", Sister Veronica would say, her umbrella pointing at the quadrangle whenever she'd catch me listening to Pam's rendering of The Maiden's Prayer, Deanna's Dream of Olwen, Helen's Jealousy or Conny's Chopin polonaises.
  Actually she was making a mistake. Far from distracting the musicians, I spurred them on to greater effort, because to me everything they played sounded heavenly and they wouldn't have been human had they not played to the gallery. 
  She'd never come in a second time, once her tour of inspection was completed so that gave me the remainder of an hour for my request programme.

  Music on tap
  All the same, I never really had my fill of music until my eldest child learned to play. Her fingers are as true as my ear, and whether she played the flute, the harmonium, organ or the piano, I dropped everything and sat beside her, listening with a joyful heart.
  No matter how cross or despondent I was, when she said: "Can I play you some music?" I was cheerful at once.
  She never tired of playing the same piece over and over again until I was happy, and I always made her laugh when telling her of Sister Veronica and her umbrella and my cowering in that little space between the piano and the wall.

  Training needed
  She had been going to singing lessons because she experienced the problem most of us have, it sounds so good inside and comes out so strained.
  Since I was the chauffeuse, and disliked waiting outside in the cold - petrol costing what it does - I also enrolled for the singing lessons, much to the entertainment of our teacher who hadn't got it in her to tell me that my voice is no great shakes.
  So we sang together, skipping the scales at my request, and going instead for songs like "O promise me", "Where we can be alone and faith renew, and find the hollows where those flowers grew . . ."
  My daughter got the good ones like "I'm in love with Vienna" while my teacher fed me on surrogates like the Unchained Melody, which I sang with gusto, fondly imagining that if an audience could hear me moan: "I need your love . . . I need your love . . . God SPEED your love TO me!" there would not be a dry eye in the hall.
  
  Who knows?
  Years ago, when my sister was overseas she wrote and told us she was singing at Benediction and a man kept looking at her, so she sang louder and louder in the hope he was a TV talent scout.
  After my singing lessons I felt myself on her wavelength, so I gave our practices all my energy. 
  At one practice my husband needed my help in the kitchen, and I told him, "First we must finish our singing. I'll help you afterwards".

  Hopes dashed
  He'd been surprisingly taciturn about our singing and had made me wonder a little; so my daughter and I beamed expectantly at one another as he said:
  "Yes, I know the two of you are always singing like two . . ."
  "Birds in a tree?" I suggested hopefully.
  ". . . cats on a wall", he concluded, and went off in search of his newspaper, well contented with the outraged effect his broadside had produced.
  We still sing together from time to time, and often one of us starts chuckling midway at the memory of his words and the other joins in without a trace of wounded pride.

Catherine Nicolette
  Ah yes, music for the heart and for the soul. Every time I visit Mom we land up playing the piano and the organ, and practising scales which have alas, grown somewhat rusty over the past hectic years. And when I visit my cousins and my aunts and uncles on my Dutch side, we end up doing the same. And my cousin's children, and my sister's daughters . . . music has a long tradition in our family. 
  There is a very sweet letter from my great, great, (I'm not sure how many greats it is) grandfather in Holland who wrote to his parents to ask them most courteously indeed whether he could take up music lessons. I am told my great aunts sang in the Amsterdam Cathedrals. One of my aunts sang in Operetta for some years. So we are big into music.

  On my recent visit to my Mom, I spent some time going through our old photo albums, and came across some pictures of a long gone family get together. I was just learning "Ik hou van Holland", and "Tulips from Amsterdam", and the family and Aunt Elly sang them together with me. 
  A great singer, Elly really got into the spirit of things, and at the end of the song - overcome with Dutch nationalist emotion at the thought of her mother country - she got a rose between her teeth and ended up doing Dutch dances with my cousin. Elly's philosophy was seize and enjoy the day; and music rules the earth. I'm sure she's singing in Heaven now (and delighting all with her vivacity and dance. . .)

Viva la musica!

Viva la musica!

 

Dancing to the music

Photos by R K

Ik hou van Holland
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_kWgb4KKnwI

With thanks to Youtube

My dusty old home from home is famous

Luky
I WONDER if you watched the Afrikaans television soap opera Kromburg? Though I seldom watched after the news during the week, Wednesday nights found me riveted to the screen.
  The nature scenes of that tiny southern Free State village gave me the queerest sense of déjà vu. The mystery was solved one night when I read the credits after the screening, where thanks were given to the communities of Jagersfontein and Fauresmith, where the programme had been televised.
  My brother who had friends on a farm in the Fauresmith district and spent the last school holidays there with his wife and children told us that they called Fauresmith Kromberg thereafter.

My old haunt
  It was with a certain amount of nostalgia that I watched all the happenings on the screen. That Jagersfontein period of my life, to which we came from Holland and where my father worked for about eighteen months, was the first experience I had of adapting to other kinds of people, other outlooks, different from mine, and in retrospect I realise that it had a profound effect on my life.
  I' m sure some of you will have visited Amsterdam. Others may have been in Jagersfontein or Fauresmith.
Imagine coming from teeming Amsterdam to quiet Kromburg.

Lots of stops
  We travelled on that same train Wenda Swart took from Cape Town, and stopped at every station. My mother, determined to make a good impression, washed and changed us four times on the journey.
  When we arrived there on the third day, the station master phoned for a taxi, and away we drove through dusty veld whose grass looked brown to my eyes, accustomed as they were to the bright green of Holland.
  I recall my amazement when a group of girls stopped talking to me, though I had explained to someone else that I found them "aardig". Though the Afrikaans dictionary gives the translation of this word partly as agreeable, nice, pleasant, which is what it means in Dutch, it also gives it as strange, disagreeable, unpleasant.

Fowl act
  My father started working that very night. He was delighted to discover that the foreman had the same name as my brother, whom we then called Josje though he since became Jos. I suppose now that his name really was Joshua.
  My father had a little trouble communicating, but his sense of humour often saved the day.
  "Get me an egg, Josje," he asked the first week. Joshua called together a conclave of his ten fellow workers, but nobody could understand what my father wanted.
  To get his message across, my father started running wildly through the bakery, arms flapping and shouting hysterically "Toc, toc, toc, toc!" They got the message and had a good laugh too.
  I had difficulty adapting and it took me many years before I could truly call South Africa home. Yet looking back, I realise it was invaluable to have had my ideas and prejudices turned upside down at an early age.
  It taught me one valuable truth; no matter what a person's culture, creed or what language he speaks, he has ideas which have been formed by his background and which are valid for him.
  I know now that I am the way I am because of my Dutch background, my Irish school teachers, my South African school fellows, colleagues and children, my Irish husband and my Catholic faith. I know that I have to be true to myself and to what I have been taught all my life. 
  And by the same token, I have an abiding respect for the outlook, culture and ideas of others. They too have their story, even if different from mine.  

Kromburg
http://www.vintagemedia.co.za/television/kromburg

 

Me emotional? Please, I'm Dutch!

Luky
THE OTHER DAY someone told me that I'm emotional, and I'm still very upset about it. It is one thing you don't call a Hollander.
  Tell us we're dry and we're gratified, dour and we're elated, stolid and we're delighted, cynical and you've made our day. No Hollander likes to be called emotional, no sir, his head rules his heart every time. 

Heat's off
  But let's get back to me. I never knew people thought me emotional. "Vesti la Giubba, on with the motley, laugh Pagliacci, laugh," was my motto. Now that my guilty secret has been revealed, however, I can loosen my collar.
  A new world will open to me. From now on when anybody asks me how I am feeling I shall describe the symptoms of my mental and physical ailments in unstinting detail. Gone for ever the brave smile and the hearty, "Fine thanks, and you?" Emotional, am I? I'll show you! When I go to see a sad film, I'll take a box of tissues under my arm and sob as loudly as my father-in-law did the time we took him to see "The Hoodlum Priest". Goodbye stiff upper lip and dignified composure. You've spoilt my fun often enough.
  In future I intend to cry at all weddings and funerals in church, not behind the pine tree in the backyard. What a relief it will be when my throat will no longer feel stiff and my eyes stinging from tears unshed. Never mind if the mascara runs down my cheeks, I'm still going to be grateful to the person who called me emotional.
  Actually, the only place I've ever really cried in during my adult years is Lourdes. Nobody tries to console you there, for everyone is too busy praying to see what you are up to.

Warmth
  Mind you, there were quite a number of women of various nationalities who clasped my son and me into their arms and embraced us. That was being emotional, I suppose, but Joe and I just kissed them right back, beaming, and I'd think of the early Christians, and how people said: "See how they love one another."
  The only thing that can pierce my defences, keep me rooted to one spot and shut my mouth is church music. If I had a thousand rands and you wanted it, all you'd need to do is play my recording of Joan Sutherland singing "Oh, Divine Redeemer", and hold your hand out silently.
  My father was like that too. After he died I heard "Ave Verum" on the radio, and telling my family it was his favourite. I requested silence. Suddenly one of the children burst out crying.
  "What's the matter?" we asked.
  "I'm crying because this was Oupa's best", he sobbed.
  One Sunday we heard an inspiring orchestral rendering of "Praise my soul the King of Heaven" on the radio. I never wasted my stiff upper lip on my husband, being Irish he is more emotional than I am. Turning to him tearfully, I asked: "If I die before you, will you ask them to play that at my funeral?"
  He nodded at me thoughtfully.
  "All right", he answered, "but just tell me what it's called, please."

Luciano Pavarotti, Vesti la Giubba
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v-H-MWJ4f14

Vesti la Giubba, English translation by Randall Garrou 
http://www.aria-database.com/translations/pag05_vesti.txt

Joan Sutherland "O Divine Redeemer" by Charles Gounod 
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FRDTeRuyFwM

Ave Verum by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart - Westminster Cathedral Choir 
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qvFUw9HvRf8

Praise my soul the King of Heaven - Choir of Westminster Abbey
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sx1eMwlDFb8

Let the lambs run on: I'm staying mutton

Luky
THE TIME HAD ARRIVED IN MY LIFE when the thing I watched happening to so many other mothers was happening to me: my older children were trying to make me over.
   "You can't make a silk purse out of a sow's ear", I sighed imploringly as I tried on shoes, patently manufactured for long slender feet instead of my short squat ones.
   I'm deeply grateful for my feet, but why do I have to squeeze my E-fittings into these elegant concoctions?
   "Pull, Mommy, you can!" my daughter stoutly asserted.
   "I can't, truly" I insisted, looking helplessly at the saleslady for guidance. But before she could say anything, my daughter turned to her.

Nice pins
   "My mother's got lovely legs, truly she has."
   (Listening to her, I could feel my heart swelling. After all, the Eve in us never dies.)
   "Of course, you can't see it, that's just because of those clodhoppers she wears."
   "But I've got funny feet!" I protested.
   "There's nothing funny about the feet, it's the shoes. Try these on - come on, just try."
    It seemed such a short while ago that I was saying those same words to her while trying to get some baby porridge into her. But judging from the stern if motherly expression in her eyes, those days were long behind us.
   The saleslady retired behind a noncommittal mask and I squeezed my funny feet into shoes whose designer would have torn his hair out if he knew where they'd eventually land up.

What can she say?
   "You see? I told you she's got lovely legs, hasn't she?" my daughter said to the saleslady who could hardly disagree and answered "Very nice" in a mechanical way.
   "Now the first thing you do is throw away those clumsy orthopaedic monstrosities into the wastepaper basket and get into the habit of wearing a decent shoe for a change", my daughter said decisively. "Hand me your purse, I'll pay."
   "Gosh, that's decent of you", I murmured sarcastically, but my wit was quite wasted.

Knows it all
   My daughter was in her seventh heaven.
   "I told you", she told me triumphantly as we drove home. "All you need is a little guidance. Daddy will be so proud of you."
   I doubted that very much. My husband hadn't complimented me on my appearance since we were engaged. No matter how great an effort I made, he never seemed to notice the difference. Come to think of it, that might have been one reason why I preferred comfort to beauty in my footwear.

Speaking looks
   We went out to a function and my daughter enthused all the way. She must have been right because I got a few unusual looks. (I was wearing a new dress too, you see, as well as carrying the bag my son forced me to buy and they made me try a new hairstyle).
  "What's up with you, Luky? You look nice, not like yourself at all, quite different", a colleague commented.
   "You should feel my feet" I replied.
   Would the afternoon never end, I wondered as red-hot pains shot up and down my feet. Every now and then my daughter beamed at me encouragingly as we passed each other.
   "I told you you could do it", she whispered.

Home at last
  When we got home I took my shoes off at the door and stumbling to my wardrobe made for the first pair of orthopaedic monstrosities I could find. With a sigh of relief I dragged them on my feet and pushed my elegant new buys far out of sight.
  "Promise me you'll go in for this type of shoe from now on", my daughter coaxed from the door. "I was so proud of you today."
  For once, her pleas failed to wring my heart.

Full stop
  "Look here, I've got news for you", I replied belligerently. "I'm not one of Cinderella's ugly sisters, on the lookout for a Prince Charming. So I've no need to saw off my little toes. I'm a married woman. I've caught my bus. I've got six children and I'm overweight and dowdy. Too bad.
  "I've got a lot of work to do which all requires much concentration and when my feet hurt I can't concentrate. So I'm going to wear my clodhoppers and relax."
  Silently she turned away from the door and went to her room, casting a reproachful glance at me over her shoulder.
 As for me, before going into the kitchen I wiggled all ten of my toes; my clodhoppers had space for each of them. What blessed relief. 

Catherine Nicolette
  That was an awful long time ago.In my own defence, all I wanted was for Mom to make the best of herself. It escaped me at the time that she - a happy and contented mom of six kids - already had, and looked lovely.
Embittered at the cavalier way Mom had treated my well meaning efforts, I busied myself with the many other things my sixteen year old self used to always find to do. Eventually landing up in the kitchen, I started doing some odds and ends there when Dad came in through the door.
  Gazing at me, he asked, "What happened today?"
"Dad, you'll never guess what", I exclaimed. And told him the story. He was riveted. "She did, did she? And you told the lady at the shoe store .. ."
"That she had beautiful legs, yes, yes. And made her walk up and down in the shoes . . ."
Something in Dad's expression alerted me.
"And what did you call her shoes?" he mildly enquired with his Tramore accent.
"Orthopoedic monstrosities, Dad."

Silent mirth
At that my Dad began to shake. My initial concern turned to teenage outrage as his shaking dissolved into silent mirth. "Well, what would you have said, Dad?"
Dad laughed even more. "What I say is that you're a far braver person than I am to take on your Mom." 
  As he began leaving the room, I said, "Well Dad, I'll bet before she wore those shoes today  you'd never noticed that she has such beautiful legs."
Dad turned back to me and said, "Oh yes, I noticed the first time I met her. Why did you think I married her so some other man didn't get her?  She is the most beautiful woman I've ever seen, whatever shoes she likes to wear." 
Slightly scandalised and deeply impressed by the note of romance on which the shoe saga ended, I let the matter rest.

Networking with nieces
  Many years later, I was going out with my nieces who looked disparagingly at my footwear. 
"Please Auntie Nog, tell us you're not going to wear those while you're out with us?" the one begged. 
I looked down with affection at my flat and sensible brown shoes, which have carried my feet through many hours of tramping over different countries on long charitable field trips. 
"Why, what's wrong with them?" I asked. 
  My niece rolled her eyes to heaven dramatically, "Where do I START?" she enquired. 
"Look at my shoes next to yours." 
  She placed her elegantly shod little feet next to mine. The Italian heels on their still new beauty contrasted next to my shoes in much the same way as a designer original compares to an old pair of bedsocks. 
  "Can you see the difference? Can you?" she demanded. A light crept into her eyes - much like that of the zeal of a reformer. 
  "I know what, Auntie Nog. We'll take you out shopping to buy a new pair." 

  My mind flashed back to many years ago, and Mom had my full sympathy. I knew just how she must have felt. The situation tickled my sense of humour, and I said, "Of what? Orthopoedic monstrosities?" and I gave way to a fit of giggles. 
  My nieces looked uncomprehendingly at one another. Sometimes my humour totally escapes them. 
  "What do you mean, Auntie Nog?" 
  "Never mind. Just ask your Ouma - she'll tell you", I said.
  "My shoes are staying the way they are." 
  "But we want to help you" they coaxed. "You'll look so lovely with new shoes."
  "Listen girls," I said, "thanks, but no thanks. I got in there a generation before you. 
  Like Ouma, I now prefer comfort."

There is nothing new under the sun . . . 

IF YOU'RE CONCERNED ABOUT MATERIALISM TRY THIS

Luky   

IT ALWAYS AMUSES ME TO HEAR PEOPLE SPEAK DISPARAGINGLY OF MATERIALISM.
To listen to some, you'd think the cardinal evil of all times is the fact that people like to surround themselves with comforts.
   It seems ridiculous to me. What is wrong with having the good things of life? My mother said that she never possessed a car in her life. Well, I remember my carless youth and what a bind it was.
   When my parents came to South Africa, they gave up parents, family, home and security, to try their luck in a foreign country where they knew nothing, not even the language.

Silent gratitude
   "We are doing this to give you people better opportunities", they assured us when homesickness overtook them. 
  Today when I drive my car, vacuum my carpets or do the laundry in my automatic washing machine, I thank my parents for giving me such a good deal.

   If it were all to be taken away from me tomorrow, I'd say with Job: "The Lord has given, the Lord has taken away. Blessed be the Name of the Lord."
   But at least I'd have the satisfaction, when looking back, that I never scorned the advances made in technology to improve the mother's lot.

   I'm sure my grandmother who washed by hand for ten children went straight to heaven when she died, but she was the most practical and down to earth old girl I ever knew. 
  I bet if I'd asked her whether to wash for my six in the tub or get a washing machine, she'd have said: "Go for the automatic, Luky. What a question to ask!"

Sweet life
   I have a number of wealthy friends and I love to visit them. 
  I enjoy drinking tea from bone china cups, with golden or silver spoons. 
  I enjoy entering a marble hall and having my feet sink into thick carpets.
   I have to tell you something about these people, though. 

They did not find their money in a little box on their front stoep one morning. 
  They made it through working eighteen hours a day. 
  However, on the principle that you can wear only one outfit at a time, and even two meals a day can make you fat unless you are a farm labourer, I settled for lots of time with my family and worked my 8-hour stint as a necessary evil.

  So do I approve of the inequality between the haves and the have nots? Not at all. 
  But I believe that there are many wealthy people who do a lot of good with their money. 
  If they do not let their left hand know what the right hand does, that does not mean to say that their good works do not alleviate much sorrow and poverty.

Spend - and give
What I want to suggest to all concerned about materialism is:
"Don't cut down on your clothes, or your car, or your labour saving devices. 
  There are many poor people employed in factories, who would starve or lose their self esteem if everyone felt the way you do. 
  Buy what is necessary, thereby stimulating the economy. 
  But first, before you budget at the end of the month, tithe from your salary for those most in need."
  How many takers do you think there would be?

Memories can give life a new force

Luky;
SOME YEARS AGO I RECEIVED A LETTER FROM MY MOTHER in which she told me that one of my father's brothers had just died - from cancer, as did my father and a third brother.
   This uncle was a priest in Holland, and I know little about him, since I last saw him on the day when my brother first received Holy Communion. A thing I noticed about him was the beautiful way he pronounced his words, far better than his big brother, my dad, who like myself spoke in the rather flat Amsterdam accent.
   "Papa", I whispered, "why do you hit that uncle on the back? He's a priest! And won't you try to speak posh, the way he does?"
   My father roared with laughter. He called loudly over the heads of the guests; "Hear what my daughter says, Nick? She reckons I ought to come to you for speech therapy."
   When my uncle threw back his head and laughed, there suddenly remained no difference between him and my father. He just looked like a younger version of my dad, and just as down-to-earth and kind.
   We seldom saw my uncle unless it was at a big family gathering, since his parish was in another province. All I remember of those occasions were the looks of love and pride my grandmother would keep sending in his direction.
   When my father mentioned him, he often told this story:
   "Nico was three years old when my mother sent him down the street to the shoemakers. When he came in with his bag of shoes, almost as big as himself, the shoemaker said jokingly: "Well, young man, are you going to be a rich baker like your father?" "No sir", answered Nick, "I'm going to be a poor priest."
   "Right through school he only yearned to go to the seminary. There was a boy who knew what he wanted to be - ever since the age of three!"
   In 1971 when Joseph and I went to Lourdes for the first time, I stayed at the pilgrims' hospital in the grotto grounds. Arriving early in the morning, I was shown in to breakfast with a group of pilgrims. Having travelled all that night, I was too tired to take notice of them until their chaplain got up to lead the prayers after meals.
   Recalling my school French, I prepared to make the sign of the cross: "Au nom du Père, et du Fils, et du Saint Esprit." To my surprise he said instead: "In de naam van de Vader en van de Zoon and van de Heilige Gees."
At once I felt less homesick, realising that I had inadvertently joined the members of the national Dutch pilgrimage. I correspond with some of its members to this day.
   After prayers, the chaplain strolled over and patted Joseph on the head. He was delighted to find I was Dutch, although I had come from far distant South Africa, and asked whether I still had family in Holland.
   "Plenty", I replied, "My mother came from a family of eleven, and my father was one of nine children. In fact, one of my dad's brothers is still a priest in Holland."
   "What was your name before you were married?" he asked, and I told him.
   "Well, I never", he exclaimed, "you much be Nick's niece!"
   It's a small world, as you discover when you've come halfway around it to meet someone who's on first-name terms with your dad's younger brother.
   Although I never knew my uncle well, the thought of his death haunts me. Thinking back I recall him and those of his brothers who also died from cancer as men in their thirties, full of life, health and laughter. I seems strange to think of them as having gone forever from this world - but we'll meet again soon. And when I think of the small domestic trials and tribulations which take up so much of my valuable time and attention, and recall the painful deaths of these people, I feel that I'm wasting the best years of my life in deploring trivialities.

Let's put music into the church

LUKY;
MY PARENTS WERE MARRIED DURING THE DEPRESSION YEARS in Holland.
   An uncle of my father's in Amsterdam led a choir of 160 men, all unemployed. To keep them motivated and off the streets, he spent many hours training them to sing the most complicated scores. My father used to go to his uncle's parish and would praise the choir.
   Shortly before my parents' wedding, my father's uncle called to see my dad. "Gerard", he said, "how would you like my boys to sing at your wedding?"
   "Good grief, Uncle," my father replied, "I couldn't possibly pay them all." "Never mind the money", said uncle, "Could you manage 160 cigars?"
   "Of course", answered my dad, who himself smoked up to 50 cigarettes a day. So the 160 cigars were bought and the choir sang like the heavenly host. My dad told me about the Magnificat. I know it, I've heard it sung in Lourdes, and it would melt a heart of stone.
   The choir sang the Ave Maria as my mother laid her bouquet in front of the altar of our Blessed Lady, and the Mass was sung in five parts.
   My own wedding in Johannesburg twenty-five years later was a quiet one, with only my parents, sisters and brother present, and one friend of mine and one of Sean's.
   Although it was such a small affair, I wore a wreath and veil, deciding that you dress up for the bridegroom rather than for the guests.
   My father had not exactly struck it rich during the eight years since he had immigrated to this country, and though my husand and I earned good salaries, our car and furniture had taken all the savings we had.
   "Its a flop all round", I thought to myself, "but at least there'll be the music."
   
The year was 1960. Some of you will know that the new Cathedral of Christ the King was then almost completed. As I entered the old Kerk Street Church for my wedding the most disappointing thing happened.    
   Instead of the wealth of sound I had expected from the choir loft, there came a thin, reedy Bridal Chorus from Lohengrin. Though the organist played it expertly, the sound was all but lost in the Church. Alas, most of the organ had been dismantled and transported to the new Cathedral the previous week.
   That same month, Princess Margaret had married Anthony Armstrong-Jones, and seeing her wedding on the cinema news and hearing Clarke's Trumpet Voluntary played with such verve, I couldn't help wishing our wedding had been a little more glamorous. 
   The music didn't worry my husband, but he felt envious when he read about the Queen's lending her yacht Britannia to the young couple for the honeymoon, while he and I repaired to our flat in Brakpan. Yet the contrast between the splendid music at my parents' marriage and the disappointment at my own did some good. Till then, I had always expected the Church to run by itself. I didn't know whence came the flowers, whence the music. They had simply always been there.
   Now I realised that someone had to make them happen, like the great uncle of mine who took 160 unemployed men from the streets and restored to them their dignity and optimism in the choir loft of their Parish Church.
   So we had our eldest daughter trained to be a church organist, starting with the piano in sub B. I know that this column is read by earnest young parents and sons and daughters who might be prepared to sacrifice the time and the money it would take to have their children trained to be the church organists of the future.
   Remember, it is music which welds the wedding service together. It is music which turns the attendance of Mass into a deeply joyous experience.
   Let's encourage our children to contribute to the making of music in our churches, to sing in the choirs and play the instruments. If you decide to do that, you will discover, as I did, that though you may sow in tears, you will reap in joy.

Ave Maria 
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FUnrLMvpQLk 
Ave Maria 
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aQVz6vuNq7s