Luky;
ISN'T it strange the way some sayings keep sounding in one's ears long after they've been uttered?
Such a saying is the Hungarian proverb a woman told me some years ago: "When the Lord supplies the lambs, he also supplies the pasture."
I topped it with a Portuguese one, "Every child arrives with its own loaf of bread under its arm."
I can see how the state of one's health may rule out having a big family, or one's age or psychological makeup, or even the fear of war or the population explosion.
While none of these factors affect me personally, I am prepared to accept that I was short-sighted not to allow them to do so.
However, I don't feel people cannot afford to have children.
Why is that less affluent people are at times far less afraid than those in more affluent circumstances of raising large families?
If the economic factor were as important as all that, the situation ought to be reversed.
Way around it
I remember telling someone about wanting a big family when we were first married.
"You don't know what you're saying", she told me.
"You can't possibly judge how much it costs to bring a child up."
My husband, who was listening to us, laughed and said:
"When you talk like that, I'm reminded of a family in my Irish home town.
They were poor, but they had a big chest of drawers in the house.
Each time another child arrived they just pulled out another drawer, put a blanket into it, and made the child comfortable."
Today no one can accuse me of not knowing what I'm talking about when I say it's not expensive to bring up a large family.
It merely takes all you have.
When you have a lot of money, it takes a lot, and when you've got little the Lord takes over and sees to it that your lambs are given their pasture.
There are two ways of bringing up children, the economical and the expensive.
Perforce we have always opted for the former.
Ten to one
When our third son was born, a friend had just had a little daughter.
After one week her baby had cost four hundred rands, and mine forty.
He didn't look half as smart as her child, but the kids didn't know the difference anyway.
My friend put her child on the bottle and complained of the expense of baby food.
I fed my child myself, and it cost nothing.
Wors, of course
"My meat bill is sixty rands a month", a woman complained years ago - that is, before meat became expensive.
"I've got only two children.
How would I manage to pay for food if I had more?"
"By introducing fish days and sausage days into your week", I suggested from experience.
But she only laughed softly, managing to be both condescending and kind at the same time.
"My dear," she said pityingly, "I couldn't possibly give my family sausages."
Well, I had to, and none of my kids ever died of it, though they've since told me that they wouldn't care if they never saw another sausage in their lives.
On the house
"That's all very well", people say to me today.
"When it comes to food, we can all stretch a point; but what about education?"
Please! Many students I knew were studying with the aid of a bursary or grant.
As for my children, they attended private schools, not because we're posh but because we believe in Christian education.
Those who showed any interest at all received private music and art lessons into the bargain.
We even managed to put by a little for their further training after school.
I take no credit for having brought my children thus far, because I know that without God's help we couldn't have done it.
But we didn't leave it all to him; we tried to help ourselves a little too.
Stay at home
For one thing, we didn't go out socially.
Not that we missed this much, because by the time we'd served supper, washed dishes, arranged baths, organised homework and said the rosary, we were far too tired to feel like going out.
When you have children who love you, moreover, you don't feel the need to be popular outside.
We didn't own our own house after all those years, and still drove a tiny car.
We didn't go away on holiday, and we wore the same clothes for years.
Sounds of home
Our children didn't sleep in drawers like the family my husband knew, but in bunk beds.
At school they met children whose parents were more wealthy than we were, but if this worried them they never told us about it.
Our house was always full of noise, fights, laughter and sometimes insults - like the time when one little bookworm called her brother an edge-otistikil ignor-i-mis.
Closer to being perfect
I may never experience how it feels to own an evening dress, a diamond necklace or a designer coat, and if you show me the woman whose mouth has never watered for such possessions you show me a paragon.
But when I reprimanded my eldest son and he said with mock severity: "Stop it, you cruel person!"
or when I caught my little daughter in the act of emptying half a bottle of her sister's expensive moisturiser on her flawless skin and she told me: "This mooshy-iser reely works!" I knew that nothing in the world can be greater fun than to have children - the more the merrier.
Life is far from perfect, but to my mind children, yours as well as mine, come closer to being perfect than anything else the world can offer.
No amount of rands and cents saved could compare to the joy of having a big family.
Catherine Nicolette
Well, I was the bright spark who came up with the insult of egotistical ignoramus.
Swearing was not allowed in my family, and my brother was - I felt with all the dignity of my eight summers - annoying me.
What to do?
I used to burrow into the Oxford Dictionary whenever I had the chance, so I looked up words which perfectly described my elegant disdain for his calling me a goggle-eyed four-eyed fishcake.
Which magnificent insult (I was wearing glasses for the first time) incensed my dignified little heart.
The next time he called attention to my new set of shades, I called him edgeotistikil ignorimis with the pronunciation I had garnered from merely reading the words instead of hearing them.
My poor brother was wounded to the heart.
He lowered his head.
"What does that mean?" he asked.
"That's for me to know and for you to wonder," I uttered magnificently, and swept proudly off.
Somehow victory did not taste sweet.
The look of my brother's mortified face stayed with me, and I decided to venture into Oxford's shady book glens from then on only in search of knowledge.
However I must say he no longer called me a goggle-eyed four-eyed fishcake.
Now; about having children.
It was never in my stars to have children of my own, having felt called from an early age to go into Christian ministry.
However, growing up in a large family with its laughter and tears, I was left with a deep love of small children and learned patience with their vulnerable needs.
I was also blessed with a dearly loved brother with acquired brain injury.
His kindness and beauty of soul, together with his great needs for assistance in his early years, coaxed out of
me a softness of heart when dealing with people in need.
Put altogether, this was a good background when I began Lumiere Charity. Many's the time I had my hands in my hair, wondering where the money would come from for the next need which came up. When education, care and food had been given to the ten thousandth child I gave up either worrying or counting the children the Charity was reaching. Which all leads me to the conclusion that yes, it is important to be responsible when planning for a child.
But somehow love finds a way once the child is there, and God is never to be outdone in generosity.
