Luky
THE REASON WHY I FELT PARTICULARLY CHARITABLE TOWARDS MY YOUNGER SISTER'S HUSBAND WAS THAT HE PRESENTED ME WITH A SET OF POSTERS WHICH I PUT ALL OVER MY OFFICE, TO THE EDIFICATION AND AMUSEMENT OF MY COLLEAGUES.
He also arranged a braaivleis for me, which was not so nice since I had just bet with a colleague that she and I would each lose 5 kg during the three weeks of her absence on holiday.
The loser would pay the other R10 - at a time when that was good money.
I didn't have ten rand to throw around, and so I told my brother-in-law.
"Eat, Luke," he ordered, "I'll pay your bet."
Hound humour
The posters were lovely, balm to my soul.
"It doesn't matter if you win or lose", Snoopy proclaimed above the telex machine. "Until you lose!"
"The clearest way into the universe is through a forest wilderness", exhorted the landscape view above my filing cabinet.
So I'm not the only seeker who feels that life is one long groping amid chaos for orderliness.
The post baskets were topped with another sign, illustrated by a glider floating in a golden evening sky.
It's one I constantly need to remind me not to be lazy. It said:
"You are never given a wish without also being given the power to make it true. You may have to work for it, however."
Over the telephone there was a winter landscape view in a forest with a Camus quotation: "In the midst of winter I finally learnt that there was in me an invincible summer."
How true. It is only when you've tasted the depth of grief, that you become aware of the bubbling well of joy within us which repairs all ravages of the grief we know.
Like the Lourdes well, this is a miraculous one, granted by God for the restoration of hope and the washing away of all despair.
Calm silence
Behind my desk there was the poster of a yacht at sea during sunset: "Each life needs its own quiet place".
Called talkative, loquacious and a chatterbox since I can remember, even I need my own quiet place, though I attain to it all too seldom.
"He leadeth me beside the still waters", said the poster near the window. Isn't it funny how David said it all for us in his time, all the mute words seeking utterance form our hearts?
He put into words for us in his psalms everything we strive vainly to explain to ourselves about the place God has in our lives.
To crown it all, he committed some pretty bad sins. That must be why we find it so easy to identify with him, and with Saint Peter, for that matter.
Above my typewriter there was a William Blake quotation:
We are put on earth a little space
That we may learn to bear the beams of love.
They adorned a picture of wheat in the sunlight, a symbolic picture. The sunlight is the love of God to which we are travelling, the wheat the Body of Christ give up for us so that we may reach this love when we have become mature enough to reciprocate.
At the door, what the cynics in my family would call a touch of sanity prevailed in the picture of a spaniel in a bucket, having a bath.
Surrounded by brushes, towels, soap boxes and covered in suds he mutely proclaimed:
"Was today really necessary?"
I put that picture in that spot because I hoped that if ever I became frustrated enough to write out my resignation from that job, the very different kind of resignation shining forth from the spaniel would tickle my sense of humour and make me tear up my own resignation forthwith.
Catherine Nicolette
A poster I saw many years ago and to which my mind often returns showed a little chick standing, very new and puzzled, in the midst of the shards of eggshell from which he had just hatched.
In large black lettering above his head was his question: "What now?"
Luky
I HAVE ALWAYS BEEN EXTREMELY FOND OF PEOPLE, THOUGH MY AFFECTION IS NOT ALWAYS RECIPROCATED.
It hardly ever happens to me that I meet a person whom I immediately think: "She's not my cup of tea."
Yet the reverse often happens.
Once I was introduced to a woman who behaved exactly the way I do - and, strange to admit, she did get terribly on my nerves.
That was a poser, I can tell you, and ever since then I've been unable to hold anything against people who find me a little hard to take.
The only people I really find it difficult to be fond of are those who complain all the time.
Copy the copers
I don't believe that it is necessary to moan so much.
Everyone has problems.Some cope, and some moan. I go for the copers, and try to emulate them.
And that's easy enough; didn't Our Lord say: "My yoke is easy and burden light?"
Complementary
How often do you have a sickly wife who has a strong and tender husband, or a sickly husband whose wife doesn't even catch cold in winter?
Isn't if funny how, when there is one sick partner, there is often enough money in the kitty to carry the family through.
Several times I have heard people say: "Funny, we had solved all our financial problems and built up a nice little nest egg: then father became ill and couldn't work for a year.
"If that had happened three years before, we would have been in the soup. As it was, we managed to weather the storm."
Replacement value
An orphan develops a hero worship for an understanding teacher, whom he puts in the place of unavoidably absent parents.
The teacher, while keeping a suitable distance, is kind to the child.
When the child passes to a higher standard, he has learnt to cope a little better with his deprivation.
And yet, now and again, you meet a person who seems to have received such a raw deal that even thinking of his misery touches your heart.
Some people are losers. They are the bullied ones.
They seldom complain, and after each bout of misfortune come up smiling with such poignant good cheer that your heart aches for them.
I think that when Jesus was so afraid in the Garden of Olives, He thought of such people - the ones psychologically unable to return cruelty for cruelty, losing their jobs and marriage partners to others not as deserving as themselves.
I often think that if the thought of them caused Jesus the sorrow they cause my infinitely less understanding heart and mind, then He had no choice in the matter but to take up His cross and die for humanity.
And I don't think it's the ones who succeed in life and business, nor the moaners, however put upon they were in life, who will be at the head of the queue marching into Heaven when the last judgement has been passed.
I think it will be those who tried so hard to do everything the way it should be done, yet never received the approval and support which we all crave.
Luky
THE DAY THE HEADLINES REPORTED A CELEBRITY BIRTH, SOMEONE I WORKED WITH DIED IN HOSPITAL.
One comes, another goes; it certainly set me thinking.
A couple of weeks previously, another friend at work had lost her mother.
She asked me to type out the funeral hymns and order of service.
Her mother and I shared the same birth date.
It occurred to me that one day someone else might be typing such a funeral service for me, and it made my pursuit of security seem paltry and nonsensical.
When I handed the pamphlets over to my friend, I tried to forget about the whole thing, but the death of the man in the hospital brought it back to me.
He was such a vitally alive person - always a joke or a quip.
And now he had gone to God. May he rest in peace.
Same both ways
"If you worry you die, if you don't worry you also die", goes the saying, and it is during such times of ultimate realities that we reflect on such words.
The new baby could do nothing for himself, yet by the grace of God and the God-given skills of the doctors and nursing staff, he had been safely born.
The old man often worried. I know, he used to tell me about it, and now he was gone.
Did he waste his time worrying?
As an arch worrier, I feel ill-qualified to pass judgement.
"A coward dies many times, a brave man only once." I must have died a thousand deaths in my time.
General flap
Years ago there was a spot of bother at the mine where my husband was employed.
He was standing in the office, waiting for instructions, when his boss turned on him:
"For heaven's sake, Paddy, don't just stand there, do something!" he snapped.
Eager to oblige - what father of six would not be - my husband stood to attention and said: "Yes sir, what would you like me to do?"
"Well, if you can't think of anything else, at least you can panic, can't you?"
I'm the one who panics in our family. I panic about the poor, about the spiritual and moral welfare in my family, about what happens to orphans.
I panic about all the times I have been weighed and found wanting.
I panicked when I could not fit my office work into the eight hours available.
I panic when I wake up in the night and when I drive through heavy traffic.
The right attitude
Sean did not panic. He panicked until he had five heart attacks.
Thereafter, whenever he felt uptight, he relaxed and said: "Sure Ma, this is the life of Reilly." Good for him.
When the apostles were in the boat and implored Jesus to quell the storm, saying
"Lord, save us lest we perish", they acted the same way I do every day.
And Christ's words: "Why are ye fearful, oh ye of little faith?" have never yet managed to shame me into letting go.
We were caught in a dreadful storm on the sea once.
The waves were like mountains, and I was so terrified I froze and could not even speak.
Catherine Nicolette and my second oldest were about three and four years old, and the more the ship dipped and shook, the more blissfully they slept.
God protected them and they lived, not to tell the tale, because they didn't know about it, but they lived.
But I relive that boat journey and ponder on the uselessness of fretting, every time I hear Catherine Nicolette sing one of her favourite songs:
"Rocked in the cradle of the deep
I lay me down in peaceful sleep.
Secure, I rest upon the waves.
For Thou, O Lord, hast power to save."
Catherine Nicolette
The beautiful words of the hymn:
Rocked in the cradle of the deep,
I lay me down in peaceful sleep.
Secure I rest upon the wave
For Thou, O Lord, has power to save.
I known Thou wilt not slight my call,
For Thou dost mark the sparrow's fall.
Chorus:
And calm and peaceful is my sleep,
Rocked in the cradle of the deep.
And calm and peaceful is my sleep,
Rocked in the cradle of the deep.
And such the trust that still were mine,
Tho' stormy winds swept o'er the brine,
Or tho' the tempest's fiery breath,
Roused me from sleep to wreck and death.
In ocean cave still safe with Thee,
The hope of immortality.
Chorus;
And calm and peaceful is my sleep,
Rocked in the cradle of the deep.
And calm and peaceful is my sleep,
Rocked in the cradle of the deep.
Luky
YEARS AGO I ACQUIRED THE TASTE FOR THE HUMOUR OF THE LATE P G WODEHOUSE.
I have just reread his Jeeves omnibus with considerable enjoyment and smiled at the anti-hero, wealthy Bertie Wooster, who is as silly as he is good-natured.
He is a bachelor of good health, has plenty of money and employs a valet, Jeeves, who has all the intelligence he himself lacks.
On the face of it Bertie has no problems.
You know what Pip Freedman calls a bachelor:"The wisest man on earth, because he looks before he leaps, and then he doesn't leap at all."
Yet Bertie is dogged by bad luck on account of his succession of scrape-prone friends who rely on his good nature and Jeeves's good sense to get them out of hot water.
Having finished the book, I thought to myself: Doesn't that just go to show that the problems we create for ourselves are far more difficult than real problems?
There was a time when we were very broke, a long time in fact.
I think it may have been the happiest time of my life - I know the days when the end of the month came had a charm second to few other pleasures I can recall.
One day my neighbour and I were having a chat over the fence and she was in a terrible state.
"I hate cooking!" she complained. "My husband and children are so jolly fussy.
John doesn't eat steak, Jane doesn't like chops, Joan refuses to eat chicken and my husband won't take pork."
I looked at her with a sense of wonderment, my mind going off on its own.
At that time I could do wonders with a pound of mince, an onion and a couple of tomatoes, and my family devoured everything I put before them.
In fact if the dog wanted some, he had to look snappy.
My neighbour was finished talking and was looking at me appealingly, but I could hardly tell her what I thought, which roughly summarized was as follows:
"First you take John, Jane and Joan and give them a good talking to.
Secondly, you serve them a plat of mealiemeal with a teaspoonful of unsweetened condensed milk.
Then you make a parcel of the steak, chops and chicken to give to the homeless service, leaving only enough for a mixed grill for your husband, who's entitled to turn down the pork, since it doesn't agree with everyone's constitution, and he who pays the piper calls the tune."
Luky
YEARS AGO WHEN MY DAUGHTER AND I WERE DOING A STINT AS NURSES IN LOURDES, WE MET THE LEADER OF A GROUP OF PILGRIMS FROM PARIS.
I'll call him Monsieur G.
Hinting broadly, I mentioned that I had always wanted to visit the Rue du Bac in Paris, and as I had hoped, Madame G invited us to her flat for dinner on the day we were to arrive in Paris, after which she would show us around.
I shall remember that visit to my dying day.
Not only was her cooking a tribute to French cuisine, but we had our first proper bath in three weeks.
Pity the poor
I had never before lived in a place without a bathroom, and now I know that poor people who have to are even worse off than I thought.
Not to be able to have my daily bath is worse than not having enough to eat.
How marvellous it is that so many people still manage to keep clean.
I'll try never again to criticize people who don't look overly well scrubbed.
Surprise
Between us, Madame G and I cooked up a little surprise for my daughter.
On our way to the Rue du Bac chapel, we got out of the bus in front of the Louvre.
My daughter looked around for the chapel before she realized we really had made it to her mecca.
She had begged me at Lourdes to take her to the Louvre as well as to the Rue du Bac, bu I had told her I didn't dare ask Madame G .
Then Madame astonished me by offering the trip itself.
Talk about sore feet! I cursed my vanity all the way up and down the corridors of the Louvre.
But talk about beauty - my jaw hung as I tried to take in the glory of the sculptures.
Did you know that the Venus de Milo has such a beautiful back?
One who knows
My daughter, who took art classes from sub A to matric and was doing fine arts at university, appointed herself as our guide.
She explained in detail why the Nike of a place that sounds like Alcatraz had no head, and another man had no feet.
"Spare me", I begged. "Till I knew how to drive, I always enjoyed a trip in the car.
Until I learn the finer points of art, I'll enjoy that."
Naughty Napoleon
At one point we entered a bottleneck entrance into a pharoah's tomb.
"Napoleon was naughty", Madame G admitted, "to steal all these beautiful objects from the countries he conquered."
But from her indulgent smile I gathered that Napoleon, right or wrong, had a great fan in Madame G.
Inside, rows of little men were carved from top to bottom.
Though they weren't much bigger than one's hand, the leg and arm muscles were evident.
Those little men could have jumped from that wall and you wouldn't have been surprised.
Those tapestries, those paintings - O glorious Rembrandt, how proud of you this fellow countryman of yours felt once again.
We saved the Mona Lisa for last, the last that is of our afternoon's trip.
I think you could spend a month going daily into the Louvre without feeling that you had taken in a fraction.
Once when I had told my dad how ugly I thought the Mona Lisa was, he said: "One day you may find yourself in the Louvre.
On that day you must look at her face from different positions.
You'll find her eyes following you everywhere."
Always looking
Remembering his words I stood in six different positions, and believe it or not, La Giaconda's mocking eyes seemed to turn on me each time, as though to say: "You thought I was ugly, did you?"
Sorry Mona. You're breathtakingly beautiful.
My daughter, being educated to appreciate art properly, took a different view of all the glory.
Yet in the end she astonished me by saying: "It was all terribly beautiful, and far more wonderful than I could have dreamt possible.
"But give me the human body as I saw it in Lourdes, wracked by disease and pain.
I'm going to leave university and start training as a nurse so that I can relieve suffering."
She did just that, much to the dismay of her father, who thereafter called her Florence Nightingale.
But I walked on air. To have a child in the medical profession had always been a dream of mine.
Catherine Nicolette
Gender choice has been a hot topic for some time now. In a nutshell, a very young child is given the chance to decide personal gender.
Based upon the result of this choice, medications and path of treatment can be begun.
To change the child to the opposite gender.
Well now. All of this has left me very thoughtful.
I count myself deeply blessed with two wise and grounded parents.
They needed to be; my teenage years weren't pretty.
Hissy fits, tears and slammed doors. It isn't easy becoming an adult.
Anyhoo. I'm so lucky that a gender choice wasn't given to me as a child, because right now, in my mature years, I'd be in deep trouble.
You see, in my very early years I didn't think - I knew - I was one of the lads.
I wore khaki boy shorts and shirts [very South African anyone?] teamed with boy sandals.
My hair being fine and in no way suitable for growing into girly styles, the option was a boy's haircut.
Mom cried the day she took my brother and myself for a walk through Joburg and someone complimented her on her two lovely twin sons.
[I was a little short for my age and he a little tall for his].
Mom was devastated, I was delighted. No greater compliment could have been paid me. A boy!
Mom - recalling her early maternal dream of a little daughter with braids and pretty printed frocks - forthwith banned boyish styles.
I was doomed to wear dresses, skirts and tops which I HATED.
My shorts had left me free to play soccer and cricket in the veldt with tomato boxes for cricket stumps.
And anyhow I didn't want to be a girl - they had to do boring stuff like washing dishes, curling their hair or needlework.
Boys got to run around the neighbourhood, fish for tadpoles after infrequent summer showers and scrape their knees while playing rugby.
But my early childhood freedom as an honorary boy was over. All was gloom until . . .
My teens. All of a sudden boys started to look a little less like delinquents with mud on their knees and more like mysterious heroes.
[I know, I know, with three brothers I should've known better, but the teens are a strange time].
I discovered the joys of spending hours winding my hair in different styles [by now my hair had decided to grow].
After sixteen I decided I was all grown up, and now looked down my nose at rugby and sidewalk marble competitions.
Now it appears I have somewhat gone back to my early years.
Nothing beats the freedom of short hair and an easy style.
Washable clothes that don't need ironing, and minimal - and shamefully, on many days, nil - makeup.
Sturdy sandals give freedom to stride, instead of the Italian shoes on which I teetered in my early twenties, much to the envy of my peers and the outrage of my poor aching feet.
The moral of the story is that, if at a very early age I had been given a choice I might well have made a gender choice which in fact was not at all compatible with my true identity.
This would have stored up suffering, disillusionment and confusion in my future.
I fully support professional assistance of those who face the challenge of gender dysphoria.
Yet I am grateful that my parents and their generation did not trouble little children at the dawn of their lives, but left us free to enjoy a glorious childhood - whether kicking balls or playing dolls . . .
Gender ideology harms children - American College of Pediatricians
http://lumierecharity.blogspot.ie/2016/04/gender-ideology-harms-children-american.html
