My apparent failure had a hidden meaning

LUKY:
WHEN A NEARBY TOWNSHIP CAME INTO BEING MANY YEARS AGO, I became very much interested in its growth and development.
  A friend, Medical Mission Sister Francisca, did a great job with the children of the the township, and she sometimes invited us along. I helped her to find a secondhand caravan, the children's first clubhouse, and introduced her to Guide leaders.
  Sister Francisca started her own Girl Guides in the township and some of her girls got the highest awards.

Picture taker
  One Sunday Sister Francisca  took my husband along to photograph the first holy Communion of her children. He had his own photograph developing room at the time.
  Travelling along the muddy road, he was surprised to her Sister Francisca say: "Excuse me, please, I have to stop to ring the church bell."
  Craning his neck to see the tower, in vain, he waited.
  Sister stopped the car, opened the boot, took out a bell and started shaking it con gusto.
  "That should fetch them", she grinned as she got back into the car.

Taste of ink 
  She and I started a little newspaper for the children, called Kinderkaskenades. It had a devoted readership.
  We had a madly exciting adventure story, which ended every month on a disastrous note.
  I, the author, was as worried about new developments as my readers, but all ended well with the good guy walking off into the sunset with the beautiful heroine, a very chastened bad guy making resolutions for the future. I don't kill off my anti-heroes, I convert them.

Folded
  We had a letter column and a monthly competition, for which the children made drawings. My daughter illustrated the paper and we both had lots of fun.
  Then my husband became ill, and alas, Kinderkaskenades died.
  One of the children who wrote me poignant letters was a boy called David Smith. The children addressed me as Tant Saartjie, such was my title as editor.

Good home
  David belonged to a religious family and was well looked after. I remember him specially because he was a really gifted artist. He used to draw marvellous pictures with his letters. He won one of my competitions, and could by rights have won them all.
  In the end he wrote that he was going to boarding school. From Sister Francisca I heard that he passed his matric exams and got a good job. He was still studying when she left the township for Belgium.

Out of the blue
  One day I was working in the office when some people came in to see my boss.
  "Please tell him the Smith family has arrived," they said, mentioning the name of the township.
  I was delighted, never having met David in the flesh.
  "Which one of you is David?" I asked before ringing my boss.
  A very personable young man in his twenties stepped forward in some surprise.
  "Tell me David, do you still draw so beautifully?" What bafflement!
  Amid smiles all round I made myself known.

Long-lost aunt
  I didn't see David for some years. Then one day I had to call on him on business. He didn't recognise me.
  "I'm your Tant Saartjie", I said. That was worth a smile!
  He showed me the site of the Catholic Church which was finally being built, a tribute to Sister Francisca's efforts, and spoke of her with great love.
  When we said goodbye he told me that he was studying for his BA through the University of South Africa.
  I was a Unisa dropout myself at the time, so I felt worried about his continuing.
  But as luck would have it that same day I received a letter from a Coffee Break reader:
  "When in 1975 I saw that you had enrolled with Unisa, that was it. If Luky can cope with all her busy days, so can I. So I write a heartfelt thank you for your inspiration to a working housewife who took the plunge, graduating in April with a BA. I'm sorry that you did not go on, but you kept me going, and when I look back, it was a time of excitement and enjoyment."
  I had often wondered what my previous attempts at joining the intelligentsia had achieved. I felt that everything one does is for a purpose. Now I knew.
  Many years later I was once more to join the ranks of University students; and remembered my previous attempt with nostalgia...
  Please put my friend David Smith on your prayer list, and all students that they may persevere with their studies.

Catherine Nicolette:
  I had the great fun and inestimable privilege of growing up in Welkom near the convent of the Medical Missionaries of Mary Sisters. They were gracious, educated and caring women of God whom I loved dearly. Being so far from my own aunts at the time, these Sisters who daily took an interest in the Whittle childrens' lives were - to all intents and purposes - members of my extended family.
  If I had worries or need of guidance and didn't want to trouble my extremely hard working parents, I would turn to them. A chat with a cup of hot chocolate and thick white doorstep slice of bread with fresh country butter liberally covered with muisjes and I would be as light as air, all anxiety gone. 

Young volunteer
  From time to time Sr Francisca used to take me to the township. I used to go out to give a hand with whatever she needed doing. Though I think she did most of the doing as well as making me feel I was her right hand volunteer. Oh, how I loved Sr Francisca! 
  I smiled when I read about Dad's experience. The first time I went out as volunteer with Sister, the same thing happened with me. Only Sister let me ring the heavy brass bell. I was still short in stature, so was somewhat bent over by the smooth wooden weight of the bell handle. I gloried in the clanging sound which called all to worship. I really felt part of things.

Confirmation
Sr Thabitha, another of the beloved Medical Mission Sisters, was my sponsor at Confirmation. I was proud and thrilled to have her as my sponsor. 
  Before we went in to the church, she gravely looked at me, and said, 'I could talk to you forever, Nicolette. But I won't. I'll tell you only one thing. Don't go through with this ceremony if you don't intend to carry on going to Church after you leave school. Otherwise, tell me and we will both go home now.'
  I didn't need to think long; in fact, I didn't need to think at all. I laughed cheerily, drew her arm through mine and said, 'Let's go on in. I have every intention of carrying on going to Church.'
  She looked closely at me for a few moments, and then went in with me.
She was right; Confirmation was a serious step. And especially after her words, I never took the sacrament lightly.

  Every now and again one of my regular dreams is of the Medical Mission Sisters. In fact, a few nights ago I dreamt I was in a Church. I knelt praying in one of a row of pews. In front of me a number of women sat praying, their beautifully held heads as familiar to me as my own. Then as I greeted each Sister delightedly by name, their heads turned around towards me. Those luminous smiles broke forth again after so many years; my dear surrogate aunts -and overwhelming gladness filled my heart.

  I have never forgotten their goodness to me.

Farewell Mass 
Last year Mom and I were invited to a Farewell Mass for one of the dedicated Priests in the Parish who had laboured in the harvest locally since I was a tiny girl. We drove through beautifully paved streets lined with gracious trees, and stopped in front of a beautiful Church. The bell was ringing to worship, and as I went in there was something familiar about the whole scene . . . a sense of deja vu, as it were.
  As I sat in the congregation, suddenly it struck me. The last time I had been in this area, I was a teenager ringing a bell at the end of a muddy road along which a donkey cart was trundling along.
  The Church office was the trunk of Sister Francisca's car, and we had waited for the children to assemble for catechism under a large thorn tree. Veld with howling wind and some spattered raindrops had stretched on either side.
  Now I sat in a splendid Church, with exquisitely worked tapestries on the walls and soft sunshine wavering splashes of colour through the windows. The liturgical music beat steadily to the cadence of voices, and rows of parishioners attested to the vibrancy of worship and happiness in the place.
  And I sat remembering long ago . . . 

Blessings, Sister Francisca and Sisters, and the Priests of South Africa.
  You planted the seeds, and we reap the joy.

Medical Missionaries of Mary
http://mmmworldwide.org/ 
Spirit of God
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_EYMoTyVWYI 
Music of Sr Miriam Therese Winter, MMM 
http://www.hymnary.org/person/Winter_Miriam 



With thanks to mmmworldwide.org
Some names have been changed
Image by Catherine Nicolette

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