Category Archive for ‘Coping’ at twinutero

Archive for the 'Coping' Category

A Day

Published

on March 31, 2009

in Coping, Getting around and South Africa

. 4 Comments

sunset

I have realized that I don’t often write about our daily life in South Africa. Sometimes it seems too utterly normal to be newsworthy. Other times, it’s too bizarre to record with any sense at all.

Last Wednesday (almost a week ago already!) was a good example of this mundane/unsettling mix. The kind of day after which I ask: Um, was that normal?

My husband was up in Jo’burg on business, so I had all three kids (aged 3, 3, 4) on my own for a couple of days. Throughout those days I think: this is a phenomenal amount of work and responsibility for one mom! Phenomenal! And then I think: there are 10 year old kids in this country who look after 3 and 4 year old siblings, and there are countless single moms and grandmothers who care for broods much, much larger than mine. So get on with it!

pinksky Okay. 6 am. Turn off the house alarm, get breakfast, get the kids half-dressed, pile the kids into the car, pick up our housekeeper from the bus stop/taxi rank, return home, put the rest of the clothes on the kids, finish breakfast, put the kids back into the car and head out to preschool.

The twins are upset, partly because Daddy is away and partly because Thomas’ class is going on a field trip – and their class is not. We’re running late (as usual) so I hastily explain why Thomas isn’t going to his classroom and that I will be back to get them at noon. Still, they grip my legs at the threshold to their class. Twins: one leg each.

Back in the car with Thomas and directions to Monkey Town, our destination about 45 minutes away. I haven’t driven the route before so I’m advised (despite having written directions) to follow another mother ferrying another load of kids. Sounds good, but just two minutes out of the parking lot, she’s off like a bat out of hell in the opposite direction, not the way my paper suggests. Which way: speeding mom or written directions? I opt for the speeding mom, now just a blur down the road.

orangesky I know it’s easy to poke fun at the way people drive countries other than your own, and not always fair, but to generalize for a moment: South Africans drive fast. And hugging the yellow line so cars can pass despite oncoming traffic is routine and expected. So here I am on the back roads, heavy mist still covering the ground, heading off I don’t know where, at speeds meant for freeways.

But it’s just a school outing. I have a map. I have a cellphone. Thomas is excited. No problem.

There’s a lot of road work around Cape Town these days (in part to get ready for the World Cup in 2010). In any case, routes and travel times are unpredictable and accidents are frequent. After 30 steering-wheel-gripping minutes in the car, we are slowed and then stopped by flashing lights, sirens and running people. As we get closer, I see a white pick-up crushed and another huge truck carrying hundreds of Coke bottles smashed into a wall. Bottles are scattered all over the road and local residents are scurrying closer, either to observe or to gather any bottles still intact. I inch by, crushing glass under our tires, hoping we don’t get a flat, hoping no one was killed.

pinkmoon We’re now behind a rickety pick-up carrying wooden crates at impossible angles. The crates are held onto the truck by people, also at impossible angles and the truck is wavering back and forth over the yellow line. The road is narrowed by more construction and I swerve out to pass. I find myself just meters from the grill of an oncoming 18-wheeler. Expletives. I swerve back into my lane. Thomas asks about the expletives. I am now officially frazzled.

But we find Monkey Town and drive slowly to our parking spot. I unbuckle Thomas from his seat and we proceed on our school outing, viewing monkeys, eating snacks, running around. Like any school outing.

When it’s time to return to the school, I’m the first out of the parking lot. I know the way now, and I have to be back in time for the twins. We don’t have much back-up here; closest family is half way around the world, our few friends have kids of their own to look after and my husband is several hours away by plane. So I backtrack along the roads at a conscientious but decent clip. I hand out spare change at several intersections and decline to purchase cellphone chargers at those same intersections. Thomas sleeps. I relax. We’re back at the school in good time – but all the other moms are there before me. How? I don’t have time to ask. The twins are waiting and I have another 8 hours before any of them will sleep.

Photos are of the sky around our house. Amazing skies here!

Had

Published

twinutero

on March 18, 2009

in Coping and Play

. 2 Comments

So the twins, Alex and Jon, spend much of their time these days refining the art of bickering. I didn’t know 3 year olds could be so good at quibbling - or at duping their mother.

A few days ago, they launched right into it after breakfast. The topic was shapes, I think, whether a particular shape was long enough to qualify as a rectangle or whether it remained a square.

Alex took the lead: “It’s a square!”

Then Jon: “No! It’s a rectangle!”

Alex: “It IS a square!”

“Is not!”

“Is!”

Alex then moved from the table to the couch, presumably so that he could shout his entrenched opinion across the room. Back and forth they went, getting more and more riled, until they were screaming and angry, or so it seemed.

I had intervened several times, though half-heartedly I admit, and they had ignored me. But when the yelling hit that pitch known to drive parents crazy, I was good and ready to sort out the offending shape.

Before I could, however, Alex jumped down from the couch, arms waving and tone changed completely: “Okay Jon,” he said authoritatively, “now you say ‘is’ and I say ‘is not.’” And he paced back to the couch like a movie director with a deadline.

They picked up their “argument” right where they’d left off. Same intensity; different roles.

I felt like the camera had panned back, revealing the set, crew and the unsuspecting audience - that is, me.

Er…right speech?

Published

twinutero

on February 23, 2009

in Coping and Guilt

. 2 Comments

Like most parents, I try to watch my words, knowing that little children are little sponges and words are like water.

I have no qualms censoring their picture books, replacing words like “hate” and “stupid” with “don’t like” and “a bit silly.” I’m still surprised by how often these words show up in books or cartoons meant for preschoolers.

But (like most parents?) I sometimes slip-up especially when incessant demands coincide with too little sleep and general chaos in the house. Both my husband and I have rushed to edit these slip-ups, prompting the kids to ask such questions as “Why do you say “Ah, bucket!?”

Then we smile optimistically and think, Whew, close save!

Or not. Kids always surprise, always take in more than I expect and they gave me a small reminder last week. I had just picked up them from preschool and we were driving home when the following conversation (recorded here with some trepidation) evolved:

“Thomas, how was school today?”

“Mommy, school is fucking me.”

The car lurched forward into the intersection and I just managed to shift gears before stalling.

“Thomas, please don’t say that. It’s not very nice. There are other ways to say it like ”I didn’t have fun at school today,” or “There’s something about school I don’t like.’”

Alex pipes up: “Only Mommy and Daddy say fuck.”

Not to be left out, Jon advises, “But if you’re frustrated, it’s ok to say fuck.”

I was hunched over the wheel by that time, trying very hard to concentrate on driving and thinking, Golly gee whiz they’re smart… and impressionable… and very, very good teachers.

Assimilation

Published

twinutero

on February 13, 2009

in Coping and South Africa

. 1 Comment

assim A few weeks ago, we took the kids to a playground not far from our house. We had only been there once before and that was a year ago, just after moving here. Those two visits, a year apart, are like two snapshots of our lives in South Africa, and the differences between them shows me how much we have assimilated.

On our first visit to the playground, I was struck by the mid-summer heat: the grass dried into tiny needles; the scorching metal slide; the swings, made from old car tires, also too hot to touch. I was bewildered by the fact that although we were smack in the middle of suburbia, there were no other children in sight. The only people in sight were workers piled into pick-ups trucks being ferried to or from a job. The houses surrounding the park were walled and many had their own play structures sequestered inside. It seemed a long, long way from our neighbourhood park in Ottawa, where on a hot summer’s day, dozens of kids and parents would crowd around the sprinklers and clamor over the jungle gyms.

But a year later, visiting that same playground in suburban Cape Town didn’t seem so strange. It was still hot, but I expected it to be hot. I checked the slide and swings before letting the kids use them. I shook the dry blades of grass out of their shoes. I didn’t expect crowds of children, because I know that lots of kids, around here at least, play only in their backyards and also because it was midday - that is hot! I’m used to “bakkies” full of workers descending on leafy surburbia, though will probably never get used to the underlying problems of poverty and disparity. Still, the houses surrounding the park looked relatively normal to me. Yes, they were walled, but only a few had burglar bars and I didn’t see any razor wire. After a few minutes, a young boy tottered over to the park with his nanny. At least I assume it was his nanny because that’s what I’ve come to assume.

Both at that park and elsewhere in our daily lives, the unusual has become the usual.

Sort of.

I haven’t really thought of myself as an “ex-pat” while living here, much less an ex-pat wife. The term conjures up cliquey groups of bored women having wine-drenched conversations about the home country. It seems, almost by definition, to preclude assimilation, to put up a safety-net of “not really here!”. I know that’s not the case (check here for info on ex-pat women). Still, I wonder, how much someone who is not a citizen and has no plans for long-term stay ever really assimilates into a foreign culture, despite wanting to. I wonder what makes home, home. Why feeling understood is so vital. Why we gravitate to people like us. Why, some days, I’d trade sunny weather and a fine ostrich braai, for snow and a bucket of maple butter.