Nobody seems to have kept a record of any kind,
so I’m just guessing when I claim that my mother’s side of the family arrived
in South Africa
with the settlers of 1820. Her name is distinctly Scottish, but with a slight
alteration in spelling. I think this occurs commonly when large numbers of
immigrants are admitted to a region all at once.
I don’t suppose it matters, really. If anything
Scottish arrived with the immigrants, it found its way elsewhere long before I
arrived. Only the gist of a name and a strong dose of Highland
obstinance survived. The latter possibly amplified by immersion into the local
strain of mule-headedness.
Mule-headed obstinance was my maternal
grandfather’s forte. It may have been the key to his prowess as a fighter, but
he was adamant that the sport of boxing was the key to restoring the family
fortune his father had squandered. It became such an obsession that there was
no consoling him when he broke his hands in a fight and had to find another way
to pay the rent. I got to know him as a bitter, old man on pension from the
South African Postal Service.
The house he shared with my grandmother in
Grahamstown was built by the settlers of 1820. It was a little house with one
step between the road and the front door. Inside the door was a passage with a
bedroom door on either side, leading to a small sitting-room adjacent to an
enormous kitchen. The back door, just past the big, cast-iron coal stove, led
to an enormous back yard divided with a gate into a general recreation area
with a fruit-tree garden behind.
My mother was the first of their three children;
all girls. I was the first grandchild, but I was also the first boy in two
generations. I could do no wrong through my grandmother’s eyes. The first four to five years of my life are shrouded in memory-resistant fog, but some of the
clear moments include great family dinners at a big table in that huge kitchen
where the coal stove, and its oven, had been fed coal and pine cones all day.
I remember my grandmother finally winning a long-standing
argument about me being allowed wine at the table, and then her careful
explanation of how wine was for tasting, not drinking. It was what I loved most
about my maternal grandmother. She seemed to understand, without judgement, how big
and confusing the world was for me. She seemed, in fact, to have open access to
my every thought.
I was a year old when my father’s shop in my
birthplace, King William’s Town burned down. He wasn’t insured and was left
with nothing. He worked for other people after that. When the time came to
think about sending me to school, it coincided with instability in my father’s
employment.
They decided, most likely under coercion from
my grandmother, that I should live in Grahamstown until my parents stabilized.
After moving in with my grandmother however, we discovered a miscalculation. The
law was quite clear: children were to be sent to school at the beginning of the
year they turned six (no problem there), but, if a child was born in the second
half of the year, they were to enroll at the beginning of the following year
(and here we come adrift).
With all arrangements made, but being born
toward the end of September, I got to spend an initial schoolless year with my
grandmother. It was the best thing that could ever have happened to me. It is
during this period that my childhood memories come into sharp focus.
My grandmother’s general philosophy with regard
to child-rearing was fundamentally different to that of my mother. From my
mother’s perspective, children are born wild and must be forcibly manhandled
with extreme prejudice into a civilised state. My grandmother seemed to have been more of
the opinion that children are born neutral and their behaviour depends entirely
on subsequent experience.
From my point of view, it was simply heaven. I
had resigned myself to the observable fact that adults were bullying tyrants
and my grandmother’s softer approach took me by surprise. After a little
adjustment, I found I liked being responsible for my own actions. Every now and
again, my grandmother would point out some or other error, but would always
include an explanation as to what made it so.
Mornings were a special time for us. The
newspaper (Daily Mail) was always available early, and she would permit me to
read to her from it. Other things I had her permission to do included things
like unravelling her wool and other skill developing activities. Most of the day
would be spent out back with the storage shed (and all its secrets), the fruit
trees, a very cocky rooster, my wheelbarrow, and other toys.
Eventually, after a year of anticipation, my
first day of school arrived. I donned my brand-new school uniform, snatched up
my little brown school-case, and stood waiting for my grandmother at the door.
It was a pleasant walk, but best of all was the driveway of the school itself;
an avenue of Oak trees, strewn with fallen acorns. I couldn’t wait for the
opportunity to explore this new environment, and couldn’t understand the tear-streaked
faces of my peers who seemed to want to return home.
I found a classroom I suspected would be ours
and marvelled at the colours and pretty pictures on the walls. I understood the
purpose of most of the teaching aids I saw, with the exception of a set of
elongated blocks. They were all the same thickness but were of different
lengths. Similar lengths were painted similar colours. The teacher seemed very
busy that day, but I did eventually manage to ask her about these blocks. She
found a very complicated way to tell me they were for illustrating fractions.
After that first day at school, my memory dims
immediately. Only a few highlights remain, but they are usually missing at
least one sensory element. The memories I have that are in full
Technicolor, complete with tastes, smells, and emotions, are almost all from
that last year with my grandmother before starting school. I have a special
room now, hidden in the deepest recesses of my being, that captures the essence
of that year. It has been my refuge through a spate of dark and ugly times. I
am convinced I could not have survived without it.
