I like to think that I’m learning, growing, becoming more like the person I hope to become.
It’s not an easy process, change. Selin told me yesterday that I’m brave. That it was courageous of me to have looked at my life and decided that change needed to happen, and that regardless of how hard things are and might be in terms of learning from my mistakes and taking a step forward, that the most important part is that I saw that I needed to change.
I don’t really know how successful I’ve been so far. When I talked to my dad yesterday, he told me that this repression and denial runs in the family. It made me think about the image of my ouma that my great-aunt gave me when I was asking about her. When my grandfather died, Ouma turned up for dinner perfectly attired: curled hair, pearls, make-up, the whole deal, and for anyone who didn’t know her, they couldn’t possibly have guessed that her husband had just had a heart attack. The stories I hear about her terrify me a little because depending on who I talk to I get such absolutely different pictures. To most people, including her younger sister, my second cousins, the other nieces and nephews and relatives, she was this perfect lady. Beautiful, intelligent, talented, dedicated to my grandfather like you couldn’t believe. She was the perfect wife. But then again, she gave up everything she had to be that perfect wife. She was university educated — this was in the late 1930s in South Africa, not exactly typical. She was a musician and singer, highly accomplished and respected, fiercely intelligent, and she gave up her life to to be a wife. She never worked, except to teach music to the nieces and nephews and later the grandchildren. She learned languages and made flower arrangements and did everything in her power to make my grandfather happy. And then when he died, she was completely lost because she had become so completely dependent upon having to someone to tell her what to do.
This is my dad’s view of things. None of the other relatives saw her as someone who was easily manipulated, or in need of guidance. She was so kind, and openhearted, and eloquent, and above all respected by everyone who met her. Her guise of perfection was brilliant and everyone who met her fell in love with her. It’s too bad that her kids hated her.
I’ve been told by some of my relatives that I am so my grandmother’s granddaughter. I was the youngest in the family, and she absolutely adored me. In a book of poetry my aunt wrote when she died, one of the verses is actually about me. In a large extended family where she tried not to show favourites, it was impossible for her to hide her adoration for this elfin little child, full of curiosity and absolutely adoring of her grandmother. I remember spending time with her. It seems that I have inherited more of her characteristics than I had ever imagined. The good with the bad, I suppose. I just don’t want to become a person who glosses over the bad, puts on a perfect persona and allows someone else to make all of my decisions for me. Not that that would have necessarily been the path I was taking, but I more than ever want to try to figure out a way to look at the options and not automatically pick the easier option — the path that takes me the route of comfort rather than facing my life head on and accepting it as it is.
