Rainy Day Musings....

Daniel's aunt Donna recently gave me two pictures of him as a little boy. Staring at the photographs, I immediately saw his current personality popping out at me from shiny images on the old waxy paper. I saw a little Daniel stooped over intently concentrating on something Paul was showing him, his big diaper popping out underneath him. (He looked a little old to be wearing a diaper, but I'm not saying anything :) In the other, he sweetly smiled as he reticently stretched out his hand to touch a goat. My Daniel is still the same: kind, gentle and very clever. Able to sit and concentrate on something for hours on end. Perhaps I was projecting my image of him today onto those pictures, but I think one can tell a lot about a person by looking at the personality traits that develop during childhood.

These pictures inspired us to get a scanner, something I have wanted to do for a long time. I have started scanning old pictures of my family's life in South Africa and will soon start documenting baby Bear's (hehe...that's D) early years as well.

If I stare long enough at the picture of my friends romping round the pool in Orange Grove, I can feel myself transported there: Walking down the long driveway with half-rotting grapes hanging from the vine on the trellis above, running down the brick stairs that led to the back yard, and me shamelessly grilling pounds of meat on the braai.

However, any notions that I entertain of returning to visit the house are readily dismantled. Because, you see, in my mind I am transported to the house as it was in 1991. When I returned to Capetown for the first time in many years, it seemed so small. Not only in size (because I was bigger) but the anticipation of seeing a place so dear to me immediately led to disappointment. The magical place of my childhood holidays had been replaced by small chaotic roads, disorder and destroyed beauty.

Childhood is a mixed experience for a lot of people. Many people say that their childhood years are the worst ones of their lives. I certainly have a lot of painful memories and waves of melancholy sometimes flush over me when I thinkof my youth. At the same time I think we are all in love with the idea of childhood. Freshness, hope, imagination: these are the things that childhood ideally represents for most of us.

I have come to reconcile the Capetown of my childhood to the Capetown I know now and for the most part believe that South Africa has not lost its wild beauty. As for the little brick house in Orange Grove, for now, I prefer the place as it exists in my mind.