Unlike many of my small yet faithful readership, I have been absent for several weeks from these pages. My thanks go out to those persistent readers who flatter me greatly by their repeated visits to my site in spite of my recent silence. I just hope that you will all forgive my lapse and continue your visits.
Perhaps some had thought that I had been the target of crime, with a dash of xenophobia thrown in for good measure. No, nothing quite so dramatic, thankfully.
I have been absent for rather more prosaic – and, it must be said, selfish – reasons.
Firstly, I have to confess that I find writing to be extremely hard work – and which is probably self-evident from the quality of what I have produced thus far. I have always been mildly word- and number-blind at the best of times and this can be disadvantageous when one’s brain races faster than the ability to write or type out thoughts into an acceptable format. It can take me several days to produce one of my little contributions.
And despite sharing the fault of many writers – namely, that of having the arrogance in assuming that what one wishes to express is worthy of the time and attention of one’s hoped-for readers – I tend to avoid until the last possible minute actually creating the masterful missive, waiting until the urge to present my particular and peculiar ideas can be restrained no longer.
A driven firebrand clearly I am not…
Secondly, my office is fiery hot in summer and numbingly cold during winter. Owing to the fact that our beloved telecommunications monopoly, Telkom, no longer wishes to provide fixed-line telephone/fax/Internet services to my suburb (just 40 km from the centre of Johannesburg), I have had to resort to the incredibly more expensive and temperamental wireless services offered by a local cell phone network – whose signals are unavailable within the body of my house. Consequently, I have had to move my office into a partially completed and totally uninsulated outbuilding some distance from the house where, on good days, I can receive a signal just barely adequate to conduct my modest business and creative activities.
Today, with an outside temperature of around 19 degree Celsius and 8 degrees Celsius inside my spacious storeroom/barn, it is not too bad. Yet my fingers are still stiff with cold, my feet no longer part of my body and my arms and torso almost immobile because of the layers of clothing encasing my shivering frame.
Thirdly, since my last post last month I had the chance to earn a couple of bucks, so had to take a few days chasing some consultancy work – regular full-time and permanent work is hard to come by for a white man in his fifties in South Africa these days. As mentioned in a previous post, I like to eat on occasion.
Fourthly, I have been severely distracted by some immediate family concerns.
The first of these has been the impending permanent departure from South Africa of my daughter and her little family. At last, she has had enough of the crime, the corruption, the utter indifference to levels of professional service delivery and the inability for a person of her considerable energies and skills to progress in life merely because of her European ancestry.
This truly is a tragedy for South Africa. Even allowing for the fact that she is my daughter and my resultant natural bias, I have come across few people who have demonstrated anything like the grit, doggedness and sheer natural ability of this young woman. Having divorced her pathetic and selfish excuse of a husband (and whom I shall be making a point of seeking out one of these fine days), penniless and with a small daughter of her own in tow, she has exhibited a strength of character that saw her not only raise her child into someone I am proud of but also drove her to carve out a life and career to the maximum possible under the circumstances of present-day South Africa.
Her new life will be no easier to begin with. She will, however, be allowed to take her career to whatever level she desires; the only obstacles she will face in her new home will be those imposed by her ambitions and her talents.
I shall greatly miss her and my first granddaughter.
The second family concern that has been occupying my attention in recent weeks relates to my second granddaughter.
Born three months premature last month, this little pink angel has been fighting for her life since being so rudely thrust out into the world. Fractionally larger than my outstretched hand when I first saw her the day after her delivery, she has repeatedly faced the spectre of death – including surgery on a heart little larger than my thumbnail (and, in the process, reducing the surgeon and his team to tears as they worked their incredible skills on that tiny body).
Expecting, at any moment, to hear the worst, this little girl has fought back time and time again. We all thought that the end had come early this week when, hours after the heart surgery, she crashed catastrophically. One of the nursing staff, bless her, even hung around in the waiting room for several hours that same night – after the end of her twelve-hour shift – just to be there.
After counseling my son and his wife, the decision was reached by the doctors to take the baby off the ventilator. The family gathered to say their farewells to her and to await the arrival of the doctor who would be switching the machines off.
The machines are still running. Incredibly, joyously, just one hour before the due time, my little granddaughter, whom I had angrily accepted that I would never know, rallied and, for the time being at least, re-stormed the ramparts of life yet again.
Even those most cynical of creatures, the doctors and nurses, described the recovery as ‘miraculous’.
Who knows what the next hours, days, weeks and months will bring. Perhaps all of the terrors and fears of the last few weeks will be for naught. I feel most, of course, for my son and daughter-in-law. My desperate hopefulness can be as nothing compared to theirs. The little that my wife and self have been able to do has been confined largely to babysitting our three-year old grandson and trying to distract him away from his bewilderment and anxiety at all the upset within his family at present.
To those who gave thought and prayer to the newest member of our family in her predicament I offer my thanks – even though I have never met or known most of you. To the doctors and nurses at the Medi-Clinic where this little drama is being played out, I offer my thanks for your skill and concern.
To my new granddaughter – be with God and give it all you have.
Spearpoint.
12th June 2008
Spearpoint's Points 