The year is 2026. Up here in the northern hemisphere it’s the end of winter. Down south, where you were born, it’s the end summer. It’s funny that. That when you were born I never considered where you would celebrate your 18th birthday but here we are. In the north and our earth is slowly reawakening from the cold days of winter.
It’s that time: a letter to you as you turn over another birthday, turning 18 is a little more symbolic than others, so here I am, writing you a letter (of sorts).
As you know, because it’s something I’ve mentioned in passing: having children was not something on my list of life goals. Granted, I wasn’t one of those girls who actually set any goals for life, so married by the age of 25 followed by babies x many years later never made it onto a list that I could tick off dutifully in my wizened life.
My plan to not have children wasn’t like an identity or anything. It was something kept it to myself. Call it pragmatic, but when you’re in your twenties, living and breathing the hedonistic lifestyle of restaurants and partying I guess you just know that you’re not cut out to be a mom. Besides, there really were no boyfriends in my life, so of course the notion of being a mom never featured in my dreamscapes.
Perhaps there’s also the self-indulgent, self-pity aspect to it where I never imagined being someone’s other half that made the line easier to roll off my tongue, and that I could be content to live out my life with my career, and with my nose buried in the books I loved to escape to, and to be able to continue writing letters to my friends across the world. That would have been all I needed right?
Right.
What you do know is that in April 2000, and I was 23 years old and dating Dad at the time, Uncle Colin joked about Dad and I, how cute we were together, that we should get married, so Dad proposed.
He proposed in the only way he would have: quite off the cuff, quite nonchalantly. It was as if he assumed I felt the same way as Colin and of course I was ready to marry him.
I wasn’t.
Far from it.
For the reason mostly that I was still only 23 and not ready to upend my life into a married one.
Apparently your Dad felt betrayed by my rejection, and perhaps it’s not necessary to say, but will be said regardless: a month later he broke up our 15 month relationship and we went our separate ways.
If I had spent the first 4 years of my career living like the un-heroine of a sordid hedonistic novel, the next 4 stepped it up to a new level. This is not the story to be told here.
In 2004 Dad and I reconnected. It involved a few too many beers, a rather bitchy Yours Truly, followed by the inevitable apology to your Dad (for being bitchy) when he finally, after 4 years, apologised to me for breaking my heart, and admitting it was the biggest mistake of his life when he had walked away from me in Y2K. And so we started a new relationship, him declaring his undying love for me and that he wanted children. Me? In the words of Beyoncé I told him to put a ring on it.
And so at the age of 28, I stopped working typical restaurant hours, I moved from safe Johannesburg (where I had my family close by) to a new town with a new family. We married, we put ourselves in debt for my career, we moved into a house that we needed help paying for, and Alex, you were was born.
You came upon this world via a C-Sec, probably by Gynae Design. He -my gynaecologist- did claim my pelvic bones too narrow for natural birth -but have you seen the size of me? I’m certain he was merely planning his calendar carefully. Needless to say, once again in life, I never set a ‘birth plan’, so I didn’t fight him on that choice. He clearly new what was best.
Your due date was March 6th or something. His elective surgery days were Fridays and Mondays. He gave me a choice of when you could be born before your due day: February 29th or March 3rd.
Even if I fancied being in hospital over the weekend (which I didn’t) I certainly wasn’t going to have my daughter born on February 29th, 2008.
Your birth was one of the first that day. An 8:17 arrival time. Your weight was a healthy 3.2kgs and you were tall already at birth: 52cm long.
Being a new mom to a first-born was tough.
It always is, I think. Dad chastised me for reading three parenting books simultaneously. I ignored him. I needed all the information I could get to make sure you were raised right. And that started by feeding you and changing your diaper at every feed. (In hindsight, 8 nappies a day was a massive overkill).
But when I took you for a 10 day check up at the post-natal centre, the lovely nurse must have taken one look at me, seen the anxiety written all over me and quietly closed her office door. She listened, she acknowledged and then she made me listen. She may have told me to put the books away, although in all likelihood it was probably just a suggestion to choose just 1 reference book. She suggested that I go home, and in time, when it felt right, that I should take a bath, choose some candlelight, a glass of red wine and try to relax. That I was probably doing a perfectly good job with my new born, and that I shouldn’t let the load of new motherhood climb on top of me. My anxiety, I seem to remember, was that you were feeding (off me, not a bottle) every 2 hours, that I felt I wasn’t enough, and that you were not getting what you needed from me. As a mother in general. I was terrified of breaking you. 18 years on, and sometimes I still wonder if I have broken you by our generational ways, but in March 2008, the nurse set me at ease after she put you on her scale, weighed you and happily announced that you were, in fact, feeding perfectly well and all was good. I hadn’t broken you.
And then it was you and me kiddo.
And Dad.
And I think we ruled the world back then. Sure, I didn’t really sleep for 9 months. And at 12 months you successfully achieved your first bout of gastro, either from day-care or the Hot Fudge Sundae birthday treat from Aunty B. For 3 months after that 1st birthday I didn’t know if I was coming or going. Disgusting diaper changes 10 times a day. A screaming red burning rash that wouldn’t go away. Soya milk powder to avoid a lactose intolerance. (I’d given up breast feeding finally to get sleep at 9 months) And at its peak, Dad was away hunting when your diarrhoea got so intolerable that I made an emergency appointment with your paediatrician. Gratefully there was no sinister virus invading your little body and your health became better after that. I guess you’d built up a decent immunity because you’re weren’t sick after that (apart from chicken pox when you were 5) and until your adolescence.
Your milestones came and went like relentless clockwork. Teething, mobility even if you didn’t ever crawl, you walked a little later than your peers, and when you did start talking, you were fluent in English and Afrikaans. You were a little more weary of your family in Natal, but but for all the time we got to spend with them, they were unfamiliar to you.
Dad would be here reminding me of his marathon training runs with you in a pram, how you would chatter away with your bottle of milk, insisting on a stop-over with Oumie, mostly to get jam cookies. I think he missed those moments when you got too big to keep entertained for 3 hour runs.
You were 2 and 3/4’s when it came to welcoming your sister to this world, I caught you off guard by a change in our routine. That Monday morning I stayed home until after 7am and dropped you at daycare you felt it completely necessary to wear a swimming costume for the day. I couldn’t persuade you out of it. Fortunately (for me) those kind of encounters were few and far between and you’ve pretty much towed the line since then.
But time marches on and soon we up-ended our life to move to France. I like to think it was a good age for you and Beth that we could immerse ourselves without too many issues. Remember how during that first summer we were here, that endlessly hot summer when we had no money for anything, nor any real idea of what to do out in Eckbolsheim and we would walk to the park for shade and playgrounds. You kids would remove your shoes and the locals would stare at you. If anybody was able to communicate with us in English you would tell them we were in France for holiday.
When school did start, you blindly followed us across the road to the little local school for your first year of ‘big school’. I was so unbelievably proud of watching you on your 3rd day crossing the playground with your head held high, not a tear in sight. You just did what you had to.
Your strength in this manner has been consistent throughout the nearly 13 years here. You do what you have to. It might be hard. At times I’m sure it’s terrifying, especially when things got tough with Dad. No 16 year old expects to liaise with ambulance drivers or doctors as a translator, or fills in for a nurse to do injections because it’s Easter, your Dad needs to be out of hospital, the anti-seizure meds need to be given but I’ve not yet figured out the medical system well enough to know how to arrange for a nurse. You didn’t flinch. You didn’t bat an eyelid. You put your head down and did everything you promised you would.
Lex, your maturity and peace and calmness has been one of my biggest blessings. Obviously I have no regrets that I did end up with children. Just what an honour it is that I can call you My Daughter is inexplicable. They way you interact with everyone around you is beautiful. Your open mindedness and peaceful spirit is enviable. Your love of the small things in life is truly magnificent: marshmallows in your hot chocolate, pink clouds and sunsets, Lego flowers among many others. I can only hope and believe that you have the perseverance and strength of Dad, the ability to trust yourself, the faith that all will fall into place.
Your dream of a career as a midwife is noble, and honestly? I feel it’s true to form. I hope that the world gets to see this. I want to write that story one day. Or certainly the story of your life, wherever it takes you.
Lex, You made me a mother. You’ve probably made me a better person, even if it’s been to teach me to be more tolerant. Our 18 years together has been an honour. Thank you for being a reminder to me to live.
Happy 18th Birthday, Rockstar Princess. Here’s to many more.
Pinot, Bretzels, and Cathedrals 