My recent South African trip led to many conversations during which I tripped over some glorious new-to-me one-liners. Perhaps they’re old hat to many South Africans, grafted into common usage, but I found each rather refreshing.
“Keep your head out of that noose,” said a woman to a friend on hearing of a complex domestic issue and an invitation to comment. A rather graphic picture I thought, an ear-catching way to alert others to being trapped in toxic triangles and a rather hard image to forget.
“My mother would always encourage us to be a ‘rainbow in someone’s cloud’,” said an avid Mercury reader I bumped into at the mall.
I chuckled, asked her to repeat it and, when she did, she said, “please use it in a column soon.”
“That’s a wave you don’t want to ride,” said the seasoned surfer who confessed he’d almost forgotten Mothers Day was just around the corner.
While I did enjoy multiple cups of tea in both homes and restaurants and repeatedly heard that tea makes everything feel better — and I affirm it often does — I also heard a man say in passing and in competition with the inherited British belief in a good cup of tea that “there’s nothing like a good bunny* with lots of gravy to make everything feel better.”
*Durban and surrounding areas “bunny chow” — an Indian Curry served in a half-loaf of white bread.
Join me as I continue my journey toward being a low-maintenance person:
Take care of yourself as best as you are able. If possible, pay your own way. Live in your own head, but more important, get out of the heads of others. Others want — or don’t — want to do their own thinking.
Offer information as needed and only to those who need it. Listen to yourself. Filter content. Negative talk about others reveals nothing about others but everything about you.
Delete “you should, – ought, – must,” from your vocabulary even if you do think you know better or are more experienced.
Take others at their word unless you have solid reasons not to. Believe people when they tell you who they are. People constantly communicate who they are but if you are already convinced you already know you will miss what they are telling you and only hear and see what fits with your already-made-up-notions. Observe without prejudice.
Chase no one for anything.
Resist the urge to convince others of what you think, believe, support, and desire to defend and know it is impossible to persuade the already convinced.
People are always communicating. There is no such thing as “no communication.” This is a cop-out catchphrase used when a person prefers to avoid or deny what is being communicated.
I am grateful to the hundreds of new and old friends I encountered, the devoted newspaper readers I met both randomly and at events. I loved teaching at Youth With A Mission (YWAM) and University of The Nations in both Namibia and in the Western Cape. Any smidgen of hopelessness I may briefly entertain about the future was quickly dismissed while in dialogue with hopeful and faithful and motivated students.
I loved attending a family wedding in the Howick area of KZN.
The family wedding – as all weddings do – demanded I re-enter the full sway of family dynamics – none of us escapes such dynamics despite distance and time – and to do so was invigorating, inspiring. It was a beautiful event reflecting the love and commitment of generations of moms and dads and aunts and uncles and family and friends from who came from near and afar.
I seldom travel away from home for a full month and now, before I board my homebound flight, I am feeling some of the expected stresses of being away. It is indeed time for me to return to my sons and to our community in Indiana, USA.
What thoughts keep you awake or greet you first on waking?
What thoughts can you not shake?
I will let you in on what’s on my mind if you are interested.
If you are not, I understand.
I often sigh and move on when I receive a parallel invitation.
In November 2023 had the joy of teaching young adults near Lome, Togo.
I noticed groups of children walking to and from school. The chatter (in French) caught my ears; the neat and proudly worn uniforms, my eyes. The shared joy and delight of the children touched and warmed my soul.
I asked questions here and there to find that the school is indeed on the same property where I was teaching and run by the same organization.
I requested a visit.
It’s a bamboo L shaped structure. In one corner of a sandy play area there is a single netball hoop with no net. The student body of about 250 children, Kindergarten to about Grade 6, under the tutelage of about 10 faculty, using merger supplies, are heads down and studying, reading, or writing notes off more-than-used chalkboards.
In one room there was beautiful singing.
As I walked through each bamboo room I saw joy and serious study occurring.
I found out that when the weather changes all are sent home to safety until bad weather passes.
Contact me if you’d like to assist – and build a classroom or two.
If you are a taxpayer in the USA and give a gift (large or small) your gift to OPENHAND INTERNATIONAL, INC will be tax deductible.
When engaging those of advanced age, approach with deep respect, kindness, openness.
Expect to be enthralled, to learn.
Besides, in a flash of time — yes, 30, 40, even 60 years, is a flash of time — and it’ll be you.
Listen rather than speak.
Learn, rather than try to teach.
Wait, hold onto yourself.
Offer time for a reflective exchange.
Imagine how you’ll want to be treated in a few years — and do that.
The life experience embodied in the person before you, if you’ll take the time to hear, will astound you. But, it requires necessary time to hear and the power to resist the urge to do all the talking.
Be aware of chasing away an elderly person’s desire to engage you because you talk too much. I’ve seen Elderly People resort to silence rather than compete with the know-it-all nature that often comes with youth.
Ask questions and be willing to listen. Ask about former careers and accomplishments. Ask about love and loss and grief and recovery and you may learn more about love and commitment than you imagined. Remind yourself, as you listen, that being elderly is not a liability but an invaluable asset to adult sons and daughters and grandchildren and great grandchildren and to society at large.
Engage exactly how you will hope to be engaged a few years from now.
Gut wrenching for the Smiths from a dozen angles while also displaying a vast array of flowers, tropical, indoor-outdoor whites, greens, shades of purple, yellows, sturdy, strong and luscious, endless developing beauty — reaching for sunlight, proclaiming life and charisma — even within our motherless home.
It’s the early 2000s and Mother’s Day: the boys wake, wander into my room, at least one son is aware of the day given the many things he had to draw, cut, glue and color at school for me, his dad-mom. He’s also performed in “Mother’s Day Bunny ” where I was the only dad in attendance. The school’s admirable efforts to include us, or rather efforts to never exclude us, get a little ridiculous but I play along lest some real mother get whiff that my children be faced with the truth that they don’t know their mothers, a reality from which we, in the privacy of our home, have always openly addressed. Blanket strewn over his shoulders and with an inspiring attempt at positivity, he says, “Happy Mama-Day, Dadda,” and I embrace him and then his brother trailing dutifully behind and I leave it at that.
We meander through the morning, sometimes sluggishly, but with momentary caffeine-stirred urges to “make it memorable for the boys.”
At lunch the restaurant tables are packed with girls-and-boys-with-mothers and flowers and gifts piled high with color and sweetness. Octogenarian mothers swoop in to hug multiple generations vying for hug-inclusion as raucous laughter buzzes through the air.
Friends see us and platitudes flow as they do when people don’t know how to talk about loss or abandonment or death while attempting kindness to quell their glaring uneasiness.
“You’re in a better place.”
“God knew your dad could be both.”
“You know it’s extra special to be ‘chosen,’” a mother says to my son as if she’s the first to offer adoption this spin.
I’m uncertain. Should I laugh, cry or lead the boys out the door and flee the overload of the boys don’t have?
Instead, we’re three-strand strong, and face it as if nothing can touch the Smith-bulwark.
It’s Mother’s Day and about 2015: my first-born off-handedly reports he’s going to make a gift for his mom and, his car loaded with equipment, he leaves. Mid-afternoon he returns, buries himself in his room to emerge hours later with a 4-or-so minute movie that still blows my mind every time I watch it. I don’t know if his mother ever saw her gift on YouTube but within 24 hours he was interviewed on a local news station and his “letter” had traveled the world. I have a hunch his mother did see it but I know she did not respond. A few years later he reached out very directly to her to be firmly and gently rebuffed.
“Adoption is a very powerful tool,” I whispered into his ear as I tried to comfort my distraught son as he sobbed and sobbed.
“Thank you for the choice you made. I didn’t mean to upset you,” he wrote, time-stamped seconds after his biological mother expressed her wish not to hear from him again. The boy was ashen, disoriented, for days.
Yes. Adoption is a powerful tool.
Rest assured, my boys’ mothers, despite their physical absence, have been more than present in our lives. They are not sitting proud at our all-male out-of-the-way Mother’s Day table, but they are ever-present guests as we steel ourselves for life together.
Nate did not learn his gentleness from me. He did not get his unflappable nature from me. I’ve spent much of my life in a hurry, and, apart from when on sports fields or a basketball court, he’s never rushed a moment in his life, not even when chasing the dog. I didn’t teach him to anticipate when I’m not feeling well and to silently — late in the night — enter my bedroom and place ice water next to my bed in the event I may want it.
I like to think we as a family are generally kind people, but, I tell you, Thulani’s natural kindness cannot be taught, tutored or trained.
He was born kind.
Kindness tumbled down through generations of his kin despite the traumas and brutality they knew. Kindness flowed into my boy from unknown generations like the mother’s milk he never tasted.
My sons’ mothers may not be at the table with us on Mother’s Day but I meet them every day in the beauty with which each of the generous women stamped their claim on the lives of our shared, fabulous sons.
Had I an opportunity to reunite with my sons’ mothers I’d say a deep and welled up “thank you” for the gifts of two magnificent humans with whom I’ve shared the last 26 years. I’d say “thank you” for the bravery it took each woman to make her generous choice.
I salute you, your bravery, your untold story, your capacity to engage in enduring, long-distance and painful, love.
I shall reply more fully soon. I’m at a wedding in the midlands and quite busy with family.
I will be in a position for a better reply soon.
May I publish your letter on my website. If yes, do you want your name, or any other details withheld?
Rod Smith
————
May 7, 2024
Dear Rod
I am pleased that my sharing with you of the changes in my destiny, have been a joy for you, Rod!
I can compare this message to a sermon – one is never sure whether the seed has fallen on rich soil or fallow ground/rocks.
You have my permission to publish my letter on your website – with no withholding of any of the content, nor any changes needed.
I notice that the family wedding in the Midlands, is followed by a busy programme being imminent!
Regards,
Gary
—————-
May 3, 2024
Dear Rod
Earlier this week I read your response to the fund-raising decision on behalf of Dale College, by the new incoming Northwood headmaster, Dr Garth Shaw.
Your comment mirrored the many pearls of wisdom which I have read since your first contributions (2001) to the column in the Mercury.
After 38 years in the banking world, and aged 58 years, I was not happy to ride out another huge change with a Barclays, UK, takeover looming over Absa Bank.
It was amazing how a colleague anonymously dropped off your article dated 4/4/2001.
Question: I’m tired of the “rat race” yet too poor to retire. Any suggestions?
Answer: If all you have is money, indeed you are poor.
Your message was very clear to me!
As one of the leaders in the province, I was aware of the enormity of the early retirement, by 5 years, a decision which I needed to embrace.
That was a turning point in my life, and career – and I have you and your message to thank, as I approach my 80th birthday this weekend.
Early in 2002 I retired, and I was well looked after by my employer.
My wife and I spent the next 10 months converting our family home at 71 Old Mill Way, Durban North, into what was ultimately a large 4-star bed and breakfast – Cornerstone! It was biblically named, and over the next 13 years we hosted 13 Heartbeat Healing ministry weekends, on behalf of St Martin’s church, in Chelsea Drive.
It was time to move on, and late in 2016 we sold the house and business, and moved to Doone Retirement Village in Manors, Pinetown.
Suffice to say we are very active in numerous activities and ministries – “Here I am, send me” is our witness.
Both of our grandsons are at Northwood, They will enjoy and benefit from the quality leadership of Dr Shaw, from the beginning of the 3rd term.
Thank you for your words of truth and wisdom, which changed my life path for the better!
Behold — look closely, observe, see, acknowledge, identify — your Mother.
We all have or had one.
No matter what your memory, treasured for its overwhelming sense of love and acceptance and unconditional positive regard, or the sad antithesis of all that is good and associated with good mothers and mothering: behold your mother.
Consider your mother as you would fine and treasured art, a masterpiece and, then, give thanks.
Remember the good times.
Recall the hard times, recall the challenges you gave to your mother and the challenges your mother brought to you.
The woman you called mother brought to the unique relationship with you, experiences and heartbreaks and history of which you, as a child would know nothing.
Yet, you’d know and experience and benefit, and even suffer the impact of it all, all she is, or was.
Behold, living or dead, known or unknown, behold, appreciate your mother.
There is something wildly healthy about doing so be your mother saint or villain, victor or victim, well or unwell.
—
Emotional Wellness and Living An Authentic Life will be my topics at The Westville Bowling Club on May 9, 2024. Please email Shirley@ShirleyWilliams.co.za for details in the event you’d like to attend.
——-
Sunday, May 12, 2024 I shall have the privilege of delivering the Mothers Day sermon at the two morning services (7:30 and 9:15am) at Musgrave Methodist Church on the Berea.
———
Saturday 11th from 9-12 with Terry Angelos at ST. Michael’s in Umhlanga…..
I saw something beautiful today, an expression of true leadership, at a crowded domestic airport restaurant.
The Springbok Rugby Captain, #SiyaKolisi the athlete who led the team to win the recent Rugby World Cup, sat facing away from the crowds, trying to have a peaceful breakfast.
I counted. Twenty five people of all ages — in groups and alone — asked for selfies, autographs, books to be signed, and for photographs with their children. He hugged, laughed, chatted, and gave time to people, especially the young lads wanting to engage. At one point fans began lining up.
The gentleman was a model of grace and kindness, expressing zero frustration or annoyance at the multiple interruptions to his breakfast and the phone calls he was apparently trying to make.
Kolisi was the perfect contrast to the baseball hall-of-fame star I witnessed chase a child away with “I don’t sign autographs” to a young man whose face I saw light up on seeing his hero.
Jennifer Arthur (my sister) – meets the Double back-to-back Springbok winning Rugby World Cup Captain.
Kindly contact Shirley@ShirleyWilliams.co.za in the if you desire to attend one of multiple events I’ll be participating in next week.
I hope you are doing well! I love watching your travels, reading your posts. I am curious if you could touch on one topic for me. It can be a post so others who are struggling can also read it.
Will you please put into perspective why someone my son’s personality and challenges tends to stay to himself and struggle with anxiety. He has lost 5 schoolmates to gun violence since 2020. One was a best friend (since they were 3) who lived across the street from us until his death. Since that death, my son has been more angry, sad, irritated with me and one of his brothers. He is not hateful, just different. He also gave up competitive sport after his friend’s death. He still hugs, loves, smiles, but something is gone from inside him. You know my son and that’s why I am asking you. As a mom, I am so sad.
This is the first time I am sharing this.
Thanks.
Name withheld
Dear Mother
Yes. I know your son. And, I know you.
I grieve reading about the extent of your loss; your family’s loss, and specifically your son’s multiple losses.
I can only imagine the impact this has had on all of your caring, lovely family.
By nature, your now-adult son was/is a very private person, even though his athleticism placed him front and center of large crowds. I could be wrong but I think he was/is naturally shy despite the bravado required of his sport.
I recall his quest for academic successes and sports successes seemed to “push” him into arenas my hunch suggested he’d have rather avoided. You may also recall he was sometimes anxious about belonging and wanting really good grades.
I do.
That your son is not hateful after all he has witnessed and endured and has had to accept does not surprise me.
He very easily, readily, openly often expressed his love for his parents and brothers and extended family and is most unlikely to turn to hate.
There is not a hateful bone in his body.
Yet, I am not at all surprised he is sometimes “angry, sad, irritated” with those who are close to him. Youth funerals leave me the same way even when I read about them, let alone know the victims and he knew the multiple victims of gun violence well.
Loss has robbed all of you but he was/is closer to the young men – I think they are all male – now gone.
I know you embody the ultimate loving and caring mom and so I also know you give him a lot of room for his varying emotions, much privacy, and encouragement to engage about these deep matters on his terms.
Your son is a quiet fighter, one who loves his friends very deeply.
Although he never expressed this to me, or if he did I have forgotten, I think he was one to feel as if he was wanting and loving his friends more than his friends were seeking him.
The boy we all knew (usually loving and warm and full of life and humor and joy) will soon be the fully present grown-man-version of himself.
Nothing is gone or lost.
It is resting. Recovering. Re-juvinating.
Re-routing.
Like Jem, in the book your son read with me word-for-word in the classroom, despite all the trauma, his former and full self will return.
Ask him about that reference. I am sure he will remember.
By the way, I will meet with him at the drop of a hat if he’d find that useful.
Offer him my number.
By the way, thank you for being mom and present for so many, many young people as I know you are as you fulfill your role in your chosen career.
difficultrelationships.com 