the one and I

Hartbeespoort Dam has been popping up a lot lately. Thanks to the very wet rainy season, the sluices have been opened a number of times, and the videos have been everywhere. It’s the sort of thing social media can’t get enough of. Water thundering over concrete, mist in the air, everyone suddenly a hydrology expert.
It sent me back.
My little family lived out there in the late seventies. My parents moved us from Brits when I was about three. Schoemansville was still a sleepy place then, tucked against the southern slopes of the Magaliesberg, with that big, shimmering expanse of water laid out below like something important.
Both my parents still worked in Brits. I was at a crèche there, Siembamba. Ilze went to a nearby primary school and then to a "day mother" in the afternoons.
At least, that’s how I remember it. Isn't memory a funny thing? It keeps the shape of events but smooths the edges, like water over stone.
Anyway, getting to Brits meant crossing the dam wall. There was no alternative. A narrow, single-lane road, controlled by traffic lights at either end, taking turns like polite strangers. And right in the middle, as if someone got carried away with themselves, a miniature Arc de Triomphe straddles the road. On the eastern side, a short tunnel through the mountain, just to keep things interesting.

Sometimes the dam would be covered in hyacinths. Great green carpets drifting across the surface. Beautiful from a distance. Less so when the smell came. It would creep into everything, thick and fetid, right into your bedroom at night. My parents called it “frog slime.” I can still smell it if I try hard enough.
So one rainy Monday morning, with the frog slime hanging proudly in the air, the three of us set off for Brits.
Naturally, the traffic lights at the dam wall were out.
Chaos.
Cars inching forward from both sides, nobody quite sure whose turn it was, everyone convinced it was definitely theirs. My dad gripping the steering wheel a little tighter, muttering things into his beard that were probably not suitable for a three-year-old audience.
And then, as if the scene needed one more layer, my stomach decided it had had enough.

I announced, with what I imagine was some urgency, that I was going to be sick.

There was no time. No bag. No bucket. No heroic last-second door opening.
My mom did the only thing she could. She cupped her hands and caught it.
Neatly.
Efficiently.
Like this was not her first rodeo.
There we were, crawling under the little arch in the middle of the dam, rain hammering down, traffic locked in all directions, my dad forging ahead because there was simply no way to turn around, and my mom sitting there holding what can only be described as a deeply unfortunate situation.
She must have been seconds away from joining me.
Eventually, we made it to the far side. Two lanes. A shoulder. Civilization. An emergency stop was executed with great enthusiasm. There was a partial disposal, a U-turn, and then a determined crawl back home through the same madness, now facing it head-on.
The rain didn’t let up. The smell didn’t improve. The mood in the car was, I imagine, complicated.
My mom, however, dined out on that story for years. Any hint of a weak stomach on my part and out it came. Fair enough. She earned that one.
And now, looking back, that’s the part that lingers.
Not the chaos. Not the smell. Not even my dad’s running commentary.

It’s her.

No hesitation. No drama. Just stepping in, quite literally, and taking the hit because that’s what was needed in that moment. There’s something almost sacred in that kind of instinct. No philosophy, no grand plan. Just presence. Just love, in its most practical, inconvenient form.
We spend so much time trying to make sense of life. Trying to control it, improve it, protect ourselves from the mess of it. But the truth is, it’s always a bit like that dam wall. Narrow. Unpredictable. Sometimes the lights don’t work, and you just have to keep moving forward.
And every now and then, someone puts their hands out and catches what you can’t hold.
I think that’s what I want to remember about her.

Not just that she loved us. But how she loved us.

Right there, in the middle of everything, without flinching.
Written by I

Beloved Mom
Today is the first Mother’s Day since your unexpected departure. For the first time in my life, I don’t get to say “I love you” out loud and spoil you with silly, mismatched gifts that always made you smile more than anything else.

I keep catching myself thinking I must tell you something — a headline, a change in the weather, some small absurdity of daily life. It still feels as if you’re just a message away, ready to give us the full bulletin. You were our mobile newspaper, after all. The world made more sense when filtered through you.
And the world, as you would have noticed immediately, has not calmed down in your absence.
We’ve had an abundant rainy season. Since January, the storms have come hard and fast — floods, level 8 warnings, skies that seemed determined to empty themselves completely. At times, it felt endless, as though the earth itself was grieving alongside us.
Then, almost overnight, winter arrived.
The rain pulled away toward the Cape, where it now lashes with cold intent, and snow has begun settling over the high ground. Here on the Highveld, the air turned sharp without warning. Frost, already — far too early. Yesterday morning, Eva’s poor little feetsies nearly froze on our walk. You would have fussed over her, I know.
You would also have had a lot to say about the state of the world.
Petrol has climbed to an eye-watering R26.52 a litre. The ripple effects of the US-Israeli strikes on Iran earlier this year are being felt everywhere, and the renewed surge in the Russia-Ukraine conflict has only deepened the uncertainty. Economies are wobbling. People are anxious. It’s the kind of layered, complicated situation you would have followed closely, giving us the highlights every so often.
I miss that. I miss you presenting the world to us in a way that made it feel less overwhelming.
Closer to home, things carry on in their usual, relentless way. Work remains what it has always been — a kind of perdition. There’s little space for grief there. The expectation is simple: perform, produce, continue. And so I do, as best I can, even when it feels like I’m holding everything together with the thinnest thread.
Ilze, too, holds so much at the moment. Her circumstances at work are not much better than mine. She carries your loss heavily. Despite that, she has taken over caring for your pets with her gentle strength.
It is strange, this insistence of life.
The world keeps moving, indifferent to the fact that you are no longer in it. The sun rises, people go to work, the news cycles churn, and somehow everything continues as if nothing has changed — although, for us, everything has.
But don’t worry too much.
We are still here. The One remains my anchor. Eva fills the house with her joyful chaos. Jane keeps her steady rhythm downstairs. In our own imperfect way, we are trying — through small acts of awareness — to make sense of this fragile, unpredictable existence.

I find myself wondering where you are now.

Whether you’ve settled into a quiet place. Whether there is clarity there, or simply peace. I hope, more than anything, that you are at ease. That whatever comes after this life has received you gently.
If I could, I would give you a dozen roses for every time you told me you loved me. There would be fields of red as far as the eye can see.
Wherever you are, I hope you know that those words never vanished. They are still here, woven into everything. Into who I am. Into how I move through this world.
And maybe that’s the closest thing we have to permanence — not the body, not the moment, but the imprint of love carried forward.
Happy Mother’s Day, Mom.
I love you. Still.
C.
Written by I

I'm getting out, I'm moving onAnd from now on, address unknown

Amanda Lear, Follow Me

We’d just started believing the water issues in the area had finally been sorted out when—like a bad sequel nobody asked for—another round of outages began. This time, courtesy of a major pipe relocation across Garsfontein Road. Progress, apparently.
There have been so many outages now that I’ve stopped counting. It’s easier that way. Let’s just say the taps work on a kind of “surprise me” basis. Every other day feels about right.
Electricity has been marginally more polite, but only just. We still get at least one extended power failure a week. Last week’s effort dragged on long enough to outlast even our solar setup. At around 2:30am, the batteries gave up the ghost, and we were unceremoniously dropped into proper, old-fashioned darkness. The kind where you suddenly remember that night is actually a thing.
Jane and I were chatting this morning while I was brewing our weekly batch of stew—an act that now feels less like domestic routine and more like survival planning. She was frustrated, understandably, with the slow crumble of infrastructure around us. At some point, she sighed and said she sometimes wishes she could just move somewhere remote. Somewhere off the grid. Somewhere that doesn’t depend on systems that seem permanently on the brink.
Well, as it turns out, she’s not just speaking theoretically.

Jane lived on Stronsay for a couple of years in the eighties.

Stronsay, for those of us whose geography gets a bit vague north of Scotland, is one of the Orkney islands. It’s known as the “Island of Bays,” which sounds charming until you realise it’s also code for “very exposed to whatever the North Sea feels like throwing at you.” The place has been inhabited for millennia—Mesolithic settlements, Vikings, kelp burning, herring booms. The usual island résumé.
But what stuck with me wasn’t the history. It was the details.
Storm pegs. Actual pegs for your washing so it doesn’t stage a dramatic escape during a gale. Fresh fish when you feel like it. Vegetables that didn’t arrive shrink-wrapped from somewhere far away. Local whisky, which I imagine helps enormously when the wind starts speaking in tongues.
And perhaps most appealing of all: interaction with other humans is entirely optional.
It’s about as far north as you can sensibly go without having to explain to people why you’re now technically in the Arctic.
And I have to admit, the idea lodged itself somewhere in my brain and made itself comfortable.

Just us three and the fierce North Sea.
No water outages. No power schedules. No passive-aggressive emails. No workplace held together by guilt, fear, and obligation. Just weather, tide, and whatever we choose to make of the day.
Of course, I know this is fantasy. Every place has its own version of broken. Swap infrastructure failures for isolation. Trade convenience for resilience. Exchange noise for silence, and then learn what silence actually sounds like.
Still, there’s something in the imagining that feels… useful.
Maybe it’s not really about Stronsay at all. Maybe it’s about the quiet desire to step sideways out of the chaos. To find a way of living that feels a little more intentional, a little less reactive. A life where we’re not constantly bracing for the next outage—literal or otherwise.
For now, we stay. We make stew. We charge batteries. We adapt, because that’s what people do.
But somewhere in the back of my mind, there’s a small, wind-battered house waiting.And in that version of things, we are, finally, a little harder to find.
Written by I

Eva woke me up at 5:30am this morning. Weekend luxury. A full 35 minutes later than during the week.
The last couple of days had been all rain and no sun. A damp, creeping chill had settled in, with night temperatures dipping into the low teens for the first time. Still, the intrepid lab and I set off within five minutes of getting out of bed. No hesitation. No negotiation.
This morning, though, the sky had cleared. To the east, a faint glow hinted at something better on the way. It felt like the day had already decided to behave.
It’s easier to appreciate the changing of the seasons when you’re actually out there in it. You can feel it happening instead of just seeing it on a screen. And really, it’s a quietly brilliant design. Tilt the planet, let it wobble around the sun, and suddenly nothing stays the same for too long. Imagine an eternal summer. Pleasant, sure. For a while. Then becoming unbearable in its predictability.

Doggo and I took it slowly. No weekday urgency, no clock snapping at our heels. Our 3km loop took nearly 50 minutes. We left in darkness and came back in daylight, which always feels like cheating time.

We slipped back into the house and closed the bedroom door quietly. The One needs his rest. Then it was the usual Sunday rhythm. First coffee of the day for me. A biscuit for Poppet. A quick scroll through the state of the world, which remains… committed to its greedy goals.
Later, around 8:00am, I went out for supplies. By the time I got back, armed with piping hot supermarket pies, my husband had started the washing. We ate while the machine churned away, and then I “helped” him hang things on the line. My role is mostly ceremonial. He has a system. I respect the system.
Eva, meanwhile, had found her patch of sun and collapsed into it like a creature whose only job is to absorb warmth and be content. Which, to be fair, is exactly her job.
She radiated that heat later when the three of us settled into a two-hour nap.
As I drifted off, I remembered a TikTok I’d seen recently, titled “The mlem almost put me in the ground.” That’s how I discovered the word.

Mlem.

It turns out there’s a name for that tiny, ridiculous, perfect moment when a dog lets the tip of their tongue peek out. Not a full lick. Very little movement. Just… a soft, absent-minded peep into the world. A mlem is what happens when a dog is so relaxed, so completely at ease, that even their tongue can’t be bothered to fully commit to staying inside.
Labradors, it seems, are particularly gifted at this. The classic mlem usually arrives when they’re on the edge of sleep, or already gone, signaling complete trust. No tension. No vigilance. Simply, “I’m safe. I’m home. Nothing here needs fixing.”
Eva does it. Of course she does. Our girl, our pup, our small, breathing lesson in how to be okay. There she was, mid-nap, sun-warmed and utterly untroubled, performing a perfect mlem like she’d invented it.
Eva, mid-mlem. Photo by The One, taken earlier this week while I was at work.
There’s something disarming about it. In a life that often feels driven by pressure, noise, and the low-grade hum of stress, a mlem is the opposite of all that. It’s a small, quiet rebellion against tension. A reminder that not everything needs to be managed, optimised, or survived.
Today felt like that.
After days of grey and cold, the sun came back. We walked. We ate. We napped. We did ordinary things at an unhurried pace. Nothing remarkable, unless you count how rare it is to feel completely at ease.
And maybe that’s the thing. Maybe a good day isn’t about fixing everything or figuring it all out.
Maybe it’s just this:
Feeling safe enough, for a moment, to let your guard down… and mlem.
Written by I

Ayumi was no longer in this world. She was a cold corpse that was being sent for forensic analysis. After, they would give her a simple funeral, send her to the crematorium, and burn her. She would turn into smoke, rise up into the sky, and mix with the clouds. Then she would come down to the earth again as rain, and nurture some nameless patch of grass. 

This seemed warped and misguided, and horribly unfair.

— Haruki Murakami, 1Q84
Such were my ponderings when Eva and I set off on our daily walk at the crack of dawn.
That passage has been sitting with me for weeks now, like a stone in the shoe of my thoughts. Grief, in its rawest form, has begun to change shape. It no longer only crashes over me; it seeps in, quieter, more insistent. And with it comes something else — a growing sense of moriturism.
A small, almost imperceptible jolt: this is it. This life. Not a drill. Not a story for later. Just this brief, flickering glimpse of the universe.
Going around the last bend on the way home, we came across a strange spectacle — a thick jet of water shooting straight up from the middle of the road. Another pipe had burst overnight after persistent rains, turning the street into an accidental fountain.

For a moment, we just stood there.
Water surged upward with reckless abandon, only to come back down in an endless glittering collapse. Something was mesmerising about it — beautiful, wasteful, unstoppable.
And suddenly it struck me: this is how grief drains away life: not all at once, but in a constant, unseen outpouring.
I would have liked to linger. To watch until others gathered, drawn in by the oddity of it all. But practicality tugged at me. With a final glance at the ethereal spray, Eva and I turned and hurried home, hoping to get a load of washing done before the inevitable water shutdown.
The universe, it seems, has a sly sense of humour. As we jogged up the road, Saint-Saëns’ Danse Macabre began playing in my mind — the skeletal violinists, the eerie, relentless rhythm — looping without permission.
Back home, I had a quick coffee while Poppet crunched her strawberry-banana biscuit with great seriousness. The One was still asleep, cocooned in the quiet of the morning. We moved softly, almost conspiratorially, loading the washing machine and willing the water to hold.
While the washer churned into motion — its own small, mechanical dance — I returned to my book and looked for another passage that had lodged itself somewhere deep:

Once you pass a certain age, life becomes nothing more than a process of continual loss. Things that are important to your life begin to slip out of your grasp, one after another, like a comb losing teeth.

— Haruki Murakami, 1Q84
It sank in the moment I read it again. Not intellectually — viscerally. There is a point where life stops adding and starts subtracting.
The roots of my irrational fear of death can be traced back to a single, indelible moment. I was five years old. A group of children from my crèche were killed in a minibus accident on their way to school. Days later, we were taken to the funeral.
I remember the row of small coffins at the front of the church. Open.

Inside one of them lay Herman, my friend. Pale. Still. Unreachable.

Something shifted in me that day. Death was no longer an abstract idea. It had a face. And it had won.
For a long time after, sleep came reluctantly, haunted by the quiet certainty of endings.
Maybe that is why loss cuts so deeply. Not only because someone is gone, but because it holds up a mirror. It shows you, without flinching, where you, too, are heading.
And yet, this realisation is not meant to paralyse. There is an older wisdom that holds it differently. Memento mori — remember that you must die. Not a threat, but an invitation.

A reminder to strip life down to what matters. To see through the noise, the accumulation, the small, frantic distractions. To live, not as if time is limitless, but as if it is precisely what it is: fleeting, fragile, and immeasurably precious.

My mom’s passing has made that impossible to ignore.
No second chances wait somewhere ahead. No warming-up room offstage. As Kundera wrote,

We live everything as it comes, without warning, like an actor going on cold; the dress rehearsal for life is life itself.

— Milan Kundera, The Unbearable Lightness of Being
So we walk.We love.We lose.
What if the dance was never meant to be feared, only recognised? Perhaps it is the quiet rhythm we are already moving to, whether we notice it or not.

Written by I

Taking Eva out for her bedtime constitutional after my last post, I noticed the sky had cleared. There it was — a full moon, steady and unbothered, hanging above the lawn. The sight of it softened the edges of what had been a hectic birthday.
The moon has been calling for our attention again. After decades of relative obscurity, it has returned to the news — fly-bys, renewed ambitions, plans to place human footprints back onto its ancient surface. There is talk now of staying, not merely visiting. Of building something that will endure.
The moon even found its way into my reading time:

Tengo's mind emptied as he stared at the moon. Memories that had been handed down from antiquity began to stir. Before human possessed fire or tools or language, the moon had been their ally. It would calm people's fears by illuminating the dark world like a heavenly lantern. Its waxing and waning gave them an understanding of the concept of time. Even now, when darkness had been banished from most of the world, there remained a sense of gratitude toward the moon and its unconditional compassion. It was imprinted upon human genes like a comforting, collective memory.

Haruki Murakami, 1Q84

Perhaps that is why it draws the past closer.
*
In 2011, another kind of transition was taking place. The final Space Shuttle mission came home, and a long chapter silently closed. Atlantis touched down for the last time, and the way to reach beyond the sky seemed to vanish. Yet in that same year, attention shifted back to the moon... albeit from a safe distance. The Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter circled above the moon's surface, sending back images so precise they revealed not just where we had been, but how we had moved there — the faint trails of astronauts still etched into dust that does not forget.

While that was unfolding on a planetary scale, something quieter — but no less improbable — was happening down here.
There was a small wedding.
Two lives, carried along their own uncertain orbits, found alignment. Not with spectacle, not with fanfare, but with the certainty that arrives without asking permission. Across distances measured in time, two specks of dust settled beside one another and chose to remain.
My mom stood there with us. She signed her name as witness, marking the moment in ink — a simple act, and yet one that now feels impossibly vast.

Fifteen years have passed since then. A crystal anniversary, they call it. Crystal — formed slowly under pressure, holding light rather than producing it. Clear, but never simple.
Grief has a way of refracting everything. Since January, the light has not fallen cleanly. It bends, splits, catches on edges I didn’t know were there. Words have come harder. The quiet audience I always wrote for — the one who read everything, who held each post with care — is no longer here to receive it.
And so I falter.
But the moon does not.
It continues its patient cycle, unchanged by absence. It reflects what light it is given, offering it back without judgment, without expectation. Perhaps that is all that is required of us, too. Not to generate brilliance, not to force meaning, but simply to reflect — to hold what light we can, however fractured, and let it be seen.
*
Fifteen years. A lifetime in miniature. A breath, in the scale of things.
The moon will be visited again. New footprints will cross old ones. Dust will be disturbed, but never erased. The past will remain there, placidly intact, waiting for anyone who cares to look closely enough.
Maybe that is what memory is.
Not something we move on from, but something we circle. Returning, again and again, each time seeing it differently, each time carrying a slightly altered light.
Tonight, the moon hangs as it always has. Not closer. Not further. Just present.
And here we are, still held in its reflection.
Written by I

My 52nd birthday started with a bang.
I took the day off, imagining a soft sort of celebration at home with my dearest and Eva, instead of spending it at my desk, absent-mindedly chewing at my thumb while jobs stacked up around me.
Perhaps stubbornly, I decided to keep to the routine. There is comfort in repetition, even on days that insist on being different. So Eva and I stepped out into the dark at 5:00 a.m. for our usual brisk walk around the block. The air still had that pre-dawn chill, the kind that wakes you up in a way coffee can’t quite manage.
By 5:20 a.m., we were home again. The One was still asleep, wrapped in the peaceful, unreachable place that mornings belong to. Eva crunched industriously through a treat while I stood with a steaming mug, watching the first thin suggestion of light stretch itself across the sky.
My husband joined us not long after and, in his gentle, generous way, made sure I felt celebrated. Among the gifts was something I have wanted for years: a sturdy telescopic metal back scratcher. Practical, slightly ridiculous, and absolutely perfect. I laughed more than I expected to, extending and retracting it like a small, improbable fidget toy.
For a brief moment, everything felt easy. Held. Not untouched, but intact.
At 6:15 a.m., the power went out.
It was sudden enough to feel personal. Also rare enough to be suspicious, especially given the supposed reliability of the solar backup. We worked through the usual checks before realising that one of the geysers had tripped the system.

Outside, the problem made itself known without subtlety. A steady, steaming waterfall poured down the edges of the carport where my love's car lives. It was as if the house had decided to mark the occasion in its own dramatic fashion.

There’s a particular kind of efficiency that comes with minor domestic crises. We handed things over to the landlords, shut off the water mains in the street, switched the geyser off at the DB, and restored electricity to the rest of the house. Contained, if not resolved.
Exactly what is it with us and geysers?
Since life refuses to align its errands with sentiment, I did a quick dash to the shops for toilet paper and vape coils at 9:00 a.m.. I was back home within the hour. A plumber arrived, assessed, nodded in that way that suggests both understanding and future inconvenience, and left again.
My sister stopped by soon after, just long enough to say happy birthday and press a gift into my hands. A meticulously hand-bound hardcover of The Boy, The Mole, The Fox and The Horse. Handwritten, illustrated, quietly profound. The kind of book you don’t just read, but cherish. It felt, in that moment, far larger than the sum of its pages.
The plumber returned in a van loaded with supplies and set about replacing the busted geyser.
And somewhere in the middle of all of this, the day began to turn.
I found myself thinking of last year. Of how birthdays seem to gather their own strange gravity. Last year’s came with news that hollowed everything out, leaving us standing in a dark void.
I still haven’t re-watched that video. I’m not sure I ever will.
It feels, at times, like certain days don’t pass so much; instead, they echo. Sorting through photos for my mom's memorial, I'd found a blurry old snap of the two young lovers my parents had been.

In addition to today being my birthday, they would have been married for 55 years. Good Friday, 2 April 1971. An early autumn day chosen with care, or perhaps simply with hope. My mother was nineteen. My father was barely twenty-two. Young enough to believe in beginnings without needing to account for endings.
My sister arrived later that same year, impatient and slightly ahead of schedule. On the other hand, I took my time, arriving a couple of days late, neatly positioning myself on their third anniversary—as if I had always intended to bind those dates together.
There are no photographs of their wedding. Only this—before.
The official explanation has always been that the photographer’s camera malfunctioned, that nothing came out. It’s a story that was accepted because it had to be. I have, over the years, constructed other possibilities in the quiet corners of my mind, but they don’t matter now. Both my mother and father are gone, and with them, the need to resolve small mysteries that no longer change anything.
Absence has a way of simplifying the narrative.
With the loss of my mom, the fundamentals have shifted. It is not just that she is missing. It is that the axis has tilted. The quiet, unspoken acknowledgement that two people who existed and made me possible—who anchored this date somewhere beyond myself—are no longer there.

Birthdays, it turns out, are not self-contained.

Now, without my parents, the day feels unmoored. As though it belongs to a story already told, and I am rereading a chapter stripped of its original context.
So this is what it becomes.
Not a birthday.Not really.
Something adjacent.Something altered.
A marker of time, yes—but also of absence.Of continuation, in the face of a story that has lost two of its central characters.
Happy unbirthday.
Written by I

It’s been a strange, almost psychedelic stretch since my previous post.
To be honest, it feels like I ate one of the mushrooms growing all over the lawn.
Not metaphorically. Literally. As if I picked one, wiped it on my shirt, and swallowed it whole. Everything has felt slightly wrong lately. Too bright. Too loud. Too urgent. Like the world slipped half a degree off its axis and nobody told me.
The lawn is full of them now. Little brown domes pushing through the wet grass, like they were always there and we just never noticed. I took a photo this morning because they looked staged. Planted. And that’s when it started to make sense. Or rather, stopped making sense in a very specific way.

*
I remember the exact moment the chaos began.
I had just finished reading a pivotal chapter of 1Q84. One of those chapters that makes you stop, stare at the ceiling, and check whether the air in the room feels different. In the book, there’s thunder. Distant. Ominous. The kind that feels less like weather and more like a warning.
As I switched my Kindle off, there it was. Real thunder. The same sound. The same distance. The same menacing pause afterwards.
Something shifted right then. Not dramatically. Just enough to matter.
*
Most of what followed was work. Endless work. Work that multiplied when you looked away from it. Work that refused to stay done once it was finished.
There was also a brief but intense altercation with my other half. The strange thing about two introverted, gentle people fighting is that there are no raised voices. No slammed doors. Just silence that becomes sharper and sharper until it finally cuts.
It ended in tears. Of course it did.
*
Work did not calm down, either. It escalated.
One of the lowlights was a Christian minister telling me, with remarkable nastiness, how unprofessional my designs were. Twice. As if the first attack hadn’t landed properly, and he needed a second attempt to make sure the blade went in.
Then came the war room. I stood there, shaking inside my trousers, trying to explain myself to a panel after a supplier reported me for being rude. I wasn’t rude. I was exhausted. Which, apparently, counts as the same thing.
Around then, people started disappearing. Random sick days. Five people gone at one stage. Just… gone. And on my side of the screen, more than seventy jobs blinked red like a cockpit warning system seconds before impact.
My shoulders and neck became knots of excruciating tension. My love kindly pounded out the painful spasms with arnica and brute force.
By Friday, I felt like I’d crawled through a river full of piranhas and survived only because there was nothing left worth eating.
*
I overdid the pour last weekend.
There’s no gentle way to say that. I overdid it. By 6:00am on Saturday, I was still online. My love stumbled out of the bedroom with that stunned, just-woken look and asked me why I was still awake.
I hadn’t gone to bed.
When he found me, I was discussing the state of world affairs with a complete stranger on the other side of the planet. It felt perfectly normal at the time. Now it feels like something that happens in a dream you can’t wake up from.
Eva got only the briefest walk because it was raining. Also, because my gut had turned into an emergency situation that required immediate access to a latrine.
Sunday faded into a flat grey blur. The rain didn’t stop. The anxiety didn’t stop. And another week in perdition was already sharpening its teeth.
*
The week did exactly what I expected it to do. It hurt.
By Friday, I had a fresh set of wounds and a growing suspicion that the universe was quietly keeping score. I tried to stay out of trouble. I really did. But trouble has a way of finding you when you’re already too tired to move.
Even the sacred weekend wasn’t spared.
Early yesterday morning, work called. Urgent. A printing glitch. Books needed for a conference starting at 15:00. No time for reflection. No time for resentment. Just movement.
So I went in. Flattened layers. Resized files. Printed. Decollated. Replaced. Re-collated. Stapled. Trimmed. Two and a half hours of repairing a mistake that wasn’t mine.
It felt like paying a fine in a language I don’t speak.
*
Last night, for the first time in months, there was a second weekend pour.
Because there’s a word for what this feels like.
1202.
The tipping point. The moment when the brain receives more tasks than it can process. When every item becomes urgent. When you feel too guilty to postpone anything, everything rises to the top of the list at the same time. Nothing moves. Nothing gets done. You just freeze.

During the near-disastrous Apollo 11 descent, the 1202 alarm meant the computer was overloaded. Too much data. Not enough capacity.

Still, they landed.
I’m not sure I will.
*
In 1Q84, once a reality shifts, it doesn’t shift back. There are no neat returns. No rewinds. The previous world simply stops existing, and you are left standing in the new one, wondering why the sky feels wrong.
So today I tried something reckless.
I tried to force a different timeline into existence.
At dawn, Eva and I took a longer walk than usual. Not rushed. Not apologetic. Just slow. Calm. Deliberate. I made a quiet decision while we were out there: nothing insane was allowed to follow me home. Not work. Not panic. Not dread.
Later, after a beautiful snooze, we decided to give ourselves a good sunning. While The One hung out the washing, Poppet and I walked through the potted garden like inspectors from a kinder universe.
The tomato is in a terrible state. Blight has taken huge bites out of it, and the pestilence was too far gone when I got around to spraying copper soap. Leaves dying. Stems tired. Everything looks like it should give up.
But, like Apollo 11, it hasn’t.
There are still fruits hanging there. Green. Defiant. Ordinary in the most reassuring way possible. I took a photo because it felt like proof that something can struggle and still continue without drama.

*The sun got too hot, and we retreated indoors.
I avoided the mushrooms on the lawn. I don’t trust them anymore. They feel like portals. If you stare at them long enough, the world around you will change again.
Maybe this is just what 1202 feels like. Not chaos, exactly. Just too much reality arriving at the same time.
And somewhere inside all of it, a Labrador still needs a walk. Tomatoes still grow. Washing still dries in the sun. And a man still sits here, trying to convince himself that the landing is going to be gentle.
Written by I

Sonder: the quiet realisation that every passer-by is living a life as complex and vivid as your own — a story unfolding beyond the small circle of your awareness.

I've always maintained that The One leads a charmed life, of a kind. He hardly ever deals with the forbidding world outside. His contact with the restless monsters beyond our gate is mostly limited to fleeting online encounters, buffered by screens and passwords and distance.
I used to think my family lived under a similar spell.
Growing up, I carried the unspoken conviction that we were somehow set apart. My bloodline stretches back to the first Dutch settlers who arrived in this unforgiving place centuries ago. My forefathers include Voortrekkers who abandoned the Cape and crossed the Drakensberg with little more than stubborn faith, as well as men and women who fought and died in the two Boer wars. Generations who carved out a life in a land that has never been gentle.
It gave me the impression that our story meant something. That it stood a little higher than the rest.
Age has been steadily dissolving that illusion. As I grow older, I’ve slowly come to grasp that nobody here is, in fact, special.
At some point, I came across a word that captures this realisation: sonder.
It describes the moment you understand that every stranger you run into has an existence as rich and intricate as yours. Each person is the centre of their own story, surrounded by their own cast of family, friends, ambitions, failures and private jokes. Their lives continue whether you see them or not. When you leave the scene, their story keeps unfolding, dense with memories and moments you will never witness.
To them, you might appear only once.
A passing car in the rain.A blurred figure on a pavement.
A lighted window at night.

The rain has been relentless this past week. It drums on the roof, seeps into the soil, muddles the edges of everything. Taking a beery slash just after midnight last Saturday, I noticed the faint glow of Menlyn Maine through the open bathroom window. Half-hidden by rain and darkness, its distant lights scattered like whispered signals from lives unfolding far beyond my reach.
For a long time, I simply stood there and watched.
Behind each of those lights is a room.Inside each room is a person.
They are living out their own grave catastrophes and small triumphs. They are grieving the dead, worrying about bills, laughing with friends, washing dishes, staring into their own dark windows. They carry entire histories inside them, most of which will never brush against mine.
And yet we all move through the same rain.
Lately, my own story feels narrow and dim. Since the seventh of January, the world has been completely off its axis. Grief has a way of shrinking the horizon until everything collapses inward around a single absence. 
Buddhism tells us that this, too, is part of the path. That the illusions we cling to eventually loosen their grip. That the self we guard so fiercely is not as solid as we imagine. Recognising the vastness of everyone else's story may be one of the silent waypoints along that road.
A humbling cognisance.
Because sooner or later, every one of these stories ends the same way. The lights go out. The rooms empty. The rain continues falling on a world that forgets us almost immediately.
And yet, for a brief while, each of us is convinced we are the centre of the universe.
Perhaps that is the only charm any life ever truly has.
Written by I

Glimmers are the opposite of triggers.
They are small, almost imperceptible cues that tell the nervous system: you are safe. You are connected. You are still here. Where a trigger tightens the chest and narrows the world, a glimmer softens the edges. It steadies the breath. It lets a thin ribbon of light slip in.
They are rarely grand in scale. Most often, they are sensory. Fleeting. Easy to miss.
*

I cancelled yesterday entirely.

I had my weekly pour on Friday night and only slithered into bed around 1:30am, warm with beer and false clarity. What felt like moments later, the alarm went off. I hauled myself upright like an unwilling marionette, strings pulled by duty rather than desire.
Eva and I stepped into a fine, stubborn rain. She trotted; I trudged. The streets were soaked and colourless, and I moved through them on autopilot. I remember very little of that walk, except the sound of her harness tags and the damp creeping into my sleeves.
Back home, I turned into a yeasty vegetable and stayed that way. I drifted from desk to kettle to bed. The day slid past without asking anything of me, and I was grateful for that.
My love was not himself either. We passed one another gently, carefully, like two ghosts who once shared a house and are not quite sure how to inhabit it now. There was no quarrel, no sharpness. Just a quiet misalignment. A shared fatigue that sat between us.
I always sleep well after a binge, and this morning I woke clearer. Not bright, not buoyant. Just clearer.
The rain had gone. Eva and I set off into a cool breeze that felt almost like autumn. It seems it will arrive early this year. The air had that rinsed quality, that faint promise of change. Eva’s joy is never subtle. She galloped ahead, then doubled back, as if the morning belonged solely to her, and she was willing to share it with me.
When we returned, The One was still asleep, cocooned in the soft cave of our bed. There was a certain deep comfort about that — the house hushed, the blinds drawn, his steady breathing behind the bedroom door. Eva and I settled into our small rituals: coffee for me, news murmuring in the background, her patient wait for breakfast at 7:30 sharp. Even grief makes room for routine.
Later, I drove to the barber. Overdue; I'd been putting off a visit for weeks. The sign on the door insisted they were open. They were not. I stood for a moment in the parking lot, mildly affronted by the universe, then decided to fetch groceries at Atterbury Value Mart while I regrouped.
As it happened, there was a barber there. Open. Brightly lit. Unfussy.
I took a chance.
A very professional Middle Eastern gentleman mowed my face with brisk efficiency. Grey fell away in soft drifts. He shaped and trimmed and tidied until the mirror offered back a man who looked, if not younger, then at least more deliberate. When I paid, he asked for my pension card.
I laughed. Properly laughed.

Back home, The One and I ate our customary supermarket pies in companionable near-silence, saving the flaky droppings for Poppet, who stationed herself beneath us like a hopeful altar. We washed the pasties down with cheap cola. There was something teenage about it. Uncomplicated. Slightly ridiculous.
He unpacked the groceries with his usual diligence. I retreated to my desk. Among the shopping was the meds to ease his aches. When he found them, there it was.
Not a grin. Not even a full smile.
A flicker.
The faintest upward shift at the corner of his mouth. A softening in his eyes. Relief, small but undeniable.

And in that moment, it settled in me.

It wasn’t dramatic. There was no swelling music. Just a quiet internal exhale. A sense that, even in this altered landscape, even in the long corridor of after, we are still capable of easing one another’s burdens.
That flicker was the first glimmer I have consciously named. It passed almost at once. But I saw it.
And sometimes, noticing the light is its own inheritance.
Written by I

After a brief hiatus, I resumed scheduled reading sessions a couple of weeks ago. Grief has a way of scattering time. The days since my mom passed on have felt both heavy and oddly elastic. Whole afternoons dissolve without warning. Evenings stretch. Sleep comes when it feels like it, and sometimes not at all.
So I decided to impose a little order on things.
I moved my dedicated reading time from just before bedtime to around 19:00, after the news finishes and my love’s in the shower. It felt practical. It also felt faintly ceremonial. Reading is no longer the last act of the day, but something that anchors the evening, like switching on a lamp in a dim room.
I also moved the location. Instead of lounging on the bed, I now sit at my desk. Here, I can stream music continuously and have access to the web on a proper big screen, should I happen to read something that my inquisitive mind wants to know more about, which happens more often than I care to admit. There’s something reassuring about being upright, properly seated, facing the world rather than sinking into it. A straight-backed chair encourages a certain discipline.
Eva, of course, has opinions about all this. She believes structured time is merely a suggestion. She usually parks herself nearby, head resting on her paws, occasionally releasing a long, theatrical sigh, as if she’s enduring something personally. Now and then, she glances up at me with that steady Labrador gaze, quietly verifying that whatever I’m doing with the glowing rectangle is not more important than her existence. I reassure her with a foot against her flank. She accepts this as a temporary compromise.
I’ve progressed deep into Book Two of Haruki Murakami’s 1Q84. There’s nothing quite like being transported to a parallel Tokyo where two moons hang in the sky, and strange little people emerge from the mouths of goats. It makes the chaos outside the window feel, if not smaller, then at least differently proportioned. The news recedes. The room narrows. Another world opens, calm and faintly ominous.

Sometimes, it doesn’t feel entirely impossible.
The other night, I couldn’t help but smile when I read the following paragraphs, paraphrased for the sake of brevity:

Ushikawa was a short man, probably in his mid-forties. His trunk had already filled out so that it had lost all signs of a waist, and excess flesh was gathering at his throat. But Tengo could not be sure of his age. Owing to the uncommonness of his appearance, the clues necessary for guessing his age were difficult to find. He could have been anywhere between, say, thirty-two and fifty-six.
His spine was strangely curved. The large crown of his head formed an abnormally flat, hairless area with lopsided edges. It was reminiscent of a temporary heliport, made by cutting away the peak of a small hill. Tengo had seen such a heliport in a Vietnam War documentary.
Around the borders of the bald spot clung thick, curly, black hair that had been allowed to grow too long, hanging down shaggily over the man's ears. Ninety-eight people out of a hundred would likely be reminded by it of pubic hair. Tengo had no idea what the other two would think.

The more I read, the wider my grin became. There is something precise about Murakami’s cruelty. It is observational, almost clinical, and yet delivered with a perfectly straight face. The image of a heliport carved into a human skull is so oddly specific that you can’t help but see it. I found myself pausing, rereading the sentences, admiring the calm audacity of it.
And then:

Everything about the man - his face, his body - seemed to have been formed asymmetrically. This imbalance, obvious to any observer, could not help but annoy those in his presence and cause them the same kind of unease they would feel in front of a funhouse mirror.
His suit had countless small wrinkles, which made it look like an expanse of earth that had been ground down by a glacier. One flap of his white dress shirt's collar was sticking out, and the knot of his tie was contorted, as if it had twisted itself from the sheer discomfort of having to exist in that place. The suit, the shirt, and the tie were all slightly wrong in size. The pattern on his tie might have been an inept art student's impressionistic rendering of a bowl of tangled, soggy noodles.

Unexpectedly, a small, irreverent giggle escaped from somewhere deep in my gut as I read the following passage. The sound startled me. It seemed to arrive from a part of the house that had been closed for repairs.

Ushikawa smiled, revealing a mouthful of horribly crooked teeth. Like seaside pilings that had been hit by stormy waves, they pointed off in all directions and were befouled in a great many ways. They were surely beyond help from orthodontia, but someone should at least teach him how to brush his teeth properly, Tengo thought.

Chuckling surprised me. It felt foreign, as if it belonged to someone who hadn’t spent the last few weeks sorting through the sorrowful tatters of a life abruptly altered. For a second, I looked over at Eva, half-expecting her to raise an eyebrow. It seemed vaguely disrespectful to be giggling, given that I am still in mourning.
And yet, perhaps that is precisely why it mattered.
Grief does not suspend the rest of life. It does not cancel out absurdity. Somewhere in Tokyo, a fictional man with a heliport for a head is walking around in a badly fitting suit, and I am allowed to find that funny. The two things can coexist: the ache in my chest and the sudden, involuntary laugh. One does not betray the other.
When The One emerged from the shower, hair damp and smelling faintly of floral soap, he asked what I was smiling at. I tried to explain Ushikawa’s head. It didn’t translate particularly well into Afrikaans. Some things live better on the page, where heliports and crooked teeth can exist without apology.
Still, the giggle lingered.
It felt less like defiance and more like proof of life. A small reminder that even now, especially now, something in me remains responsive to the ridiculous and the sharply observed. Perhaps that is its own quiet grace.
Eva eventually nudged my knee with her cold nose, bringing me back to this particular version of the world. One moon overhead. One dog at my feet. One husband in the kitchen making coffee.
And, for a moment, that was enough.
Written by I

Ever since my previous post, I’ve carried a peculiar kind of guilt. The sort that whispers that perhaps I should be done by now. That the world has moved on, and surely I ought to have followed suit. That I am clinging too tightly to my mother’s absence, as though grief were a garment I refuse to take off.
But the truth is this: it will be a long, long time before I am even remotely okay. I suspect I may leave this earth still missing her. So, for the sake of social lubrication and smoother office corridors, I will do what so many of us learn to do. I will fold the grief smaller. Tuck it into an inside pocket. Present something more palatable to the fluorescent lights.
At work, my devastating loss has already evaporated. There is no gentleness now. No cushioning. Just the steady hum of productivity, as though nothing seismic ever occurred.

Thankfully, Eva intervened - albeit unintentionally.

On Wednesday, our girl — the glossy black comet of our household — developed a sudden and dramatic case of diarrhoea. She yelped every hour to be let out, summoning impressive quantities of gas and liquid onto the lawn with urgent theatricality. Each time she looked up at us with those liquid Labrador eyes, as if to say, I assure you that this is not my preference either.
By Friday morning, our little lounge-studio had been transformed into what can only be described as a biological minefield. My love, bless him, had risen before me and carefully covered each pile of poop and each puddle of puke with wads of toilet paper, sparing me the worst of it. The white flags fluttered in the breeze from the wide-open windows, giving the room the air of a smouldering battleground after a very undignified war.
Work had the usual Friday buzz; I had just poured my fourth cup of coffee by nine when a message from The One arrived: there was blood in Eva’s stool.
Even in its fractured state, my heart found room to crack a little more. Catastrophe is quick to volunteer its services when you're already raw inside. I managed to secure a 17:15 appointment at the vet, while my husband ordered powdered electrolytes from Checkers Sixty60 to tide Poppet over. Modern miracles come in small sachets.
My darling man then spent the day on his knees, scrubbing the carpet until it sparkled. He sent me a cartoon selfie as he left home with the patient, en route to the vet.

In The Simpsons' version of our lives, he looks mildly heroic and faintly ridiculous, yellow-skinned and stoic, with Eva beside him — loyal, tongue lolling, unaware of her role in our emotional subplot. There is something wonderfully absurd about seeing one’s crisis rendered in animation.
When I met them at the animal hospital in Die Wilgers after work, The One looked exhausted. Eva looked subdued. We were quietly hopeful. After all, these diligent doctors had saved her life when she was just a tiny pup. We have history with them. They know our girl.
The vet was brisk and reassuring. After examining her, she ruled out any complications from Poppet’s recent sterilisation. A droplet of blood under the microscope told its own simple story: a gastrointestinal infection. Nothing sinister. Nothing fatal. Just a small rebellion in the gut.
Three injections followed — anti-nausea, vitamin B, antibiotics. Eva bore them with dignified patience.
I settled the bill, which came in just under R2,000, and felt my legs tremble as I tapped my card. Our finances are as fragile as our hearts these days. Still, there are moments when money becomes secondary to the sound of your dog breathing normally again.

By yesterday, Eva was almost entirely back to her exuberant self. Bounding. Sniffing. Lobbying for snacks.

Her recovery carried something else with it, too: it helped lift my love through the seventh anniversary of Dirk’s death. Valentine’s Day will never be simple for him. It carries a different weight now. A shadow that does not recede.
And yet, here we are. A small family of three. Bruised in various ways. Still standing. Still cleaning carpets. Still driving ageing jalopies to animal hospitals. Still loving fiercely.
There is a Buddhist teaching that all existence contains suffering, and that suffering arises from attachment. I understand the logic of it. If we loved less, we would hurt less. If we held lightly, we would grieve lightly.
But I look at Eva’s shining coat in the sun. I look at my love’s tired, kind face. I think of my mother’s hands.

And I know this: I would not choose a life without attachment. I would not choose less love to spare myself pain. The sorrow is proof of the bond. The bond is proof of the love.

So yes, I am still carrying my mother. My love carries Dirk. We carry each other.
And sometimes, in the middle of it all, a Labrador with an upset stomach reminds us that even suffering has its comic relief. Even grief must occasionally step aside for electrolyte sachets and white toilet paper flags on the carpet.
These are the small mercies.
Written by I

Oh MamyOh Mamy Mamy BlueI need you Mamy Mamy

It has been a month since my mom loosened her grip on this world and slipped quietly into whatever comes next. A month since she left the solid, ordinary gravity here for something colder and more distant. I still can’t quite say it cleanly. My mouth resists the words, as if naming the thing might lock it in forever.
This morning hurt more than most.
Eva and I came back from our early walk, the air still cool, the day still pretending to be kind. I made a coffee, sat down at my computer, and let sad old songs take over. The kind that know exactly where to press. Eva must have felt the shift. She padded over and rested her head on my feet, heavy and warm, as if anchoring me to the floor.
I keep circling back to the moment it all changed.
It was around three in the afternoon, my first day back at work after the December break. A message came through from my love: I had to come home immediately. There was bad news. He couldn’t say it over the phone. My chest tightened before my mind caught up.
Just as I had done years ago, after he phoned me when he found Dirk, I rushed home. The same sick acceleration. The same terrible knowing without knowing. Someone had died. I just didn’t know who.
I ran upstairs and met him in the passage. The words tumbled out of me before I could stop them.“Who’s died?”
When he said it was my mom, my hands flew to my mouth. I kept saying no. Over and over. No no no no no. As if repetition could rewind time. As if refusal could still save her.

Oh MamyOh Mamy, you never miss the water ’til the well run dry

Now she is the first thing I think of when I wake up. The thought lands fresh every morning, sharp and unbelievable. I have to convince myself again that it’s real. That she is really gone. That this is not some long, elaborate mistake.

Even with my heart cracking open all over again today, the world refused to pause. I wiped my eyes. I washed my face. I fed Eva outside. I got dressed. I woke my husband. I went out to run a couple of small errands, wearing the bravest version of myself I could manage. It felt thin. It felt borrowed.
Later, back home, I tried to nap, but the bedroom was stifling. The heat pressed down, relentless. I gave up and sank into a small, miserable cocoon of scrolling, killing time until dinner, letting the hours blur and rot quietly.

Oh MamyOh Mamy, I need your shoulders ever bent in prayerOh MamyOh Mamy, if only you could hear my voice cry

Mamy Blue, Pop Tops (1971)

I don’t know how this ends. Right now, the future looks flat and airless, stripped of colour. I keep wondering if this grief will ever loosen its grip, or if this is simply the shape my life has taken now. All I know is that I miss my mom in ways that feel unbearable, and I am so very tired of learning how to live without her.
Written by I

Some songs never loosen their grip. They wait quietly, then surface at the smallest provocation, insisting on being felt again. Even when you think you’re ready.
Over the weekend, while clipping my nails, it struck me that this was only the second time I’d done so since my mom died. The first was on the morning of her memorial service. I remember the carefulness of it at the time, as if even something so ordinary needed to be handled with reverence.
Since then, doom scrolling has become my default state. Hours slip past without resistance. It’s like being inside a sitcom where nothing truly serious exists, where consequences are suspended, and pain politely waits off-screen. It’s numbing. And sometimes that feels like mercy.
With the Venice Carnival approaching, the Floating City has begun appearing more frequently in my timelines. Sunlit canals. Masks. Gondolas drifting as if nothing had ever gone wrong there. Each video feels like a small, precise incision.

It must have been around 1983 when my adventurous parents embarked on their whirlwind European tour. They were young, curious, and still gathering stories they would later pass down to us like heirlooms. One of their stops was a two-day stay in La Serenissima, Most Serene Venice.

They were, of course, awed by the grandeur: Piazza San Marco stretching wide and confident, the Doge’s Palace heavy with history, the Rialto Bridge arching patiently over centuries of footsteps, St Mark’s Basilica glowing with borrowed light.
On Murano, amid furnaces and glass shaped by breath and fire, my mom bought a small handmade glass snail. It took up permanent residence on her dressing table, catching the light for the rest of her life.

But what she remembered most vividly wasn’t the romance. It was the filth.
She never tired of telling us about the greasy cats that roamed the narrow walkways in loose, menacing collectives, thriving on fish scraps and pigeons, leaving their mess everywhere. She wrinkled her nose when she spoke about raw sewage draining directly into the canals, her voice carrying equal parts horror and disbelief.
Half-joking, but with a tone that suggested she had given the matter serious thought, she said my dad had been under strict instructions to let her drown if she ever fell into the water. There was, in her view, no amount of soap, scrubbing, or absolution that could make her feel clean again. As a precaution, she never set foot on a gondola. Romance, it seemed, had its limits.
Those stories were told often, with each retelling slightly embellished, delivered with theatrical shudders and exaggerated disgust. We laughed. They became part of the family folklore, as fixed and familiar as the glass snail on her dressing table.
Only now do I realise how much of the world I know this way.
At just about fifty-two years old, I’m coming to terms with the fact that I will never experience Venice as my parents did. My version of the City of Masks will always be borrowed, assembled from my mother’s voice and her opinions, her delight and her revulsion. Like so many other places, moments, and understandings in my life, it exists only because she once stood there and later shared it with me.

Oh, how can I forget,when there is always something there to remind me?

Naked Eyes, Always Something There To Remind Me (1983)

Written by I 

There is a passage in 1Q84 where Haruki Murakami writes about the moment you realise it is not you that has shifted, but the world itself. One day, you wake up, and the familiar track is gone. Another one has taken its place. Your mind still belongs to what was, but everything around you insists on being something else.

That is what my life feels like. As if the world I knew quietly stepped aside when my mom passed away on 7 January, and a parallel version slid in without asking.

In evidence, there have been a number of recent changes in my life. Some deliberate. Some not.
Every morning now, Eva and I go for a walk. We started during my leave and simply never stopped. On weekdays, I get up ten minutes earlier and arrive at work ten minutes later than I used to. Traffic is still forgiving at that hour. My presence or absence in perdition seems to register very little anyway, so no one notices if I drift in a few minutes after six.
Our walks are brisk. Purposeful. They wake my body and clear my head, at least enough to face the day. Eva moves through the world with uncomplicated joy, nose to the ground, tail certain of itself. I borrow some of that certainty when I can.
Barely a month after Christmas, the holidays already feel like a story from another lifetime. The colour drained from everything so suddenly after my mom died. One moment, the world was loud and bright; the next, it was muted, as if someone had turned the saturation down without warning.
I am drinking less, too. That change started before all of this, somewhere last year, when I grew tired of wasted Saturdays and hungover Sundays that vanished in a blur. These days, I can make a whole weekend last on a single six‑pack. It is not an act of discipline so much as a quiet disinterest.

Other, smaller shifts have appeared. New habits. Slight adjustments. They sit alongside the devastation of losing my mom, not because they soften it, but because life seems determined to keep moving regardless.

I am fairly certain I know what her advice would be if I could ask her. I wrote about it before, when I called her the bravest woman I know. She would not have indulged despair for long. She would have acknowledged the pain, then reminded me to stand up straight and meet the day.

I think of her so often, especially in moments that feel unreal. When the world looks familiar but behaves differently. When my heart insists on breaking quietly, in private, while the hours continue to pass as if nothing has happened.
One of her favourites was Freddie Mercury. His words return to me uninvited, but perfectly timed:

The show must go onInside my heart is breakingMy makeup may be flakingBut my smile still stays on

I suppose that is what this season is asking of us. Of The One. Of me. Of all of us left standing on this altered track.
Not because we are ready. Not because it feels right.
But because the world, deranged or not, refuses to wait.
Written by I

These are the darkest days of my life. I hope they will never become darker, though I no longer trust hope, or time, or the quiet promises we make to ourselves about what lies ahead.

My mom sent me a message not long before she breathed her last.

It was ordinary, almost forgettable in any other life. She wished me luck for going back to work the following day. As always, she ended with “Luv u”. I replied almost immediately. “Luv u 2.” I didn’t think about it. My fingers moved before my mind caught up.
I'm endlessly thankful for that small reflex now, because it was almost certainly the last message she ever read. A few words on a screen. A closing door I didn’t know was closing.

Those messages haunt me; I keep looking at them, trying to find something hidden between the lines. Proof that my mom knew how much she meant to me. Proof that love can exist fully in a moment, even as the moment slips away.
I wish I’d phoned her instead. I wish I’d heard her voice one more time, with all its warmth and irritation and love tangled together. I wish I’d seen her on her birthday. I wish I’d been there at Christmas. There were so many chances, so many almosts. To my eternal shame, I let them trickle through my fingers, convinced there would always be another opportunity waiting just ahead.

This is the lie we tell ourselves. That there is still time. That tomorrow is dependable. That the things that matter most can safely be postponed.

If only I could tell my mom one more time that I love her. Not in pixels or shorthand, but out loud, where it could land properly and stay.
One thing has become painfully clear in the aftermath of her death. Everything we touch is already in the process of leaving us. There is never as much time as we think. Tomorrow is not promised. Sometimes, it never comes at all.
Written by I

My mom's memorial service went as well as such things ever can. It was a small circle sending her off. Barely thirty people, all told. Intimate. Quiet. I was surprised to see some of my father’s family there. My mom had worked hard, over the years, to keep ties with her two sisters-in-law, even when life made it easier not to.
While I'd been sorting out the memorial booklets in the week, my sister had compiled the acknowledgements. She wove small, quirky fragments of our mom’s life through the list. Tiny flashes of who she was. A close cousin read the acknowledgements early in the service, his voice steady where mine would not have been.

At the front of the church stood the framed canvas I'd made with my mom’s name and dates. Seeing them fixed like that felt unreal, as if time itself had closed a door and walked away.

My mom had made friendships that lasted a lifetime. One of the eulogies came from a friend she met in primary school. They had stayed in contact for more than sixty-six years. That kind of loyalty feels almost mythical now. Something from a world that no longer quite exists.
As we left the church, the same cousin played Amazing Grace on the bagpipes. The sound followed us out, heavy and aching. My sister had organised finger snacks and coffee in the church hall next door. A small kindness. One of many she carried that day.
She had even arranged a pet sitter for Eva. Nathan, a tall young man with endless patience, kept our bouncy black Lab fully occupied and happy. Knowing our girl was safe and distracted mattered more than I can put into words.

Through every second of the day, The One was by my side. We held hands during the service, gripping tightly, as if we might otherwise be pulled under by the sheer weight of it all and silently drown.

We left the church in Wonderboom around 14:00. Halfway down Sefako Makgatho Drive toward the N1, traffic ground to a complete halt. Four lanes wide. No movement. I turned around and drove back through Wonderboom instead. It wasn’t much better. We only reached home after 15:30, exhausted in a way that had nothing to do with the drive.
There were technical issues with the live stream. We only discovered them after the service, when it was far too late to fix anything. I shared digital copies of the booklet and my sister’s acknowledgements on the WhatsApp group, so those who couldn’t attend could piece together what had been said.
Yesterday, I took the day off entirely. I didn’t check my phone. I didn’t engage with the world. I didn't even walk Eva. I felt deeply bruised, as if something vital had been struck. An icy numbness began to settle in my chest, quiet and persistent.

My mom’s passing feels like the final, undeniable confirmation of adulthood.

When both your parents have been gathered to their forefathers, something fundamental shifts. There is no longer anyone standing silently behind you, just out of sight, ready with advice or reassurance. The safety net is gone. You are no longer someone’s child in the way that once anchored you to the world.
Tomorrow, I have to wake up and face a life that continues, absurdly, without the discreet, behind-the-scenes guidance of my beloved mom. Nothing looks the same. Nothing ever will.
Written by I

Every trepidation I have ever faced pales in comparison with what I have had to face this week, in the aftermath of my mom’s sudden passing.

I took a day of compassionate leave on Monday. My sister and I met with the undertakers to begin arranging my mom’s funeral, and then with the minister to organise the memorial service. A close family member, and my mom’s godson, he graciously offered his services at no cost, including the use of the church and its facilities.

I was tasked with creating and administering a WhatsApp group for friends and family, a space where we could share stories and photographs.

I returned to work on Tuesday. I didn’t get much done. My thoughts were constantly pulled back to my mom. That evening, after a gruelling day, I started work on the booklet for the memorial service. It had to be spectacular. There was no chance I would let a stranger touch it.

Wednesday blurred into more of the same. After getting home, I took a quick shower and then carried on with my ambitious plan. Terrified of leaving anyone out, the booklet kept growing until it finally settled at twelve pages. The centre spread became a collage of every photo we could lay our hands on. The remaining pages held messages and eulogies, the order of service, and the hymn lyrics.

I reserved the back page for another collage, one made up of some of my mom’s favourite things. I spent an inordinate amount of time getting this just right.



The booklet had to be finished by Wednesday night so it could be printed first thing on Thursday morning. In addition to the booklet, I designed a small bookmark as a keepsake for those attending the service, as well as a stretched canvas to be displayed at the front of the church.

I finally stumbled into bed around 23:00, utterly exhausted. Sleep did not come. My mind kept circling the hardest thing that still lay ahead, something I would have to do on Thursday.

I had asked for the printed items to be ready by noon. My boss gave me a generous discount. Just after midday, I left work, drove home to collect The One and Eva, and then we made our way to the funeral parlour to say our final goodbye to my mom.

She lay in her casket, looking as though she were peacefully asleep. I touched her cheek in greeting. Her skin was icy, and the shock of it almost burned.

She will be cremated today, as the service takes place.
Written by I

Rest in Peace

H. M. “Nonnie” Heyneke-de Beer07.12.1951 – 07.01.2026

Somewhere in the night of 7–8 January, my mother passed away peacefully, suddenly and without warning.

The photo above was taken at a cousin’s wedding in 1982. She was thirty years old. It has always been my favourite picture of her.
The bond between a mother and her son is unlike any other. That bond has now been severed. My sister and I find ourselves adult orphans, trying to understand a world that no longer contains our mom's voice, her presence, or her quiet constancy.
I like to believe that her mansion in the sky is enormous. A place filled with every dog and cat she ever loved, and where my father awaited her with open arms.
Karen Blixen once said goodbye to the man she loved with these words. I borrow them now, with gratitude and sorrow:

Now take back the soul of Hester Magdalena de Beer,whom you have shared with us.She brought us joy, and we loved her well.She was not ours.She was not mine. 

Written by I

If it weren’t for the shaved patch on her belly and the painful-looking gash with its halo of bruising, you’d never believe Eva had major surgery just three days ago. I’d post a photo of her wound, but I’m fairly certain the squeamish would squeam, and nobody needs that kind of drama in their feed.

In every other respect, our pup is back to normal.

She’s as bouncy as a rubber ball again, fuelled once more by what appears to be a bottomless black hole for an appetite. We’re still holding off on proper walks, much to her disgust, but I’m planning a very slow, very dignified stroll to the end of the street tomorrow morning to see how she copes. I suspect she’ll be fine. It’s restraint she’s struggling with.
One of my favourite things about walking with Eva is noticing all the gardens along the way. Some are genuinely impressive, the kind that make you slow down, stare, and then immediately want to redesign your entire outdoor space. It always leaves me itching to visit a nursery and add to our modest potted collection. With the end of my annual leave looming, I pulled up my socks this morning and went to the closest one, Plantland, which turns out to be a stone’s throw away.

I knew it was nearby, but I hadn’t realised it was a ridiculous three-minute drive.

I’d never been there before, and it was a pleasant surprise: well-stocked, well-tended, and not outrageously priced. I wandered around happily and came away with a few bits and bobs, feeling very smug about the whole thing.
They had a mesmerising variety of Agapanthus I’d never seen before, called “Midnight Sky”. The flowers were a deep blue-purple, almost inky, and absolutely stunning against the green leaves. Unfortunately, we’re not allowed to touch the garden at home, and this is not a plant that wants to live a lonely life in a pot. Agapanthus demands commitment and mass planting. I admired it, sighed dramatically, and moved on.

I did grab two African violets for a mere R110. We have a couple of empty pots in the bathroom; not everything we planted back in spring made it, as these things go. There are few sights more depressing than barren flower pots gathering dust, quietly judging you for your optimism.

Back home, while I fussed over my new plants, The One played gently with Eva on the lawn. To her complete delight, a palm leaf had fallen over the wall from next door, and she immediately set about dissecting it with great enthusiasm. Surgery or no surgery, important work must be done.

I am struck by how quickly life settles again after a disruption. Eva is mending, the new plants are finding their place, and my holiday break is drawing to a close, whether I’m ready or not. On Thursday, I’ll be back in perdition, leaving behind a recovering pup and a few small signs of renewal at home.

Healing happens quietly. Things take root where they can. And getting through what’s next is just a matter of putting one careful paw in front of the other.

Written by I

2025 has shuffled off the stage at last, which means I can lift my chin, square my shoulders, and cautiously welcome 2026. With snacks. And low expectations.

It’s been a bit of a whirlwind since my previous post, which, incidentally, was last year.

Around the time of that post, I contacted Eva’s vet to arrange the op. Fixing. Neutering. Spaying. Having her tubes tied. Whatever you prefer to call it, our girl was old enough at 18 months. Incredibly, the practice had an opening on 2 January, which was yesterday. Apparently, even vets believe in starting the year strong.
Following instructions to the letter, Poppet had nothing to eat or drink from 22:00 on Thursday night. I took her for just a short walk around the block at 5:20am yesterday morning. We had to drop her off by 7:30am, and I didn’t want her getting thirsty and giving me that look.
She knew something was up. She was extra bouncy and zoomy until we left shortly after 7:00am, as if enthusiasm alone might determine her destiny.
That optimism lasted right up to when we guided her into the cage at the animal hospital. One cage down from the one we left her in back in 2024, when she was so desperately ill, it dawned on her that this was, once again, Serious Business. She gave us the same sad stare she had then when The One and I turned to leave. As before, it broke my heart.

We could still hear her nervous barking as we drove away.

Home felt wrong without our Eva. Too quiet. Too tidy. We left early to kill time until we could fetch her at 16:00, wandered through a shop or two, and had lunch at McDonald’s, like the millionaires we are.
When we finally fetched her, the vet explained that everything had gone smoothly. They also inserted a microchip, which I had somehow not imagined to be so affordable. All in, the invoice came in about a grand less than I’d been mentally bargaining on. A rare win.

Back home, Eva was… not herself. She drank a little water but refused food, even her beloved droë wors – normally the answer to all of her problems.
Zonked out on anaesthetic and painkillers, she nevertheless managed a slow, trembling trip downstairs to do her business on the front lawn before bedtime. Tail tucked. Legs shaking. Then she collapsed at the bottom of the stairs, and The One and I carefully carried 30-odd kilos of Labrador Retriever back up.

Walking is on pause for a few days. Swimming is banned for two weeks. Stitches come out in ten days.

Against the odds, all three of us slept well. My internal clock woke me just after 5:00am. Eva wasn’t in her usual spot, so I went looking and found her fast asleep on the cool bathroom tiles. When she saw me, she launched herself upright and nearly ate me alive, as if we’d been separated for weeks. The tail was back. The proper one. The unstoppable, joyful wag.
Later, I brought her breakfast upstairs. She immediately inhaled it. Still a bit shaky, she’s already worlds better than last night. She’s managing the stairs slowly and carefully, but entirely under her own steam.
Watching her bounce back has been unexpectedly grounding. Yesterday was frightening, uncomfortable, and completely out of her control. Today, she’s sore, stitched, and still a little wobbly, but she’s moving forward anyway. No drama. No self-pity.

Only the quiet trust that the worst part is over and tomorrow will be better than today.

I’m trying to take that lesson with me as I brace myself to return to work on Thursday. Sometimes you don’t get to opt out of the hard thing. You get through it, one careful step at a time, trusting that better days are already underway.
Written by I

It looks like an early-morning walk with Eva is becoming an everyday thing. She just won’t stop bouncing on the bed after 5:10am. For the third day in a row, the two of us were out walking by 5:20am, while the world still slept peacefully. What was a shortened version on Monday quickly returned to the full circuit yesterday. Today, Eva led the way as if it’s always been like that.

I'd love to incorporate our new ritual into my morning routine when I go back to work next week. I enjoy our brisk walks as much as Poppet does. There’s something grounding about moving through the quiet streets with a warm leash in hand, the air still unclaimed by the day. It clears my head in a way nothing else seems to manage anymore.
This morning, it dawned on me that it was the final day of our annus horribilis, to echo EIIR. Somewhere between the second lamppost and the corner where Eva always insists on stopping, my brain started assembling this post.
*
One year ago, we had barely started settling in at our new address, having been here for less than a fortnight. The new year loomed ahead, bright and obliging, full of the kind of cautious optimism you allow yourself after a big move.
I suppose it’s a good thing we didn’t know what was coming. Had we known, we might have scuttled the ship right there and then, overwhelmed by the insurmountable challenges waiting just beyond the horizon.

The greatest source of worry back then, of course, was getting rid of our house.

Early in January, we tossed all the junk we didn’t bring along. By the end of that month, the house had been listed with a property auctioneer and, for the first time in a long while, things were looking up.
Every spare moment in February was spent getting the place into shape. We paid a truckload of money to have years of grime scrubbed away and whipped the garden into the most attractive state we could manage. It was exhausting, thankless work, but it felt purposeful. Like progress.
On 5 March, the property was auctioned off, and a developer got it for a song. Even though we would walk away more or less empty-handed, we heaved a sigh of relief. At least the ordeal would soon be over.

Then, the gods remembered.

Just before my birthday, on April Fool’s Day, the house was gutted and vandalised, a single day before the developer was meant to take occupation and begin renovations.
That day felt like the end of the road. A dead stop. A cruel punchline. I still don’t know where we found the strength to get up and keep going, but somehow we did, moving through the hours like sleepwalkers, propelled by habit rather than hope.
We lodged a claim with the insurance, of course. What followed was three months of shouting into a void.
May, June, and July dragged by with no feedback, no answers, nothing but automated acknowledgements and polite indifference. We followed up relentlessly. We involved legal aid and even the Ombudsman. It made no difference.

Those were the darkest days, heavy and airless, the kind that shrink your world down to the size of your own dread.

At the beginning of August, our claim was rejected. The insurer had found a loophole that indemnified them from liability. Again, the darkness threatened to swallow us whole. Again, I don’t know how we managed to go on, but we did, if only because there was no other option.
The first fragile sprig of hope arrived with spring in September, when the developer offered to honour the sale, provided we gave him a hefty discount to cover the repairs. We had no choice but to accept. Our finances took a brutal hit, but by then, survival mattered more than fairness.
In October, as the rain began to fall, the property transfer was finally completed.

I suppose that’s when our fortunes technically turned. It didn’t feel like it at the time.

November arrived with a snarl, and work morphed into something resembling a sadistic torture parlour as year-end pressures mounted. I can honestly say I have never worked as hard for so little in return. Our achievements are acknowledged with meaningless certificates and the occasional handful of candy, as if sugar could substitute for respect.
The pace only intensified in December. Long days blurred into longer weeks, the finish line constantly shifting just out of reach. Two days before shutdown, my work bestie was fired.
Just like that.
No dignity. No warning. No loyalty.
Watching it happen snapped something cleanly inside me. Whatever residual belief I had in fairness, in being rewarded for effort, drained away. I stopped caring, not out of spite, but out of self-preservation.
*
Biggest lesson learned this year? Everyone is in the game for themselves. Trust nobody.
Nobody?
Absolutely nobody.
Or perhaps that’s not quite it.
Perhaps the lesson is narrower and sharper than that. Institutions will not save you. Systems do not care. Promises are elastic, and loyalty is conditional. If you don’t look out for yourself, no one else will do it for you.
And once you accept that, really accept it, a strange kind of freedom takes hold. You stop waiting to be chosen. You stop expecting rescue. You begin, slowly, to stand on your own terms.
So this will be my theme song for 2026:

…you’ve gottaMake your own kind of musicSing your own special songEven if nobody else sings along

— Mama Cass Elliott

Written by I

Sunshine on my shoulders makes me happySunshine in my eyes can make me cry

I was up just after five this morning. The house was still and quiet, and my aching ulcer had decided to give me the night off. I felt rested, grateful, aware of that small, rare miracle: feeling almost normal again.
Eva, of course, was already wide awake. One and a half years old and brimming with purpose, she met me with bright eyes and a wag that left no room for negotiation. So we went out, despite it being a Monday, despite my shift usually belonging to weekends. Some days make their own rules.
My husband lay snoring peacefully as we stepped outside.
And then the day opened itself.
A rainbow arced across the rooftops, vast and unmistakable, its colours startlingly alive against a pale wash of cloud. The early morning sun sat low and bright, catching the lingering moisture in the air, and for a moment, everything seemed suspended between rain and radiance. It felt like a promise.

Rainbows only exist because of sunlight. They need it. Without light, all that beauty stays hidden, colourless, unremarkable. Standing there with Eva, her nose twitching at the new day, I felt that truth land quietly but firmly: joy works the same way. It needs light. It needs attention.
We wandered for 20 minutes before heading home. The fresh morning air was cool and clean, the kind that fills your lungs completely. Trees and hedges glowed an almost impossible green, rinsed bright by the rain, leaves catching the sunlight like polished glass. The ground breathed up the deep, earthy scent of rain-washed soil, rich and reassuring. Eva trotted ahead, nose busy, tail high, utterly delighted by the world exactly as it was.
Back home, we woke my love and started the day properly, with coffee in hand. Soon after, he headed downstairs to face the laundry, which had been quietly multiplying during weeks of near-constant rain. When the machine finally beeped, Eva and I followed him out to help hang it all in the sunshine.
White linen flashed bright. Colours deepened. Fabric warmed beneath our fingers. Sunshine on our shoulders, sunshine in our eyes. I understood John Denver perfectly in that moment. Happiness doesn’t shout. Sometimes it simply stands there, glowing, while you peg socks to a line.
An hour or two later, we took Eva for a swim - in exchange for her proper daily walk.
At the first word, she flew down the stairs. As I opened the patio door, she raced out and launched herself into the pool with joyful certainty, slicing into the clear blue water like she’d been waiting all year for this exact second. She paddled and splashed, thoroughly at home, then climbed out and dropped into a deep bow on the sunlit tiles, front paws flat, bottom in the air. Reverent. Ridiculous. Radiant.

While The One checked on the washing, I rubbed our pup down with her very own beach towel. She leaned into it, eyes half closed, warm and spent. We went back inside for more coffee, and then for a long, luxurious snooze. Sunlight slanted through the windows. Time loosened its grip.
Later, I found myself thinking about how easily happiness arrives when we let it. Not through effort or planning, but through noticing: morning light on fabric, colour after rain, warmth on skin, a dog bowing to the sun. Nothing extraordinary. Everything essential.

Sunshine almost always makes me high

Written by I

I was up early on Christmas morning. The three of us had agreed that each person would contribute a dish so we could have Christmas lunch on the patio. My offering was a recipe I’d been quietly circling for a while: Julia Child’s Potatoes Dauphinoise. Nothing says relaxed festive cheer like a dish that demands precision and respect.
Finding the ingredients turned into a small scavenger hunt. Fresh thyme was elusive. Gruyère cheese had apparently gone extinct, or was being sold somewhere behind glass for the price of an arm, a leg, and a kidney. I substituted mature white cheddar and pressed on.
The recipe itself was finicky but not difficult. Thinly sliced potatoes, cream, butter, garlic, thyme, patience. I slid the dish into the oven at 8:50am and committed to the long haul: one and a quarter hours of gentle bubbling and hoping I hadn’t ruined Christmas via dairy.

Jane had wisely opted out of real cooking, producing frozen sweet butternut instead. Once thawed, it required only a brief, triumphant visit to the microwave.
While my potatoes cooled, my love told me he really wasn’t feeling well. This meant that, without discussion, I also inherited his contribution: an elaborate Marmite-crumbed chicken. By noon, I had produced it, running purely on habit, irritation, and the stubborn belief that if I kept moving, the day might still cooperate.
None of us has particularly warm associations with this time of year. Something in the air shifted. Suddenly, none of us wanted lunch at all. As the food cooled, our enthusiasm did the same, and every dish went straight into the fridge.

I was utterly dejected. Four solid hours of cooking, and not a single appetite in sight.

The One spent most of the afternoon in bed. We never ate.
I woke in the middle of the night with a familiar, vicious ache in the centre of my torso. I’d been through this before and knew exactly what it was: a stomach ulcer flaring up. The metallic, bloody taste in my mouth, though, was new and completely unwelcome.
I fished a couple of stale Gaviscons out of my bedside table. They took the edge off, just barely. I got up and went shopping online for relief, eventually ordering more Gaviscon, some Mayogel, and a stomach acid blocker, like someone calmly restocking supplies during a siege.
The catch was that everything would only be ready for collection the next morning. So yesterday dissolved into a miserable loop of fitful dozing and sitting hunched in front of the computer, endlessly scrolling YouTube. Anything to distract me from the pain. It was relentless, grinding, impossible to ignore. By afternoon, I felt hollowed out, sore, and bleak, counting time in minutes and discomfort, convinced it would never ease.

Downstairs, untouched in the fridge, sat our Christmas lunch.

After another terrible night, I was up at the crack of dawn for Eva’s first weekend walk. Back home, I gingerly sipped cooled chamomile tea and stared at the clock, waiting for 8:00am so I could go to Dis-Chem.
By 9:00am, I was home again, swallowing medication with more reverence than is strictly healthy. I may be about R400 poorer, but the relief was almost instant and entirely worth it. Few things inspire gratitude quite like the sudden absence of pain.

Thank the gods that Christmas is over, and we can start looking forward to new beginnings.

This afternoon, I carefully reheated and reassembled Christmas lunch into dinner. The three of us finally sat down and ate, with Eva supervising closely. The potatoes turned out better than I’d dared hope. Rich, soft, indulgent. So rich, in fact, that a small portion was more than enough, which felt like Mrs Child quietly approving from afar.
The chicken and butternut had survived the ordeal, too. We ate slowly, talked easily, and at last enjoyed ourselves.
At my lowest point, I’d been tempted to rage, to stomp downstairs and throw the whole unwanted feast into the bin before collapsing dramatically from pain. But time passed. The pain eased. The food waited. And in the end, everything was warm again, and good enough, and shared. Sometimes that’s all the victory you get, and sometimes it’s plenty.
Written by I

Tonight, I find myself thinking back to Christmas Eve in 2019. It was the last Christmas I remember spending with everyone I consider close family, all of us gathered in one place, loud, comfortable, and together.
It was only a handful of weeks before COVID-19 quietly crept in and changed everything. We didn’t know that then. That night, the world still felt steady. There were nine of us squeezed around my cousin’s table, the windows open to let out the warm air; in the distance, the low rumble of a Highveld thunderstorm.
There was enough food to feed an army and, as always, even more conversation. Long after the plates were cleared, we stayed seated, talking, laughing, and reminiscing well into the early hours.

My love remained home that night. It had only been a couple of months since Dirk’s passing, and the world still felt far too sharp for him. Grief doesn’t follow a schedule, and there was no expectation for him to be anywhere other than where he felt safest. We understood. He was with us in spirit, even if not at the table.
It seems almost impossible that only six years have passed since then. Tonight, instead of one noisy table, we’re scattered across the city. Different homes, different routines, different lives. We’re still connected, of course, but the shape of togetherness has changed. Christmas Eve is quieter now. A little more Silent Night than it used to be.
Still, some things refuse to change. The love. The memories. The shared jokes resurface no matter how much time has passed. Which is why I couldn’t resist doing something slightly ridiculous to make you all smile.

Say it with me — and with Mariah — All I want for Christmas is you!

Wishing my favourite people a joyful Christmas tomorrow, even if we’re celebrating apart, melting quietly in the heat, and pretending the thunder in the background is part of the festive soundtrack.
Written by I

I spent this morning in the shops, arriving at Checkers in Atterbury Value Mart precisely as the doors opened at 8:00am, like a pilgrim who had planned their devotion carefully.

Against all odds, work had actually paid my overtime claim for last weekend’s labour, a rare moment when cause and effect appeared to recognise each other.

Flush with this unusual alignment of effort and reward, I decided to spoil us. Nothing reckless. A new kettle, because ours has been flirting with failure, and fluffy towels, because adulting is exhausting and softness should be non-negotiable. Mr Price Home gladly obliged. Builder’s Warehouse did not; their safety shoes came in at a sobering R849, so I decided to revisit that dream another day.
Best Before, as always, had the final word in the form of a small mountain of snacks.
Back home, The One and I unpacked and chatted for a while, the rain falling steadily for the second day in a row. Eventually, we took our usual positions in front of our respective computers. I set off on one of my digital wanderings across the globe, the kind where you leave the house without leaving the chair. Not long after, my husband drifted away for his first snooze of the day, a droopy-eyed Eva following closely, loyal as gravity.
Somewhere between the rain and the quiet, I found myself in Mexico.
Las Pozas, nestled in the rainforest near the town of Xilitla, is a surreal garden of concrete dreams: towering staircases, arches, and platforms rise out of dense greenery; a vision built by Edward James as if logic had quietly slipped away and not bothered to return.
One structure in particular caught my breath. Escaleras al Cielo ("Stairway to Heaven"). A stairway to nowhere and everywhere, climbing boldly above the treetops.

It felt fitting. Lately, life has been a little bizarre, a little surreal, as if I’ve been moving through scenes that don’t quite explain themselves. Work has been heavy. Skies have been low. And yet here was this impossible staircase, beautiful and unnecessary, existing simply because someone imagined it.
I was still digging around Las Pozas when my love woke up; Eva immediately attacked his ear with playful devotion. The joy that surged through me at the sight of him, hair flattened by sleep, stopped me cold. 

And just like that, the meaning landed.
My stairway to heaven isn’t made of concrete, and it doesn’t climb through a jungle. It’s this. For the next week or two, I get to wake up and spend every ordinary hour with the ones I love most.

No travel required. No grand structures. Just time, together, while the rain keeps falling outside.

That’s it. That’s my holiday miracle.
Written by I