mother.

The yellow painted tablecloth is filthy and is covered by grubby plastic sheeting. Newspapers ringed with coffee stains and curled rice are scattered across the tabletop. The radio hums pleasantly, and the dog barks at the onset of daytime.
She sits close to the table, idly flicking through an old newspaper. She spoons crunchy cereal into her mouth, eyes flicking downwards with wary attention. It is sultana bran (with extra added fibre), chosen for its consistency, flavour, and out of a life-long habit. The brown flakes are drowned in watery UHT milk. The black sultanas bob to the surface, and she chases them with her spoon.
It is morning, and her face is tired and gentle. The soft creases crowing by her eyes yawn slowly. Her skin is smooth with the idea of wrinkles slowly approaching. She is not too old, yet. Her hair would be grey but it is the auburn-brown of her childhood and her hair-dye. It is bushy and uncontained and her curls fling about in the air. Her eyes are small and dark, inherited from her mother, and passed down to me.

My mom grew up in Worcester, in the Karoo area of the Western Cape, in South Africa. It was a small town with a reptile park, tall trees, some sense of familiarity, and dust. On weekends, kids piled into bakkies of hay and drank homebrew. The youth were gap-toothed and lithe, and spoke quickly in makeshift Afrikaans.

She had two blonde brothers and a neat, straight-backed mother. Her father was the town doctor, and a respected and powerful man. He was a freemason with a moustache and utmost precision, and he delivered babies for payments in vegetables and gratitude. In the Summer, my mom and her brothers splashed in the cold water of the swimming pool outside and drank in the nectar of rotting cumquat and syringa.

Her brothers were Intellectual Types, involved in the Struggle, with aspirations of Bar exams and Democracy. While the landscape was rife with political fervor, she knew from an early age that she wanted to be an art teacher. Creativity and artistic notions nestled inside her, and she yearned for something more inspired than the quasi-intellect of her local Höerskool.

It was Thursday night, and CSI droned pleasantly in the background. Mom, Dad and eldest daughter played Scrabble in the lounge-room. The phone rang in the dullness and shattered our smooth reverie. It was Granny her mother with lucid clarity,


     The house is burning down.



          There is a fire.


The destruction was too complete; the house was gutted by the fire, and then by the reckless bravado of the firefighters. Smokey the Dog saved my grandparents, but couldn’t stop the blaze.
It was a shocking and sudden farewell to her Childhood Home: to the meandering house with sometimes-stained-glass windows and big oak doors and the flicking fireplace. To the Garden that was a jungle of apple trees and naartjies and cumquats and matted twisted vines. To me the house smelt agreeably like Old Person and gentle dust, but to my mom, it smelt like a whole lifetime.