Dear Mum,

It’s your birthday. Not only that, but is a real milestone. You are only sixty-five once… It’s even more special, because it looks like this could be your ultimate birthday. You won’t celebrate this one, because of the Alzheimer’s, but we’ll all be thinking of you. I wish we could be throwing you the huge party you deserve, but you don’t need that to feel loved.

I remember your 60^th birthday party, and how all your friends around town came out to celebrate. All sorts of people, many of whom I’d never met. That’s a reflection of the person you’ve been: In all your homes, whether in Scotland, Canada, England and South Africa, you’ve had large circles of friends. You’ve impacted many, many people, and shared some wonderful times. They all know you as a woman with a great sense of compassion and humour. A cultured person with a massive intelligence, but the kind of intelligence that can be translated practically into helping others. You didn’t become a PHD in some esoteric subject, although you could have pretty much chosen any field.

You have taken on huge challenges for yourself, and succeeded. You have remained curious and adventurous and willing to learn. That is a great gift to me. Your faith in recent years has stirred me, and brought out a tender part of your personality.

I guess that all three of us, your sons, have felt like we were your favourites. You managed to take an interest in all of us, and make all of us feel special. Having three sons is enough of a challenge, but John, Mark and I have pushed that challenge to the limits. But you never stopped supporting us. I could have told you that I wanted to be a professional human cannon ball, and you would have paid for my studies, and eagerly scanned the press for news of my career. You rigorously defended us throughout our lives as we were growing up, and were not afraid of confrontation.

It’s amazing, really. You came from a very conservative Scottish family, with strict parents, yet you were naturally able to adapt to a more modern culture of personal involvement. You didn’t have to read pop culture books about parenthood, you just poured your love into your children.

I know that you went through some baptisms of fire. I know that you wept oceans of tears of frustration, anger and hurt over us. I am both ashamed and deeply touched. We’ve worked through a lot of that hurt, and I am privileged to have spent time as an adult with you, getting to know you as a personality. I’m glad that we had that opportunity. I’m glad that you loved my wife, and treated her like a daughter, not just in words, but with genuine inclusion in your family.

You jumped at the role of grandmother. Has any grandchild been more loved than James? I know that if you hadn’t been undermined by this disease that Hannah and Jonah would have shared that love, too. They still love to be with you.

You have been a perfect wife for Dad. You have followed him around the globe, uprooting yourself and supporting him in all sorts of ways. You have always maintained an immaculate home, and provided thousands of meals. In a society where divorce is an ‘option’, you have stuck by him for forty-two years. Amazing.

It has been heartbreaking to watch, over the past four years, your decline in health. How cruel that your powerful mind should be depleted bit by bit. I think that in the beginning you knew something was wrong, and you tried to keep it at bay for as long as possible, but in the end, it has removed most of you. I’m grateful that you have remained cheerful and affectionate. I still expect you to say something ‘Mummish’, with your constant humour. You don’t laugh any more. You just manage to remember who I am, but it is difficult having you here physically but not mentally.

I was devastated to see you in hospital, frail and confused after the burns. I wanted to pick you up and make everything ok. That role is just another reversal. You would have sat by my hospital bed, done anything in your power to make everything right. I am accepting that you may not have long to live, but it is hard to grieve while you are still alive. I think about the things we did together, the movies and music you enjoyed, and silly things, like your obsession with Mount Everest. In a perfect world, you would have lived to go hiking in those Nepalese foothills, able to gaze on that magnificent creation in reality.

You loved books. Thanks for that, Mum. Your love for reading has absolutely transformed my life. How my world-view has been altered by reading is all due to you. You recognized that literature is a gateway to other places, physically and mentally. You have recommended some life-changing books to me, and willingly read some of my more ‘out-there’ favourites.

You taught me to sew. You didn’t question me when I asked to be shown, but happily let me loose on your sewing machine. You taught me to cook and bake, but those things I have adapted as necessary…!

In fact, you encouraged me in the following crazes, passions, and sometimes ill-fated interests: swimming, trumpet, clarinet, piano, rats, fish, mice, hamsters, cats, a dog, poetry, drawing, church, girlfriends, marriage, children, writing, studying, running, the art of cappuccino drinking, working with clay, wire jewellery making, collecting stickers, yo-yos and whatever else, in fact, there is a lifetime of interests, too many to recollect. Not once did you try to discourage me.

Ok, so we had disagreements about fashion, hair and substance abuse, but in retrospect, you were right about many of those things, and I respect that you were there to protect me. Even when I was getting into trouble with the police, you would have supported me, if I had involved you. I think that it is the high moral standard that you and Dad gave me that brought me through those times. Thank you.

Only sixty-five years? Seems like such a short time. I don’t know what to wish for: Do I say I want you to live another ten years? I don’t think you would want that. Now that you are bed-ridden and mentally disengaged, I guess you would want to leave this life, if you had a choice. I can see your body failing, which is very tough to watch. Maybe the best thing to hope for is that you are comfortable, and that you know lots of love during your last time here on earth. You may not be able to reciprocate, but I know you love to be loved.

I couldn’t have wished for a better mother, Mum, and I hope you hear me whispering that I love you in your ear, and that a brief moment of clarity will allow you to know that that is the truth.

Happy birthday.

Your son

Scott

You think Robert De Niro prepares for his roles? Apparently I’ve spent 37 years preparing to take on the role of… Homer Simpson.

While I have a weakness for a cold beer OCCASIONALLY, and I do find myself doing that thousand-yard fridge stare of the terminally peckish, I have not got luminous yellow skin.

I have less hair than Homer, which proves that I am not trying to be him, unless you are one of those insane and deluded people who throw around the meaningless adage ‘less is more’. Er, no, less IS less.

My son is not a pint-sized anarchist, nor my daughter a pointy-headed dweeb. I admit that they can make our house appear like a re-enactment of the sacking of Constantinople, but they do eventually respond to threats.

Actually, although we are a Christian family, interestingly our family resembles more the Simpson clan than the Robo-Stepford family next door, the Flanders. We don’t do pointless copy-cat Christianity, which is rightfully mockable as being insincere and unbiblical. Maybe I’m overcompensating just because if I drop something on my toe, there’s a good chance I won’t say ‘Goodness!” or even ‘D’oh!!!’ but possibly something that even the Fox Producers would edit out of the script…

Amusingly, I think/choose to interpret it that way, I took a stupid ‘Which Simpson’s character are you?’ test on the net. Apparently, I’m Marge… Suuuure, because I always mutter sensible things, and have a towering confection of blue hair??

Love my dysfunctional family. Neen, representing my as-yet clueless children bought me a gift for Father’s Day. The Simpsons Movie on DVD. And she hates the Simpsons, which makes it all the more special.

Good kids- you can hereby continue to co-exist in my house with me.

An update: So the refugee crisis (xenophobic attacks) seems a little more under control. Many have returned to work, some to their old houses. Still, there are thousands more living in tents in the middle of winter. Babies have been born in tents.

Part of what I have been doing as a volunteer was filling in around the control office: generally helping to take some of the pressure off the people trying to lobby government, the UN and any local NGO’s. They are presenting legal letters of demand, and trying to force an active response. It’s been three weeks in Cape Town, and the response has been slow in coming. The various groups that should have stepped in to take control of a humanitarian crisis have been involved in a petty squabble amongst themselves.

This has created a situation which is likely to take a couple of months to resolve. The chairperson called me at home the other day. He has asked me to help out doing press statements, emailing of interested groups and handling communication. He offered to pay me, too, which has come as a great relief!

So on Monday I start as a full-time relief worker, which is exactly what I wanted to do. I don’t know where it will lead in the long term, but my contract at the university finished on Friday, so I will be free for as long as it takes.

Having spent years wishing that I had been more involved in eradicating Apartheid, I now have the opportunity of being involved in destroying racism on a different level.

A couple of months ago, I asked God, as you do, to give me a job that I enjoy. Seeing as I was speaking to the God of the universe, I told Him that I really wanted to work for an NGO, but that I didn’t have the usual cv to get in (Social work, political studies etc). But I reminded Him that I can write, so I would love to do that.

How amazing has that response been? At the time, there was no way I could have envisaged this, and indeed, while I was volunteering, I didn’t ask for work. But He told the guy running the whole show to phone me (that is my take on it, anyway).

Which once again proves to me that He is able to do anything, and that He cares about our dysfunctional little personalities. Thanks, God. I’ll try not to mess it up!

You have to wonder about Disney. All those movies where the princess/parlour maid etc meets the handsome prince, and then they dance around with birds and mice and so forth, their unbelievably large eys glistening, until they waltz off into the sunset, happily ever after.

Sure, to a single babe like Cinderella, staying up to the wee hours and frolicking with princes was her lifestyle. I can only imagine that glass slippers were incredibly uncomfortable, and of no practical use other than as a receptacle for champagne. Did she ever sit down, years later, her prince now lazy and fat, her five children nagging and crying, and the mice leaving droppings all over the mantelpiece and wonder if being a princess was as useful as, well, a glass slipper?

I’m also pretty certain that after she married the prince, Snow White would have grown apart from the seven dwarfs. Between all the cooking, cleaning and ironing, there just isn’t time to patronize seven little people, and to dance around with baby deer.

Did Beauty ever wish that her nerdy prince husband was just a little bit beastly? Didn’t she pine for the days when he was hyped up on testosterone, prowling and growling on the castle walls? Was he reduced to playing Scrabble and filling cracks in the plaster?

Even Ratatouille. At the end of the movie, the rat is set up in his own restaurant, but I know from painful personal experience that rats live for between two and three years, so the restaurant would have had a limited future.

I think that the most realistic kid’s movie recently was Babe, because the guys making the movie made no bones about the fact that several piglets had been used in the filming, and that they had been summarily dispatched to the butcher afterwards. Now that is a reality show. They should do that with all difficult actors: Whaddya mean ya didn’t have mineral water in your trailer? To the executioner with you!

There should be more kid’s movies based on reality: Life is nasty, brutish and short.

(You may be detecting that I am a bit depressed- I have cabin fever- I have been in the house for four days now with a cold.)

I have recently been hired as an editor for Dadosphere, an internet magazine that is there to help/inform/amuse dads. It’s not quite the same as a blog, but most of the Dads involved are long-time bloggers. If you are a dad, have a dad, or know a dad, check it out!

I should be more active around the house. Lately I spend my weekends pretending not to notice things. Today I would have done a couple of them, but I was feeling really ill. What I hate about not doing them in the nagging suspicion that the house is falling down.

I see a tiny hairline crack, and my paranoia turns it into some massive sinkhole threatening to suck in the entire neighbourhood. A flake of paint means some rogue mold embarking on a worldwide lung-destroying mission. A slightly loose wire is going to have us all doing the Wile-E Coyote skeleton dance pretty soon.

As a noble husband, those happenings would all be filed under my name in the manslaughter case at court. (If my electrocuted and virus-ridden body could be retrieved from the bottom of the sinkhole).

I have a confession: I expect inordinate amounts of praise when I do regular husband stuff. Hellllooooo, Over heeeere! Just changed that lightbulb all on my oooown!

And my wife, to her credit, has learned to respond to that need for praise. Well done, she'll coo, You are sooo manly! (Ok, so that response is just in my head). She does appreciate me, but relative to what I do. A lightbulb is a half smile of praise, a fixed lightswitch a mental highfive…

I'm looking forward to how she responds when I dig the family out of the sinkhole using nothing but a shelf that we bought but never put up…

Winter is that wonderful time of year when children get to not appreciate other kinds of food.

I spent a while chopping up butternut, grating the zest of a naartjie* (just google it, ok?) and generally creating the soup to end all soups.

If I put a bowl of soup next to, say, a Happy Meal from a particular chain of restaurants on the table, and gave the children a choice, I can tell you that they would go for the boxed stuff every time.

Which is odd, because a recent poll of chefs asked what they would choose to eat as their last meal if they were going to be executed, and almost all of them chose comfort food. The kind of food Mum used to make when they were small (or Maman, seeing as a lot of them were French). Roasted this, stewed that, fresh whatever. None of them chose junk food, or even complicated food like a reduction of truffles on a nest of Russian caviar blah blah.

Does this mean, then, that in thirty years time, my children will go misty-eyed with nostalgia over food that had them making quiet gagging noises before they were sent to their respective rooms? If I am still around (as I hope I am, I will highlight their revisionism, and force them to eat plastic burgers.

Of course, they won’t be living at home then. Surely?

*

*Ok, I took pity on you. This is a naartjie- sort of a tangerine.

I was at home with Jonah today, as Grandpa, who normally looks after him, has flu. Fine- I don’t mind doing the whole parenting thing. Of course, a man without something to do can cause plenty of trouble…

At the end of a peaceful day, the highlight of which was playing balloon soccer with some leftover balloons from the Barney party (don’t those things ever deflate???), I decided to invent a recipe for Neen.

Really, it was an adaptation of the traditional kedgeree (rice, fish and veg) with tuna, egg, green peppers, spinach and white sauce. It was going well until I thought I would run a bath for the children so that they could hop in when they came home to save time.

The stupid extractor fan on the stove was so loud that I forgot about the bath. As Neen arrived home, I remembered. Instead of coming home to a peaceful home with supper simmering on the stove and a warm bath, she came through the door to me frantically, and rather pointlessly, throwing clean towels onto a pool of water covering much of our carpets an inch deep.

I hate it when stupid irritating unnecessary things happen, and you can only blame yourself. If my arms weren’t so sore from mopping and rinsing, I would beat myself about the ears.

She enjoyed the supper. Eventually. Yet more proof that I can't multitask.

I find it interesting the way children receive a descrescendo of care depending on their place in the family hierarchy.

James, son number one, had entire photo albums dedicated to him. We even almost started one of those keepsake books, you know, first lock of hair, wristband from maternity ward. Those two things were as far as we got. But we did try.

He came into the world with a wardrobe ready-made, toys all lined up as though one-day-old babies love to play with keys in primary colours. He was pushed around shopping malls by his proud parents, receiving soft sideways smiles from almost everyone. He hardly ever cried, and slept through the night from about 2 months on. We peered at the contents of every nappy, checked for any sign of a cold, and sang and read to him every night.

Hannah, daughter number one, came next: By now we were slightly distracted parents, so we forgot to buy as many batteries for the camera: not so many photos of her. She got to wear any of James's old clothes without holes, although many friends bought her pink stuff. By now we knew that babies didn't really need toys, so we let her look at James's stuff. When we went to the shops it was for our sanity: We had to get out occasionally, or we'd go mad. The smiles weren't as frequent as the 'why do those young parents have TWO children? Do they not know about birth control?'looks.

We let her sit in on whatever books we were reading to James, bu usually she was crying, absorbing our attention. Fortunately, two parents means a neatly divided regimen. I could still wave at Neen occasionally as we went about our 'I'll sort out James, you look after the baby' routine.

Lastly: Jonah, son number two, child number three. By now we were just downloading the photos- hardly any hard copies exist, so if the harddrive crashes… He was lucky to have clothes, our exhaustion levels threatening our ability to cope so much that we would have just tied a loincloth on him and left him if we could. We were no longer experimenting with follies such as cloth diapers: Disposable. Who has the time to rinse nappies at the end of the day?

He got to watch TV, play with tiny unsuitable toys, and survive on a diet of Tomato ketchup. Instead of coaching his language skills, we laughed when he got it wrong, and let him grow up on his own. Two parents, three children meant that by now Neen and I had to wear name tags in order to remember who each of us were in the family. Jonah was indulged in being allowed to wear the same Spiderman t-shirt for three days if he wanted. Heck, anything to make life easier.

Shopping? We try to avoid it these days. Anything to get out of it. My own personal hell is a busy shop with the full triptych of children crying at the same time. I daren't even attempt to translate the looks we get when that happens…

I guess if we'd carried on having children, by number ten or eleven, they would have to come out of the womb practically self-sufficient, like those snakes that just wander off after birth, or they would have starved. If you'd asked us after the first child if we were good parents, we could have replied, confidently, that we were doing the best we could. Now? I have my doubts, but still, they all seem to have turned out ok.

*Slips into phone booth and out of disguise*

I learned something today: Never listen to the advice of a policeman without asking about mental illness in his extended family. When you are part of organizing a march of a couple of thousand people in the city centre, always make sure that the cops know what they are doing in terms of crowd management.

Our anti-xenophobia marchwas getting a bit restless. Half of the march had passed when another ten busloads of irate displaced people arrived. They were beating people up wearing the same t-shirt as me, which was in support of foreigners. Then a cop asked me to divert the march into two lanes of traffic. I tried, but apparently a thousand angry people don't give my authority a second glance. After nearly falling over and being trampled twice, I ran away.

Then the really violent stuff happened. As I left, a Somali woman was screaming 'Die, South Africa!' I continued leaving.

Fortunately, no-one was too badly injured, and we successfully marched on parliament with various demands from different displaced people group.

Then, back to the office to arrange a press conference, phoning the media and being pleasant. A lot of them turned out, which was wonderful. Bit nervous about ending up in the papers or on TV by accident, but that is one of the hazards.

I think tomorrow is the last day I shall be able to invest in volunteering, as I need to earn a salary, but I will still be as involved as I can.

Let me just mention that I have been very much just a tiny spinning cog in this. Thousands have been labouring far longer hours than I, and giving selflessly.

I've been working out of the Treatment Action Campaign offices in the city. TAC is normally an AIDS advocacy organization, lobbying government for free treatment, proper care and human rights issues for HIV positive South Africans. Under the charismatic leadership of veteran struggle leader Zackie Achmat, they have created one of the most effective teams combating HIV in South Africa.

ZA and TAC joined forces with other civil groups two weeks ago to spearhead the relief work in Cape Town as the Western Cape Civil Society Coalition. Considering their involvement is voluntary, I have been astounded at the quality of support coming out of meager logistical frameworks. Together with other roleplayers, TAC has cared for displaced people with great compassion, always aware of their rights as human beings. What sensitivity.

Zackie Achmat has so impressed me as a leader: He doesn't force himself on anyone, and yet with calm authority, he gets things done. I am no veteran activist, but I wish we could have more leaders of integrity like him. And, of course, the whole team has benefited from his involvement: They seem to act as one organism, each one following through with their various responsibilities. I was privileged to have helped out.

We are a nation of individuals: each needs to examine himself to check for any signs of racial hatred. I do believe that we can heal this nasty wound, but it is going to take a long time.

I do still have a family, so I guess I should go and be dad, small 'd', again.

*As an aside: I made pasta and meatballs for supper last night, Hannah was looking at them dubiously: What goes into the meteors, Dad? She asked. Guess it's back to culinary academy for me...