21 on Shiny Metallic Paper

Last night I was cutting up 21 on shiny metallic paper – freehand, mind you haha, hence the imperfections my mom would have picked up instantly – as I always do each year. We’d stick them around the dining room walls for each birthday of our kids. Today we had a small birthday breakfast at home with them. Simple, not quite vegetarian. My wife works so hard for them, she’s a super mom and highly creative, too! More about how she whips up amazing things with her super powers one day – if I’m permitted to share them. We’re all very shy folks.

When my wife was pregnant with our twin daughters, the gynaecologist asked us when we’d prefer to have them delivered. In South Africa, private hospitals highly advise families expecting twins and multiples to go for a caesarian operation. They are probably scared of possible complications, or perhaps it’s easier for them to “manage” such births.
We were shown dates when the doctor would be available. We chose Heritage Day, 24 September 2002. I still remember that day, driving on the N1 before dawn, the highway nearly empty as it was a holiday. I’ll spare the details of the ordeal of waiting, and what I wish could have gone better (I wrote a few poems years ago about the experience). Not everything went smoothly, but everyone was safe and fine afterwards.

Medical aid only covered three days’ stay in the hospital, so I drove us all back home to our house about 32 kilometres away from our closest relatives in Cape Town. My wife sat in the back, still in a state that needed a lot of care, holding two bundles of new life, each barely bigger than two hands spread out.

We were both unsure we’d be able to take care of them by ourselves. We had hired a nanny just for a few hours a day of the week, but she wouldn’t be seeing us until after the holidays.
My memory goes blurry pretty much from that point on. Zombie state on auto mode took over after many sleepless nights. I vaguely recall how on that first night I had to deal with the incessant crying until the first light of dawn crept in.

Flash forward to today. Heritage Day in Cape Town. The Springboks had just lost to Ireland at the Rugby World Cup. It’s a gloomy, wet and cold day. No one can braai outdoors in this mood, in this weather. We ourselves don’t braai as often as most South Africans. Semi-vegetarians have mixed feelings about braais.

So our twin daughters turned 21 today. It seemed to go so fast, the years, but also oddly took forever. I guess that’s how memories work on you and your sense of things, of time and space.

I won’t tell you in detail my intention to write a series of essays – bit by bit, in my battered notebook, on my secondhand laptop, on my secondhand phone, on scraps of paper I hope not to lose. But this, recognising the unique heritage my small family shares, will hopefully be part of it.

My Canadian-born wife with a Scottish mother and a Greek father, my twin daughters born in Cape Town, half a world from where I was born – we’re all part of this country as much as it is part of us. The world is so much more bigger and yet also smaller at the same time.