A year in the life...

Today is exactly a year since I started this blog. And it’s been 12 months of some ups, some downs and more plateaus than anything else, spanning what has felt like a lifetime of events, experiences and feelings. In this year I have learned to keep house, with all the mistakes that I make, to cook everyday dinners instead of aiming for glossy-cookbook perfection, to control my temper and tantrums and even reactions and to live with stress levels elevated above those I thought I could not handle. And in all the potholes and speedbreakers that there have been at home, at work, with people who matter, with those I have met by accident and by design, there have been moments to remember, usually with a smile.

Like the time I came out of the salon with newly ‘done’ hair. It glowed a deep and glorious purple in the brilliance of the January sunshine and managed to blow away some of the cloud that weighed down my mind, for a few minutes, at least. My stylist stared at me from about four inches below my height, and suddenly burst into delighted laughter. She had never seen the colour job work this well and expressed her joy at her own success with a tight hug and many exclamations, all of which startled the security man standing guard outside the swish shopping complex and attracted the attention of taxi drivers and hungry seagulls alike. My exclamations as the colour gradually faded to a straw-like orange were not as delighted a few months later, but that is another story.

Or like the time I walked into the house to find a tiny orange furball perched on Father’s chair in the study of our apartment. She was shivering and dirty, bug-infested and starved, injured and scared. But her big eyes and bigger ears charmed us, as did the little squeak she produced just before she dived feet and all into her first-ever dish of real food. That little scrap is now a good sized feline with a gleaming coat, bright eyes, astonishing intelligence and all the personality of a diva with the persistence and confidence of a spoiled brat who always gets her way. And she rules the household with an iron claw hidden under soft fur and seductive wiles. Small Cat is not all joy, but has brought in with her a great deal of laughter and fun that we sorely needed.

And then there was the time I came home to find that Father had created the most delicious lemon-curd pie…and the apple one, too. The time that the power was not shut off after days of four-plus-hour loadshedding stints. The time that the painters left the house after what felt like years of tracking dust, dirt and white blots all over the newly polished living room floor. Or even the time when I arrived back from a week away and found Small Cat making cautious overtures of friendship only half an hour after I first said hi to her. And so many more, too special to share, too meaningful to put into a public forum. It’s been a year of recovery, of learning, of adjusting, of discovering. And a year that has, I hope, slid into the next without the shattering bumps of the previous one…