Cold Carrot Soup

I remember the bright Sunday mornings when we’d rush to get ready for the journey to Annie and Poppas’: packing our car with a few odds ends and grabbing a bunch of fresh flowers or a cheesecake we had made the night before, then traveling on the road up to Ballito past the lush sugar cane growing on the gentle roll of the land, and seeing it waving us on our way as the wind blew over their tall slender shoots.

I remember sitting with my brother in the back of the car and sometimes fighting or joking with him while my mum played “She loves you ,yeah yeah, yeah...” – one of her Beatles favorites from the old worn tape deck in the tiny City Golf, trying desperately to block us out and concentrate on her driving.

I recall loving the dusty roads we drove on when we journeyed through the more undeveloped parts of Ballito – our car kicking up clouds of brown dust which billowed and twirled in the rays of the morning sun. I knew we were getting closer when we turned onto these roads and my heart would leap because I would soon see my grandparents: my Annie and Poppa.

I remember the sleepy-eyed families coming out of their thatched mud huts to begin the day’s hard work, the chickens pecking for worms and grubs, and the surly-looking goats tethered to a tree, chewing tenaciously at the coarse rope that held them captive.

Along these dirt roads were rows and rows of Bluegum trees standing silver and silent and I would marvel at their beauty - the forest they delineated was deep and dark, mysterious even and for that, all the more beautiful.

I remember the smiles, the hugs, and the kisses, the smell of antique furniture, and the fresh carrot soup my grandmother made, I remember sitting around the table together, sharing and loving and living.

I was about five years old.

***

Over the next eleven years I had witnessed the developments in and around Ballito; every Sunday the landscape was a little bit different. It had started with the tarring of roads and the felling of those beautiful Bluegum trees. Eventually, the forest was gone and all of her mysteries now lay bare and frank in such a pitiful way, like a lion with his mane shorn off. The land was empty except for odd stumps that stood out like resilient stubble.

The people were still there though and they had newly upgraded from the mud hut with its thatched roof to dazzling-white painted brick walls with a red iron roof … the pièce de résistance: a second-hand pool table that took up residence under an old tree outside.

Buildings and new housing estates started popping out of the ground, and the natural bush was destroyed as a result of this. Soon there was a new Mall down the road. Ballito was moving on with the times and that wasn’t necessarily a bad thing, but for a young boy, it became the first of many lessons on the subject of Life’s impermanence.

Our Family life changed too, my Annie was diagnosed with Alzheimer’s disease and this put extra strain on my grandfather of eighty. Annie could no longer cook, and my Poppa had too much pride to let anyone know. Every Sunday he was thinner and my Poppa, the epitome of strength was slowly weakening. My mother naturally started freezing meals for them much to my grandfather’s protest. All the same, my mum knew he accepted them gratefully. He did try paying for them though but my mum would hear nothing of it. I loved him very much and he was a great strength to me as well as being the father figure I had always lacked, and, even when I was sixteen, I would give him great big lion hugs, which were always warmly returned.

The major change came when my mother found out that my adoptive father had designs on what little she stood to inherit. My grandfather called a meeting where they would discuss the tension in the marriage and other monetary problems objectively; but it turned foul, however, and my adoptive father told my mother that he was under no obligation to care for us, he turned on my grandfather and insulted him and slammed the door behind him. My grandparents drove my mother back home that day. A week later my grandfather passed away.

My mother and I went up to Ballito a month later to sprinkle his remains over the sea and I remember how his ashes burned in my mother’s hands and how the wind blew so fiercely and whisked them up into the sky. I remember the tears that fell from our faces, how hard my mum and I hugged each other. It was the final rite and it was finished. I wish he was here now – today, but he’s not and I have to accept that.

The trip back had none of the special memories and feeling it once had. The buildings and housing estates were smart and sophisticated but the beautiful landscape was gone, those lovely Bluegums never returned. The bustle and coldness of business had taken over and I knew this was the end of a chapter in our lives.

The people were still there though, the children had gone inside, the chickens were roosting, and a paraffin lamp glowed in the window.

My mother drove on.