Penguins, Pink Tongues and ATMs - a great wedding all round

Not surprisingly I survived the wedding. Not only survived, but actually enjoyed it. I mean hey, it was a week long holiday to one of the most beautiful cities in the world, in the company of all my boys. Ideal almost!

It was Q’s first time south of the equator and he kept obsessing about figuring out whether water goes down the drain in the opposite direction from the northern hemisphere. In the end I don’t think it was ever figured out. We were too busy having a blast.

We stayed in a bunch of amazingly trendy flats in an area of Cape Town called De Waterkant (Afrikaans, and absolutely rude when pronounced properly (duh vah ter kuhnt) to us English speakers!)
Q had a field day with that one! Their website lists the properties as ideal for ‘gay stay’ which was quite far from our agenda, but nonetheless, we found out the area had other ideas… The area used to be quite rough, but has been cleaned up recently and lots of cafes, cute shops and boutique hotels line the streets. The owners are a friendly enough gay couple, who have an array of gay focused brochures and newspapers, and while we sat in the office on a serious note, discussing a potential theft of camera SD cards, I couldn’t help but pick up a copy of the Pink Tongue!!

But I definitely digress.

We went for a wedding and it was a great one. It was all a bit last minute and why not?! Stress shouldn’t be part of the party to unite two souls in my opinion. The day before the nuptials, we were huddled around an ATM en mass, trying to draw enough cash to pay the stubborn wedding planners who told us just then that thy didn’t take credit cards…

On the morning of the wedding, the ceremony was e-mailed to the officiating friend to read and remember, and on the way to the venue with our bride in tow, she let us know she’d forgotten a cake. No worries! We pulled over at a bakery in Simonstown and picked up a cute little chocolate lemon cake, which the wedding venue decorated with flowers and which came in handy later, for bride and groom to cut symbolically together and smear in each other’s faces. All in good fun.



The ceremony itself, at Boulder’s Beach, with the penguins and other visitors to the park as the background audience, was blessed with the best weather in Cape Town one could ever hope for. No wind, lots of sun…

It looked like a movie scene… Our bride looked beautiful. The whole backdrop was surreal. I don't think you could have asked for better.

I volunteered as photographer while JW and our boy's mom sat upfront to proudly ‘give away’ their son. I saved my hugs and pride for later, and wiped away the happy tears from behind my lense…

And the after party put all family differences in the bin, while we bonded and danced and drank and danced some more until it was midnight and the DJ called it a night… I think we could have gone on for hours.

The best part of this trip was seeing all the boys bond. In step-families it can go wrong so easily. It can make life uneasy and put all the relationships on edge. In our case however it has always gone well. Everyone gets along. Everyone accepts and gets on with life. And on this trip everyone had the chance to hang out (which isn't often now that the big boys are scattered across North America and we are here on the dark continent), to support each other, to be proud and to feel the love that family represents. I felt something shift. We’d all become closer. We’d all grown and we’d gained even more respect for each other. And that is good enough for me!

Penguin wedding - step parent wedding etiquette goes south

We're in the last throws of packing and closing up everything in the house. In a few hours we'll be above the clouds, heading south. All the way from Africa's west coast to it's southern most tip.

This weekend my stepson is getting married. Not only does this make me feel old! It is also a sentimental occasion and one of those important life defining moments. The children are growing up!!!

The wedding will be very non-traditional which suits me just fine - never having been a traditionalist, nor remotely religious.

Family members from both sides will gather, some from the other side of the world - as the bride is American.

They are having the wedding and reception at a national park - home of the African penguins. You gotta love that. A bunch of guys in tuxedos and matching penguins wobbling about. I'm looking forward to that.

But there is the minor issue of being the step-mom', It's not the most highly regarded position in a family if you know what I mean. Yesterday - when I had WAY more time, I had the idea of writing some witty post about the topic but then I got sidetracked when I found a number of websites outlining the etiquette for step parents at a wedding!!

I couldn't believe it - but if you go HERE you can see a good example.

Who knew I was supposed to sit on a back seat, bow out of the receiving line and most probably wear beige.

The bottom line is that you should try to blend in with the surroundings. In this case, maybe I should go as a penguin?

Well - etiquette and family feuding aside, I'm excited for the young couple - all those hopes and dreams ahead of them!

I plan to have a stiff cocktail near the very beginning and enjoy the day in their honour.

Be back in a week.

xo

'Empty nest expat' - the emotions without the nest

Words prove inadequate to capture the majority of life’s most poignant moments and gripping emotions.

This morning I breezed by the empty bedroom, door wide open, dusty abandoned papers – the sum of eight years of private school in Ghana - left in sliding piles on the floor… Where the door would once be almost closed, the hum of the airconditioning purring and the soft breath of a teenager, sleeping, sleeping within.

It’s a Saturday morning. We’re up late, but he always woke later. I saved some bacon to fry up for him and we carried on with the day, always with the subconscious comfort of knowing he would pop his head into the lounge at some stage, bushy haired, sleepy eyed and shy, and he would find his mini soccer ball, like an old friend, to kick leisurely around…

Today is very quiet. Even with the music blasting from the speakers, to aid us along in the daily tasks, a vibrancy, an expectation is missing. It is truly a void.

Earlier this week, as the airplane lifted off, our middle son, second graduate, off to University in Canada, left the dark red soil of Ghana forever. It is the reality of living as an expat – the children don’t have a ‘home’ to come back to. We don’t know how long we’ll be here, there is no sentimentality in the company provided house, fully furnished. No bedroom to come back to forever, with all the medals and posters displayed as a haven, a fall back zone for the child, but mostly the parents – as seen in American movies… No, it’s just the raw emotional reality that the child has grown up and has gone.


I find myself, in the silence, burdened with the conflict between the emotional and the practical. Things have gone well. He has mastered the basics in life – brilliant at charming and influencing peers and adults alike, calm and affable yet the life of the party when the time is right. He found first love, and witnessing the dance was beautiful and nostalgic. But he did it better. He waited, he played and then he fell hard. No heartbreak yet, but those come. And we will not see it, feel it, we will not be part of that. He has grown up and he has gone. It’s natural. Yet it’s a sad reality for parents. He was never one day the cause of anger or worry. The rarity of this is not lost on me. At 18 years old, we can only wish him well and miss him in every way. Though the last two years prepared us for his departure – he was wrapped up in his own growing world, with emotions and passions and relationships evolving – we still felt his presence, cherished the small time together, the laughter in his eyes and the man he was becoming.

Still, today is difficult to face. He hasn’t gone away to a University a half a day’s drive away, he is gone in a much more profound way. He will live for four years at school, in a different world, a continent away, during which time the rest of his transformation will occur. He will definitely be a man. He will never be back. That process started in earnest this week.

As a step parent my emotional ties surprise me – but then he has always had a way of pulling people close, having them feed off his subtle but electric energy, and leaving you with a sense that you desire only to nurture and inspire him on his path. Four years were special, well spent, and enough to pull me in fully.
And next will be the last one. My own. I can’t as yet imagine it, though it will come, pushed along by the forces of nature and seasons and the urgency of puberty. He too has been an angel and I’m not sure whether to think we have been lucky or blessed.

I also find it strange, my melancholy. We have plans and aspirations and life affirming adventures ahead. We will not be sitting in the proverbial suburban house, on the matching opposite arm chairs, with the daily paper between us - the children’s bedrooms, ‘as they were’ upstairs, pathetically awaiting their return or a weekend visit with laundry in tow… We won’t be in that proverbial world, staring at each other over a pregnant silence… no empty nest syndrome for us. When the boys have gone we too will start a new life, like teenagers, on our boat… floating out to sea…

But still, there is the stark realization that the children we have raised are wonderful, complex and likeable people, and we’ll miss them with a love and admiration I would never have imagined until now.