Last week I met a six-year-old girl who reminded me that love always wins. Don’t worry, this is not a sad blog. No one dies. In fact, I’m not even writing about anyone who is sick. So, breathe out. No tissues required this week.
Let me give you some context. My long–suffering husband and I went to the “wedding of weddings” in Reunion at the end of November. It is the ideal location for everything you would want in a destination wedding: turquoise seas, white and black beaches, sunsets even Turner couldn’t paint, waterfalls, volcanoes and everybody speaks French – the official language of love. (Side note this needs to be unpacked: I’m not convinced the French are the most loving people after dealing with the waiters).
The wedding could be seen as atypical as the couple are from two different backgrounds. One is Jewish. One is Hindu. They are two different colours. One is white, one is a beautiful brown. Where they are the same is in their gender. What I loved about all of it was that itwas not these differences and similarities that made the wedding unusual.
The wedding was unusual because it was simply drenched in love. Full stop.
There were about forty adults, two tweens and the above–mentioned 6 year old, Ishani, who is so cute it is almost illegal. Friends and family came from all over the world. We were a hodge-podge collection of different cultures, religions and languages, ages and educations (I was by far the least academic – and yes, I include the tweens in that estimation), yet somehow, this group connected in the weirdest and most beautiful way.
During a sunset picnic one evening, I sat with my hand gently being hennaed by an Indian goddess (who is the mother of Ishani). She told me about life growing up on the Cape Flats, and I wondered what road she walked to get to being one of Gauteng’s most sought after medical specialists? My husband was sharing some whisky with one of the bride’s parents. They are second and first generation SA Indians respectively. I contemplated the road they and their forefathers.
Next to them, two married couples were laughing over some French faux pas committed earlier that day. One couple is gay and from America. I had to wonder how their lives are affected now that “the land of the free” is changing and a man with orange hair is stripping away the rights ofall people who do not look and love like he does.
The father of the other bride was sitting opposite us and talking about investment. He is Jewish and has told me how he was desperate to continue his name after most of his family was killed long before he had a chance to meet them.
Over the next few days of celebrations and wonderful moments of tenderness, I was acutely aware of how easily Ishani darted around the group of very diverse people. She jumped into the pool, knowing one of us were always there to catch her, she merrily skipped around the breakfast buffet knowing one of her loyal servants would dish her whatever her heart desired. If she needed a lap or a cuddle, there was always one available. She was simply loved and included, and because of that, this was her normal.
It made me think back to when I was six. I would have said that I definitely felt loved, safe and included, but in 1979 this love was limited. It was not inclusive and now that I am forced to face it, with some hindsight and broader perspectives, I never did feel really safe.
Everyone in my neigbourhood was white and Afrikaans, with the exception of our next-door neighbours. They were English and I was terrified of their pale, freckly children. I suppose hearing on repeat how the English burnt our family farm and how my great–grandfather Oupa Japie spent his childhood in the Bethulie concentration camp would do that to a person.
The only black person I really knew was our precious Christina (I have no idea what her surname was) who carried me on her soft broad back smelling of Zambuk. When she looked after me, she sat on the floor and I sat on the couch. She didn’t use our crockery but had her own enamel plate and mug. I loved her. I know she loved me.
The English were not the only people I was afraid of. I was scared of other black people too – not the ones we knew or the ones my grandfather taught to weld and my grandmother taught to sew, but the “black terrorists” like Nelson Mandela, Walter Sisulu, Govan Mbeki. We heard the name Solomon Mahlangu mentioned all the time. Our family and friends’ sons were sent off to the border to fight yet another danger: the communists. The boys who didn’t die came back broken and filled with hatred.
The Indians I knew were the people my mom spoke to while I tightly held her hand when we shopped at the Oriental Plaza. She knew the shop owners by name. They spoke to her in Afrikaans and called her “Mevrou”. They smelt different to us and the strong spices and colours overwhelmed my senses like nothing anywhere else.
We sat in our pale churches in our stockings and hats and homemade dresses. We listened to the “dominee” preach about this God who loved everybody the same (but clearly didn’t expect the same of all of us?). From this pulpit, we learnt about forgiveness and inclusion (while hate and fear abounded). We were told, all the time in our schools and our churches and community halls, that we had all the answers, we were the only ones who knew the absolute and the only truth. Our little white tribe would only survive in its theocratic manner if we kept it exclusive to the point that our ideas and ways became toxic and incestuous.
I am filled with gratitude that it is no longer 1979, and that we can love who we want to love, that you respect me because I am a decent human being, not because of the amount of pigment in my skin… or because I have a penis. I am beside myself that I can get an Indian auntie to lovingly dress me in one of her sarees so I can attend her daughter’s nelangu-ceremony. I love that we can break a challah bread and drink wine with a Jewish dad while he wears his kippah to remind him that there is a creator above him who is more important than him. I can ask my newfound drinking buddy why his god, Ganesh, ended up with an elephant head. I can sit next to a Jewish mom and ask, “Why do you keep bringing up the temple that was destroyed 1955 years ago rather than bemoan the atrocities that happened last century (or yesterday)?”
I can have the honour of watching a mom bless her daughter while they both weep. We can still find a way to feel safe in our old rituals and our old traditions because we allow the love and the light in.
There is a meme that says, “Is it not strange that we were taught to fear the witches, rather than the men who burnt them?” I am so pleased that Ishani may grow up in a world where you can trust your instinct. Unlike me, she was not taught that gay men are perverts. She would have rather distrusted the creepy white Latin teacher in my high school who managed to spread his pedophilic wounds among my peers while the school protected his lust. Ishani will not automatically fear other religions because they are unknown to her. She will be allowed to be curious and rather to learn from their beauty and grace. I pray that Ishani will never see colour, but that she would rather celebrate the glorious beauty of its diversity. At the end of the day, if the god you serve encourages you to feed the hungry, clothe the poor and heal the sick, and love each other, I reckon we’re on the same page. Is this not more relevant than what your god is called?
And so, because algorithms like boxes and do some keyword perusal, and this is a Recovery Lodge blog, I should mention recovery and care somewhere. Perhaps this is exactly what recovery looks like: learning slowly and tenderly, to unclench from the past, allowing old wounds, whether recently inflicted or generations ago, to breathe in the light of something kinder.
I am glad we may live in a space where curiosity is celebrated, difference is not a threat and caring for each other and our fragile planet is a conversation we’re finally willing to keep having.
But mostly, I feel honoured that a six-year-old girl reminded me of how far we can travel as a humanity when we let love – simple, stubborn, every day love – lead the way home.