If I had to pick one word to describe my gran, I would choose “formidable”.
Don’t get the wrong idea – she was many things. She had one of the best laughs I’ve ever heard, which I heard often. She was kind, often in very practical ways. She was adventurous and capable and loved a good story – especially if the person telling it was a good looking man.
She was a staunch feminist, ahead of her time in many ways. When she got married, at the age of 22, to my grandfather who looked like Ryan Gosling –
(No really though)
– she wore a pink wedding dress. In those days, this… sent a message. My gran was aware of the mild scandal she was likely igniting, but she simply liked the colour, and honestly why shouldn’t she wear the wedding dress that she wanted? Let people talk if they were so small-minded.
That wedding dress hung in the spare wardrobe when I was growing up, and I used to step into the soft folds of its shiny fabric, wrapping it around my tiny body, swaying in front of the mirror.
She was brave, in the kind of way that women had to be in the 1950s. When my aunt was three and my mom was one, my grandfather died of a sudden illness. It was only in fairly recent adulthood that I thought about this story, so much a part of our family mythology, in real, human terms. The fear that she must have felt, alongside the grief there wasn’t a whole lot of space for, with two tiny girls.
She was a great judge of character. She remarried, this time causing a stir not because of the colour of her dress but because of the age of her new magistrate husband, a lovely, gentle man, 21 years older than her. When my mom, little tot, would wake in the night after a bad dream, she would creep into their bedroom, careful not to wake my gran (good lord, no), and climb into bed next to her stepdad, who would softly, softly recite poetry to her in the dark, calming her racing heart.
My gran was an excellent driver. When the family went on holiday when my mom and her (now) three siblings were kids, my gran always drove while her husband smoked placidly beside her. When the car broke down, as the old kombi sometimes did in the Mozambican beach sand, the family would pile out while my gran fixed it.
One holiday, as she was napping in the hot afternoon, my two uncles (probably 5 and 7), with little-boy reverence, brought an exciting catch in their beach bucket to show her – a Mozambican spitting cobra. The story goes that her response was firm but level. “Boys, put that right back where you found it.” The part of that story that always amazed me most, when I heard it as a wide-eyed child, was that they’d actually made the choice to wake her up.
She was a talented cook, famous for her Sunday roast chicken, and equally famous for her no-nonsense directness. One Sunday, I wandered in front of her in the haphazard way of a small child while she was carrying said roast, and I can still hear her clipped reprimand: “Sarah get out of the way, you’re worse than a dog.” This is now a catch phrase around the lunch table at family get-togethers. As is, “Don’t be ridiculous, it’s perfectly alright,” (said, routinely, about cream so bad it was actually green), or, “I’m so mad I could spit teeth!” (uttered in fury when she found her plate of Christmas lunch covered in glittery confetti after she ignored the warning everyone got to cover their food as a trigger was pulled experimentally).
She was resourceful. When my aunt and uncle and cousins moved to Romania (long story), she bought a computer and taught herself how to send emails. Then she taught me.
When she went to visit them, on landing in Bucharest, she realised that she was, in fact, in Budapest, separated from my aunt in the arrivals hall by a few hundred kilometres and a national border. Travel agents make mistakes like the best of us, you know! She promptly found the delightful couple she’d sat next to on the plane, regaled them with this hilarious mishap, and invited herself home with them until a plan could be made the following day.
She delighted in raising eyebrows. One Christmas, teenage me unwrapped a chunky pair of green and purple platform takkies so luridly luminous they almost glowed. I was thrilled. Until my gran tutted, “Oh Sarah, aren’t those a bit ridiculous?” Emboldened by the magic of Christmas I looked at her, unruffled (unusual for me), and said, “Gran… I dare you to wear them to church.”
She paired them with a green and purple floral dress, and all but sauntered down the aisle that Sunday.
She loved cricket. Woe betide anyone who interrupted her while she gazed intently at the screen – especially if Makhaya Ntini, the best player in decades, darling, was bowling. Watch now, watch him! Look at that! What a chap.
She was fearless. One night, when she was probably in her 70s, she woke up to find an intruder in her bedroom, standing over her in the dark. She said in that tone that my cousins and I knew only too well, “Young man, what are you doing?” He could tell she was not to be trifled with, and left at once. And – this will really tell you everything – she rolled over and went back to sleep.
She adored elephants and liked to refer to herself as “the matriarch of our herd”. In the game reserve, the rule was that you had to be close enough to “see their eyelashes” – a preference that utterly terrified my mom, probably because it came with decades of close calls and whispered, “Stop being ridiculous, it’s perfectly alright, I’m trying to focus the binocs!”
I was in my 20s when she died. I wish I had asked her more about her life. She once made an offhand remark about the thrill of a young man putting an arm around her at a garden party, and 39-year old me has many questions about this. About so many things.
I wish I could talk to her as a (proper) adult. I wish I could tell her how much I think my inner steel comes from her. I wish I could introduce her to my husband (she would have loooved him – very “dishy”! Knows all about cricket. Loves elephants, and not shy of eyelash-level proximity).
I wish I could show her my wedding dress. See, Gran? It’s not white either. It’s slightly pink. (Although I’m not convinced she’d have liked the plunging neckline, having once commented that my friend’s matric dance dress was a bit “come hither”.)
I wish I could tell her about Something True. I think she would have been fascinated by this job I made up for myself – a job inspired by wanting to do things a little differently on your wedding day. When I think about it… maybe it all started with the story of that pink wedding dress that hung in our cupboard. And the young woman who knew her own mind.