Some of my earliest childhood memories involve my gran’s hands.
Sitting next to her at her dining room table, feet dangling, I would watch as she trimmed the ends off beans. Precision-wrapped a present. Cut around a pattern pinned to a piece of fabric with decisive strokes of her fabric scissors – which you were, under no circumstances, to touch. (Note: The purpose of this rule was not for the safety of small children. It was for the safety of the pristine scissors in the hands of children who could not be trusted to use their heads.)
There was something so capable about her hands, so no-nonsense. It was the way her nails were always short and neat. The way her wedding ring lay flat against her finger, like it was part of her hand somehow.
If I think about it now, the wide, almost masculine ring was perhaps unusual for a woman of her time. But, then again, so was she.
There were three “golden rules” that she baked into our family lore.
One: Your time will come. Do not withhold joy in celebrating others when it’s their time. Be generous in your delight at other people’s wins. Your time will come.
Two: If something is lost, and it is meant to find its way back to you, it will. You just have to trust.
Three: The Kruger Park is a sacred place.
Ok, that last one was less of a rule than a feeling that was passed down through a combination of osmosis and regular pilgrimages to the Park. But it’s felt so deeply in our bones that it may as well be one of her tenants still woven into our lives long after hers.
This story is about rules two and three (although rule one lives quietly between the lines too).
On one long ago Kruger trip when my mom was little, the family Kombi pulled into the sandy parking area of the Timbavati picnic spot (a name I never really remembered whenever this story was told) as the sun started to get hot. Tradition (aka, my gran) dictated that you left the camp at dawn as the gates opened, and had your first cup of coffee or tea when you came upon a good sighting, whatever that happened to be. If luck dictated that you only saw something worth cutting the engine for a couple of hours into your morning drive, well, that was the way the Ouma rusk crumbled (just kidding – my gran obviously baked her own rusks).
Breakfast was something you really had to hold on for. It wasn’t until you made it to a chosen picnic spot, where you could alight from the vehicle and pull out the picnic basket and Kadak camping stove, that you could finally eat.
(As an adult, whenever I break this rule – i.e. always – and take a sip of coffee from my pre-prepped flask as we exit the camp gates at sunrise, I feel an interesting twinge of guilt.)
I imagine the picnic spot they chose that day hasn’t changed a whole lot since my mom and her three siblings climbed out of the hot Kombi, looking forward to a final bush breakfast before the long drive back to Joburg.
A winding dirt track leads up to a decent sized clearing in the bush where a handful of tables and chairs sit under shady trees and a few little thatched roofs. There’s a tiny “kitchen” area with a sink where you can wash your dishes as you chat to the picnic caretaker. Apart from a bathroom and the caretaker’s bungalow hidden by some rocks down near the river, that’s it. A beautiful, isolated little spot which, even these days, has no phone signal.
On that morning all those years ago, my gran stood at the sink, cleaning the remnants of an excellent breakfast off the plates. When she got to the pan, particularly greasy after a full fry-up, she removed her wedding ring and placed it on the side of the sink, not wanting to coat it in bacon fat as she scrubbed the dishes.
It wasn’t long before the picnic basket was loaded back into the car and everyone climbed in, ready to head home but hopeful for a last lucky sighting on their way out of the Park.
I don’t know if they did see anything that day, because one thing eclipsed everything else: at some point on the journey home, too late to turn back, my gran realised that while she methodically packed the clean dishes back into the basket, she had left something on the edge of the sink: her wedding ring.
When they got home, calls were made to whoever they could think of: the closest gate, the closest camp. Her details were taken and she was reassured that if they found it, they would let her know, but… you know how these things go.
I never actually asked my gran how she felt about this, but it’s not hard to guess. She was pretty good at getting on with things, though, and I imagine she made her peace with it eventually.
Years later, she found herself back at that same little picnic spot in the middle of nowhere. Towards the end of their stop under the shady trees, she struck up a conversation with the caretaker – the same man who had been there all those years ago, it turned out. A solitary existence.
“You know,” she said, “I think about this place sometimes because I did a stupid thing here once. I left my wedding ring next to the sink after washing dishes, and I only realised long afterwards when it was too late.”
He looked at her for a long beat, nodded his head, and said, “Will you wait here?”
My gran watched him make his way down the narrow path leading away from the clearing, around a large rock. It was a little while before she saw him returning, walking slowly up towards her. As he drew level with her, he wordlessly held out his hand.
Sitting in his palm was her wedding ring.
She was gobsmacked.
“It’s been years!” she said.
The man nodded. “I knew,” he said, “that whoever left it here would come back one day. So I kept it safe.”
As I type this, that same ring now sits on my right hand. It’s one of the most precious things I own, not just because of the connection to my gran, but because of this story. And this strange little addendum…
My gran never got to know my husband, Joe. She died before I met him, and I often think how much she would have liked him. He has his own family lore when it comes to Kruger – a place that’s equally precious to them. A place that, over the years of our relationship, became our place in its own way, with our own new traditions.
One January afternoon after a crazy storm, Joe and I went for a sunset drive in Kruger. We stopped at a lookout point where you could get out the car, and, one moment Joe was taking a photo of me looking at a brilliant rainbow, and the next, as I turned around, he was down on one knee, asking me to marry him. To say that I had less than zero inkling that this was going to happen would be an understatement. In fact, it was several moments before I could even form words.
The following morning, after we found a spot with signal to call family and friends, Joe suggested that we take a slow drive to a picnic spot he’d seen on the map and have a champagne brunch (as he’d sneakily packed a bottle under the seats). In full passenger princess mode, wrapped up in the last 24 hours, I was very happy to let the day unfold as he liked.
As I stood, a couple hours later, looking at the sign at the picnic spot, I had the strangest feeling. I sent a message to my mom that I knew would only go through once we were in signal range again.
“What was the name of the picnic spot where gran lost – and found – her wedding ring?”
Her message came through a few hours later as we drove through the Park with the windows open, not really minding that we weren’t seeing much.
“Timbavati,” she said.
Isn’t life strange?
