God – Page 3 – PurplePretoria

I was seated on our bed in the hotel room which you had decided to book even though we had gone through different options and I had chosen another place. We had been walking through the shops all day, stopping only to eat. I knew you would be leaving for a long time and so everything you did seemed like repentance. I sometimes wished that things could replace you, but all I really wanted was you.

You had wanted to show me how patient you could be and I had wanted to show you how considerate I am and how responsible I am with money, so you stood outside waiting for long while I walked around in circles and if you showed me two things, sometimes I chose just one and other times I chose neither.

Now I was inspecting, picking up and putting down items one by one. I picked up the ring box casually and as carefree as I could. I had planned to say something funny, something that would not show any partiality to love, rings or feelings. I started, but, suddenly you were on one knee. You took the box from my hand, opened it and held it out. I laughed, but your face was serious and cut my nervous laugh short.

“My name_ I love you. I always have. Always will. Will you be my wife again? Through loneliness, you laughed shakily. I grimaced and held my breath. I don’t quite remember what else came after that. I just wanted to remember what you knew, what you said, what you asked. “… and when you see it shining, let it remind you of my love for you.” I said yes; again, a little too quickly, again, in my own opinion.

I have remembered why I followed you. When we met I was looking for stability and you seemed to know the way. I allowed myself to be someone like you. You were unbound, crazy, mysterious, free and you were a mountain physically but also as a force. We secretly called you that, my high school friends and I. Yet, the same mystery and freedom scares me now and this past year and half, your mischievous eyes that can’t see, your lopsided tongue in cheek smile, and the school boy I met 15 years ago disappeared. The torrents that beat you down, the future with all its uncertainty before you, replaced you and I missed you, constantly.

You’ve been restless. You’ve been sad. You’ve been angry.

The tips of your fingers are warm when they touch mine as though they were a matching set of prints. My heart rests when it is next to yours. I hold onto you on the plane to anchor my fluttering heart. That time, when the waves almost swallowed us, I asked you one thing. “Don’t let go of my hand. If our boat capsizes and we find ourselves in the lake, don’t let go of me.” Next to you, I feel like I have lived. I have loved. I have nothing left to fear. Without you, I feel like, I have given too much. I want it all back.

The day after I put on my new ring we went back walking and I suggested that I wanted to ice skate. You kept whispering and grumbling about how I could break my leg but I insisted, so you kept whispering, “It’s your choice. You know how difficult it is to walk around an airport in a cast? But it’s your choice.” “You know how expensive it is to go to the hospital in a foreign country? But it’s your choice.” I responded with, “I told you not to go back mountain climbing without a doctor’s check up and you still did it anyway.” “That was different”, you said, sensing defeat. I looked at you firmly and said,

“I want to do it anyway.”

“Okay, it’s up to you.”

“Yes, it’s up to me.”

I had never skated a day in my life. As soon as the thin curved hook of metal touched the slippery surface of the ice, I knew I was in for it. I still had to show you that you had underestimated my strength and resilience though. I had also realised that it was not only you I was trying to convince, I was trying to prove to myself that I could handle myself hereafter.

The ice was wet-glass slippery and the audience surrounding the ice rink had a constricting racial element to it. In as far as the pyramid of the eco system goes, our race was at the bottom, so the middle superiors watched with anticipation. The man at the entrance had asked me twice if I knew that they had a disclaimer for any injuries, but there had been another one of us in the shoe dressing area who like us, is described solely by colour as if it is a paint palette, ranging from light to dark with connotations construing actual lightness for good and darkness for bad. He seemed happy and enthusiastic to help me, almost even confident about me. I held on to that little vote of confidence. I put the diastasis from carrying our children aside and pulled myself together, literally; holding my core muscles together for longer than I have in a while or ever. More complicated was that I was also wearing a semi-cropped top which I had worn with you in mind, so I gripped the plastic dolphin and learnt how to push myself forward and sweep the ice in an outward v shaped motion, mimicking the foot movements of fearless young children who were whizzing past me and the experienced ice dancers near me, spinning and waltzing with grace- all while maintaining my posture and sticking to my stance.

About marriage- You want to bamba? You wanna chill with the big boys? (Ameno Amapiano)

Do you remember how when we got engaged, you told me that love was like the mountain we were on. You said that sometimes we would be up at the top and sometimes, we would be in what you always referred to, with amusement, as the valley of the shadow of love?

The first time we were on the lake, in its dark sky-blue expansiveness, we used a canoe. We floated on its roughly cut planks of wood finding a makeshift sitting place within its irregular inner structure. As we swooshed on into the water, it turned a dark green colour with strings of moss underneath. The canoe men who steered the boat, used cut outs of jerrycans to pour the water out of the boat when it sipped in. But even that did not scare me, the heart of a young girl would jump from a cliff into the vast deep if it was with the man she loves.

It was a four hour journey to the island and the lake was calm and joyful. The sun sparkled onto our faces and the silhouette of the islands faraway comforted us; but even when all we could see was lake all around us, I was certain that we would be safe. The water held us in its palm throughout and except for a sprinkling of water from the vibrating engine at the back of the boat, we were just two voices speaking in a bubble, in the backdrop of a 68,800 square metre water body.

The two lake-men had packed sachets of waragi for their journey but they agreed to resist them until we reached the shore. I had wondered out loud in disbelief as to why they had to dose themselves in alcohol and yet were relying on them to take us on a journey so far away. I had heard that the people of the lake were very superstitious, that they had seen things, that they made sacrifices to please the water. I scoffed at their naivety.

Seven years since we had been on that canoe, we came back to the lake, this time on a passenger speedboat; not just two people and two canoe men on a rough wood canoe with leaking holes and broken jerrycans. This boat had a powerful engine. It could accommodate up to 54 passengers, take us to our destination in one and a half hours, with a lavatory in the back, life jackets in the upper head shelves and an automatic inflatable raft at the top. The seats were covered in faux leather and there were windows; big enough for me to see the lake expand and contract, into a depth that only before seemed superficial; big enough for me to see a massive tide rush towards us, lift the boat atop it, push us off our linear path and drop us back into the deep.

The journey to the island had been lulling. I had slept through the last part of it and awakened to a uniform tall green forest curving against the soft dark blue. It was the start of the weekend that marked the end of a heavily loaded year as I climb out of my twenties.

On the day we left the island, unlike the day before, the clouds were grey and foreboding and it was drizzling. But we had been on the lake before, with no land in sight, on a smaller mode of transport, with two fishermen we had just met. BUT, water is deceptive. The drizzle that just barely kissed the surface of the water and the 54 passenger boat could both fit into the wide gaps that unexpectedly appeared in the water, swallowing it whole, leaving no footprint on it, as if we were never there.

As we settled into our seats, I pointed out how earlier in the morning, the water had been pulsing towards the shore and now it was rocking gently away in the opposite direction . As soon as we set off, a few happy travelers, some of whom we had made friends with over the weekend, requested to stand on the deck. With their party music on blast, we heard them shout, “One last round for the road!”

Not more than ten minutes later, one by one, they came back to their seats. The wind was unrelenting and the water it stirred up had left them drenched. The once soothing waves had become so high and violent and the farther we went, the more turbulent they became. Soon the waves came rushing towards us, pushing us away from our linear navigation, tossing us high upon its waves and letting us drop into its depressions. As we tumbled on, on our trek onto the mainland, unable to go backwards and unwise to stay still, I started to realise that even if we managed to float, the rushing large volume of water would first push us under long enough for us to swallow half our body weight in water.

I had underestimated it. Nalubaale. We were just a paper boat in the middle of an ocean and we had overestimated our power. As the lake expanded and its waves threatened to blanket the boat, I thought of the landscape underneath. Mountains? Vast stretches of sand that had covered those it had claimed before us? The people who had lived here centuries before, had personified the lake and as our powerful engine boat fought for balance I could see why the Nalubaale had taken up the natural characteristics of a human being. The lake could get happy or sad. The lake could get hungry or it could be asleep. In that moment, I could sense its fury.

As we continued to swing and fall, the music had stopped, and those still talking, were either praying, gasping or asking questions. You can tell how turbulent it is when you begin to ponder on the captain’s credentials. Your mind rummages within its contents and brings up thoughts of MV TEMPLAR and the last calls to ‘balance the boat’. And you look ahead saying, God, if I touch the ground again.

The family in front of us, a father, his veiled wife and five daughters, three of whom were also veiled sat un-moving. They did not hurdle together and if they prayed, they prayed in their hearts. There are some religions which fear hell more than they fear death. Even though I saw relief on the father’s face much later, I had not seen him as much as cast a glance towards even his wife.

The sound of the engine struggling to keep up was like complete nonsense in comparison to the heaving to the might of the water. Calm the sea. Calm the sea. Don’t you know that if you say to the storm… We held onto the jackets, knowing that that the bright orange covered foam and plastic life boat would no longer be enough to shield us from a lake that was eager to swallow everything that was moving a top it.

The feeling was familiar. It had hit me on the first flight I took after becoming a mother. Sitting next to the man I had leaned for years, the wheels of the metallic structure we had voluntarily boarded, started running against the tarmac and it attempted to lift itself and fly. It rose sharply to the sky, the sound of its old wings rattling against the wind, 243 people on board, two of whom had said quick goodbyes to their 8 month old baby (quick so as not to upset him), it fought against gravity and came out on top of the clouds. Somewhere in the white fluff, 10,000 metres above sea level, I realised that I had nothing else to hold me. I was only in the hands of the Spirit who made me, as I had always been. With no ground to hold me up, and, you know, the wind is not in the habit of catching people, there was nothing else to rely on but the Spirit who once moved upon the dark waters creating things. God, I don’t have the ground to hold me now. I have only You. But should my feet touch the ground again, I will be grateful.

Tag: God

THE MOUNTAIN

Touching Ground