Working and traveling, mothering and building relationships.
It is fun living in
On working:
So we got the opportunity to demo at another really big mining operation, this time totally out of our experience as the client is very influential in the building industry as well and the commodity is low cost high volume as oppose to the high cost low volume of the platinum industry. To prepare properly I had to work right through the night at Phil's house (this is a post all by itself) and by 9:00 the next morning, just a couple of hours before the demo, our laptop packs up without warning. I phone the client to try and postpone the meeting but alas, she secured the attendance of a couple of their executive and to postpone on such short notice is just not possible. So we packed up the server and two other support laptops and turned their boardroom into an IT showroom.
All was well until one of the managers questioned the integrity of a company working in transformation that has no ownership representation from the black African community. How to explain to this woman in her highly paid position that our company is newly formed and we cannot even pay ourselves a salary, let alone support additional people? I did not even try to defend us, it just left a bad taste in my mouth and definitely made me decide that building relationships with the smaller operations is time better spend.
On traveling:
My parents, Elrich and myself went back home for the first week in September. Now in the South African context,' home' is not necessarily where your furniture is. Home is your roots, it is manifested in the acceleration of your heartbeat when you smell and hear your childhood sounds. The humid green of
It was a nostalgic experience for me, taking E to a place where my memories are filled with scenes from my childhood, and as a teenager laughing and sharing a carefree existence with Phil as we played in the waves and listened to the night sounds together. Sometimes I got a bit caught in a time warp but never did I want the ‘now’ to change. I am very happy with my life and I can truly say that I have moved on emotionally - that I am living a new reality.
On Mothering;
Oh the challenges of mothering a 5 year old. This is an interesting time for us, E has left his small childhood years behind and he is a young boy now with all the challenges and fun this entails. He is a very funny kid and we are all learning how to best express the range of emotions that inhabits this life stage. His barely controlled desire to explore and learn new things closely coupled with the fear of 'getting it wrong' and 'not looking so cool'. I do not remember ever being as image conscious as my kid is now and can only assume it is an attitude picked up at school. Some of the fun things my kid said this holiday was
'mom, you know what, I don’t want to be human anymore. Humans are not cool' yip I share that sentiment, but what to do about it?
Another funny was as a result of my dad, who suffers from flatulence, letting a stinker of in the car on the way home. E exclaimed loudly, opened his window and said ‘Eish…these noxious gasses will kill us all!!' Resulting in hysterical laughter by everybody in the car
E starting every second sentence with ‘Eish’, which is a very African South African expression, is the most honest reflection of my child’s multi cultural friends.
On building relationships
Believe it or not, but I have started to really communicate to John and guess what? He has responded, not by ignoring me, but by communicating back and even though we have by no means changed much in the relationship, as all the challenges remain to be challenging. But at long last, I have come to a place where I am prepared to be emotionally vulnerable around him. Now that is a very big thing for me. Recognizing and feeling those emotions I have for the longest of long times just ignored, has really affected my life on many different levels.
For one, I can actually relax, just relax. My tummy is not in an anxious knot 100% of the time. I am not as driven to be perfect anymore, a perfect mom, a perfect consultant, a perfect driver, a perfect partner. I am ok to be just me. And guess what? My kid does not have to perfect either – we are all just incomplete imperfect humans. Living closely together, enjoying each other. I don’t have to be anything different to be loved, or attractive or anything. And lastly, let me whisper this …..for the first time in a long time I can actually enjoy sex. Yip…… see, I am ok. I don’t have to perform to please, because I am pleasing just as I am. Now that was a revelation if ever there was one.
