Of shoes and holy moments: 365 words about the first day of the year

New Year’s Day. Before the braai at my folks we drive east to the veld where we run Lola some weekends. It’s our city respite – our taste of dust and peace and sanity where we breathe deep and fresh. Murray wears his 5-finger Vibrams hoping for a bit of a trail run. Cam is cool in slops, his shorts hanging low showing his jocks like a teenager except that he’s also carrying his new green umbrella with frog ears which detracts from the coolness. It’s not raining but he insists that green umbrellas are for rainy days and sunny days. He lifts his feet high and careful until he’s read the stones and the dongas and then he runs helter-skelter, blind trust hoping for depth perception. My brave big child. He calls for me until he’s caught up close, pretends to see me way before he does. Scott stamps proud in new sandals – stops – bends – ants sticks rocks sky – wonderful and wonder-filled – he clutches adventure by the chubby fistful – runs and shrieks excited grinning strong little happy man with the eyes that miss nothing. My little loved child. It’s been a white Christmas – snowy butterflies drifting delicate and surreal. Lola romps slobbery in the lush long grass catching sun and butterflies but she’s more golden than retriever and how we love her. We clamber high on rocks flat and jagged and steady and loose and find a place to sit and be on this first day of a new book of blank pages. Kings of the castle we look down over Silver Lakes for the rich and Mamelodi for the poor and I think how we live in a country so deeply roughly textured and so bursting with need and so alive with opportunity. I feel suddenly we should pray sitting there on the rocks – like it’s a holy moment and maybe we should take off our shoes because God is here and in every day ahead. We see an ant carrying a bee and I wonder why I doubt the God of impossible things. The clouds are purple grey and rumbling deep and there are showers of sun, then heavy drops in the dust.