Of brothers and anything but boring

He ain’t heavy

Puzzles are hard work for Cam. We practise. Yesterday at my Mom’s place, she was building puzzles with both boys. Cam found the piece with the beehive and told Granny, ‘I need the one with the bee.’ Scotty picked it up and passed it to Cam. No fuss. Just being the calm little eyes for big bro.

Sometimes they help each other too much. This afternoon Cam helped Scott onto the coffee table, where he danced and chortled dangerously. Scott likes to help Cam to wake up in the mornings by performing full-body power slams. Repeatedly.

The little Scott is doing some serious testing of the boundaries at the moment. He bites and scratches and hides the keys and takes the batteries out of the remotes and turns on the washing machine and runs when I’m about to catch him.

But then he hugs me close and tells me long soft stories and plasters my cheeks with wet loving smooches and raises his hands to worship Jesus when we dance in the lounge and his eyes are a blue sea drowning my frazzle. Sigh.

Cammy comments and conversations

Waving me off this morning: ‘Be careful to drive carefully, Mom! Don’t get dead!’

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Cam: What’s Pluto for if there are no people on it?

Me: Just for God’s glory. To show how great he is. He can make planets! It’s too cold for people to live there, and there’s no oxygen.

Cam: I think Pluto is just there to keep winter at the right degree.

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Cam overheard someone saying, ‘You screwed up. You’re just human.’ He proceeded to say it several times during supper. This led to a conversation on original sin. I’m explaining, ‘And God said, “Don’t eat the fruit from that tree!”’ Cam was not to be taken in. ‘No. You must eat fruit! Fruit is healthy.’

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On Sunday Cam was hurtling through church after the service. He discovered the baptismal pool. Breathlessly excited: ‘When can we swim in this?!’

Anyone can count the seeds in an apple, but only God can count the apples in a seed. – Anonymous

A letter: some memories in mid-May

My boys,

Here are some things I thought I’d store for you.

Yesterday, Cam, you asked me, ‘Mom, why did Noah’s boat land on Mount Aromat?’ Salt of the earth, I guess…? J

We also had the following conversation, on the way home from taking Lola for a run at St Alban’s:

Cam: Why did Jesus make some animals nocturnal?

Me: [Explanation involving nocturnal and diurnal habits of animals, ending with…] So like, people, we’re diurnal ‘cause we play in the day and sleep at night.

Cam: No. That’s not actually right. We also sleep after lunch.

This morning Dad left to ride Sani2C. Cam, you prayed for him when we said goodbye. Brave shining star, what a big man you are becoming.

This afternoon Thandi was in an awful accident and you were both with Granny and Grandpa when they rushed to the scene. I’m glad you didn’t really understand what had happened, and I’m proud of you for waiting patiently while the ambulance and the police did sad and serious grownup things.

Tonight we ate lasagne but it was too quiet without Dad and blowing out the supper candle wasn’t hilarious like it usually is.  

Scott, you are a little man of few (actual) words, except of course for your astounding repertoire of animal sounds, which you can witness here. But you jabber in earnest and with great enthusiasm. This morning while you dribbled rusk crumbs in our bed you scolded Cam with vociferous intensity and a very intentional index finger. Cam retaliated by quizzing you – in Afrikaans – on all your body parts (‘Waar is jou maag / kop / rug / ens.). We were a bit shocked when you obediently and correctly pointed out the relevant bits without so much as batting your long blonde lashes.

Speaking of those lashes. Gosh. They will be my undoing. You are frikkin’ naughty. And your big soft blue eyes plead innocence as you climb wine racks and railings, couches and counters. We have to check dustbins, appliances and flowerbeds for things you’ve tossed. Yet you are equally mesmerised by the quiet adventure of books, and when you are worryingly quiet, you are as often immersed in slow, gentle, ponderous page-turning as you are in digging up my sweet peas. Sweet child of mine.

Taste and see that the Lord is good. – Psalm 34:8

Sleep tight now,

All my love

Mom

xx

 Teatime way up high...

Of fried chicken feet, world travel and divine appointments on pavements

You’ve got to love Africa.

Murray picked up the boys’ passports today. They have quite a few stories attached to them already and they haven’t even been stamped.

In short:

We enlist the help of a perfectly amiable agency (i.e. some chaps who use a cell phone booth as a base for their trips to Home Affairs and Beyond). Forms are filled in. Wads of cash change hands. Ben, the entrepreneurial promise-maker of quick-quick-passport-delivery, insists that Murray accompanies him to Home Affairs, to prove he’s the dad of kids that really exist. At Home Affairs it becomes disconcertingly and infuriatingly apparent that Ben has lost one of Cam’s ID photos. You need two. So Murray drives back through town to fetch Cam (while Jo, his self-appointed car guard, Home Affairs advisor, bouncer and ID photo negotiator, risks death by practically lying down in Pretorius Street to save Murray’s parking bay). A marathon clogs the streets. Eventually Murray returns with the live exhibit. Cam poses for new photos on the pavement outside Home Affairs, on a beer crate neatly covered with a towel. The white backdrop is the reverse side of a Vodacom street pole ad, held up behind his head by the photographer’s able assistant. The photos emerge immediately, from a printer next to the beer crate, plugged into an extension running into the Portuguese café selling chicken and Coke and bread and hope. Everyone is fascinated. Cam and Murray are having a blast. Ben thinks it’s a sign from God that he and Cameron Benjamin Reyburn have a name in common. Fast forward a month or so. Home Affairs has had a slight problem with a scanner. Ben has gone home to his family in Zim. We have gone on holiday. Eventually through the power of voicemail and persistence, Murray brings home two brand new stark little travel docs and a world of opportunities. Praise God.

We got the passports because it’s good to have passports, not because we have plans for imminent travel abroad. Although now that we have them I’m itchier than ever to throw the boys into our backpacks and take them somewhere. All in good time I guess.

I don’t have many specific dreams for our boys. I mostly dream for them just to live out every bit of their potential, to become what God has planned. But one dream I do have is that they will travel the world, because as Miriam Beard said, ‘Travel is more than the seeing of sights; it is a change that goes on, deep and permanent, in the ideas of living.’ I pray that whatever stamps fill these pages, each journey will be a celebration of God’s wonder in history and creation and train stations and weird tastes and weirder accents. I pray that travel will remind them that life is about people more than it is about places. I pray they will know that Jesus journeys with them, directing their paths. And that he summons each new generation from the beginning of time (Isaiah 41:4), choosing their time and place in history. I hope that our boys will always celebrate their earthly roots while fixing their gaze on a heavenly inheritance. I hope they will go where God leads. 

A Celebrating Life suggestion: L.L.A.P.

This one’s for you if:

1.       You want to be an awesome parent

2.       You feel like you’re not an awesome parent

Options 1 and 2 are true for me every day.

So I have an awesomeness gauge. A checklist that I run through a couple times a day. It helps me feel less overwhelmed by my ideals and my failings, and more as if parental awesomeness is within reach. Regardless of the levels of ordinariness or exhilaration on any given day, I ask myself four questions about what I’ve done with my boys:

Laughter?

Have they laughed? Like, really laughed. Contagiously and unstoppably. If not, am I willing to cartwheel out of my comfort zone to make sure that this day doesn’t end until they have?

Learning?

What have they learned? This could be anything. Like, ‘God knew he was going to make you before he had even made the world.’ Or, ‘Don’t put metal in the microwave.’

Adventure?

Has today been fun? Wild? Exciting? Different? Challenging? Interesting? In even a very small way? Like, did I let them run naked through the sprinklers? Or, did I say yes to spontaneous pancakes and trampoline-jumping with their cousins down the road?

Prayer?

Have we prayed? Before school? Before meals? Before bedtime? Randomly, in the car, on our way to something nerve-wracking or exciting? Instinctively, mid-chat on the couch?

‘So commit yourselves wholeheartedly to these words of mine. Tie them to your hands and wear them on your forehead as reminders. Teach them to your children. Talk about them when you are at home and when you are on the road, when you are going to bed and when you are getting up. Write them on the doorposts of your house and on your gates, so that as long as the sky remains above the earth, you and your children may flourish in the land the LORD swore to give your ancestors.’ – Deuteronomy 11:18-21

Mr Plod, attending to urgent business…

Murray camped with Cam in the garden last night (Scott came inside at bedtime)

Discovering the pedals…

Celebrating the city

I took the boys with me to what is spoken of in hallowed terms as The Jumping Castle Garage. I did this because The Jumping Castle Garage has a car wash. The last traces of our holiday were soaped and sprayed into oblivion and industrially sucked out of the upholstery. Cam and Scott and a handful of other carwash kids romped and bounced and collapsed ecstatically against the grubby green plastic of their inflated fortress. I tried not to think about the diversity of germs to which they were being exposed.

That’s when it struck me: This is what it is, to do life in the city. There are germs. And there are jumping castles.

Small-town, peaceful places surrounded by mountains or farmlands or beaches or bushveld always get me wondering if we shouldn’t chuck it all up and do life smaller and quieter and sans city stress. After all, we have one shot at bringing up kids. One shot at giving them a childhood. The foundations of whatever else they build in their futures will be drilled into the bedrock of that childhood. So, should that childhood be here?

I guess every decision involves a sacrifice.

Choosing to bring up our boys in a city means we’re sacrificing the natural beauty and simplicity of another existence. But if we chose that existence we’d be sacrificing all that a city upbringing has to offer. And if it’s true that God is at work everywhere, then it’s true that his glory is on display in both milking sheds and malls. We can make much of him in a deserted sweeping sea view and we can make much of him in a luminous city skyline.

So tonight (there’s a dog barking somewhere and probably an ADT car doing its slow circuit and I can hear distant traffic above the immediate silence of our streetlamps and windows are lit and content and people who don’t have toddlers are out doing Friday-night things) I’m celebrating quiet parks with old-school jungle gyms secreted away in leafy suburbs. And the thrill of seeing diggers and dumpers and great heaps of red earth magically turned into buildings behind chevron tape. And green gardens and museums and milkshakes and pavements and play dates. These are things my boys love about this city. We’re at peace here despite traffic and electric fencing and splendid pollution sunsets.

And of course it runs much deeper than a list of entertaining things to do, or other pleasing amenities like superb schools and decent doctors. The magnetic effect of the city is the lives with which ours are intricately connected. The city phenomenon – millions of human beings living wall to wall on a particular patch of the planet – presents astonishing – profoundly gratifying – opportunities to invest in peoples’ hearts.

You are the light of the world—like a city on a hilltop that cannot be hidden. No one lights a lamp and then puts it under a basket. Instead, a lamp is placed on a stand, where it gives light to everyone in the house. In the same way, let your good deeds shine out for all to see, so that everyone will praise your heavenly Father. – Matthew 5:14-16

A spontaneous Bible story session with Maria

A (freezing cold) picnic in Borzoi Park

Other cool memories from the past week or so:

Scotty threw his first proper tantrum. He lay on the floor. Kicked and turned red and everything.

He also carried Lawrence James’ The Rise and Fall of the British Empire into the playroom. Sat down, paged through it reflectively. And made horsey trotting noises every time he glanced at the cover.

I was lecturing Cam about something. He obviously felt he had had enough. So he splayed his right hand on my stomach then drew his fingers together to a point. Repeatedly. Until I stopped. Yip. He was ‘closing’ me like an iPad app. 

Poems about paradise (almost)

We had an awesome time away. Easter, three birthdays, time to relax and reflect and plan and play. (And write poetry.)

Here's a handful of random-ish poems concretizing a handful of random-ish holiday moments.

A swing in the Karoo

Distant 

Sheep graze

And mountains rim 

My spiraling rope panorama

Dizzying me beneath autumn branches 

In this rough-slatted safety of journey relief:

We're halfway there and boys' laughter is whipped 

Insouciant with yellow leaves across an icy dusk garden

Cam, Scott, a Futon and one pillow: a haiku

Two deeply snoozing

Snug bodies breathing warm and

Dreaming Easter eggs

So call me a freak

At the end of adventure days drenched in doing there's

God's glory in simple cathartic pleasures like

Hot baths run sandy floors swept towels

Hung toys tidied sleepy teeth

Brushed breakfast table

Laid lights out -

And waves crashing in the dark

(Sometimes our family downtime culminates in ridiculous fantastical stories and creatures made up on the spot amidst riotous giggling and roughing and tumbling...)

Nonsense and Lagoons

A magical land of swamp and sand

And shallow pools and fish

Is hours of splashing and mystery and fun

And all that little ones wish.

It's there we discovered the Vuvu -

A creature who only eats cheese

And tries to avoid the Moozy Booter -

Who may be covered in fleas...

(We gave Cam a kite for his birthday. It was a winner.)

Now he's four

Berg winds blanket the valley in a slow sultry

Peace. Fishermen and sunset hand-holders

Melt into the pink salty haze of hot twilight

A birthday kite dazzles

Rainbow-happy above the waves

Four-year-old fist fiercely clutching strings

Thrilled and proud and big-boy free

Cam's birthday - 7th April. He had such a happy day!     

Celebrating Easter and Murray's birthday (8th) and mine (9th) at Pienaarsbaken

 Then on to the Valley...

Sing out your thanks to the Lord... - Psalm 147:7