slip-sliding away…..

I remember rays of sunlight, streaming through the windows at my grandmother’s house when I was very small. The sun would send dust which would swirl in the light – a vision of beauty at such a young age. I also thought that the sun would sometimes dim – by itself – before brightening again, oblivious to the fact that passing clouds actually caused this phenomenon.

There was a phone on the wall there – on a shelf, I think. The rotary kind – with a circular dial that was used to get to numbers. I still remember the phone number for that phone, which had no dialling code before it because local calls didn’t need one back then. That phone was sometimes locked with a key, presumably to assert some kind of control in a house of many, many children.

I don’t remember much of my grandmother. But one of my favourite memories is of her cooking sugar beans and roti in that kitchen – still a beloved dish to this day. They also had thick glass mugs for tea and other drinks (though I didn’t drink tea back then). I remember praying with her, too. It’s my first memory of making salaah.

I remember even less of my grandfather. His head was bald, and he would shave his beard at the mirror in his room – using an orange plastic container to hold the water that he’d dip his razor in. One time, after playing with this pedal car, which was stored under the house, I ran in to tell him about it. It felt like the greatest experience of my life at that point. That simple car gave me a joy I can’t explain. The kind of joy and wonder that grown-ups may never know again. A childhood magic reserved exclusively for those formative years of pure innocence.

There were chandeliers in the lounge of that house. Nothing fancy – and probably commonplace in the 80s – but still captivating to my young eyes.

Mangoes or litchis in the jungle-like back garden, down at the bottom – which was not my favourite spot (given my fruit phobia). I don’t remember monkeys raiding the garden back then, but they must have been there, because I recall them visiting that garden many, many years later.

The carport between the yard and house had these burglar bars which I’d climb through. My cousins did the same. I got stuck once, which was probably the last time I attempted it – a sign that I was outgrowing the novelty.

My youngest aunties would come home from school, I remember, as I played in the paved front yard. They walked, because walking was quite safe back then, and the school wasn’t that far away…though by today’s standards, it would be.

On one of those afternoons, in that front yard, I recall, I grasped the concept of what a ‘breeze’ was.

And there were always Madagascar periwinkles in the garden – those pink flowers which I didn’t know the names of until recent years, when I looked it up (because we have them at home now).

I remember Candy – the next door neighbours’ dog. It had short, reddish-brown fur. He (or she?) would bark a lot, and I was always scared. I may have gone into that yard a few times, though…I don’t recall.

And then there was my uncles’ friend with the grey eyes. To me, he was a rare, coloured* person in an Indian neighbourhood. (*In South Africa, ‘couloured’ is a mixed race – neither pure black, nor white.)

My grandmother’s house stood in the middle of the road, and there was an upward-sloping hill on one side. My brother and I skateboarded down there, and he was chased by a dog while doing so once.

On the other end of the road, there was a park, and next to it, a butchery on the adjacent road. Next to that butcher was a corner shop (which we called a ‘tea room’ back then), where we’d buy Chappies bubblegum for 1 cent, 2 cents, and 5 cents for the big ones. We’d play Pac Man on the arcade machine inside, and we’d sit on the wall outside – which is where I envisioned the song 99 bottles…

We’d play in that park, too. It had a couple of steep banks (steep for my age), and two sets of swings. The swings always scared me, though. I was always cautious and fearful. I never wanted to go too fast or too high – unlike my brother, who loved the thrill of pushing those limits.

My mother was often concerned about the influence of her brothers – my uncles – who would expose us to knives and other trinkets which we thought cool at that age. But I didn’t see the big deal. And I still have one of those knives today.

One uncle would read Roy of the Rovers comics, and carry his Adidas tote bag with him on his long walks from their current neighbourhood to their old neighbourhood.

I remember going to the city centre with my aunties and uncles on Saturday mornings. Taking a bus out of the neighbourhood, past the mountain (which might be the remnants of a quarry…I still don’t know), into town. We got marbles – and probably other treats – at the shop called Game (still in existence today), and we’d walk those streets in the Durban sunshine of the 1980s. On one of those Saturday mornings, I remember, I was bored in a hairdresser, waiting as my uncle got his haircut.

Back at the house, in later years, we’d watch LA Law on Saturday nights, as well as Diff’rent Strokes – everyone gathered in the TV room, in the final years before my uncles and aunties moved out to start their own lives. This huge family, in that house which will forever remain a home for so many of us – even though it’s now moved out of the family’s possession.

These are the memories I carry with me, of times that were simpler. Simple for me, as a child, though likely not as easy for the grown-ups back then.

Many of them have passed on now, as me and my cousins now occupy the roles of the parents, and our children build their own earliest memories which they too will treasure in decades to come.

Such is life…the fragments we piece together: tiny crumbs of lifetimes lived long ago, never to be repeated  – but remembered fondly as we age, until we are no more, and all that remains of us is the memories of those we leave behind, the old pictures that live on, and all the other elements of personal legacies we wrote into eternity.