MOM, DAD AND THE TIME CAPSULE HIDDEN IN THE CAVE
When my partner Loraine had a Significant Birthday coming up, I suggested that we celebrate it by circumnavigating the world, using any means of transport she wanted: plane, car, bus, train, camel, donkey, rickshaw, canoe …
And we would go to any country of her choosing.
She thought about it and picked South Africa as one of the countries. I had left there many years ago, and had last been there 36 years ago, in 1981, to attend Mom’s funeral.
I had met my eldest sister in Florida, where she moved after becoming an American, and my brother in Bellingham, where he was staying for a while after also becoming an American.
But my two younger sisters and I had not met for 36 years.
So we started our 45-day circumnavigation of the world and flew from London down to South Africa. Before we left, I used photos and stories sent to me by my siblings, and stories I knew, to write a book about our Mom and Dad.
I self-published it on Amazon and sent copies to my siblings before we arrived, so that they could give each of their own children copies as well.
I named it Ray & Shiny, and the blurb on the back cover reads:
When I took pen in hand, I wanted answers to 10 questions:1. The blood of which nations pumps through the veins of the five Van Siblings?2. What crooked paths did our ancestors wander before we dropped, in rapid succession, onto the scene between 1940 and 1949?3. Who was the first van Schalkwyk to arrive at the Cape of Good Hope?4. Who was the first Linforth to arrive in South Africa?5. Where did Mom meet Dad?6. What made Mom marry Dad?7. Where did the Vans wander before we ended up in 15 Contact Street, where we Siblings spent most of our younger years?8. What forces shaped Mom and Dad?9. What was it like to grow up with them as our parents?10. How much of Mom and of Dad lives on in the Siblings?
We spent a wonderful two weeks meeting family and friends, and Loraine was swiftly adopted as an Honorary South African, and even earned how to pronounce some Afrikaans words, like koppie, boerewors, and ag shame…
And Ray & Shiny helped us revisit our childhoods.
We spent four days in a lonely cabin built on a hill looking out at the magnificent Drakensberg mountains, in Zululand. Built by my youngest sister and her husband, over ten years, the cabin can sleep ten, with more in two tents pitched outside.
| Where the Time Capsule is hidden ... |
We had been asked to bring something to nail to the huge tree trunk that supported both the second floor bedrooms and the roof, as a token of our stay there. Loraine brought a gilded metal maple leaf, which she nailed to the Memory Pole.
My eldest sister then suggested that the siblings all sign a copy of Ray & Shiny, and she placed in in a metal time capsule, along with other items contributed by siblings and other family members.
Then the time capsule was hidden deep inside a narrow cave in the slope of one of the many valleys around the cabin, with instructions to the offspring of the siblings to take it out in ten years time, read Ray & Shiny out loud, add more items, and then hide it again, to be taken out in another ten years, and another ten after that, and so on.
In that way, memories of our Mom and Dad would not fade from the earth for a long, long time.
And so, the book now rests in its time capsule, in its cave, while we go about our lives.
We miss you, Mom and Dad.
A lot.
Here is the final chapter in Ray & Shiny:
The Man with the Chisel
The Siblings gathered in 1981 for Mom’s funeral.
We were in a room, sprawled on the floor and talking.
Gigi walked in, and placed something heavy, wrapped in a towel, on the low table before us.
I am concerned about Dad, she said.
She lifted the towel to show a large revolver, with a long barrel.
I found his gun.
Earlier that day I had walked around the small home that Dad and Mom lived in. There were lovely flowers all along the side of the fence.
Something puzzled me, so I dropped to my knees and moved some flowers and leaves aside.
Someone had chipped a hole in the Thick Concrete Slab laid up to the fence, and the flowers had been planted in the hole.
I checked the next cluster of flowers. A similar hole.
There were at least a half dozen holes, cut through the concrete.
Dad had wanted to grow flowers for the woman he had loved for so many years, and had taken a chisel in hand and hammered holes into the thick concrete slab, so that the flowers would be able to take root in the soil beneath.
Many years later, in Canada, I was laid off by the Royal Bank when they downsized and eliminated the corporate finance group I led. I had tried to earn a living doing some consulting, but my heart wasn’t in it and I was not very successful.
So I took stock and decided to go back to my very first love, law.
When I came to Canada in 1977, the laws in force did not allow me to qualify as a lawyer, because my South African qualifications were not recognized. We were not part of the Commonwealth, and South African law was a mixture of Roman-Dutch and English law, and not just English common law.
