Highlights, Lowlights and No Lights - 2022 In Review

 

As is with all the years in the 2020s so far, 2022 turned out to be a rather strange one. It was a year of sadness tinged with a pinch of happiness.

It was a year in which everyone began to live life again after the plague. It was a year in which I lost one of the key people in my life from which I don't think my heart will ever heal. And it was a year in which I was reunited with someone without whom, if our paths had never crossed, my life could've been very different.

The End Of Alcatraz

It was 1 pm on a Monday afternoon. I was on my lunch break. The word "break" may be a bit of a misnomer here as while still working from home while on a break I have to cook lunch and wash the dishes too. (WFH=WTF) I find myself going back to work after my break in order to take a break from my lunch break. Suffice to say my dream girl is now no longer Cate Blanchett - but a 1950's housewife. You know the type, frilly apron- chained to the stove- brings you your slippers and pipe when you come home from work. Granted she's not as exciting as Miss Blanchett I'm sure, but if she's willing to do the dishes right about now that would really get my motor running.

I was in a hurry to get everything done and settle down to a podcast I had discovered on Spotify called History Daily, a podcast covering a daily historical happening each day. Ready to wolf down my lunch I grabbed my cellphone and saw that today's episode was titled The End Of Alcatraz.

I immediately thought of my brother Julian who like me was a history buff and how much he would enjoy this particular episode. It was actually of some significance to us both. While visiting San Francisco a good many years before, we had stood on the docks looking out on Alcatraz. Being from South Africa there were many moments where we felt like we were in a movie. This was one of them.

As two bored brothers growing up in the 80s we had seen the movie Escape From Alcatraz during the school holidays on our trusty VHS video recorder. As the remote control was attached to the VHS by way of a cord, which didn't quite make it to the couch where Julian lay stretched out on, it fell to me as The Little Brother to be the human equivalent of the remote control and Chief TV Channel Changer. I also made copious amounts of coffee for my big brother in between movies. My parents were a bit worried about me handling boiling water, but Julian said I can do it, and that made me believe I could too. Of course I was pleased as pie to be doing this and felt especially grown up.

I opened Whatsapp on my phone and shared the link of the podcast to Julian.

That's odd, I thought, Julian hadn't seen the joke I had sent him the evening before. In fact he hadn't been on Whatsapp at all that day. I didn't quite know why but it just felt to me that something was a bit off, as if I had been made aware of something that I couldn't quite understand. Something seemed off in the rhythm of our communication.

I thought though that perhaps he was just busy. I resolved to give him a call after work.

That evening, after a particularly grueling hard day's day, I called him a few times only for my calls to be routed to voicemail. This was odd, I thought, like me he lived alone so wherever he was, he was always reachable on his cellphone. Only later would I realize that he and I communicated every single day, even if it was just to exchange jokes.

I contacted my sister to see if she had maybe heard from him. She hadn't either. We didn't really know how to contact any of his friends in Johannesburg where he lived, but my sister said she was going to make a few calls and get back to me.

Oh boy, just imagine if we send someone out there I thought, and he's just away on business but they have to break a window or something to get in. He'll never forgive me.

I did my dishes and afterwards I started falling asleep in front of the TV (Blue light is supposed to keep you awake, but after a hard day at the home office it does an amazingly good at putting you to sleep too) I resolved to go to bed.

***

I woke to pitch black darkness. As I lay in bed I started to think about Julian and then reached for my phone to see if I had any missed calls or messages. I put my phone on Silent when I'm busy working and almost always forget to switch the Ringer back on. There were 2 missed calls displayed from my brother-in-law, made about an hour before. It was already just past 2 am. Should I call him back? What if it was just nothing? Surely it was nothing. I was probably just overreacting. Why make it worse, I reckoned.

I resolved to wait and see if he would call again, if it indeed was bad news I was sure he would call again. I sat up in bed, and still feeling uneasy I switched on the TV. Nothing was going to get me back to sleep now anyway, not even TV.

It was Julian's idea that I put the TV in the bedroom. I had bought a better one for the lounge and was going to give this one away, but during one of our marathon lockdown telephone calls which usually stretched for over 2 hours, he convinced me to move it into my bedroom. I wasn't a fan of having a TV in the bedroom as I preferred to be Old School and read before bed, but during the dark, lonesome days of lockdown in which the only voice I heard at night was mine (I used to talk to the oven) it was actually soothing to hear other people's voices as I rolled over and went to sleep. I don't think I made it very far past the opening credits of Sleepless in Seattle for sleep to disqualify me as being Sleepless In South Africa.

For the past few years now I have been absolutely fascinated by old American TV shows mostly from the 50s, 60s and 70s. I'm not quite too sure why. Perhaps its because while TV has been prevalent in western culture since the 1950s onwards, it was only allowed into South Africa by the apartheid government in 1975. The reason it was held back, I'm told, is that they feared they would lose control of the narrative within South Africa. People were being fed a certain viewpoint without being able to see other points of view and ways of living in the world.

I have vague memories of those pre-television days, of listening to the radio with the rest of the family, or listening to my brother's Superman records. I was held spellbound by the booming American voice as it dramatically leapt out of the speakers at you -"Faster than a speeding bullet; more powerful than a steam locomotive..."

Ancient TV shows for me have been the best way to fall asleep now for many years - even during pre-COVID years. There's nothing more soothing than sleepily watching an old episode of CHiPS which had absolutely zero plot apart from catching the bad guys each week. Julian and I used to watch that as kids - the main focus being the motorbikes. That doesn't quite grab you as a viewer as much when you're an adult though. Still, it is the best way to let your mind float downstream and drift into dreamland - just remember to set the sleep timer on the TV.

I reached for the remote control which lay beside me - in the spot where a lover should be - and switched on the TV. I navigated my way on the USB stick until I got to one of the old American TV shows I had loaded on to it - Bewitched. A rather cheesy but quaint TV show about a rather beautiful lady - she held the same appeal as the motorbikes did when I was a kid methinks - who was a devoted wife, mother and witch. And much like CHiPS, there was hardly any story to follow. Just good vibes of the 60s to fall asleep to.

A dark blue hue invaded the bedroom via the screen as the theme song began to play. I muted it as still mindful of the sleeping neighbours upstairs. Startled, I immediately sat up and rewound the song again as something weird caught my eye. There it was, in big yellow lettering: This particular episode was written by someone by the name of Arthur JULIAN. How odd is that? Never in my life before had I ever heard that someone has the surname of Julian.

Somewhat perplexed I watched with one eye on the episode and a whole mind on what I had just seen. Was it a sign perhaps? My younger self would scoff at this notion, but after my father's death and then my mother's death, I am a believer that there are threads of love that aren't totally severed when we lose a loved one. Don't ask me to explain it; I can't - I just know.

After that, still restless in the RSA, I switched to an episode of Game Of Thrones. I had been slowly making my way through the series once again, to see if the dreadful last season was really that bad. Some time into the episode there was a scene with the character Tyrion Lannister who was imprisoned and visited by his brother Jamie. In the scene they speak of their childhood and their relationship as brothers. In that moment it only dawned on me how similar their relationship was to that of me and my brother.

Just then my cellphone began to ring. It was my brother-in-law, Shaun. Before I answered the call I already knew what he was going to say.

I had just lost my brother and my best friend, the person who accepted me as I am from Day 1, who made no bones about it - and who let me make no bones about it. and life would never be the same again. My heart was, and still is shattered. Like Humpty Dumpty no-one can ever put it back together again. He was the kindest of souls and had the biggest of hearts and was just about the only person capable of making me laugh when I was in pain.

The Write Stuff

From the time that I was born my parents knew that it wouldn't be an easy road ahead for me - or for them. Questions without answers abounded. I was diagnosed with Moebius syndrome at the age of 5 by an ophthalmologist who just happened to have a medical book that featured the condition which he had obtained while studying in the US.

Once that question had been answered, a few more presented themselves. Among the biggest questions my parents had was will I be able to lead a normal life? Would I be able to go to school? And would I be able to use my hands to write?

I first went to school at the age of three. My parents had first approached a predominantly English-speaking special school - normal is never an option for me - in order to enroll me but they wouldn't accept me as they catered for students with cerebral palsy and learning disabilities and I had neither of those impairments, and even worse, at the time I didn't have a diagnosis as to what disability I was born with at all.

My parents then approached the predominantly Afrikaans-speaking special school and their view was much the same as the English special school - I did not have a diagnosis, and more to the point, I was not afflicted by the disabilities that the school catered for.

In desperation my mother pleaded with the school psychologist to give me a chance, she knew that despite everything else I had a sharp mind and already I had learned everything she could teach me.

A trial period was eventually agreed upon by the school. At the end of the aforementioned period the school psychologist noted how well I fitted in and how happy I was, and it was agreed that I could attend the school on a permanent basis. And so it was that a trial period grew into a full education for me.

After my preschool years were done and dusted though a nagging question presented itself to my parents once more: Will Gavin be able to use his hands to write? It all hinged on that, for if I couldn't, I wouldn't be capable of receiving an education at all.

During my preschool days I was subjected to a fair amount of cutting, copying and pasting, all of which I really struggled with. Those were the days of course where an apple was something you'd find in a fruit bowl, a window was something you looked out of on rainy days, and a mouse was something the cat brought in.

Taking all of this into account my prospects for receiving a normal education looked bleak. And so a decision was taken by the school and my parents to place me in a preparatory Sub A (Grade 1) This meant that I wouldn't exactly be going to the first grade, but rather an intermediary phase which would prepare me and see if I would make it in the first grade. If I made it there, much like Frank Sinatra in New York, I could make it in first grade anywhere - or rather only in a so-called special school.

If I didn't make it there then unfortunately it would mean that I was incapable of receiving a normal education and would be in the special class at a special school. This is probably where my issue of being called special started. 

Even though I was only 6 years old I was well aware of the pressure on me. I knew if I wasn't able to use my hands to write I wouldn't be able to go to school in the way that my older brother and sister went to school.

I grew up looking up to my siblings - both literally and figuratively. School seemed a very important place. I wanted to also wear a school uniform like they did, carry a bag of books to and fro like they did, and do homework like they did. Little did I know then that I'd soon grow to despise homework - like they did.

From my arrival at the school I had been given Occupational Therapy and attempts were made to teach me how to use my hands to write, but I just couldn't do it the way they were showing me how to do it.

Enter my preparatory Sub A teacher, Mrs Eileen Marais - a very young, pretty, kind, gentle, soft-spoken lady.

At the time I was undergoing a series of hand operations on both of my hands. These were mainly devised to give me better function of my hands and fingers. One operation on my left hand was done in order to separate the first finger on the hand from the second finger so that in time it would assume the roll of a thumb. I still couldn't smile, but I could now give a pretty good thumbs-up to say all was good. Another operation was done on my right hand to amputate a kind of mini-finger attached to the first finger on that hand. They transplanted muscle from that finger into the first finger which did give me the ability to move it slightly, but it isn't something that I use very often. Still to this day there is a kind of awkward eeriness I feel if I touch the spot where the mini-finger used to be.

The last hand surgery I ever had was done when I was 7 years old. The doctors had the idea of amputating a big toe on one of my feet and fashioning it into a thumb. Things were getting downright experimental at that point, and thankfully my father said no. I wholeheartedly agreed. My 7 year old brain couldn't comprehend a toe on my hand. I just hoped if they did it that it wouldn't start to smell bad. It became clear that they were scratching the bottom of the idea barrel in order to give me better use of my hands.

Along with all the hand operations came strange things I had to wear. After one such op I would have to wear a splint on my hand in order to space my fingers apart.

I had to wear the splint to school, I had to wear the splint when I got home, I had to wear the splint while playing with my friends, and I had to wear the splint while eating dinner. The only time I didn't have to wear the splint was when having a bath and going to bed at night. I hated it with a passion. The only reasons why I complied was because Mom said so - and the fact that I couldn't removed the splint using my right hand for lack of being able to grip with it. Like it or not, once it was put on in the morning before school, it was pretty much stuck there.

But on one particular hot summer's day when the leather began digging into the webbing between my fingers I complained to the only grown-up I could complain to - the sweet Miss Marais. Without protesting too much, for she could see I was in distress, she took my hand and figured out in no time how to remove the splint.

I was elated. Somewhere a lightbulb switched on in my mind. I had convinced her to take it off... if I could convince her to do this today - I could convince her to do it tomorrow - I could convince her to do it every day too, I was sure.

And so a 6 year-old, 8 fingered, non-smiling manipulator was born. It came surprisingly easy and I was surprised by how good an actor I was. In truth the splint didn't hurt all that much after I got used to it - but I was determined to get rid of it at all cost. I was NOT going to wear it no matter what. I was adamant about that.

My rather sensitive, sympathetic beloved teacher fell victim to my nefarious scheme, although I was doing my damndest to convince her that I was the actual victim.

This carried on for a good while. I would wear the splint to school but as soon as I got the opportunity I acted out my own version of a Shakespearean tragedy for Miss Marais "Alas poor hands, they know the hand splint well."

Unfortunately as all good things do, it soon came to an end as Good Ol' Mom became suspicious of why and how I was returning home everyday without the hand splint. I had also gone one step further and started to throw the splints in the dust bin. Mom soon worked it out - Sherlock Holmes had nothing on this lady - and was rightly miffed as each splint was custom made to fit my hands and cost my parents a small fortune. She wrote a stern letter - nobody could do stern quite like my Mom - advising my beloved teacher - probably on pain of death - not to remove the hand splint, no matter what story I spun her.

I of course had to now ramp up my game and gave Oscar award worthy performances - tears, tragedy - the works. I pleaded and pleaded, but to no avail. I gave such an intense performance one day that poor Miss Marais started to cry, obviously feeling bad because she could no longer help me.

In this new preparatory version of Sub A - or First Grade to my younger readers - I had not yet been absolved from all the cutting and pasting and wallowing in the fact that I just couldn't do that. But despite that, a light appeared on the horizon: Words. Miss Marais began to teach us about words by giving us fill-in-the-missing-letter exercises. Words weren't merely physical things you had to do or make with your hands, words were things you could also string together in your head. Fortunately for me I had been stringing things along in my head for a very long time. I could not yet use my hands to write but I knew which letters the missing ones were. And so my love of words was born and still burns brightly.

Soon the magic day arrived. We were going to learn how to write our names. It was something I had actually been dreading, but as soon as I saw that a pair of scissors and a pot of glue were not involved it put me at ease. I stared at the blank paper and red crayon in front of me and wondered exactly just how I was going to achieve this feat.

I felt Miss Marais take both my hands in hers and together we guided the crayon across the page. First of course came the G. My hands, holding the crayon and guided by my teacher made a circular-like motion to the left and shot up dramatically to complete the letter. This was fun. Next came the A, the same thing, V and I came soon after. we ended on N, which reminded me a bit of being on the see-saw on the playground.

And there you have it - with the help of Miss Marais I had written my name for the very first time - and more importantly, I had WRITTEN. Writing for me was the physical act which connected the dots to all the things I loved - words, stories, reading and now writing. Of course I couldn't have my teacher there every time I needed to write something, so I started to think of a way how I could do it. My own way of doing it.

All the experts had been telling me how I must write. I had to hold the pencil in my left hand, despite not being left-handed, as I couldn't grip with my right hand. The actual process of writing felt very unnatural with that hand and I was unable to do it. But what I could do instead of using one hand to write - why not use both, like I had just done with the help of my teacher. My left hand would be the hand that grips the pencil, and my right hand would be the hand that guides the pencil. Together they became the Lennon-McCartney, the Elton John and Bernie Taupin of my written word. I began to use them together eight days a week. Together they wrote some things that saved my life at night - especially when I realized that it can't buy me love.

The Beginning Of A Beautiful Friendship

I stared at the computer screen deep in thought. A Facebook post was advertising a Paarl School reunion. This was the school that graciously gave me an opportunity at education when no other school would.

I remembered the school like the proverbial back of my hand. The places that I had gotten cuts - canings - in my days of being a bit of a rebel without a clue were as familiar to me as the cuts - stitch marks - on my hands from the various hand surgeries I underwent; once for playing air guitar in Assembly when we were singing Die Stem (The Call of South Africa) - the apartheid national anthem; once while bunking Woodwork to go and play computer games; once after being caught running in the corridors by the English teacher - after I had corrected his English in front of the class the day before...

I wasn't too sure if I was ready for a trip down Memory Lane. Although I had been back to the school once or twice since I left it in 1993, I kept thinking of how my boarding school room mate and myself would disparage "old fart" ex Matriculants who would loiter around the school premises after leaving school the year before. We'd never do that, we vowed. "Once we're out of here, we're gone." we said.

Besides that though, something else was going on which didn't exactly put me in the mood to stroll down Memory Lane just yet. For the last few months my mom's health had been deteriorating. We didn't quite know what was wrong but it looked as though it would get worse instead of better. This was the main reason I was resisting a trip down Memory Lane. I attended Paarl School from the age of 3 - 16 years of age. Going back to the school would also mean facing memories of my family, my home life, and how things used to be - all of which I'd rather avoid at that moment.

Sadly, my mom passed away in early January the following year. Her loss was devastating. The woman who was once so adamant that I should do things for myself and who taught me how to do those things was in the end no longer able to do some of those things for herself. My Mom was always the True North on my life's compass, the Guiding Light of Home. It took me a long time to get over that she was at first no longer that, then no longer. In fact, maybe I'm still not over it.

A little while later I bumped into an old school friend who had been to the school reunion. He told me that our old teacher Ms. Marais had asked about me and said she would liked to have seen me.

***

The restaurant was quite crowded for a midweek afternoon. The surrounding opulence of the Choclat Bistro made me feel a bit uneasy. I had become far too accustomed to eating my chocolate - usually a Cadbury's Top Deck - while watching TV with my feet up on the coffee table during lockdown, but here I was, out and about, perhaps about to sample French chocolate so fancy that they dropped the extra o and the e.

I looked up from the table and suddenly there she was, standing right in front of me, a lady I hadn't seen in 40 years - my teacher - Mrs Eileen Marais - the one who made me fall in love with words - even though they were Afrikaans words - and the one who gave me the initial idea of how to use my hands to write.

Incredibly she looked exactly the same as she did almost 40 years prior. I remembered her to be sweet and kind, and that she was, but it was only after we started speaking that I remembered that she was no push-over either, which made perfect sense when you had to teach the younger version of myself.

As we spoke it felt as if time had melted away. We were who we were in the present, yet we were also who we were in the past. Even though such a lot had changed in my life from the time we spent together, especially during the last 3 years in which it felt like my world had been ripped apart by the loss of first my mother and then my brother - two key people in my life - it also felt like nothing had changed and that the world was still intact, as I began to feel the old familiarity of our relationship - most of which I had forgotten about in the ensuing years, but all of which was now rushing back to me.

Rather sheepishly I began to tell her the tale of the hand splint and how I would make the teacher cry as I pleaded and pleaded to have it removed. I couldn't exactly remember who the teacher was. The one thing I was certain of is that I wanted it off at all costs, and in reality it didn't actually hurt as much as I made out. I had thought about that often and couldn't believe what a manipulator I was - even at the age of 6.

"Yes Gavin," Mrs Marais said. "that was me."

I don't think I've felt so bad and so guilty in all my life. If the floor of the Choclat Bistro opened up and swallowed me  I would've felt better.

We whiled away the afternoon deep in conversation. Such a lot had happened and changed in my life during the last 40 years, and yet, as I sat at the Choclat Bistro that afternoon, too preoccupied with our conversation to try anything with chocolate on the menu, it seemed as though nothing had changed at all.

Through my teacher's eyes I had been reintroduced to the little six year old boy I once was. He was tenacious and confident in his abilities and even confident in his disability despite whatever the experts had to say. He was completely unbroken by life even though his life had been broken since his first day of life. He felt as if he were all alone in the world and that no-one was quite like him and he wasn't quite the same as everyone else either.

That little six year old boy who I once was reminded me again that despite feeling all alone in the world he got along just fine, and that despite my being all alone in the world after losing my mother and brother - always the two closest people to me throughout my life - I would get along just fine too, especially after rekindling a relationship I very much valued once upon a time. I had lost but now I had found.