A love letter to my grandmothers.

 I move the through the world with a particular kind of hubris that I can only account to having been born of and been loved by the grandmothers I had. I am one of those people who were fortunate enough to meet all four of my grandparents and while my grandfathers were sometimes charming, they paled in comparison to the wonderful women they married and had children with. It is my firm belief that anyone who has been the object of the intense and consistent type of adoration only a grandmother can render, knows one of life’s greatest blessings.

My grandmothers are two of the most admirable people I have ever known. What has always fascinated me about them though is how they not only had similar backgrounds and life experiences but seem to have responded to both triumph and adversity in similar ways. Both of them are born in the early 20^th century into poor families and at time when girl children were born, raised, minimally educated and prepared for marriage and children.

My paternal grandmother had twelve sons many of whom died in utero, infancy and early childhood with only two living into adulthood. She then went on to outlive even those two sons and passed at the age eighty-nine having spent a significant part of her life sans her progeny. My maternal grandmother experienced five miscarriages of girl children before finally being able to birth six more daughters. I have attempted, albeit with little success, to find a credible source to explain what was happening with the general state womens’ reproductive health at the time they were trying to conceive. I suppose I want to understand whether this was a common experience, or they just happened to be unlucky. I imagine though, that in mid-20th century South Africa with apartheid being the order of the day, very little was done to help black women carry healthy pregnancies and be able to access emergency care when needed.

My grandmothers were deeply acquainted with this kind of grief. It is no wonder they were so dedicated to loving us as warmly as they did. Having suffered this kind emotional and psychological hurt repeatedly and with no mental health professional to help them work through it, they probably at some stage began to struggle to imagine themselves becoming grandparents and so we were a kind of miracle to them. We were a wonder and a sweet reminder of triumph and a guarantee of the continuance of their lineage.

My grandmothers loved beautiful things and knew how to take care of them well. They had worked as domestic and service workers and therefore did not have much in material form. But the little they did have was carefully chosen, maintained and that way of being taught to their children first and ultimately to us. Sometime in 1998, my mother had bought them matching sleepwear while they were both visiting my home during those harsh Komani winters. I remember watching them as a child, clad in their beautiful winter gowns, chatting and drinking hot tea their daughter lovingly made for them every morning. My paternal grandmother’s gown is still in pristine condition nearly thirty years after its purchase and years after her passing. I too now sit in my apartment, cosied up in a gown drinking tea on Sunday mornings as ritual.

Both my grandmother’s experienced betrayal and abandonment from their husbands. My one grandfather left my grandmother in rural Eastern Cape raising children and just never returned home while the other went to work one day and just never came home. Both housewives at the time with little in both education and experience, they had to forge a new path. They did not wallow in their hurt and proceeded to seek work and raise their children alone and in some instances with the help of relatives. I remember speaking to my grandmother about this as an adult, telling her how much of a badass I thought she was for initiating her divorce and taking her children and setting out to a new province where she had no guarantee of work and starting a new life. She laughed at me and said “Pheli, ubomi bakho luxanduva lwakho. Ukunika omnye umntu amandla okubucitha kuphele, yinto okumele ungayivumi leyo.” This loosely translates to “Pheli, your life is your responsibility. Surrendering the power to disrupt it indefinitely to another person, is something you must never allow.”

While I admire my grandmothers for taking on these and many other forms of adversity with courage, I admire them most for never having allowed these experiences to make them hard. They were strong people, strict parents but their hearts and homes were the softest place. On every one of my birthdays as a child, my grandmother would send me a special birthday cake from her that I was to be enjoy by myself unless I wanted to share with anyone else. She would cuddle me all night and drown me in affection over the many weekends I demanded to go see her even at the cost of inconvenience to her or my mother.

My other grandmother whom I saw less often, listened to all my tales and indulged my sometimes-outrageous sense of humour. She listened with intent to my ramblings and recalled them long after I had forgotten about them. She collected them like precious jewels that she would shine and display for me when we saw each other again. I was doted over and while in adulthood I have come to understand that this will not be my experience in all the spaces I occupy and welcome that reality, I move with a certainty about who I am and what I deserve that can never undone.