DEBBIE LOOTS
It’s on the sunny side of a place where the magic lies, says DEBBIE LOOTS.
The VERANDA was the best place for his PLANTS and FOR US.
My grandfather was a mine captain on Randfontein Estates Mines. According to my mother, he had a short temper and a gruff manner, and made his co-workers tremble in their boots. But it’s not how I remember him. To me he was simply my grandpa who liked to collect strange-looking succulent plants. Lots of them. He spent hours teaching me their names, and I loved how his eyes would widen in mock surprise when I managed to recall one. I remember rows of prickly plants in plastic containers and glass jars stacked on shelves along the edges of my grandparents’ veranda.
The veranda was enclosed with fine wire mesh that had seen better days. In certain parts, it sagged so far down it formed odd shapes through which I could look across the garden. The veranda was the best place for his plants, and for us. It was on the sunny side of the house. The other side was always in the shadow of a bridge over the railway line that linked the suburbs to the town.The walls on that side were cold and damp to the touch. I used to lie on an old sofa on the veranda and listen to the low hum of my grandparents’ voices. What stays with me after all these years is their presence, and the warmth of the sun lying there, more than a sense of the house itself, which with its large rooms and wooden floors must have been cold and draughty.
Today, I have my own collection of things, my own enclosed veranda and my own grandchildren. My flat is near the sea, and the air leaves sticky droplets on my windows that remind me of the mesh across my grandparents’ veranda. If I want a clear view, I have to slide open the window on the veranda.When I stick out my head I can see a sliver of ocean on the right; across the road is a row of high-rise apartment blocks; on the left is a section of Lion’s Head.The veranda is my grandson’s favourite place. When he visits, he sits on a chair in the sun and watches the seagulls squawking their way across the sky. He asks me about the helicopter flying up and down above the clouds and the spikes on the roofs of the apartment blocks that scare away the pigeons.
We also talk about my collection of animal objects congregating in one area of the living room. Among many others there’s a fluffy head of a swan mounted on the wall, a blue plastic dinosaur with a succulent (my only plant) sprouting from its back, a pink Tyrannosaurus rex lamp, a tiny vintage glass owl, and a plastic Japanese cat with a waving arm. On the days they visit, he teaches his little sister the names of his grandmother’s strange-looking animals before she takes her afternoon nap on my bed and he takes his place on the chair in a sunny spot on the veranda. I hope they remember me one day by their sense of these things.