IRNA VAN ZYL
Travel restrictions have led novelist IRNA VAN ZYL to recall simpler times and childhood pleasures
Arriving on my grandparents’ farm for our annual three-week winter holiday was always an occasion. As was usual, my grandmother waited for us on the big red wraparound stoep. How long she had been hovering in the vicinity of the front door we never knew, but there she always was as my dad parked the car close to the five cypresses that stood guard on the front lawn. Big hugs were always followed by tea and soetkoekies already laid out on the table – setting the scene for so many treats in the weeks to come.
In later years my mom told the story of how my great-grandfather used to tell off my grandmother for sitting on that very stoep in the mornings, reading.“’ n Boervrousitnooitdiétydvandiedagopdiestoepmet ’nboeknie.” (“A farmer’s wife never sits on the veranda reading at this time of day.”) It was a different era, when patriarchy ruled strongly, yet Ouma was very much in charge of her household and did not necessarily heed her father-in-law’s words, because she managed to pass on the wisdom to all her grandchildren that a reading person is a wise one.
Our winter holidays were a time of learning and playing. Learning about the ways of a farm – how to throw a stone at just the right angle that it skimmed over the dam water not once, not twice but at least three times. How cuddly baby ostriches did not look like their parents and which plants grow best on the koppies in the Klein Karoo, where my aunt started a wild flower garden.Then there was the endless playing, but never in the ostrich camp or close to the red Afrikaner bull. And never, ever would I have dared wear red when passing the bull camp!
The old study, our gathering place at night, was full of books evenly spread out across the ample shelves next to the warm log fire.This is where I got my copy of GonewiththeWind, although I was probably much too young to understand anything about the American Civil War and Scarlett O’Hara’s love life. And it was here that I buried myself in the stories of CJ Langenhoven, as my grandparents owned the full VersameldeWerke (Collected Works) of the Oudtshoorn author.
The farm, at the foothills of the Swartberg mountain range, close to Calitzdorp, was cold in winter, with snow low on the mountains and little clouds in front of my nose in the early mornings when I went out to watch the cows being milked, too scared to touch the teats with my city hands.
I remember sun-filled days of walking in the veld, climbing the koppies to look for rock art, skirting around the edges of the two farm dams, the blou (blue) dam and the nuwe (new) dam, and nights at the log fire where Ouma also taught us how to play her beloved card game, Impatience. No bridge parties for her, no internet scrabble matches, not even a book club. And certainly no television or Netflix.
We would easily have been able to lock down there. With my middle sister taking the initiative at organising house concerts, our evenings sped by. She was the piano player among us and the director of our little plays. Every night we came up with a new performance for the adults and every night we collected a couple of cents to be spent on loslekkers (loose sweets) at the farm café the following day.
It was a time that I have always thought of with nostalgia as happy winter holidays. But now I realise that doing jigsaw puzzles on the dining room table, shutting the doors earlier as winter crept closer, making a fire in the wood-burning stove and inventing new games every night does not sound so unlike life in the time of COVID-19.
One day, hopefully, we will be able to think fondly of the time when the world came to a standstill. But until then, we will have to travel back in our minds to other eras and other settings to remember that these things too shall pass.