THE MOTHER LODE

For JEN THORPE, the quintessence of being “at home” is much more than spaces or places – it’s about learning how to be yourself.

My mother turned 60 this August, and it is impossible for me to think about home without thinking about her.

All my childhood memories have her in them. Each recollection is filled to the brim with sensory information that makes remembering feel like reliving. There is the sight of her on dark, icy Highveld mornings, making us Jungle Oats and sipping sweet tea in her sheepskin slippers. The sound of her clapping to the beat as she teaches me how to dance to Kylie Minogue’s Locomotion in our lounge after I ditched ballet for modern dance, and her cheers poolside at galas. The taste of kumquats picked from our garden, their citrussy smell and sour flavour always taking me back to our first house. The soft texture of her dressing gown that my head rested on as she read to my sister and me in bed. The smell of her perfume that lingered on her clothes as I borrowed (stole) them as a teenager. Home is not a place; it is a person.

My mom courageously left an unhappy marriage at 33 years old. She put my sister and me and our pets in her red Nissan EXA, and drove 760 kilometres to make us a new life on her own. I am 35 now, and thinking about what that journey meant for her then, and for all of us now, leaves me breathless with gratitude. Home is not a location; it is in the endeavour for a better life.

My mom encouraged us to pursue impossible dreams. When I told her, at 12 years old, that I intended to complete high school at a prestigious school far away, her response was to encourage me to work hard, to drive me to scholarship entrance exams, and to lobby for me at every turn. When I got the scholarship and left home at 13, my mother had to do a two-hour round trip twice a week to take me to and from boarding school. But home was always only a call away, and the distance was useless against the force of the love that came down the line accompanied by the beep-boep of the Telkom tickey box. Home is not being in the same place; it is connection.

When I left home again to go to university, my mother made the 20-hour round trip to take me there. Home was now even further away, but it never felt like it. The beeping of a call box was replaced by a Nokia 3310, and when I called and sobbed about my realisation that I wanted to change my degree, my mother listened, then reminded me to trust my gut. Home is not a place; it is the space that is made for you to be yourself.

My mom taught me that kind words matter, that women can do whatever they put their mind to, and that I should never settle for less than what I know I need – in work, in friendships, in love, in life. She showed me that you can survive anything with a laugh and a smile, a photograph of a sunrise, and occasionally with a well-placed curse word.

She will always be my first and forever home.

is a feminist writer and researcher. She has published five books – most recently a novel, The Fall,

and an edited essay collection, Living While Feminist (both Kwela Books, 2020).