Seven-ping Sunday (14)

Mum's the ping

Whether the price for last week’s extended super-ping, or just bad luck, I spent much of this week counting my pings after being downed by flu. The outset did indeed look pingless when the lights in our street went out for five or so hours two rainy nights in succession, but warmth returned when I remembered last winter’s wood pile out on the verandah. Behold the Victorian fireplace we renovated many moons ago!

Woolly ping. Behold knitting needles when you’re ill! Two years ago (in good health) I knitted 20 high-durability beanies for my partner’s annual Kobtober fishing competition at Hamburg in the Eastern Cape. Not doubting deservedness of recipients, but suddenly, an idea touted by my mom-in-law — beanies for premature babies (places like Mowbray Children’s Hospital accept) — seemed far more worthy, while I watched, inter alia, David Attenborough turn 100 and Winnie Madikizela-Mandela defend herself.

Weather ping. Which, in this instance, is not a positive sound. Thanks to a connection bumped into at the previous week’s university reunion, I knew not to chance the roads and visit my brother in Port Elizabeth this weekend and that Mom’s Day lunch needs to be prepped for. Click here if you’re bored with your weather app – Spike says there are things here he has never seen before. And, if you have the means or inclination, one of a few farm houses flooded this week in the Klein Karoo belongs to a friend of a friend, who had to evacuate in the dead of night with little else but their pets and a change of clothing. His daughter has set up a gofundme venture.

Movie of the week. Called by some the Mother of the Nation, there are none who surpass Winnie Madikizela-Mandela for complexity. Shaped by the politics of the time and her role in it (“I am the product of the masses of my country and the product of my enemy”), Winnie gives profound insights into what drove her actions in the riveting seven-part series ‘The Trials of Winnie Mandela’. “I know for a fact my father wanted a boy. So he brought me up as a boy. He brought me up to be tough as hell. He didn’t know that he was shaping me for the hard life that lay ahead. I’m very grateful for that. I never regarded myself as a woman. I’ve always been a boy in my mind because my father wanted THAT boy.”

Mother’s Day ping. While I watched Winnie, motherhood — and her approach to it (“I look at Zindzi and I wonder how she has turned out as she has and I wonder why she doesn’t blame me for choosing the country”) — was playing at the back of my mind, and I pondered that of my own mom, who, because she died when I was 17, I was only beginning to get to know as an adult. I typed a few thoughts on my phone’s notepad while Winnie (of whom her daughters said, “Even today, Mom has never been able to shake that she is this controversy, she is this villainous woman who fell from grace, and she’s a murderer, she’s a kidnapper, she’s all these things. She is an adulterer. She’s only human. She’s our mother. She raised us.”) and the fire crackled in unison. “One thing I most remember about my mother was her respect for freedom of thought and speech. I didn’t have much time to get to know her on an adult level, but I did get that, above all, and despite the fact that she had no opportunity to go to university, she encouraged that and the choice of action that followed the thought.”

“I like to think she, who said if she wanted to get closer to God would lie in a field of daisies, and she struck me as such, as of being of the variety that hung on Voltaire’s philosophy: ‘I disagree with what you say, but I defend to the death the right to say it.’ I never felt I needed to hide anything from her, that she was always up for a discussion regardless of whether she agreed or not and she gave me plenty of room to make my own choices.”

That said, mothers a many there have been in my 60-year-old life, and I wrote about some of it a few years ago. Click here.

Historical ping. In the beginning there was Eve. Regardless of your creation myth of choice, it always makes for interesting speculation. Daily Maverick’s environmental guru Don Pinnock believes evidence points to it all beginning at low tide. Click here.

Instagram of the week. An anonymous photographer’s showcase of the shitty, gritty side of Gqeberha, formerly Port Elizabeth. Click here. Or type in ‘shittycitype’ on Instagram.

Cosmic ping. Love the planet? Click here to spell your name with NASA’s earthly alphabet of aerial images and pinpoint where they are taken.

Till next week,

May the ping be with you,

Sharonski