What a weekend! I’m dead tired, and the week’s only just started, although, that might be due to the fact that i only went to bed at 3 last night rather than a busy weekend:)
So on Friday and Monday I undertook the journey to and from the parentals and in the process was subjected to the national sport of the Free State – Pot hole dodging. I’m pretty good at it too….since I’ve been doing it for years traveling between uni at home at least 4 times a year and between jhb and home in more recent years. On Monday however, some poor dude wasn’t quite as good at it as he thought, and his reckless 160km/h on a road so riddled with potholes that they should have a warning saying “Caution, sections of road ahead” instead of “Potholes for next 100km” ended in a nasty wreckage. He was hurt, but apparently no permanent damage was done to him…the car however was a complete write off.
On Saturday we travelled down to my gran for the day. Yes, she lives 250km away, and yes we often just go for the day. And yes, i guess we might be just a little odd. Anyhoodle, to get back to my story. The reason we went is because she needed us to help her pack up her things, and to go through the stuff she won’t be able to take with her and divide it between the children and grandchildren. See, earlier this year she fell and broke her back. At 83 she is still living on her own and looking after herself quite well actually, but after the fall she realised that she can’t continue to live on her own indefinitely. So she’s decided to move in with my aunt, but she’ll be visiting all the children for long periods of time, so she’ll only be there like 3 months in the year anyway.
I wasn’t exactly thrilled at going through her stuff and helping to divide it up and choosing what i wanted. It felt like a gross invasion of privacy. Like we were scratching through her whole life, looking for the parts we wanted most and ripping them from her life. It almost felt like we were saying goodbye. Quite a few tears were shed during the course of the day by my gran, my mom and her sisters and also us grandchildren. But the day was also filled with tons of old stories, tales of how and when a certain object was obtained…..i realised that my Gran’s life had been filled with amazing stories.
When we got their my gran called me aside with a very mischievous look on her face. In her room she had hidden a number of articles which she didn’t want anybody but me to have, since I’m the oldest granddaughter. Now, I’ve never been a very sentimental person, but this weekend I discovered that faced with certain situations I can be extremely sentimental and also emotional…who would have thought. The first thing she gave me was my great grandmother’s recipe book. Now i realise that this sounds ridiculous, but bear in mind that this book is more than a century old. It’s historical value alone is overwhelming, but of course the sentimental value was the one that got me. The second item which want to mention specifically is a small hand embroidered purse which contained a 100 year old threepence. I knew about this little purse and coin and before my gran even managed to say anything i was in tears. You see, my great gran used to say that you always have to carry a little money with you in the form of change, in case of emergency or in case you needed to phone. So she always carried this purse with the coin in her handbag, and when she was really old she gave it to my gran. And although she knew it was silly and sentimental since she could do nothing with a threepence she carried it with her all these years. And she wanted me, as the eldest grand daughter, to have it, and to do with it whatever i please. 3 Guesses where that little purse is right at this very moment 😀
I spent the most of the rest of the weekend working on ASSignments which were due today, and yay me! because i e-mailed them in earlier today:) On my way back yesterday I encountered something which is neither strange nor uncommon considering where I grew up. It made me smile, knowing that my journey was being delayed by 15min because of this
Thank you, dear ghost of weekend past for an awesome weekend. For the time I got to spend with my parentals and with my gran and with the other family:)
Love
Ruby
xxxxx
Rubyletters 