Planning

Jenny and Charles are beating us at our own  game by coming here before we go there. I breathe a big sigh of relief when I write that because it has taken months to arrange this trip and we're tired it. 

Should I clarify? It's the women who are  tired of it,  J and I.  We sent the emails and haggled with price-gouging profiteering proprietors and asked a million times, are you SURE there's no room? The men did nothing at all except repeatedly ask us when we were going to make some PLANS. And excuse me for saying so, because I love Art and think Charles is one helluva a nice guy, but they're sure to want credit for every nice place we stay.

My friend Fiona loves to observe how stories quickly change tenure and focus, depending on who's telling the story. The truth, she says wisely, depends upon the individual. If Art tells you he rescued a bedraggled kitten from a raging teacup poodle, you better believe I'm the one who came away scratched from pinkie finger to pinkie toe and bitten on the leg.

Anyway after J and C arrive from So. Africa, we're off on a two-week expedition thru Melrose, Montana, Yellowstone, the Grand Tetons, Jackson Lake and Jackson Hole. The guys'll claim it as their idea; Jenny and I will roll our eyes. You'll know who's tellin' the truth by the name on the blog

Aging

A good friend of mine wrote me a note: "I think you should wait until Art's mother passes, then you won't break her heart, and we'll have you around longer!" 

Got me thinking about one of the Boomers' parents' dilemmas. As they planned--or didn't--their families, many of them thought of their kids as a reserve against old age. Millions of them were right; millions were wrong.

Here's how I responded to my friend's kind-hearted note. It'll clue you to how I really feel about leaving my mother-in-law just where she is while we pursue our dream.

As far as Art's mom is concerned, she's 86 years old, has perfect blood pressure, does not take any meds--the only thing wrong with her is bad bones. She comes from a long line of people who live to be 105 and she's only 32 years older than i am....sooooo thanks for the suggestion and i love you too, but  NO. NO. NO. Can you imagine waiting for her to die? oh too morbid for me, it'd turn into something too scary.

I once had a mean-spirited friend who passionately hated her mother. The old lady lived in a downstairs apt that  my friend couldn't wait to turn into an art room. The "joke" was, every time we talked, i'd ask, "she still alive?" "yes, dammit," she'd reply. Funny, i knew why my friend hated her so, but i kinda liked the old lady.

I had long ago lost that friend when a distant acquaintance told me what a gorgeous work room her friend had in her basement.

I wasn't surprised when she mentioned the friend by name.

I wonder if she's  any happier now that she's got this great space, remodeled for art, glowing with natural light? All i can think is that her mother lived a mighty lonely (miserable?) existence downstairs from her one surviving daughter, a mean woman who hated her so badly she talked to her only about business matters. And then practically in the third person.

Of course, as i write to you, i'm writing to myself--so thanks for the question. I love Art's mom, who btw, is home now. i visit her way too often to fit my busy schedule. She lives in a great community where everyone--EVERYONE--loves her. She's not alone--she has more friends now than she ever collected in her entire life. Too bad she's got just one child. 

All that justifies why we can't and won't wait for her to  die. It answers the question that so many Boomers ask themselves about their parents....and their own kids. If you have children to care for you til the end time, you may not be so lucky. Yes, her heart will be broken. But that'll be the signal for her friends to gather round her, close ranks, so to speak.

I'm 58, Art's 62. Let's say she lives to 100, which she easily could. i'll be 72, art will be 76. Geriatrics on photo safari? So Africa may not even BE there anymore....even if we could get the walkers into the plane's overhead bin.

Money

We had dinner with a friend the other night. He's an insurance salesman, but we try not to hold that against him. For some reason, we make friends with insurance guys; one of our oldest friends is someone we met across a sales desk. (It was actually a bar, but that doesn't sound as respectable.)

Anyway, this guy, I'll call him DavidCampbell, is a good man, sensitive and slightly depressed in the best of circumstances, morose in the worst.  He's a voting member on the board of Friends Who Worry About Us, and who could blame him? Art is 62 and I -- well -- I am the right age to have a 62-year-old husband. We're the "older couple" on our block (some might add "crazy" to that description), the ones playing at youth one final time. 

But DavidCampbell worries about us with class and finesse. You won't catch him wondering about how many kinds of spiders might kill us with just one bite or how far we should we keep from a mother elephant and her new darling. Oh no, when DavidCampbell worries for us, he worries about money. How we'll get it in the first place, how we'll spend it (or not) and how we'll get some more. Budget, that's the answer, a magic word full of intrigue. Oh right! I know nothing about keeping a budget....and i do not want to learn. DavidCampbell is a thoughtful man--the only person I know who ain't afraid to use his MBA for something other than wallpaper. He tries to make us smarter; he succeeds in making us braver.

Money. That's what life's all about, enit? For us, however, money's more like what it isn't about. We don't have any, but that's not stopping us.

The insurance part of  the dinner discussion didn't last long, but the part about red wine went for hours. And hours.

(I miss you, John Boy)

Pouting

I forget to blog. Sorry, but I feel as if I'm spinning a web with no tensile strength, practicing journalistic masturbation, humming a tuneless doldrum to a small audience that rarely notices. (Thank you Inger-lis.)

I recently sent emails, inviting people to a private reading gone public. The response was pathetic....brought me from three to six followers. Don't know what I expected. Guess I thought I'd have a wider audience. 

Identify  your audience is the No. 1 rule in any writing. If I know anything, I know that. So. Who's my audience? Am I writing for the unknown reader or for me?

I just this very second experienced an "ah ha" moment. It's me. It's ME.

OK--on with it. 

Illusion

I see animals.

OK, you say, so does everyone.

Yes, well....I see animals  that frequently are not there. I see birds where others see only a clump of leaves. I see a lion where there's a big tan rock. I see hoofed animals that turn out to broken tree branches. I see rhinos where....well, I actually do see rhinos.

I don't think of myself as blind, just lucky. Many people have mocked my "sightings" but I know they're only jealous. Not everyone has the keen imagination necessary to see a stone wall as an elephant and her child. Knowing and loving the power of  illusion, I live for game drives, keeping my eyes open to what I may discover. I'm always the first to spot a troop of baboons (rocks strewn across a field), a giraffe (a yellow fever tree) or a huge crocodile (a fallen log, floating). I enjoy muttering, "Oh, false alarm," to my companions' signs and groans. 

Call me the little girl who cried wolf, er.....leopard. But don't make me get new glasses.

Gifts

Jenny sent us a care package for our birthdays--a box of  So African goodies. You'd think from the looks of us that Americans are the chief snackers of the world. I can confirm that with the size of my seat. But certain SA treats put our reputation to shame and threaten the popularity of the junk that made it happen.

Enough to say Art and I were like two children on Christmas Eve, a week after being adopted by a wealthy and loving family. We pawed happily through the smooth Cadbury chocolate bars in flavors we don't get here: Top Deck, Turkish Delight, Milk, Dark Chocolate. Yum. There were short-bread biscuits--that's cookies to us--and yummy sodas called -tizers: grapetizer, appletizer. We doled the goodies out one-by-one. We inevitably ran out, long before we wanted to, or even realized we were getting low on supplies. 

That was a great gift--the second of its kind Jenny sent us, so to me it feels like a tradition in the making. Wonderful as the new box was, it lacked my two favorites: rusks, those hard-as-biscotti dried up things that look like big croutons but are most delicious when dipped in coffee or tea. AND biltong! 

That's OK though--Jenny ordered this stuff from a California shop called the African Hut. For some reason, biltong thru a US shop is OK. Biltong thru the airport in your hand luggage is not. That "legality" kills it for me and lets me quickly "forgive" Jenny's omission. It's simply not the same recipe. 

I like my biltong spiced with intrigue and subterfuge and encounters with meat-sniffing dogs. 

Painting

We're getting the house ready to sell. Don't laugh. Damn the economy, all the house needs is some paint, right? And with Popped Corn and Parmesan, we're reforming the place. You can laugh now cause those are the colors we're painting...the corny color is a pale, pale yellow, just off white. The cheesy one is shiny white. Corn on walls, cheese on woodwork. Does that mean we need do nothing in the kitchen?

Painting is painful. I can't say that I enjoy it much, but it's the least we can do for this poor old house. We've concentrated everything on the garden, leaving the inside to fend for itself. So now we're trying to whip it presentable, tho I'm not sure violence is the answer.

Unless something drastic happens politically to prevent us, we're going to Africa. Hell with politics, our So African friend Jenny says. In order to go, and to stay for the extended period we want to stay, we gotta sell this place. 

Spring threatens to pop soon, and if only the snow would stop, I could feel even more optimistic. Our lovely garden will sell the place, I'm sure, with a little help from the corn and the cheese.

Politics

I decided today that I've got to read up on the history of southern Africa. I can't understand why the people in power in that region, and So Africa particularly, seem hell bent on destroying it. I guess thousand-year-old tribal pride, ritual and tradition make enemies for eternity. It's rather like Mormons sealing themselves to their families til the end of time. Gruesome no matter which way you look at it. 

Robert Mugabe ruined Zimbabwe so completely that the once and future "breadbasket to Africa" is a ransacked, treacherous place where farmers are pushed off their land--or murdered off it--just because they are white. Don't make the mistake I did and call that a racist thing to say. Black or white, you shouldn't suffer for your skin color. Whites were not indigenous to Africa, but they've been there a long, long time, the obvious minority. They ruled harshly against the blacks, who now retaliate. For what good purpose? Worse than retaliation is the black-on-black violence that runs amok through that country. "Appalling" does nothing to describe it.

Zimbabwe's inflation rate is 165,000 percent. Life expectancy is 37. We think we've got it bad with our unemployment rates, but Zimbabwe boasts 80 percent. Minimum wage is 200,000,000,000 and one egg costs 20,000,000. The most damning thing is the way Mugabe tortures and kills his opponents. Look around on YouTube if you're curious, but don't do it while you're eating. 

Looks like Jacob Zuma wants to do the same damn thing to So Africa. Zuma's supporters are young and wild and uneducated. And 100 percent black. His foes are numerous, blacks and whites, including the likes of Nelson Mandela and Desmond Tutu, once so widely and wildly cherished by So Africans. These two bastions of So African reform are now ridiculed as old men, out of touch with their country.

And Zuma? He was charged with hundreds of cases of fraud, murder and rape, extortion and bribery. Just as he was about to go to trial, the whole lot got dismissed. Can't have the next president of So Africa serving from jail, now can we?

Like Zimbabwe, So Africa bristles with corruption. Will it go the way Zimbabwe did? I don't know, but I'm fretting about it. So I guess I'll find something to read about the politics that brought So Africa to this point. 

I have a feeling it won't make me happy.

Imagination

I've been held captive by the winter--the longest in my life--and during the snow storm yesterday, all I could think about was the heat on the veldt.

When I picture us in Africa, I bypass thinking about the long  flight, the expense of getting there, the visa complications where there were none before, the worry over Art's mom's reaction when we tell her we are going. I forget the long list of complications I constantly jot into my little notebook. And mostly I forget the freezing weather and look beyond the white flakes to that silver lining, hard as it is to see.

I see us there, the tall grass yellowed in the sun. I see us spotting the lion lying disguised there, tips of his black mane visible only accidentally. 

"There! You see him now,  don't you?"

Yes I do, in my daydreams, in my night dreams, I see him. I see the rhinos mating. I see the jewel-like birds flitting in and out of the undergrowth. I see a troop of baboons led by a long-toothed bruiser. I see giraffes bending their long necks through splayed legs to drink. I see the sun, which is more than I can do here.

Yes, I have an active imagination. It does wonders for me as I scrape ice off the windshield. 

Watch This Space

Know anybody who wants to buy a cute little home south of Sugarhouse, complete with Asian-esque garden and a pond?

Dilemma

I woke up shivering, dreaming that the African sun had disappeared. The sky was darkening quickly, the temperature dropping. Herds of zebra ran amok, their black-and-white stripes bouncing reflections against the glowering clouds. I saw a wildebeest with a broken leg and a disinterested lion not 10 feet from it, sniffing and grunting.

I shook the dream from my head and shuffled off to get coffee, take my meds, wash my face. 

And then I remembered: Art's mom fell and broke her leg Thursday night. I'm dreaming of Africa, and she's breaking things. She's 85 years old, but except for an undiagnosed neuropathy, is healthy as the proverbial mule. With a busted leg. She could live to be 100. And five. Art's her only child. And now she's in a "rehab facility"--read nursing home--with a leg so swollen it'll be four days til they can cast it. 

So, am I the lion to her wildebeest?  

I suddenly feel desperate. How can we plan a trip to Africa--no, not a trip, but a life change--with an old woman dependent on us for practically everything? She lived her life, made her choices, raised her kid, did her ironing and never left the country. Is it fair that we leave her here in the company of her friends while we traipse off to live our lives? She'd never come along--the uncertainty would kill her if the flight didn't. Should she have a choice in the matter? In my heart, I know the answers to these questions.

Coffee cup in hand, drop of Kahlua and a dollop of sweetened condensed milk for flavor, I opened the blinds in the kitchen. 

It was beginning to snow.

Reservations

When it comes to making last-moment reservations, Jenny is a miracle worker. My form of luck involves finding street parking in crowded neighborhoods. Hers comes in arranging the best lodging available, regardless of how long it's been "sold out." She says it's because she retains skills from her days as a travel agent, I say it's something completely different: karma. Juujuu, mojo, luck, it's practically preternatural. 

Christmas is the busy time at Kruger National Park, when people book a year in advance to stay in the camps there. Not only did Jenny arrange lodging over Christmas, she got the range she wanted, luxurious to simple, and she did it two weeks before Christmas, one week before she wanted to depart. And she did it for four people.

Not including us, I'm sorry to say.

We were quite at home in the poor house, thank you very much, having travelled the previous Christmas in So Africa and the one before that in Switzerland, both times with Jenny and her spouse, Charles. 

Art and I can't say enough about traveling with Jenny and Charles; they're as generous, thoughtful and amusing as any traveling companions we could desire. Charles sure took the work out of Switzerland, speaking fluent Swiss-German as he does. The traveling is easy, but at the end of each day, we end up in the most charming place you can imagine, thanks to Jenny's magic.

I could tell you how we marched, roomless, into Zermatt, Switzerland--knowing full well that Zermatt was fully booked at Christmas--but Jenny had a theory, one that worked. And so, next morning, we left well rested and full of breakfast fit for mountaineers. The real joy came in the surprise that our cozy rooms, in a town where there was no room, overlooked the Matterhorn on a crystal clear evening and a brilliant morning.

But this is about Africa, not Switzerland.

Magically populated by the charming terra cotta people and creatures pulled from a local Venda woman's imagination, Lesheba is a desolate mountain resort way up the narrow track of a red clay road in the Soutpansberg mountains of South Africa. The artist, now world-famous, is Noira Mabasa and sculpting is her game. She sculpts giant cows, tiny lizards, old men, pregnant women, snakes and rhinos, giraffes and mythical critters, whatever, and drops them, an unseen god, into their surroundings. I've been lucky to stay in her marvelous Venda Village twice, thanks to Jenny's magic.

If you book the Venda Village, a tidy cluster of nine huts guarded by Mabasa's statues, you get the entire place to yourself. That's what makes it so magic: the solitude. How is it that Jenny booked us there at Christmas, two separate years?

I don't know, but I'm not asking.

Photo Credit

OK OK 

Art nagged me til I agreed: photo credit where photo credit is due. Some of these are his (the lion licking herself), some are Jenny's and some are mine. Same with those yet to come. Just don't ask who took what cause I'd like to take credit for all.

That's just like me, too, wanting credit for every good thing that comes to me: lasting friends, a charming spouse, a cute and cozy cottage of a home, one adventure after another. 

I'm lucky.

What more could I ask, except that Art assign his photos to me, give me some credit I don't deserve?

Biltong

A year ago, we returned home, laden with stuff: touristy salad scoopers carved into wild animal shapes, beaded keychains, cheap batiks that looked like a million bucks, shopping bags printed with animal hide or ecological messages, jewelry made from ostrich egg shells. And biltong. 

Biltong, that luscious game jerky explicitly banned from import into the United States, for fear of what? Contamination of the game market here? Addicts questing for more, more different, more exotic, whatever? It hardly gets more exotic than kudu or crocodille biltong.

Biltong is: shape, texture, aroma, taste. So different from our jerky. I'm rarely at a loss for words, but since the day the lions made me give up vegetarianism, I've loved biltong so much I can call it heavenly and leave it at that.  

But I can't leave it, just like that, so I prepare to smuggle, er, import it to the States. I triple-wrap it in plastic and mine my luggage with it. I'm not confident the plastic will stay the biltong-sniffing dogs at the airport on the US side, so I leave a few unmentionable garments discreetly unwashed, hoping to throw the dogs off.  

At the Johannesburg airport, a huge sign, in red capital letters, declares, "DO NOT ATTEMPT TO CARRY BILTONG INTO THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA." 

I turn my chin down and pretend not to see it.  Art doesn't know I'm carrying biltong. If I go down for the crime, I didn't want him to take a rap. (hahah and too many cop shows for me.) He doesn't love biltong the fanatical way I do and would declare this entire mission a bust long before I got busted.

I lug my suitcase to the counter and hoist it onto the scale.

"One kilo over," says the official smuggly. 

"What?" panic rises in my throat.

"One kilo over. You must remove one kilo."

"Uh. What will I do with it?"

"I do not care. One kilo must be removed."

Up until that very instant, I believed that "African time" was a racist tag. How quickly we change our values.

I pull my suitcase off the scale, step aside and slowly proceed to undo the latches. That's when a man, someone I don't know, approaches the official. Just loud enough for the official and me to hear, he purrs, "This is a tourist in our country, an influential one. Leave the kilo." And he presses a bill--a surprisingly small denomination--into the official's hands.

Next thing I know, I'm clutching my boarding pass. My rescuer disappears into the crowd and I never see him again.

During the longest commercial flight  in the world, 18 hours to New York, I almost forget about the biltong and the ferocious rottweilers that would be my fate. Even coach aboard South African Airlines seems plushy. The food is amazingly continental and the attendants are exactly that. They prowl the cabin while you sleep and will cover your feet with one of those fleecy blankets if your toes stick out. They're prompt to answer the bell if you get thirsty in the night.

One thing they do just might save me from slavering dog jaws. They give you biltong as a midnight snack. It comes in a little vacuum-sealed packet, about an ounce of it. Art's not interested and neither is the woman across the aisle. But I am. Score three ounces of biltong for me. 

As we approach New York, I rip open the packets and stuff them into the outer pocket of my carry-on bag. As soon as we collect our luggage and step into that big room where the cops saunter through with the dogs, my panic is nearly palpable. All this for a couple pounds of biltong? Am I crazy? Maybe that'll be my defense...

I'm trying oh so hard to be casual, that I nearly jump out of my skin when I feel a damp, cold nose against my leg. I look down into the sweet wet eyes of a little white dog, the cross between a dust mop and a wig. I cannot help it, I start to laugh. So does the cop. For a moment. The little dog goes nuts, sniffing and pawing my carry-on.

"Whatcha got there," he asks. "Airplane biltong?"

I pull a packet out, apologize, "Oh gosh, I forgot. Want it?"  Try to hand it to him. 

He refuses, shakes his head, "Thanks. I don't care for it."

And smiling down at his pretty little dog, he moves off. 

I'm so pale Art notices.

"You OK?

 

"Yes," I lie.  "Just tired," and that's the truth.