14. Relatives Really Happen

 

Relatives. We had heard a lot about them from Mom and Dad, and now we were about to experience them through picnics, parties, plain days and other proceedings. Perhaps it had to start with those who took priority in the ‘pecking order’, namely our two Grannies. That year we were given a place to stay in Cook Rd, Newlands. It was fairly small, so we often visited other relatives or we went out for picnics in smaller groups.

Dad’s mom, Granny Serena, held a special place in Dad’s regard. From the age of twelve, when he had lost his father, he had been the ‘man’ in the house and was very solicitous of her. She lived with her eldest child, daughter Yvonne and Glynn Tudor and their family. Uncle Glynn was from Wales and was a Baptist pastor in Observatory and good friend of Dad’s too. He also served in North Africa during World War II and he and Dad connected there when possible. Years later, we heard stories of how Granny Serena would open Dad’s letters to his sister Yvonne and would underline phrases she felt Yvonne needed to take note of. She would then put the letter back in the envelope. Yvonne did not appreciate this invasion of her privacy, but it seems the custom continued unabated. Aunt Yvonne and Uncle Glynn had three children, Glenys, Gareth and Errol. I remember as a young boy going to the beach at St James with them and the boys showed me how to collect discarded soft drink bottles and take them to the Greek corner shop for a refund. If we collected enough, we could buy something nice at the shop and would share it around. It was a good scheme for keeping the beach clean, and it motivated us for quite some time. The shopkeeper gave us boxes to put the bottles in and everybody was happy.

Dad’s younger brother Ernie and his wife Gwen lived in Manor Gardens, Durban at that time. Some family pictures show both families sharing a picnic at Blouberg Strand Beach, and on top of Table Mountain, so they must have come to the Cape to visit. Lorraine was my age, and Neil was younger. Later they had Kevin. Dad was always particularly fond of Uncle Ernie.

Granny Hannah Mathew, Mom’s mom, lived in a retirement flat in Rouwkoop Road in Rondebosch. She attended Claremont Baptist Church, which was the church that supported our family and so were regularly attended, under the ministry of Rev Herringshaw. Dad travelled extensively, taking meetings around the country, sharing about the mission work in Lebanon, but we generally stayed with Mom.

Mom’s brother, Uncle Jim and Aunty Jess and with Jimmy, Bruce and baby Sheila also lived in Rondebosch. Every Sunday Granny Hannah would join them for lunch, and we sometimes went along too. As mentioned earlier, Mom lost her father when she was 16 years old, and she went to work to help support the family, so her two younger brothers looked up to her. I had no idea when I first met them that they would be my ‘second family’ for some years, but that came later. Aunty Jess was from a family of four sisters with DG Mills and “Granny” as their parents. DG built up Anchor Yeast and bought four properties in Betty’s Bay for each of his daughters. He was a respected evangelical church leader with close ties in Scripture Union. He also owned a property at “Firgrove” which he allowed the Scripture Union organization to use for camps. It was a joy for our family when we were able to use one of the Betty’s Bay houses for a break together. It was a place where we were not confined to a small urban garden, but could feel free to explore the lake, the beach and the bushes nearby. At the time, there were hardly any other houses nearby. After one such visit, there was a bit of drama, when young Howard threw the keys into the bushes and no amount of searching could discover them again. Dad had to make a rather shameful apology to DG for this. It was hard for DG to understand why a boy would do such a willful thing, though Howard was too young to realise keys were important. “They let children do strange things in Lebanon!” And so legends are born (or reputations lost).

I also remember Dad taking me up the mountain to a point overlooking the house and nearby Lake. We came down by way of the waterfall and it was a simply glorious day.

Mom’s youngest brother, Hugh and his wife Jill and their family of Isabelle later joined by Jeremy, lived in Johannesburg and we saw them when they visited the Cape.

Being ‘the missionary family” we had something of a novelty status. We no longer were part of a village community or the ‘mission family’ in Lebanon, where everyone was in the same boat as it were. Now we were either held in awe, or evaluated on what we ‘didn’t have or didn’t know’. Stories of ‘third culture kids’ are numerous and varied. Each one of us could tell our own story and write books on this particular subject. I tended to take things as they came, and tried to avoid thinking about the negative aspects of the inevitable confusions. Later in life, questions such as ‘Who am I?” or “Where do I belong?” were faced on a deep level, but at this point, they did not occur to me. I simply noticed that I had to do quite a bit of adjusting to the lives of others. Family and friends certainly made space for us and often went out of their way to welcome us in their world. However, the shift had to occur in our way of adjusting to the new realities we found ourselves in. In some cases there were conflicts and confusions that were not consciously understood.

I have mentioned the understanding I had of what constituted ‘a friend’ in the Middle East as someone who could be relied on to help me ‘save face’ in a time of conflict. It was a shock to find that this was not something friends in South Africa considered a value. I also recollect people offering us some food, and in the polite way of Lebanon we would refuse the first offer, expecting the host to continue to offer the tasty morsel, only to find they took our fist answer as the final answer. That lesson did not take us long to learn to accept the first time we were offered something!

At Claremont Public School (CPS), Brenda had the unique distinction of learning Afrikaans poems off by heart without knowing what she was actually saying. She remembers that she could not write a “J” properly and felt like she had failed rather badly by that. This affected her rather profoundly and was not helped by the poor attitude her teacher adopted towards the fact that she could not write it the same way as everyone else. No doubt the class would have struggled to write Arabic script.

In the course of that year, we discovered many other relatives and connections. While Brenda was at CPS she made a few friends such as Lynnette Grapentin, who she used to spend time with playing dolls. They would line all the dolls up and teach them, which was a bit prophetic in that both Lynette and Brenda became teachers. It is interesting to think that the tendencies began so early on.

Dad, thankful for the use of the house in Cook Rd, offered to look after Leighton Edward’s paint shop so he could go on holiday for a while. I seem to remember him having done that on two different occasions over the twelve months in Cape Town. 

I started standard four (Grade 6) in 1959 with Miss Smith as my class teacher and remember enjoying the lessons and responding more and more freely to geography, art, English, mathematics, history and Afrikaans. I was learning to find my way in this new world.

In the first part of the year Brenda had an operation on her legs at Groote Schuur Hospital and she remembers Reverend Dennison, the new pastor from the Claremont Baptist Church, visiting her there.

June, July and August must have been the months when Dad and Mom made some decisions about what would happen to me in the years to come, when they returned to Lebanon. There were discussions with Jim and Jess related to my staying with them. Evidently, they agreed to have me and so a process of sorting out consequences was put into place. They explained the decision to me, but I was not really able to grasp the implications of what this meant. I simply understood the family were going back to Lebanon and would be leaving me behind with the Mathew family for the sake of my education.