Chalk and Cheese

I find it fascinating how children who are birthed from the same parents, who grow up in the same house with the same circumstances turn out so differently. I guess when you throw two different adults together and make a baby; you take potluck with how they are likely to turn out.

Sailing and horse riding are sports with a certain genteelness that I certainly did not grow up with. My son is a fan of both and it matters little to him that no one in the family shares that passion. Similarly, he plays the clarinet. Although we all love music, none of us play an instrument. My daughter briefly played the recorder in grade one, as a requirement of the syllabus but dropped it with little further interest. She did not even try out for the school choir, dismissing it as being for children who needed to learn how to sing.

She sleeps like a log, since an early age has invited all she meets to come round and visit and leaves everything till the last minute because she “works best under pressure”. She's travelled like a dream since she was nine months old. My son on the other hand does not mind his own company (choosing solitary interests to occupy himself) sleeps like a flea and is more focused and conscientious about his work. If it wasn’t for the fact that he looks like me and shares other characteristics too, I would be inclined to believe my daughter’s assertion that he was swopped at birth.

I spent the first two and a half years of his life comparing him to his sister before I accepted that this little boy had his own agenda and was blazing his own trail. Now that adolescence has dawned I find myself comparing them again. My daughter breezed her way through but it seems like it may be pay-back time with my son. 

Both of them have enriched my life in so many ways, teaching me so much and often pushing me out of my comfort zone (like when I decided to take horse riding lessons). If sailing proves to be a lasting passion, I might have to take to the water soon.

Older and Better

You know you are getting old when you are sitting at your desk and something just pulls in your back. Or like last year, I was just walking along the road, when I twisted my ankle. I don’t know about these people who keep telling you that aging is in your mind, that age is only a number. Tell that to my body! There is the added weight gain around the middle, the slower recovery from sudden bursts of exercise, and of course “the change” which happened last year.   

I have no idea what my children are talking about in Math, and have to suffer the rolling eyes when I need help with an apparently trivial technology-related problem. I nearly fried my brain at the 4-hour workshop I attended on how to use my camera. Other giveaways must be talking about the "old days", and preferring snail mail and chats on the phone to "texting".

I don’t have a problem with getting older; I just have a problem with everyone telling me that it is happening in my head. It’s a process, this getting older. I remember a visit to the doctor a while back, when she told me that now that I was over 40 we needed to do an annual battery of tests like mammograms, cholesterol, thyroid, etc. I left there feeling like I was about to spontaneously combust now that I had passed a certain milestone. 

But here I am years later, still going strong! I have been growing my hair for the last few months. I have had short hair since forever but was feeling like I needed a change. "The only way to have something different is if you grow it," said my hairdresser (while you can still carry it off, he added, half under his breath). But there is life in the old dog yet! Last year was also the year that I went shark cage diving, learnt to ride an elephant and took horse-riding lessons. I have my open water diving certificate and made my television debut on Morning Live, no less.  I have just finished a course on magazine journalism and set up my blog (by myself when they were all in Durban watching Portugal and Brazil during the World Cup!). 

So now I find myself with the odd pain, embracing my curves and the natural highlights in my hair. I am doing things I never dreamt I would be doing. I plan on going back for the longer version of the photography course in the new year and watch out for the new and improved version of my blog. Things are definitely getting better. 

Horse-riding and other mid-life challenges

On Friday night I sat next to a show-jumper at dinner. He told me how riding had kept him out of mischief as a teenager when all his friends were going off clubbing, and doing other things that teenagers do. Horse-riding did not rank high on any list I might have had growing up in South Africa, when I did. Fortunately, I could contribute to the conversation since my son has been riding for a few years now. He has always loved animals and one day declared that he would like to go riding. I think I might have dismissed it as a passing phase. Many holiday trips found him longing to go riding. 

One holiday we did a horse safari in Addo Elephant Park - I am not sure how I get talked into all these things. My husband assured me that he had told the guide that we were Absolute Beginners, so off we went. Things started off simply enough until we had to duck to go through a bridge under the highway. We had to wait our turn and the horses got a little restless, bumping into each other. It was my son's horse  which reared up and dumped him on his bottom. To our surprise, he stood up and got straight back on. This was not very confidence-inspiring in my daughter who was even less enchanted than I was at the prospect of being on a safari on an animal in an area where we knew lions roamed! However, there was no turning back and we spent the longest 2 hours of my life trying to enjoy the experience!

On our return home, my son reminded me again that I had not done anything about his earlier request for riding lessons. After a little research,  we were recommended to a riding school which had a waiting list of 9 months (which, I admit, I hoped would put him off). He waited patiently and, now, four years later, we are still taking weekly trips to the "mink-and-manure" side of the mountain. He loves riding and has changed his lesson to a Friday afternoon as it is "a good way to end the week."

Of course now that he can ride he is even more keen on tracking down places that offer riding when we are on holiday. I may add that he has dragged his similarly riding-challenged father off at dawn to ride Arabian horses in the desert of Sharm-el-Sheik! 


Last year we had quite the year of the animals - shark cage diving, whale watching, riding elephants and bottle-feeding tigers in Thailand. In between the adventures on the sea in Hermanus, my son dragged us off to do some horse riding – "gentle ponies that even you can ride mom!" After an hour in the saddle on Lukas, who had ideas of his own about whether he should in fact move, I needed to be prised off and was not sure whether I would ever be able to walk upright again. I spent the rest of the week sporting a John Wayne swagger from those Westerns we watched as children. 

After the Lukas experience, I decided that perhaps I should have a few lessons to get the hang of it since it seems like this riding thing was here to stay. At least I could learn to sit properly instead of being thrown around like a sack of potatoes. While the idea of riding (being outdoors, the graceful rhythm that seems almost meditative) is peculiarly appealing to me, I have to admit to a certain reservation about the whole business. 


I am so aware that this is an animal - bigger and stronger than I - with its own mind. And when the teacher says give him a whack - I mean what is that?  - an open invitation to fly over its head? Neither does riding a horse called Hercules conjure up visions of gentle canters through the forest. I bravely attended a term of lessons and would like to say that I am prepared for the next Lukas. Alas, the longer I went for lessons the more convinced I became that the odds of being thrown off were stacking up against me. Images of the late Christopher Reeve (aka Superman) started to appear in my dreams. I felt like I was playing Russian Roulette and decided to quit before I met my end. 


I have to admit I do feel just a little bit proud of stepping out of my comfort zone and adding riding to one of my mid-life challenges. But I can ride an elephant, and I did that bareback.