Photograph by Derek Keats
Earth, my dearest, oh believe me, you no longer need your springtimes to win me over....
~ Rainer Maria Rilke
I could have kissed him. Really. It’s not as if he was handsome, or sent my pulse racing. It’s just that he, after I’ve delivered the rollers at the factory and he was walking me back to the bakkie, casually said: “I love winter.”
I love people loving winter. The
Gauteng winters. People living down in the Cape are not frowned upon when they
talk in nostalgic tones about Cape winters. There it is more or less in vogue
to love winter – rainy weather, the warm glow of fireplaces, a glass of wine.
The mere sound of it all is cultivated.
With the winters in Gauteng it is
different. My brother who lives in the Cape says everything north of the Vaal River
is bleak and barren. I don’t have any defence, no counter arguments against
that. All the tinsels in the world will not be able to let the landscape scorched
by frost appear alive. Veld fires and the black scars left behind do not make
for nice postcard images. And the squatter camps and cities that appear in the
early mornings from under their blankets of smoke, have a close resemblance to
the street children that wake up drab and cold in its streets with the sleep
thick in the corners of the eyes in their unwashed faces.
But I love winter in Gauteng with
a passion. Not because she is pretty but because that is who she is. Because
she is quiet and the season of looking inward. The season of stripping all excess.
She is the woman who sits peacefully knitting in front of the fireplace,
glancing at you as you come in and sit down. And after some sweet silence she’ll
say: “What’s the matter?” And you tell her.
I love her because she is so overlooked
and undervalued. Because she suits my temperament and I am totally me during
this season. I do not love winter on an intellectual level. It goes much
deeper. Where words become dumb and clumsy and where in the end you only sit
with the knowing. The knowing that you gently cherish when others do not
understand.
I feel about winter the way the
mother with the daughter that doesn’t fit in at school must feel. You braid her
thin hair with care and stare in amazement at her where she is walking away in
the slender, frail body. You ache inside because you know about her loneliness
at school and the cutting remarks. You ache because they do not take note of
her and they do not know. Sometimes you hug her, without
warning, so that she looks up in surprise at you with eyes the crisp blue
colour of her sky. You kiss her on her frost white forehead.
Winter arrived this week in
Gauteng.
Last night, as I got into bed,
she did the kissing. The tips of my ears, my bald spot. I shrieked and pulled
the blankets over my head. She smiled and went to the chair in the corner of my
room where she sat down. During the night I was aware of her lovingly looking
at me, sometimes getting up and stroking my hair.
I missed her.
~ ~ * ~ ~
Winter has
a loving heart
but struggles
from the start.
Her kisses
being icy cold
make people say:
"Let's keep apart."
George
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