There’s something about being at
home on a cold, rainy day that makes me want to write. I feel more introspective
than usual, and I have a strong need to put my thoughts and feelings down in
words. My son sent me something he’d written recently, and I was struck, once
again, by his immense talent for writing fiction. For me, writing has always
been more of the journaling type. Writing, in one form or another, seems to be
a family thing, because my mom, now 84, has a stack of books in which she
journalled for many years. When she moved out of our granny flat and went to
stay with my sister, she couldn’t take all her things with her because of space
restrictions, and she casually instructed us to throw her journals away,
because, as she said, “Who’d be interested in that old rubbish?”. I couldn’t.
They’re in my house, and one day I’ll read them. I found, amongst them, a small
book in which she’d journalled throughout a country-wide tour she’d taken with
an opera company (the Eoan Group), in her twenties! I read extracts from it to
her, and encouraged her to take it home, which she did. I really hope she reads
it every now and then, because she has a dry sense of humour, which comes out
in her writing.
The need for solitude is another
thing that I’ve seen in certain members of my family, and interestingly it’s
the same people who love writing. Actually, it’s the writers and the readers who seek out long
stretches of time, to lose themselves in books, or - these days - the
computer. But I’ve been a solitude
seeker ever since I started living away from my family. When I was about 19 or
20, I started living semi-separately from my family, when my sister and her
husband moved into a new house and my mom and I moved with them – I was excited
to be given my own quarters, a flatlet on the premises. We used my kitchen as a
storage place and I ate my meals with the family. But I had my own bedroom and
bathroom, completely separate from the family. It was at that time that I started the
practice of lying in the bath for hours, listening to music, thinking,
dreaming.
Towards the end of my second year
of teaching, in 1984, I met someone and, about a year later, moved in with him.
That living arrangement lasted about four months, after which I moved back
home. By then, a cousin of mine had moved into the flatlet, so I was forced to
find my own place. I was lucky – after just one week of squatting with my
family, I moved into my own flatlet, a few suburbs away, where I stayed for a
few years. I had a teaching job, my own car, I was studying part-time, I was
very physically active (gym and running) and I was growing as a musician,
playing my guitar a lot, writing songs and performing occasionally. I LOVED
living on my own. When I couldn’t go to gym, I’d work out at home, doing the
aerobics I’d learnt at gym. I loved running, and would run on my own or find
someone to run with me.
I lived that way for four and a
half years, during which time I formed a good relationship with the elderly
couple who owned the premises and lived in the main house. When their health
declined, their children took them in, the main house was up for rent, and I
saw the opportunity to solve another family situation that had arisen. My mom
had returned from three years of working in Bloemfontein (singing opera with
PACOFS), and needed a place to stay. My
sister’s house didn’t have a spare room, so we needed to find a different
solution. I moved out of the granny flat and into the main house, which I
shared with my mom for about two and a half years. At the time, I didn’t
realize just how big a change I was in for, but I suppose that’s how life goes
when you’re at a certain stage of your life – you still think like a child,
when it comes to your parents, but you’ve actually been an independent adult
for many years, and you’re not who you were before, you’re not who your family
expects you to be, and you surprise even yourself when you go from living alone
to living with someone else – especially your mother. No regrets, however –
that was how it was, and that became part of our family’s story.
For two and a
half years, my mom and I shared a huge house in Lansdowne, owned by the
Bloemetje family. That was in the early 1990s. In February 1992, I finally
extricated myself from an intense, on-off, 8-year-long relationship and started
enjoying being single again. Unfortunately (and this I say with hindsight), I
didn’t give myself enough time to be single and to explore whom I could be and
where I could take myself in life, with my energy and my various interests and
skills. Towards the end of 1992, I met someone new and we started a serious relationship. In August 1993, because my life had moved on so rapidly, my mom and
I went our separate ways and I moved in with my new partner, whom I married in
March 1994. Mom then found a granny flat opposite my sister’s house, which was
where she stayed for the next five years. That was in Massey Avenue, Crawford,
with the Solomons family.
I’m still on the topic of how I
enjoy being on my own, remember? J
In December 1994, my first child was born. In November 1998, my second. Time to
myself was rare, and I started to live a very different type of life. Having
discovered that my husband had read my personal diaries early on in our
relationship (why don’t we ever SEE the writing on the wall?!), I’d thrown away
my years and years of diaries, and started journalling about my children’s
development, instead. This gave me an outlet for my writing urge, but also
became a legacy that I would leave for them, as I ended up journalling in the
form of letters to them (about their lives).
In Nov 2000, my husband and I split up, and the divorce was finalized a
year later.
A whole new phase of my life then
began, fraught with all kinds of things I could never have imagined,
particularly around the most precious part of my life - my children. Even
though I won sole custody (after an unpleasant and expensive legal
battle), I agreed to joint parenting, as I really did not believe that there
was only one way to do the post-divorce parenting thing. Besides, I had grown
up without my father, and didn’t want my children to suffer the same fate. But there are very different interpretations
of “joint parenting”, so I was then thrown into another legal wrangle, over "domiciling”. For YEARS, my ex-husband fought for the children to live at each
parent’s house for 50% of the time, and each time an extra day was added to
their time at his house, the next round of the battle began. There was so much
unrelenting pressure on everyone, that in the end, the children were saying
THEY wanted to spend 50% of the time at their dad’s house, which they then
ended up doing, somewhere in their primary school years. Long story!
But we’re still talking about me
and my need for solitude, right? So, when my children first started living away
from me, for a day or two at a time - my son was 6 and my daughter had just
turned 2 - it was EXTREMELY difficult for me to adjust. I had become a mother, with all the intense
life changes, and then suddenly I had to live without them. My sensitivity to
how hard it would be for their dad
influenced my decisions at the time. People tend to forget that fathers who are
suddenly forced to live without their children also go through hell.
In the beginning, I’d fill my
time crying and doing housework. My house was spotless at that time. Ooh, that
was a long time ago! J
AND…. I went back to journalling and playing my guitar, reconnecting with the
songwriter I’d almost forgotten I was. In the first two years after my divorce,
I wrote 22 songs! A far cry from the 6 I’d written in my 6 years of marriage.
And so I steadily got used to
being THAT Trudy again. I began to enjoy my time alone, filling it with music,
music and more music. Despite the ongoing legal battles about increased access,
I persevered with my own passions, and slowly started rebuilding my new life.
Yes, I made mistakes, including a few notable ones, but I opened myself to what
life presented me, and I gave myself the space to become the Trudy I liked being.
2003 was a watershed year for me: I started a new relationship (which ended 8
and a half years later – AGAIN I missed the writing on the wall!) and
started performing with another
guitarist, Keith Tabisher, re-entering the world of gigging, this time in a
format that I knew was right for me -
the acoustic duo. 2003 started a whole new, exciting era of my life, including recordings and concerts
of my original work – no regrets there! Many of the things that make me happy today started around that time.
In Sept 2013, after quite a few
years of learning to enjoy living on my own every alternate week, my life
changed AGAIN, when my daughter decided that she wanted to live in one house
and she moved in permanently with me. So, for the past 8 months, I have not had
much solo space. How has this affected me? I suppose as mothers we learn to
compartmentalize, so I’ve spent a lot of my energy focusing on my daughter and
her needs. You can’t switch that off, you know. I play my guitar whenever I
can, but I also have a day job that takes up a lot of my private time – I’m a
teacher! - AND I’ve recently got involved in a new, exciting venture, that of
presenting a weekly radio show, which also takes time: I have to source guests
to interview live on radio, do research and prepare for the interviews. Two
hours on radio means many more hours of preparation. But it’s a new part of my life
I really enjoy, and I will continue to do so for as long as I have this
wonderful opportunity to be on radio.
So, why do I seldom go out? Why
do I often choose to stay home? Why do I seem to be such a homebody? I NEED
time out from all the people I’m constantly surrounded by, in the different
parts of my life. Ironic that I’m also a performer, someone who needs other
people to attend my concerts, etc. But maybe not so strange after all? Maybe many
other ‘creatives’ can relate to what I’m saying? In order for me to feel I’m living a balanced
life, I need time to myself. This morning, I have taken some wonderful time to
myself. Yay!!!!
I know myself well enough to be
at peace with the fact that I will constantly find creative ways to experience
the feeling of solitude, wherever I find myself, because it’s just another form
of oxygen to me.
Below: three of the many pictures I took this week as I made my way around Cape Town, walking a lot more now that I'm without my car: a stream in Newlands, near Josephine Mill, autumn leaves lying on the pavement, and a magical autumn sunrise, seen from a bridge in Wynberg.
