My favourite month

Words are powerful tools that can create worlds, bring fictional characters to life and into your heart, weave magic and beauty, but there are some tasks that words are inadequate for - or at least my power to yield them is inadequate - particularly when I am talking about something sad in a blog that is meant to embrace optimism... Sometimes it is difficult to find the right words... but I have to try.

My favourite beach 

This week was my birthday, a happy day spent travelling back from a weekend with my folks and one of my favourite ladies (thanks to their amazing generosity). An evening that was spent drinking champagne, eating beer bread and decorating cookies - bliss.

BUT 

This week would also have been my cousin's birthday... I have mentioned my cousin a couple of times in this blog and in "The other F word" I told you that she had passed away - two innocent, innocuous words for a world of sorrow and change.






I have always treasured that our birthdays were in the same month, just a couple of days apart. I am a few years younger than my sisters and cousins, and often felt as though I missed out a bit on growing up together and the closeness that that (being in school together, graffiti-ing the patio, early days of clubbing, first kisses etc) brings. (There was no small amount of hero-worshiping of my older sisters and cousins, you can tell and it grew into a deep love and respect as I got older...) So, it may seem silly, but sharing our birthday month made me feel like I had a special bond with my cousin too. I was even more excited when her daughter (my goddaughter) managed to be born in February too! 

The first page of my notebook

I have mentioned that having to resubmit my PhD was one of the reasons I started this blog. There was another motivator. Way back in 2006, for my birthday, my cousin gave me a lovely notebook. In the front she had written that it was a book for me to write stories, ideas, poetry in (see photo). She would often say that I had a nice writing style and that when she read an email from me it was like having me sit in the lounge with her and tell her a story. (If you have had an email from me you will know that they are usually LONG stories...) Instead, I used the book to write down snippets of books that I had fallen in love with, snippets of genius, or facts that I thought interesting but knew I would forget (I have a terrible memory when it comes to details). When she found that out, she was disappointed that I used it for other people's words and not my own.







So, this blog is a little bit for Sandra, because I like to think that she would have enjoyed seeing me write, and I am sure she would have read my blog and encouraged me - she always had my back. I loved that she retained the thought that I live a glamorous life (this is despite me telling her about the 1000's of fish I had to dissect and that you can't do dolphin research in Namibia in a bikini!) Happy birthday JHB Cuz. This blog is also to remind me, and you since you are reading it, to LIVE. Celebrate life. Don't put off everything until after you have finished this, that, or your PhD. Yes, work, work hard and finish it, but also live, laugh, love.

P.S. Life is about balance, and this tragedy has taught me that, while you shouldn't save the bottle of caramel vodka for a special occasion that might never come, you should also not drink it all on one New Year's Eve...