me, i'm not

on sunday afternoon we went to the walter sisulu botanical gardens.

in roodepoort.

to meet up with the rest of our extended family.

a total of 36 people, huddled around sporadic trees for shade from the almost-summer sun. children, grandmothers and second cousins.

several group photo attempts, and only one where everyone is looking at the camera.

there were choo-choo trains on wheels, a waterfall, crusty bread rolls and shaken soft-drink spray. all over my shirt.

makeshift wands were made from plastic bottle seals, so the little ones could blow bubbles from bottles which, shortsightedly, didn't have bubble-blowing wands of their own.

we had naps, lie-downs and walks to the restricted waterfall called witpoortjie, which is home to nesting eagles, and a polluted flow of white water.

family members ate soft serve ice-creams, with flake, from a VW hippie bus, painted with smiling faces and happy slogans.

i took photos of succulents in the rockery, botterbome and vygies, noticed coke lid-yellow weaver birds, hanging from their intricately woven, hive-shaped nests.

as we walked back, i watched as a little fairy kite flapped its glittered, plastic wings in the afternoon august winds. we could see it from the other side of the gardens, flip-flapping dangerously close to leafless, brazenly bare-branches.

as we expected, the fairy kite soon crash landed into the tangle of tree, which we later gathered from the glittery plastic ribbon remains, sparkly in the breeze. the only reminder of it's treetop demise.

an apt metaphor for ups and downs, life's phases, and unwelcome but necessary obstacles.

last year, i was like the shitty, un-recyclable plastic flying barbie-fairy. not tied to one place, and held down only by a slight string. unaware of the sharp, approaching branch thicket in the bottom right corner.

kite free

this year, i took a nose-dive straight into a stationary shrub. and i'm still stuck there, trying to find a way out, and probably destroying my fake, China-made, tinsel-shitty decoration in the process.

kite tree

i've struggled and strained, wishing i could get out. thinking that stationary means stuck. and that stuck means means i can't do the things i want to do.

but i had an awareness of family, change and growth yesterday that i hadn't had before.

for the first time in years i was surrounded by almost my entire directly-related family. and i realized that new generations happen, people change, and really do find happiness in stability, bubble-blowing and picnics.

so maybe being static isn't the worst thing to be.

for a while.