Page 7 - In a different register - Sample

Mother and Maternal Grandmother “To Uncle from Frances (eight months old)”My mother often called me Tokkie, short for Tok-tokkie which is a long legged shiny-black African beetle that makes a tapping noise to attract attention. But a ‘Tokoloshe’ is a skelm or trickster: To terrorise the powers that be, the tokoloshe emerges from obscurity. My little Tokkie.” she would say. It was endearing, sounded like sweetheart, not really like ‘little naughty one’. But I was that. Always up to mischief and later somewhat of a wheeler dealer. So I suppose I ended up associating it with something endearing about being a Tokoloshe. A personal template for a life? Here is one of my father as a baby with his grandmother.Father and Grandmother “Dear Mother - taken 1st week in Feb. 1904. Died 28 Feb. 1904”These photos make me feel like part of history. All the photos of a life time kept in an old carved wooden Kist that gives off the fading smell of sandal wood. A gift from Martha, my sister Martha. Five and a bit years older than I. Even as a young child I can remember lying on the grass looking up at the sky with a sense of longing, a sense of wonder at what might be out there. It seemed to beckon without letting on to what it was calling.