B&B

I am in my parent’s new home, just a stone’s throw away from the Vaal dam which is like an inland mini-ocean. I have been going running along the banks in the afternoons so that my body doesn’t start illustrating my love for my mother’s cooking. I feel like I am in a gay South African version of the film “Like Water for Chocolate” because every meal that my mother serves is fortified with some kind of magic ingredient that loosens my highly strung nerves and cradles my heart until it stops its bitching and moaning. The house is gorgeous. Its double storey with four bedrooms and the belly of the house is a generous open plan, connecting the kitchen and the living room with a high churchlike roof, which is made up of whitewashed wooden beams that hold everything together under the watchful eye of Angelica. Angelica is the hand carved guardian angel that I bought my mother for her birthday to look after us all, and she does. I have been here a week already and it has been a warm hazy blur of Love, laughter and tea. These people have and always will Love me and it feels like the gooseflesh you get sitting in the sun when even your bones have gotten cold. They don’t just accept or tolerate me. Here I am enjoyed like a square of rationed chocolate. I Love my family because they Love me for more than being a brother or a son. They are above all things in my life my greatest blessing. I will move back into my little flat amongst the trees in Northcliff soon and commence rehearsals for The Rocky Horror Show, but until then I am enjoying every minute of the time I spend with these wonderful people that made me. I Love hearing my father’s authoritative tone in my voice when I reprimand the baby in our family (a gorgeous three year old German Sheperd named Zack.) I love setting the table and putting Pompy , our adopted terrier (previously my Ouma and Oupa’s now both watching over us like Angelica) to bed outside under her own duvet because she suffers from late night potty training memory lapses. I spent way too much time on my own in Cape Town and am so happy to now have all this wonderful company. The bed in the room I sleep in is so comfortable that even three of the five cats we have are constantly to be wrestled with for a comfortable spot. I am glad that I have not settled with anyone yet because it makes this time I share with my family so much more intimate. This week we had so many guests that I now feel confident that my mother and I could run a lucrative bed and breakfast. My uncle came to stay followed by a friend of my mother’s and then my aunt and uncle and niece. So much territory was covered. Love, betrayal, death, regret and even marriage (which some would argue is an accumulation of the former four.) Conversations became heated and then cooled and all was punctuated delectably by my mother’s sublime cooking. She is the happiest I have seen her in years and I taste this in every mouthful. My Little brother that is so much bigger than me in so many ways has set something in motion that may provide me with a career. But even if it is not lucrative and so nothing comes of it now, I will feel its rippling impact for the rest of my life. It is good to be believed in.