She is long gone, but there are bits of her in the weaving of my DNA, particular bits that I love as part of me, that she passed onto me seemingly deliberately through my mother. But more importantly she is part of my value system and some of my favourite memories have her in them. How do you piece someone you love together into a paragraph, so that someone who has never met her, feels the warmth of her handshake, the zest of her spirit, the backbone of her resolve and the compassion that surrounded her steeliness?

She was born in Holland in 1908, number nine in a long line of siblings that arrived before her. I never met her family, as she had left them far behind, when she emigrated from Holland to South Africa, and many were dead by that time, but I felt like I knew them. My great-grandfather owned a department store, in Rotterdam, my grandmother would tell wistful stories of her nine siblings working in the store, doing mental arithmetic in their heads to add up what customers had bought, then late at night in the warmth of their home, singing songs around the grand piano. The rational and the emotional, integrated side-by-side in their lives. My grandmother taught me a love of language, she spoke to me in Dutch, taught me how humour differs in different languages and we would roar with laughter when we translated Dutch idioms into English and realise they were totally meaningless and nonsensical. She also gave me a deep love of French. The sound and music of the language. She had been sent to a French Boarding school, much to her despair, being away from everyone she loved. Her mischief causing her desk to be placed outside the school gate, to wait for the wrath of her father, who was coming to pick her up at the end of term. I loved the image of my grandmother, being a young girl and being naughty, sitting outside the imposing French boarding school waiting with trepidation for her father to arrive. I asked her to retell that story and the one where she fed a goat a toffee, over and over again. They appealed to me that this woman, so principled and correct and loving, had once been a girl just like me. We would sit and play cards, domino’s or “Halma” for hours and she would speak her secrets to me in Dutch and French and my world would feel safe and complete. We would make dinner together and wait for my grandfather, the love of her life, to come home. At dinner we would say grace in French, I always felt that God appreciated that grace far more than the boring English one we said at home.

My grandmother was from a generation of composure. She never had a hair out of place and if she did, no problem, she put on her wig to disguise a “bad hair day.” She taught me to share my joy, but hold my grief privately. I remember being so upset when my grandfather died, knowing that she would be alone in the house, that I left home, to go and live with her. I was 17 in my final year of school. I packed my bag, got on my scooter and moved in with her. I knew half of herself had been ripped away. She remained composed and together. I asked her how she did it. She said “Tears are for your pillow.” Many years later, after she had gone to join her beloved. I found a telegram she had got from the Red Cross to tell her that her parents had been killed in the bombing of Rotterdam. I held the telegram in my hands, knowing she had held it too. Knowing that that single sheet of paper had brought her world collapsing around her and I felt the strength that she had held that paper with transfer into my own fingers.

I have a friend, who is much older than me and who every time I bemoan the fact that I am getting older, says “You are scared.” I am not scared of getting older if it means that I will carry the wisdom of my life in my heart like my grandmother did. I am not scared of getting older if means that in the powdery softness of my wrinkles, I will hold my grandchildren and whisper the secrets of the women who have come before them. I am not scared of getting older, if it means that I will gather my clan, share music and food and the memories of generations. I am not scared of getting older, if it means I can shape the hearts of those younger than me with the values and stories my grandmother passed on to me. I will be proud to have the unbotoxed wrinkles my grandmother had, as long as my heart is full as hers was, with passion, principles, light and love.

For my grandmother, long gone, you are still here and the song below, slips me back to lying next to your record player, making you repeat this “7 single” over and over again, while we played “Old Maid.” I loved you then, I love you still.

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Tanya Uncategorized