Tag: cat

Project 52: Home, your heart…and where you are…

ChiromancerLeave a comment

In case you all think I have a jet-set lifestyle, may I correct your assumption. A week in New York – for work – followed by a fortnight in South Africa – for family – can seriously mess with your melatonin levels, and your mindset. Jets, notwithstanding.

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Image: © Chiromancer 2018

Both trips were welcome, but having spent exactly one night at home with The Belgian, swapping suitcases and clean underwear to hop on the overnight from Brussels to Cape Town via Dubai was somewhat dislocating. Even the cat was upset!

Which got me thinking. At the ripe old age of 52, being asked where I am from, or where I live is more complex to answer than you might think.  I can legitimately claim ancestry from at least 3 places (hence the triple passports) but I also find myself living somewhere I did not choose, with someone who I most definitely did.

So where is home for me? Heading back to the Mother City was a revelation, and yet I felt apprehensive.  Not to see my family  – I love them and we come together far too infrequently – I felt nervous because I wondered if I still belonged to a place I had left decades ago. Would I fit it? Would I feel comfortable in a city, a country, a continent that had changed so radically? Was it home?  Or just homesickness?

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Image: © Chiromancer 2018

It might have been both. Sometimes your soul itches…Driving through landscape that captures the light as much as it captures your breath, I felt somehow whole. As the desert flowers shared their beauty, my soul stretched. When I saw the ocean…I wanted to cry with the loveliness of it all.  In that moment…I realised that family, fynbos and familiar landscapes all reminded me of who I really am.  And perhaps of where I truly belong. In my heart, in my soul.  Here. My heart.

But here I am instead. Northern Hemisphere. And according to people who know, the most boring country in Europe. Well, it is rather flat. Geographically speaking. Emotionally speaking. Sometimes your soul contracts…

This week’s lesson is about expanding your universe. That only happens if you choose to ignore your emotional geography and go exploring anyway.

 

 

The Year of the Cat…

Chiromancer1 Comment
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Image: Copyright Chiromancer

The cat – as with so many things this year – arrived in an unexpected way. The Belgian and I were enjoying a late-evening aperitif and some ‘hapjes’ (a.k.a. bar snacks) – when a skinny creature made it’s approach, miaowing plaintively.

Since we were living in two places and I was working in a third, pets were not on the agenda.  We had only just had a funeral for the gerbil so I really didn’t need another crash course in  pet care for step-parents!  

 ‘Do not feed the cat!’ I was instructed. Which of course, I was compelled to ignore. Surely a small and surreptitious snack would not do any harm? ‘He won’t leave’ The Belgian muttered. And he was right…the next night the cat arrived for another late night bite.  Clearly the cat was domesticated, so he must be someone’s pet. ‘If he is here again, I’m going to take him to the animal shelter’ said my husband, darkly.

Instead, he took the cat to the vet, got him micro-chipped, vaccinated and issued with a pet passport so he could travel.  The Belgian is nothing if not kind-hearted, and that is why I married him!  We named the cat Watson. He purrs louder than a tractor, and since his batteries must have been removed in one of his previous 9 lives, sleeps 18 hours per day. He is of course, totally perfect for us.

Sometimes in life, you get what you need, but it’s not necessarily what you thought you wanted.  Thanks Watson, for being one of the good things in 2016.