Life, actually

We have been back precisely a week, Rob and I, in our Emmarentia home (we have reached the stage where it is necessary to clarify – when we talk of home, are we referring to Toronto, or Johannesburg? Emmarentia, or our next, still to be identified, Johannesburg lodgings?). Apropos of which, the transfer documents for the Emmarentia property were due to have been lodged at last, with the Johannesburg deeds office today, meaning amongst other things that we will need to be ready to vacate in favour of the new owners within the next two to three weeks.

We are working on it. More precisely, Rob is working on it – delving through rental advertisements on Gumtree, taking me online to discuss the more likely candidates, making lists and notes and placing calls and emails, talking with estate agents: target date, 1 October. Target zone: northern suburbs. While working on all this, Rob is also working on a Canadian TV budget, on her South African Life Partner visa, and thinking about thank-you notes and weddings. I meanwhile have been plunged back into work, with little time to think or plan ahead – I am just a wee bit anxious about the need to line up new work, for October and beyond, but right now this week is key, and all-consuming.

And yet, somehow, we managed to have a good, albeit busy weekend: Saturday we bought a new refrigerator, reconnoitered a property (Rob more enthusiastic than I was, about the property that is), shopped for groceries, took in a movie at Cinema Nouveau, came home and watched another movie on the box before falling happily exhausted into bed; Sunday morning I satisfied a need that has been intensifying (now then, you prudes!) ever since I set sail at the beginning of the month for Canada, spending a couple of hours on my novel with an almost physical sense of relief, after which we read the papers together, chatted, called my mom, made a braai, sent a few personal emails – you get the idea.

It will be like this for the rest of the month, until we have moved house. It will be quite like this, for a while longer, as we move on to wedding plans and arrangements, as Rob figures out how to make a living in South Africa and I look to set up new work, as we work day by day to shape our new life together in the midst of all this bustle and activity.

Life as Musical

A warm, sunlit day here in Johannesburg, and Rob and I are home at last. Tonight we will go out to George’s on 4th to celebrate her birthday; it seems hard to believe that just yesterday we were having a pub lunch with Jono in Highgate, after a stroll past the cemetery where Marx no doubt continues from the grave his unforgiving analysis of capitalism and its ways – I wonder, though, would Karl still be a Marxist now?

Mike & Rob

More important things than Marx are on my mind, however, as Rob and I unpack, and I check work emails and make a few calls, do a little work-related catching up. I am thinking of Mike, who met us at Gatwick on Wednesday and whisked us off to Canterbury to see the cathedral and walk about the town and still the famine with a pint and a sandwich; on Thursday it was off to see Dover Castle and the secret War Tunnels from where the evacuation of Dunkirk was directed and the Channel protected; Friday Mike took us to see the Egyptian Room, the Rosetta Stone and the Parthenon friezes at the British Museum, then to an exhibition of this year’s portraiture prize-winners before leading us upstairs for lunch with a rooftop view of London from the National Portrait Gallery; and finally the Design Museum and a long walk back up the South Bank and over the Millennium Bridge to St Pauls. A cab ride to Picadilly, and Mike dropped us off to spend the night with Jono and Hayley. First stop, Les Miserables, then a late dinner in Chinatown before two very weary and happy fifty-somethings thudded into the pillows and fell soundly asleep.

Saturday was outstanding dim sum with Rob’s niece Genevieve and her husband Dave – and then, dear Reader, a little diversionary sally into Tiffany’s on Bond Street, where after some discussion and thoughtful consideration, a wedding ring was purchased – not, as you might think, for the bride-to-be, but for the groom who has never before worn a ring but is rather taken with the prospect of wearing this one. It is simple but modern; stylish but timeless; and I think it looks great, and says a lot more than it shows. There will be more on this topic, of weddings and rings and and associated things, from time to time, as the time approaches….

Rob, Jono, Hayley

Saturday night Jono and Hayley delivered an exemplary meal in which their pride and satisfaction was well earned and mutually appreciated: boneless quail stuffed with foie gras and wrapped in pancetta, squid and potatoes, and Hayley’s world-famous-in-Highgate chocolate risotto desert. After which, well fed, father and son retired with whiskey and cigars for a long heart-to-heart discussion about work, career, living in London, future plans, and all the business of life one needs sometimes to share with another.

In short, Rob and I had a magnificent time in England – spoiled rotten in the most unaffected and generous way by Mike, feted and wined and dined with open-hearted kindness and affection by my son and his partner, and in the midst of all this, finding time to do one very important thing for ourselves: choose a ring, and in that act and in every other moment of this whirlwind tour, find ourselves reminded that we have found ourselves partners for life, and reminded again how lucky we are.

Not miserable at all.

The Fisher men

Saugatuck, Toronto, London

Tags

engagement, family reunion, marriage, travel

Voluble, gregarious, noisy, hilarious – the tribal gathering of Rob’s decibel-driven family in Saugatuck, on the Kalamazoo River just over a spit of land from Lake Michigan, was a memorable event, in many ways: four generations gathered together for the first time in seven or eight years; long-lost cousins emerging from the mists of time to rejoin the family fold; skeletons in the family closets rattling their inter-generational bones; deaths commemorated and loves and life celebrated; calories enough to fuel another US invasion in some poor benighted country; and at departure, hugs and affection in all directions.

There was general satisfaction, too, I can safely report, with the Rob and Glen show, departing shortly from Toronto for the next appearance, in London.

Kindness of friends

Tags

friends, pre-nup party

Blanche DuBois, in Tennessee Williams’ A Streetcar named Desire, memorably depended upon the kindness of strangers. I am more fortunate. I have been deeply touched by the generosity and kindness of Rob’s friends, the open-hearted warmth of their welcome, and their happiness for the two of us. At Bill and Gail’s, on Saturday night, fifty people came to celebrate our engagement with us, and the party which started in broad daylight at 6pm went on till midnight. Each person wanted to talk with us, each individual was interested and involved, it was real and it was fun and it was, at some fundamental level, profoundly moving.

Both Rob and I felt this. There is something about making a public statement of this nature; something about the social rituals of public announcement and public approval, that reminds us how closely we are connected to each other, as social animals and cultural beings. In Africa there is a saying, ‘it takes a village to grow a child’ – and on Saturday night this visiting white African felt a sense of community, of belonging, of some kind of acceptance into the tribe, that marked, I hope, the beginnings of a Canadian education. And, as the evening wore on and people flowed in and flowed out, I began to understand something of what this was saying about Rob: this party was a tribute from her friends, earned over a lifetime, and it told me more about her, in some respects, than I could have found out for myself.

All change

Tags

Canada, couples, marriage, Rob, travel

Tomorrow morning, Paris; tomorrow evening, Toronto.

From the moment I touch down at Lester Pearson, at 3.45pm local time, and step out onto Canadian soil, everything changes.

Rob will be there, waiting for me. We will see and touch and hold each other, for the first time since March, for the first time after our decision, on April 11, to get married.

At that moment, this single life ends, and Rob and I will walk out of the airport side by side, beginning a much longer journey that will take us the rest of our lives, as a couple.

National identities will blur and converge, geography will dissolve, our sense of place will be permanently altered.

When I lift off tonight, from O.R. Tambo, it is the future I am travelling to.

Of contracts and futures

Tags

Birthday, futures, independent consulting, marriage

The contracts and futures I have in mind, you may be relieved in these times of financial crisis to hear, are not the contracts and futures beloved of brokers and traders and financial speculators. They are contracts and futures of a more personal, and personally meaningful kind, and they come in pairs or, if you like, in couples.

The contracts are those I have with the NBI, and the marriage contract. The futures, belong to Rob and to me.

This morning (incidentally, my birthday – more of that in a minute) is the first working day of the second quarter of my contract with NBI, as a consultant. It marks not only a period of time, but a change in conditions: from full time, and full pay, to part-time and part-pay. It also marks the point at which I can (and must) generate other work of my own, and I am happy to say there is work lined up till the end of September, at least. More to be done then, to follow up with potential clients; but beyond the financial exigencies the deeper question I guess is, how is this going? How do I feel about this new life of mine, as an independent consultant?

Frankly, I am relishing it. It is only when you are free of organisational life and management responsibility, that you realise how onerous and constraining it is. Of course, during the good years it provided me with opportunities, to learn and grow, and to do things I could never do as a lone consultant – but I had reached the limits to growth, in that space, I am pretty sure of that – and continued personal and professional growth demands something different, now. Along with growth is freedom, independence – and the space to be my true self. I am feeling enormously empowered, fulfilled, content, and positive.

That there is a marriage contract in the making is part of this feeling of optimism and resilience, of that I am also sure. Two futures in the making, two lives crossing and inter-mingling, two streams flowing together at last. It has been a hard journey, in some respects – reading last night through my journal I was reminded how hard – and I won’t pretend it has been without its doubts and uncertainties. But reading from the journal of my last visit to Toronto, in September 2009, I was struck, and quite moved, by the feeling of confidence, contentment, happiness and certainty, that lifts off those pages, as if the spirit has lifted, the weight has been struck off – a more than bearable, a pleasurable and delightful lightness of being.

Life is good, and it is time to get on with life. Today, as I mentioned before, is my birthday, and birthdays are always a time for reflection as well as celebration. And my reflection, in this year of momentous change, is simple. Life is a journey of possibility – and there are many possibilities still to be held, loved, tasted, explored. As I contemplate marriage, independence, the decade ahead, I am reminded that one may step again into the river, but one can never step into the same river twice. There is loss, in that reality, but also renewal.