SPEECH THERAPIST
For want of a better description, these trust us episodes lead me to a speech therapist, a Rabbi, a Hindu Avatar residing in Germany, and a final walk through time on the Rondebosch Common. Sponsoring can often be a two-way street. A sponsee of mine was particularly enthusiastic about some releasing treatments he’d been having, so I decided to check it out for myself. Paige, who was a formally trained speech therapist, had me lie on my back in a comfortable position and began a combination of reiki and guided meditation. I took deep breaths in through my nose, held, and exhaled slowly through my mouth while she guided me to release the tension in my body, starting with my big toe on my right foot. I was indeed relaxing. When I was completely at ease, Paige probed, enquiring if any images had come to mind and if they were something I needed to speak about or let go of. Each time I’d reply, ‘My father.’ I could see a picture of him, one that I took shortly before his death at one of our last outings together one cool misty morning at the Silvermine Nature Reserve. The clouds rolled in as rapidly as the tablecloth covers Cape Town’s iconic rock. Dad was smiling and posing next to a protea bush with the tea-hued water of the dam for a background.

Paige apparently could also see my father; he was in the room with us, only he was not smiling, he was crying and wanted me to know just how much he loved me. The situation unsettled me – and I guess seeking normality, I thought if I had more work to do regarding my father I would continue with Kathy. I didn’t think I would see Paige again, but a few hours later she called to suggest I visit Rabbi Katz. ‘He’s a busy man and hard to get an appointment with, got a pen? Okay, take down his number and please give him a call, he’d like to meet you.’

THE RABBI
Until the 19th Century, most Ashkenazi Jews had no family names. Instead, they were named after their parents; Ya’akov ben Yitzhak (Jacob son of Isaac), or Sarah bat Rachel (Sarah daughter of Rachel). In the Islamic world, names often denote places of origin, like Al-Fassi (from Fez in Morocco), Isfahani (from Isfahan in Persia), and Yerushalmi (from Jerusalem). Some family names are acronyms; Katz is a contraction of Kohen Tzedeq, which means priest of justice or righteous priest. Rabbi Katz was highly qualified. The wall behind him displayed an array of framed certificates including two doctorates from prestigious universities. Still, I couldn’t have possibly anticipated the lesson that followed, which ranged from the practice of alchemy to devouring mother archetypes. From Zohar: The Book of Splendor to the Hindu script of the Bhagavad Gita. I’d heard some of it before, usually from addicts with a preference for
hallucinogens – I’d briefly listen to them before interrupting ‘Spirituality is wonderful and an important part of the Twelve Step program. But if we want to live, if we want to stay clean, then we really need to keep it simple. And right now, that means ninety meetings in ninety days, and find a sponsor.’

The irony is that while I found these conversations potentially dangerous, I have a rather large tattoo that covers my arms, chest, and back, which embraces just about all these concepts. I had chosen a Japanese tattoo that used to be associated with the Yakuza, the Japanese Mafia, however, this connection only came about after World War II when tattoos were outlawed by the Emperor of Japan to improve Japan’s image in the west. Tattoos went underground and took on a criminal element. Despite their recent surge in popularity I’m not in the habit of showing them off, except at bike rallies where tattoos are part and parcel of the biking culture. Out of respect for the Rabbi, I’d worn a long-sleeve shirt to cover them up.

I had a general idea about what I was aiming for, and with Masaru Emoto’s water experiment in mind I wanted to stay away from putting any negative or tortured images on my body. But other than that, I almost always followed whatever my artist suggested – except I did need an antagonistic dragon for my left chest. My artist suggested Gozuru from the tale of Benzaiten. Typically, a dragon represents positive connotations of wisdom, strength, fertility, happiness, and immortality. These benevolent creatures are usually there for protection and to ward off evil spirits. But she told me that in the story of Benzaiten, Gozuru the dragon is best known for devouring children.

It was incredibly difficult for me to follow Rabbi Katz who’d spent much of his career mentoring scholarly Jewish men over the age of forty, but I paid attention when he referred to the devouring mother archetype. And I wondered if there was a possible connection between what he was saying and the tattoo on my left shoulder – Gozuru, the devouring dragon from the village of Koshigoe, who my artist had chosen to threaten my inner-child.
Then he ran through the teachings from The Book of Formation and other Kabbalistic teachings attempting to explain the secrets of the universe, as well as Zohar: The Book of Splendor. But while I enjoyed listening to this qualified sage, I really couldn’t follow much about what he trying to tell me until he said ‘The purpose of creation, in this whole diverse reality is the sensation not given to animals. The most important sensation is the noetic sensation, given to man alone, by which one also feels what is in others, their pains and comforts.’ I interpreted it as having empathy for others, except I wasn’t too sure about the ‘not given to animals’ bit – mainly because the animals I knew and loved seemed to be more empathetically tuned into my feelings than some adults I knew, some of whom seemed decidedly incapable of caring about anyone other than themselves.

He went on to speak about sublime levels of intuitive cognition. ‘The part of the soul that allows one to have an awareness of the divine life force itself and the highest plane of the soul, where full union with God is possible.’ He added, ‘But we must still understand: what was the purpose for which the Creator created this lot? Indeed, it is to elevate him to a higher and more important degree. To feel his God, as one feels one’s friend, so will he learn the words of the Creator. As it is written about Moses, “And the Lord spake unto Moses face to face, as a man speaketh unto his friend.”’ (Exodus 33:11)

If I’d correctly understood the Rabbi, he’d highlighted empathetic feelings and behaviours as pathways to God – which made me feel I little bit better about my rejection of the survival of the fittest theory. I often beat myself up for not accepting the world for what it is, and for not understanding why fame and fortune seem to be valued and admired above all else. Perhaps I’d simply been lucky, but every tiny bit of success I’d experienced seemed to be explicitly linked to service. At school, whenever I made time to help a struggling classmate, I’d perform better on the test. In business when I prioritized a client’s wants, needs, or desires, and considered what that might mean to the business or the individual, I’d secure the more profitable deals. And when I stayed focussed on the best interest of my children, I was granted custody. On the other hand, I also needed to admit that putting others first really hadn’t paid off for me with my romantic relationships, where whatever I did never seemed to be enough. And I was still looking for answers as to why I continually found myself attracting and being attracted to others who seemed decidedly self-centred. Ultimately, I would always ask myself why I would want to change when helping others had almost always worked for me.

I would have been happy to leave with what I took to be an affirmation of my somewhat idealistic view of life. But, just like my tattoo artist had skilfully woven a symbol acknowledging each faith and attached them to Tibetan prayer beads tying the piece together, this Hebrew priest continued to weave ideas together. He moved on to Hinduism ‘In the Hindu script of the Bhagavad Gita, Vishnu, Shiva, Devi, and Ganesh, are all described as descending in the form of Avatars – the incarnation of a God. In other places, an Avatar is described as an embodiment or personification of a principle, an attitude, or a view of life. I’m more comfortable with messengers who throughout time are born manifesting a part of the Divine, belonging to Paramatman.’ He was suggesting I should arrange to meet them and perhaps spend some time with them. ‘Look them up, you can Google them, and you’ll know where to go.’ He concluded our time together with a polite ‘Please come back and see me if you have any questions. My door is open.’

WHITE CHRISTMAS 2009
It was an icy Christmas in a quaint German village overlooking the river Lahn, established in the 1300s as a Catholic outpost during the reign of Emperor Ludwig of Bavaria. Still, the villagers of Schloss Schaumburg remain a Catholic minority in an otherwise Protestant area. Samuel and I were not spending Christmas day at the pretty parish church, fitted with charming turrets and orioles. Instead, I was there following the Rabbi’s suggestion by meeting with Mother Meera, a Hindu avatar. We had taken a twelve-hour flight to London and headed straight to St Pancras Station to catch Eurostar’s high-speed passenger train to Brussels. St Pancras Station, a restored Victorian masterpiece with its vast pointed-arched train shed of iron and glass, is one of the most powerful spaces of the Victorian age. In its day, it boasted the widest clear-span structure in the world. As part of the redevelopment, the shed was extended by 200m. About 18,000 panes of self-cleaning glass were added and the roof of the shed was re-glazed and repainted to its original sky-blue shade. Add the eclectic detailing of patented bricks from Nottingham, mosaics, and George Gilbert Scott’s hand-drawn Gothic revival ironwork infused with ideas and motifs from the Continent, and it’s hard to imagine a finer point of departure for Europe.

We had to overnight in Brussels and I got lost trying to locate the venue for a Christmas ice-escapade. In the end, we settled for a delicious Lebanese chicken shawarma and turned in for the night. Christmas morning we were on to our second bullet train, travelling at speeds up to 300km per hour to the medieval city of Limburg. I’d planned to catch a taxi to our hotel in Schloss Schaumburg, but there weren’t any taxis to be found. Fortunately, a kindly young couple noticed our predicament and offered us a ride to the local train station and somehow, almost miraculously, we made it on time for the first of three scheduled sessions of darshan.

MOTHER MEERA
Devotees from all faiths visit Mother Meera for darshan – a practice, unbeknown to me, which is conducted in total silence. Darshan is a simple ritual where Mother Meera touches a person’s head and then looks into their eyes. She was born in the village of Chandepally in India in 1960 as Kamala Reddy. At the age of six, she had an experience of samadhi – a state of complete spiritual absorption and consciousness. Her uncle, convinced she was the embodiment or avatar of Shakti, the Divine Mother, pointed her in a spiritual direction. Later, through marriage, she settled in Germany.

I started with a twenty-day plan to visit all three avatars that I’d googled, two of whom resided in India and Mother Meera who lived in Europe. At first, I thought I could plan a simple round trip that would encompass all three, but then I realised what I had in mind would be almost impossible. Being from Africa, I thought Samuel would enjoy experiencing a white Christmas where he could also try his hand at some winter sports. So in my mind, a winter holiday that included a few days of eccentric hippie stuff – as Samuel liked to call it – could easily be a wonderful adventure for him. While it had been impossible to arrange a trip that included India, somehow everything seemed to have magically opened up to allow this European holiday to happen. We obtained the unabridged birth certificate we desperately needed for Samuel’s Schengen visa in less than two days – a process that can easily take months, if not years, in South Africa.

Europe had been experiencing their worst winter in decades, and before landing at Heathrow I was told the Eurostar trains leaving from St Pancras Station had been cancelled and to expect long delays as stranded passengers were camped out and sleeping all over St Pancras Station. Yet our last-minute expedition ran remarkably smoothly, and we were not caught up in any of the delays. We arrived at St Pancras Station just as they reopened, and we boarded the Eurostar a few hours earlier than we had originally planned.

In Hindusim, the word darshan means auspicious sight. In India, people partake in darshan with a guru – meaning they share the guru’s divine connection with God. Mother Meera, whilst performing darshan, reportedly unties knots in your subtle system, removing obstacles to your spiritual journey. Interestingly, she doesn’t want to be followed but rather suggests that you keep your faith. There are few rules, but most are to ensure that people get an opportunity to see the Mother. As first-timers travelling from afar, we were given preference to attend all three sessions held over the Christmas weekend.

Samuel made friends with two Russian kids that were now living with their mother and her new partner in Amsterdam. Her partner had stayed behind and I met Arina through Samuel, and we connected through our shared interest in this rather unusual spiritual practice. After and between sessions, we pretty much ended up spending the rest of the weekend together. But before our final session with Mother Meera, I kind of knew what was coming when Arina said ‘I’m gay and you’re confusing me.’ She didn’t need to say any more. I could answer Arina, and I could share with her what Kathy had taught me about wound buddies and how I’d experienced it to be true. This created the space for me to honestly admit I didn’t know why I was there, and I felt I was missing the point of Darshan. I expected the silence, but I had hoped I would somehow be untangled and at least understand a bit more. But after two sessions with the Mother, I’d gotten nothing and now I was even more confused than I had been before. Arina suggested that I write to the Mother and pop it into the donation box. Personally, I couldn’t see it working, but I wrote a short note with one simple question, ‘Why did Rabbi Katz suggest I see you?’ and dropped it into the box on my way in for my final session with Mother Meera.

In my final session of darshan, while watching the long line of devotees awaiting their turn to receive spiritual alignment, the removal of spiritual obstacles, and an infusion of God’s light, I suddenly started to hallucinate. I could no longer see the hall, the bench that I was seated on, the line of devotees, or Mother Meera herself. My vision was completely consumed by an incredible show of lights I can only best describe as a laser performance of extraordinary detail. A procession of translucent creatures followed, some that were easily identifiable and others that were not. An elephant, a jellyfish, a crab, a koala, an owl, a blue whale – a continuous scroll of blueprints depicting what I understood to be the diversity of life. My experience in darshan was quite like the lighting-strike experience that I’d almost forgotten about. On the beach with Jeremy I was given a glimpse at the expanse of the universe, and in darshan I was shown all forms of life. My beach experience happened at the presumed speed of light – the time taken for moving electrons to strike the earth. But in darshan, it was a procession of beautifully lit drawings that lasted for about three hours.

Schloss Schaumburg with its medieval structures, inspiring castle, and half-timbered houses, had fortunately escaped two world wars and modernization. The hotel we were staying at limited our access to the dining area to mealtimes only. But I’d found a way to get in through the kitchen, where I could make myself a cup of coffee and help myself to a few biscuits, before settling down to complete my journal for the day. I don’t want to sound ungrateful. Both experiences were spectacularly beautiful. But I didn’t know what they meant or what I was supposed to do with them. I wrote that perhaps I’m simply meant to enjoy the ride or learn to appreciate that the Universe is so much bigger and more complex than I could have imagined. But as I started to jot down my confusion, Mother Meera appeared, not as a shining light as I’d expect from an apparition, but rather more as flesh and bone as if she too had sneaked in for a coffee and a few biscuits. What ensued was a friendly but intense debate about who I was and what role I was meant to play, which I couldn’t help but challenge by running through my list of personal defects and inadequacies. Throughout the night, she patiently dealt with each fault or display of not-good-enough feelings I mustered, until the morning kitchen staff started to filter in to start preparing breakfast. By then, I had nothing left to counter with.

SNOWBOARDING
Rail transport in Europe is characterized by its efficiency and its diversity. I’d done a tiny bit of pre-planning and I’d bookmarked a helpful snow report website before leaving. Only I never imagined I’d struggle getting connected in the heart of Germany. I couldn’t check the snow report, but I’d promised Samuel we’d go skiing so I was only too happy when I finally managed to secure a hotel for us in Trins. Ski fever broke out and the train we were on was packed with enthusiasts who were quick to inform me of my error. I was told I had booked and prepaid in an area where we were unlikely to find any snow. According to them, it was too early in the season for Austria, and I should rather have booked a spot on the Italian side of the Alps where they were all headed. As we railed along from Germany to Austria I decided – if we have to move, well then we’ll just have to move. After changing trains in Innsbruck, we arrived in Trins.

Well, it may not be enough snow for seasoned skiers, but we’re from Africa and to my relief and Samuel’s delight there was certainly more than enough snow for us. We must have trebled the time it should have taken us to walk to our hotel as Samuel kept discarding his backpack in favour of diving into the banks of snow that lined the road. He’d roll around and – I don’t know how he knew to – he immediately started creating snow fairies. The next morning, we woke to a stunning view of a picture-perfect winter wonderland. The beautiful village of Trins is located at the beginning of the Gschnitztal Valley where The Last Valley, starring Michael Caine and Omar Sharif. As I gazed out over the snow-covered meadows dotted with Tyrolean buildings, I thought about my mother’s reaction when I first told her that I’d reconnected with Vernon – and how she thought Vernon’s father was Cape Town’s sexy version of Omar Sharif.

I’d scheduled a few lessons for Samuel to learn how to snowboard. Watching Samuel having lessons with his instructor, who was in her late teens or possibly early twenties, was quite a treat. With her bubbly personality and infectious smile, she was popular on the slopes, and she was not that much taller than him. As expected, Samuel kept falling, but with a bit of assistance from his trainer he’d bounce back with a gigantic smile on his face to try all over again. According to the hotel’s receptionist who’d organized Samuel’s lessons, the instructor was expected to make the Austrian Olympic team. And I was pretty sure that I was witnessing my son’s first adolescent crush.

Being back in Europe and watching Samuel’s youthful enthusiasm reminded me of my first trip aboard. Backpacking around Europe in my early twenties had been a fantastic carefree experience. However, at the invitation from a friend who was then living in Munich, I’d detoured into Germany. To the city where Hitler had first come to power and where the Nazi Party had its official headquarters – Munich. Out of respect for my veteran father, my love and respect for the Jewish community on the Atlantic seaboard, and I guess as a member of the human race, I felt obligated to visit the Dachau Memorial. Dachau was opened in March 1933 by Heinrich Himmler and was the first concentration camp. It operated till April 1945, for almost all twelve years of the Nazi regime. It was used as a training centre for SS guards and served as a prototype for the other Nazi concentration camps. The slogan above the prisoners’ entrance reads, ‘Arbeit Macht Frei’ (Work makes free), which was also used at Terezín, near Prague, and Auschwitz. The guided tour included the cells, barracks, ovens, exhibits, and gas chamber, and had display boards with photos of each section telling the story of what happened there. There was also a film that included interviews with survivors sharing their experiences. The tour left me devastated. So much so that I was physically ill – too ill to enjoy the Greek islands I had come to explore. I just couldn’t be around people that were having a lot of fun. So, after a week of diarrhoea and hugging scrub for shade, I changed course and flew to Israel where I got to spend three months working on a kibbutz and recovering.

Samuel loved our winter adventure and was determined to learn how to snowboard. He built snowmen, an igloo, an enormous snowball, and a snow baby which he pretended was his. He went sledging, had snowball fights, built a fort, stomped around leaving footprints, and literally threw himself into all things snow-related. The village of Trin is perfect for families and novices and it’s only a ten-minute ride, or two train stations, away from the much larger Bergeralm Ski Resort. I believe it includes every grade from the green circle for beginners to the double black diamond for extreme skiers. At Bergeralm, we went for the five-kilometre-long toboggan run that starts at the middle station. The brochure referred to it as a family-run so I was confident it would be perfectly safe, but I had someone else’s child with me who was two years younger than Samuel – I know I’m at fault for being overprotective. When my stomach started grumbling and cramping at the halfway station, I instructed the two of them to wait for me, which of course they didn’t. I got stuck and there was nothing left for me to do but worry. I needn’t have, because when I looked up from the confinement of the restroom the entire restaurant designed for Tyrolean cosiness all became transparent. I could see through the structural wooden beams and panelled walls mixed with stone as if it was all made from glass. And I could see every engineered detail of the structural design, the nut, bolts, and wooden joints. It was all the same level of transparent detail that I was shown in my last session of darshan.

Leaving my body, I moved past the empty bar with its stone fireplace and through the dining area filled with winter enthusiasts enjoying traditional boiled bread and bacon dumplings. I saw others ordering sandwiches filled with an assortment of dry-cured meats, speciality cheeses, and pickles. I went straight through the panoramic windows, past the generous sun terrace, and onto the toboggan run where I had a birds-eye-view down to the valley below. I watched Samuel and his friend make their way safely to the bottom, stop for a snowball fight, grab their sledges, and scamper back to the circulating gondola. I joined them in the gondola for the return trip and I was so close I was sure I could feel their adrenalin-filled anticipation for the next run.

We completed our time in Austria watching skiers fly off the Bergisel Ski Jump, a part of the Olympic facility that rises above Innsbruck like a celestial staircase of modern glass and steel. We strolled the old town’s enchanted avenues of medieval buildings decorated with larger-than-life storybook characters – The Big Bad Wolf, Three Little Pigs, Hansel and Gretel, The Ugly Duckling, Pinocchio, and so on. We happened upon a gift shop filled beyond capacity with beautifully carved wooden Christmas decorations. Samuel chose Tchaikovsky’s Nutcracker Prince to add to our collection.

After a week in the Alps, we began our return trip with a night in Paris and a visit to the Eiffel Tower and the Louvre. We had two days to shop in London, and Samuel got to spend an afternoon with one of Aida’s brothers who just happened to work for the British Museum. After wandering around the famed museum with his uncle, we still had the last of our shopping list to do. With a final march up Oxford Street, we’d just about found everything on the list, when one more shop for one more item became one step too far. Oxford Street, which is said to be the busiest shopping street in Europe, was practically deserted. It was simply just too cold, slippery, and wet, so when Samuel spotted an iconic London bus he just hopped on. Clearly, he’d had enough.

SCOOTERS TO HARLEY DAVISON
Shortly after Samuel and I returned from our holiday in Thailand, I got into watching the popular TV series called Overhauling. I loved the show’s concept of taking someone’s old, dilapidated car they’d always hoped to restore and letting them think it had been stolen, only to have a team of ace mechanics and designers transform mundane – or even junky – autos into unique custom cars under the watchful eye of auto-design legend Chip Foose. With Samuel’s love of tinkering, of taking everything he could find apart to re-build, I thought we might want to have a go at restoring a muscle car. We eventually found an AC Cobra that had been partially restored and I thought we could afford, to take over from a seller who needed out. I had a little experience of fixing my cars in the 70s, but that was only because I didn’t have a choice, so I was having second thoughts about not knowing what I was doing or how much it may end up costing. I knew a car dealer who had a few for hire, so I thought it best we take one out for the day. But the moment I started that V8 engine, Samuel literally jumped out, exclaiming ‘It’s too scary!’ Well, that put an end to what was possibly not a good idea to start with. But we would get to experience a bit of the American motor culture when my friend Stan popped in for a visit.

As the newly elected chairman of the Harley Davidson Club of Cape Town, he invited us to join the club for one of their monthly rides. The club was more of a family-friendly environment than what I expected a motorcycle club to be. We bought our first Harley, and I couldn’t get Samuel off the bike – not even in the wet or sub-zero temperatures. The club was incredibly well organized. On longer rides, there were always a few backup vehicles where Samuel could watch TV or play games with some of the other kids. But Samuel was adamant about staying on the bike, even for the 665km ride to Graaf Reinet. We started attending a lot of these family-friendly bike rallies while collecting loads of badges and Harley paraphernalia. I felt like I had to flip a coin to decide which was the best way for me to practice meditation: walking the dogs in the forest or hitting a coastal road on the Fat Boy.

And I felt that I especially needed to meditate while trying to wrap my head around surveys done by research initiatives on sexual abuse and sexual assault. I was reading and summarizing papers on everything: traumatic dissociative amnesia, recovered memories, false memory syndrome, unexplained chronic fatigue, core conflicting relationship themes, sex addiction, sexual anorexia, the likelihood of drug and alcohol abuse, major depressive episodes with poorer response outcomes to antidepressant treatment, risky sexual behaviour, suicidal thoughts, and attempted suicide. These were all overwhelmingly negative potential consequences.

I’d surrendered to my new early morning routine, but the real reason behind questioning my sanity was these trust us instructions I was receiving and following. Just like I knew I had to get up and start writing, at times I’d know I had to take my bike out and go for a ride. But while I may have been considering a trip to Cape Point where the Atlantic and Indian oceans collide, by the time I’d manoeuvred the Harley out I’d know I’d be taking a different route. So, I’d point the Fat Boy in the opposite direction and head for the west coast to visit a friend that I hadn’t seen in a while. I didn’t call ahead, primarily because I never knew if I’d be given different instructions when I reached the coast. But this time it turned out that I was heading to see Summer, who was surprised to see me. ‘I don’t believe you’re here,’ she blurted with genuine excitement. After a hug and a kiss, she added ‘I really must start paying more attention to my inner voice. I’ve literally just finished the last page of this book. It was only a second ago that I was told to give the book to you. And here you are standing in front of me.’ With that, she closed the book and handed it over. ‘You must have this, it’s yours to keep.’

THE SHACK
She gave me The Shack, written by William P. Young, and it tells the story of Mack Phillips who had a physically abusive father, and learns that his youngest daughter is abducted during a family vacation. The police find evidence in an abandoned shack that she may have been brutally murdered. Mack spirals into a deep depression which causes him to question his innermost beliefs. After receiving a mysterious letter, Mack goes back to the shack where he encounters an enigmatic trio of strangers. The trio, who depict the Holy Trinity, is led by an African American woman named Papa. The author describes Saraya, the Holy Spirit, as compassionate, creative, mysterious, intangible, empowering, always in motion and beyond our understanding. Saraya means wind, and the Holy Spirit is compared to wind in the Gospel of John chapter 3 verse 8. Through meeting the trio, Mack finds important truths that transform his understanding of his tragedy.

The Shack is a heart-warming work of fiction that wrestles with the question: Where is God in a world so filled with unspeakable pain? In the book, Papa explains the difference between expectancy and expectation, which I could relate to. Mainly because of what I’d heard in the rooms about expectations being premeditated resentments, and because I’d come to accept that a crucial part of my recovery depended on learning how to let go of my resentments. Similarly, the distinction between response and responsibility pointed out the difference between God’s approach and man’s need to control. This suggested to me that I reread the scriptures using this language tool to try and distinguish between God’s attributes and man’s somewhat limited subjective influence. At times I sobbed uncontrollably, and I wasn’t entirely sure why. I think I missed my faith and I so much wanted to believe that all children, especially the hurt ones, end up happy and divinely loved in a heavenly place. Then there was the profound care that Mack received, and I felt so utterly alone in my insanity. But even though I was no longer sure what I believed in, this work of fiction made me feel a little bit better about the journey I seemed to be on. It reminded me that perhaps I shouldn’t be overly concerned about my inability to describe the indescribable.

ENLIGHTENED RUSSIAN STRIPPER
Next up was a ride to Hout Bay (Wood Bay), named by the Dutch colonialists in the 1600s for the quantity of timber the area supplied to the construction and shipbuilding industries of the time. This sheltered bay on the Atlantic Ocean is home to one of the busiest fishing harbours in the Western Cape. We’d take a drive through to Hout Bay almost every weekend when Ellen was still with us. We’d spend some time on its white sandy beach and end up at Dunes for Ellen’s favourite calamari meal. Dunes is a popular kid-friendly restaurant at the mouth of the Hout Bay River. It’s built on a sand dune, with swings, monkey bars, and a jungle gym for the kids to entertain themselves, while parents can relax and get the kids fed with the sand between their toes. Surrounded by mountains to the north, east and west, all three mountain passes provide perfect winding twists and turns that any biker would appreciate.

I’d taken the Constantia Nek route past Kirstenbosch Botanical Gardens. After the summit, I shifted up so the Milwaukee’s guttural growl wouldn’t startle any of the horses from the smallholdings that lined the slopes on my way to the wooded valley below. While freewheeling down the back of Table Mountain, I received the next instruction to look for Borya. And sure enough, there he was parked practically on the centre line as I entered the village main road. I waved hello, did a quick U-turn, and pulled up next to him. He’d been out riding for the day with a fellow member of our HDCCT bike club and he’d stopped to look for Mike, who’d fallen behind. They’d been over Chapman’s Peak, affectionately referred to as Chappies. With well over a hundred turns and sheer drops to the sea below, Chappies is considered to be one of the most spectacular marine drives in the world. Borya was one of many accomplished members of our club with an array of toys, which included several customized bikes, low-riders, and muscle cars. ‘We’re stopping at Peddlars.’ he called out just as Mike caught up to him, and indicated that I should join them.

We seated ourselves in the shaded alfresco terrace area. As Mike got up to get us some drinks, I knew why I was asked to find Borya, and what I needed to say to him. ‘This is going to sound a touch weird,’ I started, ‘but I’ve got a message for you.’ Then I simply relayed the message, ‘You’re about to receive the best opportunity to learn the First-Last principle of life and it’s a wonderful gift.’ As Mike returned with our drinks, a perplexed Borya leaned in and asked me to repeat myself.

Later that evening, Borya called to ask me how I knew that his girlfriend was expecting their first child. When I delivered the message, I had a pretty good idea of what it most likely meant. But I didn’t know him well enough to know that he had a permanent girlfriend or that they were living together. I’d previously met her on one of our weekend rides to Montague Springs. She was one of the drop-dead gorgeous Russian dancers from the upmarket strip club he owned who I thought he’d simply brought along for company. But over dinner, she’d surprised me with her philosophical interpretation of the meaning of life and the importance of meditation. But I didn’t know they were an item, and of course I had no way of knowing that he was about to become a father. I tried my best to explain my understanding of what Jesus meant when he said ‘Yet it shall not be so among you; but whoever desires to become great among you shall be your servant. And whoever of you desires to be first shall be slave of all. For even the Son of Man did not come to be served, but to serve, and to give His life a ransom for many.’ (Mark 10:43-45) For most parents, the advent of a firstborn represents the defining moment when we realize that someone else is more important than we are – when our concern for someone else’s well-being supersedes our own.

WELCOMED CHANGE
Samuel would occasionally see his mother. But usually only when her parents were in town. Other than seeing Aida at one of Samuel’s school awards evenings, I rarely saw her. But to be perfectly honest, I was much happier with not having anything to do with her. Still, I did find it rather peculiar that we’d never had a conversation about Samuel’s well-being since our last meeting at the attorney’s office to finalize our custody agreement. I was somewhat surprised to receive an email from Aida shortly before Ellen’s sixteenth birthday. I hadn’t seen Ellen in eight years, not since she was so brutally removed from my care. I was even more surprised that it was essentially a letter of apology. Aida had left Martin, and in her email she apologized ‘ . . . for not maintaining a better relationship with you, Jeremy, and Samuel and not enabling you to continue your relationship with Ellen.’ She thanked me for keeping Samuel available to her and went on to explain: ‘It was very difficult living with Martin, and he kept me under a tight rein.’ She had a new man in her life, someone I apparently knew, and who she believed would be good for the kids. Then she signed off with, ‘Clean House, Trust God, Help Others.’

I’d briefly been introduced to Grant at a meeting of Narcotics Anonymous. It wasn’t one of my regular meetings and I’d never actually had a conversation with him. He was a newcomer at the time, and I was asked if I’d be willing to sponsor him. Up to that point, I’d never declined a single request for sponsorship and if he’d asked me himself, I’m pretty sure that would have said yes. Except, it wasn’t him that asked but rather one of NA’s mothers, who appeared to have already started a relationship with him. In NA, it’s strongly suggested that for our first year of recovery we avoid any form of intimacy, and we best not get ourselves into a relationship. It’s a common cause, if not the leading cause, of relapse. I personally fell for someone in my ninth month of sobriety, only to be told by my sponsor that it wasn’t a good idea. In fact, he was rather adamant that if I wasn’t prepared to wait, the chances were I’d relapse and in the process I could quite possibly end up losing or harming my children. So when I was told Grant had only been clean for a little over thirty days, I agreed to sponsor him. But then I added my first suggestion – he extract himself from this relationship or whatever it was that was going on between them. I’m not sure if he was given my answer, but he never ended up asking me directly.

Geographically we attended different meetings, so we never crossed paths again. However, when he got engaged to Aida, I did receive several calls from other concerned members of NA who’d gotten to know and like him. From all accounts, he was a really good guy. He was an active service member of the fellowship who seemed to be working the program to the best of his ability. Bottom line – I couldn’t and I simply wouldn’t, interfere. Besides, what on earth would I possibly have said to him, and why would he want to listen to anything an ex-
husband might have to say? If the roles were reversed, I know that I wouldn’t. Even though I really didn’t know Grant, as a fellow member I was naturally concerned for him. However, as selfish as it sounds, those concerns were easily overridden by the immeasurable sense of relief that I felt for Ellen.

Things did improve and they started having Samuel over for alternate weekends. It wasn’t perfect, and it did irritate me that once again it was left entirely up to me to do all the fetching and carrying whenever they wanted to see Samuel. Then one weekend while skateboarding he fell and broke his wrist. In fairness, it was a hairline fracture that any parent could easily miss. But without checking, they left him alone for more than twenty-four hours. They did leave him with a few painkillers, but by the following day he called and asked me to please collect him. In high school, I’d spent four years with St John Ambulance, so when I examined his wrist I knew it needed to be x-rayed and sure enough his arm had to be placed in a cast. But here’s the thing, in one ear I had the attending physician so annoyed with me for not bringing Samuel in earlier that he chose to read me a section of the child protection act. At the same time, I had Aida who was visibly pissed off that I was denying her the opportunity to bond. I hardly said a word, but at that moment I thought about handing my phone over to the doctor so the two of them could discuss their differences.

Then there was the matter of child support. I’d never asked for any child support from either of my children’s mothers. It was only after I became ill, and the business and I were firing on less than one cylinder that I knew I had to learn how to ask for help. But it also dawned on me that it had probably only been my ego standing in the way of Samuel’s right to be financially supported by both parents, even though Aida was clearly in a better financial position than I was. After a relatively short court battle I had to settle for less than fifteen per cent of the amount that I paid Aida – while Samuel was solely in my care.
In my reply to Aida’s letter of apology, after swallowing my false sense of pride by letting her know that I was struggling, I really only asked Aida for two things. First, could she please just be a little bit more considerate of the fact that I was ill, but that I still had a business and a household to manage – if she wasn’t going to show up, could she just let us know? The second was her child support payments. If for some reason she couldn’t meet her financial obligation, could she at least let me know when she thought she could pay?

I was struggling and I was afraid that I was incurring debt that I might not be able to repay, so I specifically asked if she would please prioritize her child support. For a little while things did improve, and I was happy Samuel was getting to spend time with his mother. I occasionally got to see Ellen and she seemed to be okay – and I could tell that she was really happy to have Grant in her life. But still, the odd child support payment would go missing without any explanation, and when I asked about it my emails would simply go unanswered.

ELLEN’S 16TH BIRTHDAY 2009
As part of the executive management team for a local casino, Grant had arranged to host Ellen’s sixteenth birthday in a part of the casino inspired by the spirit of District Six. I could appreciate why the architect wanted to tap into the colourful hustle and bustle of balcony life filled with jostling shoppers, street vendors, and children playing in the streets. But, of course, that was all before it was bulldozed and the community forcibly removed. Enough of my thinking! This was Ellen’s sweet-sixteen birthday party and given our history I was pleasantly surprised to have been invited. Still, I couldn’t help but question the use of what was destroyed to target gambling, which more often than not preys on the more vulnerable within our society.
Grant and Aida had done a magnificent job and Ellen looked absolutely radiant in one of Coco Chanel’s timeless necessities, the classic little black dress, elegantly finished with a playful splash of cerise pink. But I only got a glimpse of Ellen, and I didn’t get to wish her well. Ellen’s biological father had flown in for the occasion and he came over to greet me. But before we could say hello Aida interceded, even though I was holding an invitation that she’d sent, and I was asked to leave. I don’t know what Aida was thinking, but it was obvious that she didn’t want the two of us talking. But why she’d even think that we’d swap notes or discuss her on the occasion of Ellen’s birthday was beyond me.

I waited for Samuel at a coffee shop on the other side of the casino complex. I should have been pissed off, and I’d honestly had enough of Aida’s fear of being found out. But in my diary the previous night, I’d jotted down just how much I’d enjoyed shopping for Ellen. Ellen would probably be the only daughter I’d have, and it’s so much more fun shopping for girls. So while I waited, I chose to reminisce about Ellen’s infectious giggle and the positive changes in her life. She now had Grant, and her father had specially flown out for her birthday. And from what I could briefly see, she seemed to have developed an enthusiastic bunch of friends whom she’d invited to her party.

I’m not sure about what happened next. I can only retrospectively assume that an immeasurable sense of relief swept me away like a tsunami. I don’t ever remember playing as a child and I still avoid games like the plague. But, in the pre-dawn stillness of the following morning, I simply couldn’t stop myself. Feeling like I’d lost my mind, I grabbed a stone from the garden and drew some lines and squares and started playing hopscotch in the middle of the road. A kid’s game that I’d never played, but the only game that I could recall. Samuel woke to discover me hopping in the middle of the street and remarked: ‘That’s a girl’s game, dad.’ Nonetheless, he joined in and we took turns hopping from one leg to the other between squares, as we imagined the game might be played. We sang out loud, something else, that I rarely do – ‘Let it be, let it be, whispered words of wisdom let it be.’

THE EDGE OF MADNESS
The tsunami of relief I felt for Ellen triggered what sounds like the start of a badly written joke, which started with shadowy forms, a speech therapist, a Rabbi, and a Hindu Avatar walking into my life. They had me following instructions and delivering messages, while constantly questioning my sanity. Plato wrote ‘Madness, provided it comes as the gift of heaven, is the channel by which we receive the greatest blessings . . . So, according to the evidence provided by our ancestors, madness is a nobler thing than sober sense.’

Well, I don’t know too much philosophy or psychiatry, so I thought I best keep Kathy informed. Thinking I’d started to manifest symptoms of schizophrenia, I jokingly suggested that she might want to arrange a padded room for me. But what started with a game of hopscotch in the middle of the night became my nightly routine for the next hundred and twenty days. The following night I woke up a little after midnight with an overwhelming compulsion to write. Half asleep, I wandered to the kitchen to pour myself a glass of water. Unable to go back to sleep, I decided to catch up on the news only to be told to turn off the TV and write. As suggested by my sponsor, I’d gotten into the habit of doing a daily inventory. It reminded me to be grateful and helped me to let go of whatever was going on in my head. I’d often include the next day’s to-do list and somehow, it all made me sleep a lot better. But I hadn’t written for a few days, so thinking my consciousness had grown a pair of lungs, I decided to listen if only to get back to sleep.

I came to understand that 12:15 am was about to become my new non-negotiable starting time. Complaining didn’t help and only made me feel more certifiable. ‘You’ve got to be kidding me,’ I’d argue. ‘You know I was up till after eleven last night. I was doing service listening to an addict who’d relapsed and you still wake me up with less than an hour’s sleep and insist that I write!’ At the start, some of what went on reminded me of the hospital work I’d done as a child. As a new Christian, I’d taken to visiting the local hospital to visit anyone who was alone. But at times I’d know when I had to return, and sure enough, I’d be there holding a stranger’s hand for their final few breaths. At that time I believed this energy was called the Holy Spirit and I felt like a swirling, Sufi vessel of God.

Despite my initial claims of confusion, I knew from the very first moment I sat down to write I was being asked to share my story. But why me? Someone who’s practically illiterate and struggling to share their story with Kathy in the safety of therapy? At the time and to the best of my knowledge, there were only three books on the subject of childhood sexual abuse, all written by women. And I knew all too well the fear that men and boys face having to admit we were sexually victimized – fear it may indicate weakness or homosexuality, which can still result in negative social stigmatization.
‘A man gazing at the stars is proverbially at the mercy of the puddles in the street.’ I thought Alexander Smith’s quote, which I had read at a King Cake children’s birthday party venue I’d chosen for Jeremy’s ninth birthday, might help. Perhaps if I just followed these instructions one step at a time, I might just get there. It could help me to disclose all I had been so determined to hide, and I might end up helping someone else.

My version of the Third Step Prayer – ‘God, I offer myself to You – To build with me and to do with me as You will. Relieve me of the bondage of self that I may better do Your will. Take away my difficulties that victory over them may bear witness to those I would help of Your power, Your love and Your way of life. May I do Your will always.’
With the Third Step prayer in mind, I rearranged my working hours to utilize the morning hours to research, read, transcribe, make notes, and do my best to make some sense of it all. At 6:30 am my alarm would remind me to start breakfast, prepare Samuel’s school lunch, and get him up and ready for school. After the school run, I’d focus on business until it was time to collect Samuel. Then came after-school activities, sports, projects, homework, shopping, dinner, and I’d usually be in bed before eight-thirty. Subject to certain project deadlines, working from home allowed me enough time to take a nap if need be, or to spend time with the dogs unwinding in the Newlands Forest.

TWO IMAGES OF JOHANN
Step Eleven – ‘We sought through prayer and meditation to improve our conscious contact with God.’ – introduced meditation into my morning routine. Despite a mild reservation, a hangover from my fundamental Christian teenage years that suggested I might be opening a door for who knows what, I found an elderly Buddhist teacher who was not dressed in bohemian attire or traditional orange, but rather reminded me of an orderly hospital matron. ‘To practice Mindfulness of Breathing,’ she started, ‘first, find a suitable place, perhaps a room that is not too noisy and where you are not likely to be disturbed.’ Then she taught me to sit with my legs folded, a pillow under my buttocks to straighten my back, nestle my hands in my lap, close my eyes, and to breathe in slowly through my nose, hold and then slowly release my breath through my mouth.

I bought a meditation bench, Tibetan rosewood prayer beads, and some guided meditation CDs, and I’d set an alarm to avoid wandering off. However, the weakening of my thoughts or the quieting of my mind, as I was taught, rarely happened. In truth, I’m not sure if I ever managed to achieve any form of stillness for more than two breaths. But I couldn’t help noticing the difference between when I at least attempted to meditate and when I didn’t. I felt strangely more aligned as if I was going with the flow as opposed to swimming upstream. I was a little more patient and tolerant with life’s unexpected curveballs, and almost everything seemed magically easier – from dealing with that client who believed he was the only client and school projects that had been left for the last day, to finding an elusive parking spot in the most unlikely of areas.

I’d been doing my best to read The Courage to Heal, written by Ellen Bass and Laura Davis, which had helped so many survivors to reclaim and rebuild their lives. But as much as I tried to follow Kathy’s suggestion, I couldn’t manage more than a page, or sometimes a single paragraph, before heading to the bathroom to throw up. The authors had been criticized for their lack of psychotherapy training and the Australian False Memory Syndrome Foundation had reportedly linked their book to roughly fifty per cent of all false allegations. I wasn’t too concerned because my more recent memory, the one that involved my father, surfaced long before I’d even heard of their book. In a way, my physical revulsion to this collection of sexual abuse stories helped confirm my own abuse. But then, I wasn’t confused about being abused when I was eight. If anything, I was doing my level best to forget and to deny its very existence. I didn’t want to think about it and the last thing I wanted was for anyone else to know about what happened. I’d discussed the image with my mother, and I was relieved to hear she didn’t believe it was my father. I’d gone down a rabbit hole researching all that I could download about traumatic dissociative amnesia. But even with Kathy’s help, I couldn’t make sense of this disturbingly disorganized memory that had been haphazardly triggered at my lunchtime meeting on Greenmarket Square.

Overwhelmed, I’d removed all photos of my father. I couldn’t bear to look at myself, while simultaneously feeling profoundly guilty for initially believing what had been revealed to me. Jeremy’s departure had brought up Biddulph’s words from his book Manhood, words I’d studied shortly after Jeremy’s birth: ‘It’s important at some stage of your life, to have a profound conversation or series of conversations with your father. Only by doing this can you get an understanding of his life, his reasons, his failures and his successes. Unless you take this step, you will always be building your manhood on shifting sands – on guesswork.’ He goes on to say, ‘Even if he was an alcoholic, a wife-beater, a child abuser, even if you never met him, your biological father still matters. Until you come to terms with him, he will haunt you from the inside.’

My mother’s father had been a violent alcoholic and wife-beater. In the normal course of events, it was perfectly normal for my mother to have attracted a person of similar character. My father did drink alcohol until my sister had refused to kiss him, then he never touched a drop again. My father was a war hero, but he couldn’t hurt a fly. I wish I could dismiss what was an incredibly vivid memory, but I simply couldn’t. Nor could I dismiss the possibility that his alcohol addiction might have morphed into a perverted form of sex addiction. But according to my understanding of Biddulph’s writing, even if my father had hurt me I would have to find a way to understand him.

I was working with Kathy and regularly visiting Rhodes Memorial where we’d spread my father’s ashes. I’d sit on the boulder which marked the spot and where the foliage appeared suggestively denser. I’d discuss what was going on for me and symbolically hold both images in my hands. In one hand, I’d hold the memory of a loving father who once bought me an oversized bright yellow kite that nearly dragged me across the field, a regal but sensitive man who cried on the platform when I left for the army and whenever my sister and I fought. And in the other hand, I held the vivid image of a man who might have profoundly hurt me. But try as I did, I simply couldn’t combine the two. If I had to understand, then the very best I could manage was to accept that I wasn’t able to accept the unacceptable.

I’d worked with Kathy for roughly three years when The Courage to Heal, or I should rather say the book’s critics, lead me to the controversial topic of false memory syndrome. Immature childhood memories can often be a mixture of facts and fantasies. I determined that this particular flashback memory had taken on an elaborate life of its own in its reconstructive process. With zero collaborative evidence to the contrary, I concluded that my memory had attached my father’s face to fill in the gaps. Quite possibly because he was the one person I trusted more than any other to love and protect me. I was happy to have my father back and to remember the gentle, loving, regal man that he was. A hero who had survived the horrors of war. A man who could have gotten out, after being wounded in the deserts of northern Africa, but who chose to re-join his regiment in Italy. Before his war was over, he ended up enduring fifty-plus operations in an attempt to save his leg. A man, who despite his ongoing struggle with PTSD, had worked tirelessly to support his family.

But I also couldn’t deny that I was a vulnerable toddler, a three or four-year-old child who for some unknown reason preferred spending his nights in a park instead of the relative safety of home. A park that wasn’t really a park, but rather an overgrown field frequented by the homeless in a pretty dangerous part of the world. I needed to accept that anything could have happened to me as a toddler. Either with any of the men that we used to call family or wandering around the neighbourhood alone at night. And I’d have to forgive myself for falsely accusing my father of the most heinous of crimes. But I remain convinced that something did happen, which fortunately or unfortunately, remains hidden from my explicit memory.

TRYING TO UNDERSTAND
As an adult, I intellectually knew beyond a shadow of a doubt that I wasn’t responsible for what happened when I was eight years old. Yet forty years later I still felt ashamed and somehow to blame. I was a member of an incredible fellowship that encouraged us to admit the exact nature of our wrongs to God, to ourselves, and to other
human beings. With Step Five, the other human would invariably be one’s sponsor. But it could be a therapist, a priest, or any other trusted individual. I’ve also heard some of the vilest war stories shared openly in meetings to burst of laughter, understanding nods, and hugs of acceptance. It’s not a favourite of mine, but I do understand that sharing about how it was and what happened is an important part of the acceptance process. As part of the Steps, I’d completed a written searching and fearless moral inventory of myself, and I’d shared my story with my sponsor. As suggested, I shared my written resentments and to the best of my ability, I examined my flaws. I’d even touched on the awful image that I’d recalled in my lunchtime meeting, but only because he already knew about it. But when he asked if there was anything I’d left out, I remained silent.

I’d read John Bradshaw’s book Healing the Shame That Binds You on toxic shame and I was learning to be a little more forgiving of myself. Then I went on to read and promote Every Parent’s Nightmare, written by fellow Capetonian Bruna Dessena, which in my opinion should be mandatory for every parent, teacher, or anyone working with children to read. Dessena’s book covers everything: how to recognize signs of sexual abuse and the grooming strategies of the abuser; how to address the problem, the legal processes, and how to prepare for court; and most importantly, how to support the child. At the same time, I started following different advocacy groups and coalitions against sexual assault in South Africa, the United States, Great Britain, and Australia. Then, in an attempt to wrap my head around the extent of the problem, I started reading every academic paper that I could find about the sexual abuse of children. What stood out for me was that advocacy centres estimate that 1:3 girls and 1:5 boys in the US are sexually abused before the age of 18, and every 9 minutes child protective services substantiate or find evidence for a claim of child sexual abuse. In a talk to The Royal Institution, Professor Dame Sue Black of the University of Dundee stated there are 124 cases per day, the equivalent of a medium-sized school of children being abused every week in the UK. And I couldn’t help but follow the cases of paedophilia against Jimmy Saville in the UK and the Gerry Sandusky case in the US. In both cases, I had to ask how people knew but did nothing about it.

Well, while society at large may not have wanted to talk about it I couldn’t shut up about what I’d been reading whether or not anyone was willing to hear what I had to say. But here’s the crazy: while I became incredibly vocal about the global plight of child victims of sexual abuse, I still couldn’t speak about my personal experience. I hadn’t even completely opened up in the confines of therapy with Kathy. And it wasn’t that I thought that my story was somehow worse than others. If I took away anything from what I’d been researching, it would be that sadly I was not alone.

DON’T THINK ABOUT IT
I was told not to think about it, to forget about it, and for most of my life that advice had actually worked. So, why now? And how is it all related? Or is it all related? And why is it that I still find it so damn hard to speak about? And when I do think about it I have to ask, am I dramatizing or minimizing what happened?
Shortly before my eighth birthday, we moved three blocks up the road into a home that my parents rented from my dad’s boss. We weren’t that far from our old house so we didn’t need to change schools, but it felt like a new neighbourhood and possibly a new beginning.
My parents were likely the best tenants that any landlord could wish for. They spent the first few months stripping away several layers of paint and redecorating. They sorted the plumbing, the electrics, the doors, and the window frames. Anything that needed attention they took care of on their own and out of their own pockets. The house was built on the slopes of Devil’s Peak with a precariously high roof. Unperturbed, my father – with one leg – dragged sheet after sheet of two-metre-long corrugated sheeting to fix the leaky roof. We had an uninterrupted view of the Cape Town harbour. I got to have my own room, which at night had a spectacular view of the surrounding suburban lights.

I made a couple of new friends. One was Brian, who lived next door. He had a wonderful back garden where we’d play outside forever. And even to my untrained eight-year-old eye, they were notably better off than us. They owned their home, and his father had his own contracting business with several trucks parked in their driveway at night. But we both got our first glimpse of apartheid’s separate development laws when our parents explained to us that we weren’t classified the same, so we wouldn’t be allowed to attend the same high school. Of course, none of this made any sense to either of us.
Then I’d also met Juno, who lived in the same street but a little further up the road. His family had converted a large upstairs balcony into a playroom for him. The playroom had its own couch, some bookshelves, and an urban mat. They had a few books, but most of the shelves were lined with toy cars and most of the floor was covered with a brilliant scale-electric racetrack. It must have taken them some time, but they’d finished the track with its own Start/Finish line, a grandstand with unit garages and pit lane, and a tree-lined embankment for additional spectators.

Juno had an older brother Emilio. Aged eighteen, Emilio was ten years my senior and an enthusiastic rugby player. We played soccer at the primary school I attended, and it didn’t offer rugby as a sport. So even though it was our national sport, I didn’t know a thing about the game.
At age eight, I was totally unaware of the ban which was about to be imposed on South African sports. It came about because of Basil D’Oliveira being left out of the South African cricket squad. As a South African coloured player, Basil was not eligible to play test cricket for South Africa. To pursue his career in cricket, he left for England where he ended up being selected to represent England for their 1968 tour of South Africa. But the tour was called off after the government, under the leadership of Prime Minister John Vorster, insisted that all visiting teams respect South Africa’s racial segregation laws. The next year’s 69-70 Springbok rugby tour of Great Britain was met by anti-apartheid campaigners calling themselves Stop the Seventy Tour. Many consider the Basil D’Oliveira affair to be the defining moment of South Africa’s sporting isolation.

Emilio was a pretty engaged older brother who kind of took it upon himself to toughen us pipsqueaks up. He’d take us to the triangular field created by the intersection of two highways and show us how the game of rugby was played. We’d run up and down, learning how to pass the ball to each other. Then he’d kick the ball for us to anticipate its unpredictable bounce and show us how to tackle another player by going in low. It was all new and exciting but of course, we were no match for him. He’d taunt us with ‘You two can’t tackle me!’ and we couldn’t. He’d simply continue running towards an imaginary try line, while the two of us tried to hang on. When at home, he’d almost always tease us into wrestling with him. ‘What’s your plan, going to push your little cars around all day?’ We’d happily engage, but it didn’t take much more than a pull of an arm or a shove to the chest to flatten us. We’d momentarily be freed, only to be twisted, turned, and pinned to another part of the urban rug. He taught us a combination of judo and wrestling moves that he liked to use, and he’d give us an opportunity to practice with each other. But it wouldn’t last long. Before long he’d have us both tied up in knots again. It was like having an older brother who for some reason seemed to favour me. At times I’d hear Juno say, ’Leave him alone. He’s my friend – not yours.’ Emilio would respond with a ‘What are you going to do about it? You’re both too weak, but I’ll still going to make a man out of you. Out of both of you.’ However, every time we played with Emilio, every toughen-you-up-be-a-man moment would without fail include a wandering hand that spent a lot of time targeting my genitals.

As a child, growing up in a mild Mediterranean climate, I don’t recall ever wearing anything other than a short-sleeve shirt and a pair of shorts. Occasionally, we’d be told to put on a jersey, but that was only because our parents were feeling cold. Then one day, I arrived before Juno had gotten home from school. Emilio invited me in and suggested I wait in the playroom. ‘You can play upstairs. Juno should have been home already, so he won’t be long.’ Emilio said. I don’t recall seeing him follow me, or any of the usual playful wrestling. But I clearly remember being pushed onto the couch and pinned down with a crushing forearm to my chest. Before I knew it, and long before I could possibly understand what he was doing, he had his head between my legs. I remember asking for my shorts, only to be told ‘Look, you’re enjoying this. I knew you would.’ I didn’t know what the hell he meant, but I’ll never forget the look on his face when he climaxed. I found my shorts that were still around my ankles the whole time as I got up to leave. Emilio, sounding rather pleased with himself, said ‘You’ll soon get to do that – I’ll show you.’

A few weeks later, after connecting with an evangelical Christian church, I’d end up spending puberty and my teenage years praying relentlessly for forgiveness. Don’t get me wrong, I’ll always be grateful for the unquestionable difference that the church made in my life. But then I also cannot deny that the church’s fundamental belief in abstinence, combined with the way that I already felt about myself, was possibly not the best solution for what I was dealing with. I spent my teenage years tormented by unwarranted guilt over my inability to remain celibate. With each failure, I’d visualize my newly cleansed snow-white heart disintegrating into a filthy workshop rag that should be discarded as trash.

COMMITTED

AA’s legacy of service embodied all that had worked for me as an enthusiastic Christian teenager. Then one week after I’d fucked up, my son had been magically returned to me. And a little while later, as a result of having helped myself to some equipment that I strictly shouldn’t have, I legally secured custody of Samuel. My unmanageable thirty-three-day binge, and the DUI accident I’d had, hadn’t yet convinced Kathy that I might have a problem with alcohol or drugs. According to Kathy, both incidents were purely circumstantial. As a young clinical psychologist, she’d spent the first fifteen years of her career working with addicts and alcoholics in the field of addictions. So, she may have been right. In meetings, there was a lot that I couldn’t relate to, but I simply needed to add the word yet to my vocabulary – I haven’t been there or done that . . . yet. But then, I could readily identify a lot of the distorted, restless, irritable, and discontented patterns of thoughts and reactions to life that we all seemed to have in common.

With the help of my sponsor I worked through all Twelve Steps, concerned that I might have crucially missed the First Step since I hadn’t truly surrendered to being an alcoholic or an addict. But thankfully, that wasn’t required for membership. The only requirement for membership was a desire to stop drinking or using, and I could commit to that. But above all, as far as I was concerned, there was something rather unique going on in these Twelve Step fellowships. Something that had given me a second chance to be with my son, and I wasn’t about to walk away from it.
Samuel’s nightmares were soon all but a thing of the past. And we were back to reading about a building in the city that comes alive at night and Oonga Boongas who stopped baby Louise from crying. I soon discovered that he’d been born with a rather sophisticated palate with a penchant for fusion foods. I can reasonably follow a recipe, but I’m not a good cook. So I seriously needed to up my game, and started delivering Thai Red Curry Risotto, Beef Kimchi Fried Rice, Kung Pao Chicken Tacos, and the like. At a restaurant, he could detect if the chef had changed the recipe or switched out an ingredient and he’d soon be in the kitchen enquiring about the changes and politely offering his opinion. There were no peanut butter sandwiches in his lunch box. But rather an array of cured meats, nori wrapped rice balls, fresh herb and rocket salads, caramelized onions, and speciality cheeses.

Jeremy was spending more time hanging out at Ed’s shed – a friend’s garage that they’d cleaned up and decorated with makeshift furniture. His taste in music changed and he learned to play the electric guitar. He made a few new friends, and he met his first girlfriend. He was spending less time at home than I would have preferred, but more importantly, he was staying away from drugs and the crowd that he used to use with. Then one evening, while walking with a friend to the shed, they were held up at gunpoint. He was less than fifty metres from our
front door when they were shoved in a car and driven to the nearest ATM to empty their accounts. They lost their money, watches, and phones, and were driven around for a few hours before they were finally let go. They had no idea where they were, but they found a police station and thankfully returned home. They were both physically unharmed, but we all knew that it could have been so much worse.

Despite our best efforts and additional support from speech and occupational therapists, Samuel continued to fall behind in his first year of schooling. Initially, I wasn’t overly concerned because most of his classmates were going through the same process. When I checked with the school, I discovered that roughly eighty per cent of boys in their first year needed some form of additional support – which did make me question the school’s relationship with the burgeoning cottage industry of therapists and whether any of this was helping or harming the children’s sense of self-worth. Naturally, I followed each recommendation. Like most parents, I just wanted to give him the best possible start. Also, I was cautious because I hadn’t yet been granted custody. In his first school year, I had no idea about what might have gone on during the six months he’d spent with his mother. Personally, I would have preferred to have spent the money on a child psychologist, but I simply couldn’t take that risk. On the other hand, Samuel was adept at socializing and he’d developed a delightful circle of friends. And he was still a bit of a hero to the kids and staff from the attached kindergarten – I hoped it all would sustain his confidence.

Still, by the end of his first year, we needed to change schools. I had hoped he’d be allowed to stay at the same school, but we weren’t really given an option when he was diagnosed with ADHD. The move to a new school entailed an hour of sitting in traffic, but the school provided all the appropriate educational supports and adjustments to meet Samuel’s learning needs. I may have been reluctant, but changing his school turned out to be one of the best decisions I made. Samuel thrived in his new environment and by the end of his fourth year of schooling, he walked away with almost all the academic awards. Even though Samuel rarely saw his mother, I kept Aida informed because I believed it was the right thing to do. I forwarded all his school reports and all of the school’s notices to Aida – who to date had not attended a single meeting with any of the school’s in-house therapists, any PTA meetings held with his teachers, or the previous two awards ceremonies. But she showed up to this one. As I slid into the available seat next to Aida, I couldn’t have been happier for Samuel who’d worked so hard in his determination to attend a normal school.

CHRONIC FATIGUE SYNDROME
‘Can’t we go to Montague Springs?’ Samuel asked as I surfaced to take a breath. I was giving him dolphin rides while taking a break from the parks and spending the day at the pool. I’d been pushing to make the most of our time at Disney World in Orlando, Florida, but we were struggling to navigate the mayhem of Thanksgiving week. I had asked, but I was told by our travel agent that the parks should be relatively quiet because most Americans prefer spending this holiday period at home with their families. Had I done my own investigation, I would have discovered that Thanksgiving week is one of the craziest weeks in the parks. Montague Springs is an affordable self-catering resort only a two-hour drive from Cape Town, and we’d taken a twenty-three-hour flight to get to Florida. Montague Springs is kind of special and Samuel loves the hot springs, the waterslide, and the enchanting resident birdlife. It’s a favourite of ours, but come on, we were in the Happiest Place on Earth, and I can’t think of a better place to stretch the imagination of any pre-teen. We pushed on and ended our two-week holiday at the park with a line from Lilo & Stitch, ‘This is my family. I found it, all on my own. It’s little, and broken, but still good. Yeah, still good.’

After we returned, I thought I was struggling with jetlag and a rather ferocious stomach bug, but I kept getting progressively worse. Eating became increasingly difficult and eventually, I couldn’t even sip the electrolytes and supplements I’d been prescribed. I finally collapsed and was admitted to the hospital. I was placed on a drip, and the doctors were scratching their heads as they tried to determine what was wrong with me. The doctor who admitted me seemed convinced that he was dealing with HIV. I was displaying some of the symptoms; rapid weight loss, recurring fevers, profuse night sweats, pronounced fatigue and weakness, memory loss and depression, prolonged swollen lymph glands and chronic diarrhoea, which had lasted more than a week, but none of the sores that develop in the mucous membranes or the purplish blotches on or under the skin. I was concerned until my blood test came back negative. In my life, I’d had my moments of unprotected promiscuity. But I also had taken several HIV tests for insurance purposes after I hadn’t had sex for more than one year. The truth was, that I hadn’t had any sex with anyone after I’d followed my sponsor’s suggestion of practising celibacy for the first year of recovery. Next, they suspected lung cancer, which thankfully also was scrapped. Finally, after a process of elimination, it was determined I’d contracted myalgia encephalopathy, more commonly referred to as chronic fatigue syndrome. While travelling, I’d apparently picked up a rare stomach bug that had resulted in post-viral fatigue or Yuppie Flu.

Other than having several names, there didn’t seem to be much information available on the subject. There seemed to be two camps of thought about the cause and nature of the syndrome. Some viewed the physical and mental fatigue as being caused by prolonged depression, while others argued that couldn’t account for an entire village contracting chronic fatigue syndrome after an unrelated virus had swept through it. All I knew was I had gone from being extremely fit to physically feeling like an unhealthy ninety-year-old who couldn’t focus or remember a thing, all in one week. Over the course of a gruelling four-day exhibition build where I used to comfortably keep up with twenty-year-old crew members, I was suddenly struggling to climb a single flight of stairs and had to keep detailed notes and set reminders for absolutely everything.

The only advice that I could find from medical science was to rest. To do nothing or as little as possible for approximately two years, and as a single parent with a small business to run, this simply wasn’t an option. I was then referred to an alternative medical doctor with extensive experience in the field of homoeopathic treatments. He confirmed my diagnosis and suggested an alternative explanation. In his opinion, chronic fatigue was entirely related to the digestive system. My system had apparently lost its ability to discern what nutrients my body required and was randomly polluting the rest of my organs. He prescribed a series of colonic treatments and a diet of dark green raw vegetables and leaves, sprouts, and soaked almonds. And I needed to raise my alkaline level with the use of pH drops added to distilled water. With nothing else on offer, I religiously stuck to his program for a little more than nine months and for a while, it did seem to help. My concentration levels seemed to improve, but nothing I did alleviated the physical exhaustion – I finally decided I’d just have to learn to live with it.

I had to rely more on my small complement of staff who I viewed more as partners. Everyone either owned shares or had a profit percentage share. Even though I was rarely more than a few feet away, in my absence the business didn’t go so well. It wasn’t long before I received a spate of resignations and I was left with one remaining shareholder – who unbeknown to me, had become addicted to crack-cocaine. In an attempt to control the situation, his wife had taken away his cards and had restricted his access to cash. It took me a while before I discovered a lot of expensive business tools were going missing. But it wasn’t just the tools, it was just about anything that could be readily turned into cash, including many of my children’s DVDs. We checked him into rehab on the advice of his addiction counsellor, who felt that it would be in the best interest of his recovery. I had to let him go.

CHRISTMAS 2008
Jeremy had matured into a caring but no-nonsense older brother. Having graduated from college he quickly stepped into the business to help me out. With an innate understanding of the business, he embodied all I’d envisioned while observing the business community on the Atlantic seaboard and all that I’d hoped to accomplish in the early stages of my relationship with Aida. I was filled with renewed hope as Jeremy surpassed all my expectations to become the very best employee I’d ever worked with.

As I watched the boys play-fencing in the back garden, I wondered if I’d forgotten anything for tomorrow’s lunch. Granny Pam would be joining us. Usually at Christmas, we’d all be invited by my sister Abigail to join her and her husband at her brother-in-law’s home. Their home in the northern suburbs was an entertainer’s dream with a spectacular view of Table Mountain. But naturally, it was a much larger gathering and given the choice,
Granny preferred spending Christmas with the three of us. Some families I know prefer sharing a celebratory dinner on Christmas eve, then stay up late to open their presents. Out of habit, we’d always gotten together on Christmas day for lunch. The boy’s friendly banter had turned to ‘We can’t be brothers’ or ‘No, no, no. You must have been adopted.’ They were having fun and simply teasing each other as siblings sometimes do.

All in all, it had been a pretty good day. It was Christmas day after all, and I’d managed to make sure that Granny was served the meal that she preferred. Jeremy and I aren’t too fussy, but when it comes to food, Granny and Samuel are on opposite ends of the spectrum. Generally, we prefer our vegetables slightly undercooked and a bit crunchy, and our meats a bit more on the rare side. But, as per her generation, Granny preferred hers what we’d call cooked to death. But it’s not too difficult to keep everyone happy with a traditional English roast. I served granny the well-done slices I’d carved off the ends of the roasted meats and her ‘over-cooked’ helping of vegetables that I’d kept on the boil for that much longer. We were about to eat when the boys picked up on their innocent rhetoric from the previous evening.
‘You’re not my brother,’ said Samuel, then suggested, ‘Ask Dad. He’ll tell you. You’re adopted.’

I thought Granny, who’d been inspecting the carrot on her fork, was about to ask if I’d added enough salt to the corned beef. Carrots cooked together with the corned beef is a favourite of hers, which I rarely managed to prepare as well as she could. I didn’t do too badly with the Christmas chicken, lamb, and pork, but I invariably failed to get the carrots just quite right. They were usually either not soft enough or not salty enough for her liking. Well, it was either going to be the carrots or the roast potatoes that was bound to catch her attention. But she stopped dead in her tracks to ask, ‘When did you find out that Jeremy wasn’t your son?’

Then before any of us could say a word she proceeded to lay out the evidence she’d been carrying from before Jeremy was born. She told us everything, from sitting outside the home I shared with Valeria and monitoring her daily lunchtime affair with a close friend of ours called Andrew, to Jeremy’s birth, his appearance, the way he walked, his teenage pimples, and even his ongoing struggle with Psoriasis. Everything she’d observed about Jeremy over the past twenty-two years of his life had reminded her of Andrew. Devastated, Jeremy politely excused himself and retreated to his room. Stunned, it took me a while to wrap my head around what had just happened. My thoughts bounced between Why tell us now? and Why not then?

Jeremy was struggling. After retreating to his room on Christmas day, he hardly ever emerged. Occasionally, I’d wake up in the middle of the night to find him sitting on the end of my bed, silently burning himself with a cigarette, the lighter, or both. Therapy and the medication he’d been prescribed didn’t seem to help. I’m not sure how well I handled the situation, but I’d like to believe that I created enough space for us to talk. I tried to assure him it didn’t matter to me whether he was my biological son or not. If he needed to know, we could do a paternity test, but that was entirely up to him. But whatever some DNA test may show, it wouldn’t change a thing for me. As far as I was concerned, he’d always be my son, and nothing would ever change that.

I was really worried about Jeremy, but we had a job to do and I was still struggling with chronic fatigue. In the circumstances, I had no alternative but to dial back the business to a few key clients. Between myself and a friend of Jeremy’s who’d been introduced to the business, we were doing okay and keeping our heads above water. To his credit Jeremy, from the bounds of his room, could apply his much-needed photo-shop skills in getting graphics ready for print. Things went horribly wrong when a client’s husband was involved in a head-on collision, which drastically delayed the graphics. In hindsight, I should have just said no. With almost no sleep, Jeremy took on an almost impossible deadline. On the final day, the day before the show was due to open, the additional stress erupted into an unhealthy young-bull, old-bull head butting session. In the world of exhibitions, being late simply doesn’t exist. It doesn’t matter what went wrong or whose fault it was, the show is going to open as advertised. We delivered on time, but Jeremy had had enough.

After two months with Valeria’s sister, Jeremy returned. He’d decided that he didn’t need a paternity test, but he did want to go to his mother. His decision apparently had nothing to do with our head-butting session and he didn’t even remember the incident the way I did. But for the longest time I battled to forgive myself. He hadn’t gotten over being mugged and abducted, and he neither felt safe nor saw a future for himself in South Africa.
From my perspective, he had stuff that only he and his mother could sort out. So, with hugs, loves, tears and a promise to stay in regular contact, I said goodbye to my son at the airport.

FIRST DAY OF SCHOOL
We got through the rest of the year dropping Samuel off and collecting him from his kindergarten in the far reaches of the northern suburbs. I work from home, and it meant adding a two-hour commute to our morning routine. Obliviously I didn’t mind the commute, but I didn’t want to think about Aida or what reason she may have had for attaching her seemingly unnecessary condition. It couldn’t have been to protect her parental rights should we ever decide to go back to court. Her rights as Samuel’s mother had been clearly established in the High Court when it ruled that, ‘The child belongs with the mother . . . her choice to leave him . . . her right to decide differently . . .’ So, I could only guess that she didn’t want to answer any questions her parents or others may have wanted to ask. All that mattered was that Samuel was back home and we made the most of the daily drive, listening to music and singing along. I can’t sing, but Samuel didn’t seem to mind.

Unfortunately, it did mean that I had to drop Jeremy at his school long before anyone else would arrive. As I watched the boys tossing a frisbee to each other, I felt incredibly proud of how Jeremy had accepted the situation. We were at Boulders beach near Cape Point for the afternoon – it had become a favourite of ours. Its reef had created a natural shallow area for young kids to play in and enjoy the warm waters of the Indian Ocean. The catwalk is a popular tourist destination for visitors to get as close as one possibly could to a breeding colony of penguins, and they seem happy to share their beach with us humans. Naturally, it’s restricted so we don’t try to feed or pet them. They waddle around avoiding us and our beach towels, swim between us and climb the boulders with us. And we get to share and appreciate these flightless birds in their protected habitat. As a parent, I could relax in the shade provided by any of the large boulders, while comfortably keeping an eye out for my children. That day, despite their ten-year age difference, they’d built a sandcastle, climbed some boulders, played frisbee, and despite Jeremy’s psoriasis, they’d spent a lot of time in the water together.
‘They bite,’ Jeremy said, catching Samuel as he attempted to stroke a penguin swaying within reach. As part of the Table Mountain National Park, visitors are asked to not disturb the penguins and there is an entrance fee for the conservation of this endangered African penguin. Moving his head from side to side, Jeremy attempted to distract Samuel by mimicking the penguin’s warning signal. They decided instead to go for a swim. I joined in with a tennis ball to pitch as high as we could to each other while still floating.

Jeremy’s psoriasis started two months into my last marriage. He’d taken a minor tumble while rollerblading and grazed his right elbow, and it just never recovered. Instead, it developed into an endless cycle of dry, silvery-white scales. We tried every suggested form of treatment. At best it would retreat to a faded red reminder, only to have patches of these overachieving cells return and pile up on other parts of his body. On his stomach, back, legs, and even in his hair. He bravely put up with all the medical and alternative treatments that I researched, as well as what his mother tried while he was in Australia. Finally, after yet another uncalled-for suggestion from another concerned stranger, he asked ‘I have to live with this, why is it that you guys can’t?’ From then on, he politely ignored suggestions or the stares he received, and took control of the management of his own treatments. The salty seawater was quite painful and only seemed to aggravate his psoriasis. So obviously, he really didn’t enjoy going to the beach. Yet he always did a stellar job of entertaining and taking care of his younger brother. The little tourist shop, crammed to the roof with straw hats, bathing costumes, fluffy penguins, and an assortment of African curios, additionally sold the obligatory ice creams needed for the road home.

I needed Aida’s permission to enrol Samuel for school. But I’d chosen a school that was a comfortable walking distance from our home. It wasn’t easy and I should have started the process a lot sooner. So, hoping it would support his application and somehow make it easier for Aida to give her consent, I intentionally selected a school with close institutional ties to the school where his grandfather had retired as headmaster. Both schools have excellent records of academic and sporting achievements, and they share similar traditions and teaching methodologies. I’m not sure if it made a difference, but thankfully Aida agreed to sign the required forms. Since his return, Samuel had regularly been having nightmares. Often as many as three or more times a night. But he wasn’t actually awake, so I couldn’t communicate with him or ask him what was wrong. I’d try offering him something to drink but he wouldn’t respond, and he wouldn’t allow me to hold or attempt to comfort him. I simply had to let him be and wait for the episode to pass. Naturally, I was a bit concerned about whether he was getting enough sleep. So, I was possibly a bit more anxious than usual about his first day of school. But I needn’t have worried. Samuel loved his first day. So much so, that he couldn’t wait to introduce me to two of his new friends. Beaming from ear to ear he enthusiastically introduced me to Alan and Otto. They were staying for aftercare and with an assumed can-I-please-stay from Samuel, the three of them turned and took off for the jungle gym.

VALERIA GETS HONEST
I connected with some of the parents from Samuel’s school and we’d started meeting regularly on Fridays at a nearby kid-friendly restaurant. The house we’d rented and made liveable was on the same road as Jeremy’s old primary school, so he reconnected with most of his former friends. We’d employed a professional beekeeper to safely remove an enormous beehive that had collapsed the ceiling of the granny flat before cleaning and turning it into an office. However, stray bees would periodically return, and Samuel bravely took it upon himself to rescue them. The owners had moved away and I’m pretty sure that their rental agent had never bothered to inspect the property. Still, with a fresh coat of paint, a bit of carpentry to fix some bits and pieces and the collapsed ceiling, and some time and energy spent bringing the garden back to life, we had a decent enough home to comfortably accommodate our work-from-home lifestyle.
We used the tandem garage to store the exhibition furniture and equipment we frequently reused for trade shows, so we had more than enough oversized cushions to comfortably invite any number of children over and our home soon became the go-to-spot for sleepovers. I loved having them, the more the merrier, and I quickly learned what to shop for and what meals to prepare that didn’t break the bank. It did, however, surprise me that a few parents from this school-orientated, upper-middle-class neighbourhood would simply drop their kids off without ever introducing themselves. Or more importantly, without coming inside to ensure that their child would be safe with me.

With the business and busy home life – at times it reminded me of a train station – I was kind of used to people sneaking up on me. But I never expected Valeria to be standing behind me while I was on a call talking about her and the fact she was in town. We spoke often enough, and at times I needed to remind her that it was Jeremy with who she actually wanted to speak with. She’d done well from the sale of some real estate and had decided on an extended trip which naturally included visiting Cape Town. She’d collected Jeremy from a friend’s house, and he’d brought her home. After the birth of three additional children, she still looked as captivating as ever casually clad in jeans and a delicate white embroidered shirt. Her Nashville ensemble was perfectly finished with a western belt buckle.
‘Wow, you look great,’ I said. ‘We knew you wouldn’t change, and you haven’t.’
We chatted for a bit, mostly about her trip, until Jeremy commented, ‘You know, I’ve no memory of ever seeing the two of you together in the same room.’
We spoke often enough, but we hadn’t seen each other in eight years and I think we were equally caught off guard. Did she know I’d be at home and was she concerned her husband might not be so happy? But Jeremy wasn’t letting either of us off the hook. He’d been listening to two completely different versions of the same story and now that he had us in the same room, he wanted the truth. It was an uncomfortable situation for all concerned. I thought this would quite possibly be the only opportunity I’d get to make amends.

I started by apologizing for not having been the husband I could have or should have been. Then I ran through my list of faults; my insecure tantrums, the belittling flic of her hair, and the time I kicked her ass. It had happened at a particularly difficult moment in our relationship, but that is no excuse. Still, it landed I lot harder than intended and could have resulted in never seeing my son again. Valeria had no recollection of the incident, so perhaps I was making too much of it. Still, I thought I’d get it all off my chest by owning up to having been unfaithful. Valeria appeared rather relieved and immediately reacted with, ‘Oh, thank God, I thought it was just me.’ Then she took over. I’d like to believe that I somehow made it easier for Valeria to say her piece, but at the same time, I wasn’t sure how healthy any of this was for Jeremy.
Valeria did attempt to regurgitate the story of being afraid of me. However, Jeremy wasn’t having any of it, constantly challenging her version with, ‘No Mum, that can’t be right.’ And he left her no wiggle room for having left his older brother Gareth behind. To her credit, she finally admitted that I was in no way responsible for her decision to leave South Africa. Then she told him the truth about needing a fresh start. The truth is, we’d always been good friends – which anyone would have known if they’d witnessed the two of us after our divorce or overheard any of our telephone conversations – and I’m pretty sure Jeremy knew that. I think he didn’t care what she needed to tell others, he simply preferred she didn’t repeat the story in his company. But he did want her to stop blaming me and to be honest with him, so he could build the kind of relationship he very much wanted to have with his mother. At the end of it all, I still wasn’t sure if we should’ve had this conversation, but I was proud of what Jeremy was trying to achieve and the young man that he was turning out to be.

NOTICE OF ATTACHMENT
It had been quiet for a little while on the northern front. We’d invited Ellen and Aida to Samuel’s sixth birthday, but we didn’t hear back. I really enjoy organizing children’s parties and, if I may say so, I’m pretty good at it. But this year was made so much easier by my recent discovery of Charley’s Bakery, originally located about a minute’s walk from the houses of Parliament. They baked the most spectacular range of magical cakes, cookies, and cupcakes that I’d ever laid eyes on. As per our household’s custom, Jeremy and I tiptoed into Samuel’s room the morning of his birthday. Samuel awoke to the sound of us singing the birthday song and six candles in a colourful cupcake. Grinning from ear to ear he dove back under the covers of his Monsters Inc. duvet, only to emerge as Sulley the monster to frighten the two of us away. I’d ordered a Jimmy Neutron cake for his Saturday party, but it was the colourful cupcakes that delighted his guests, and the wickedly sticky chocolate slices had most mothers asking for directions.

On Monday morning, after dropping Samuel at school along with some party packs for the kids in his class, I was still thinking about how well Samuel’s birthday weekend had gone. But I arrived home only to be handed a Notice of Attachment. The Sheriff’s helpers had already emptied most of the garage and were busy loading our exhibition equipment for removal. There was nothing I could do. Aida’s new company, which unbeknown to me was equally owned by Martin, had claimed ownership. According to the Sheriff, I’d been given ten days to respond, and as they hadn’t heard from me a warrant to attach the equipment had been issued. I don’t want to suggest there was something nefarious going on between Aida’s and Martin’s attorneys and the courts, but it wasn’t the first time something like this had happened and I had no idea how they managed to get the courts to move so fast. The last time, I hadn’t received any notification from the court or their attorneys, and no one in the office had seen or signed anything on my behalf. But I did know that we were a week away from having to deliver one of our biggest events of the year, and if they wanted to cause damage their timing couldn’t have been better.

After we divorced, the last thing I wanted was to compete with Aida for business. If I could’ve gone back to the security of the corporate world, I most likely would have. Fortunately, as it turned out, working from home was so much better for my children – and for me. However, finding a job as a middle-aged white South African male would have been damn near impossible. As South Africans, we have so much to be proud of. For one, there’s the peaceful transfer of power from a white minority to the previously disadvantaged African majority – which was nothing short of a miracle. This was followed shortly after by the Truth and Reconciliation Commission, a restorative justice body assembled to invite victims of gross human rights violations to present statements about their experiences at public hearings, and perpetrators were given the opportunity to request amnesty from criminal or civil prosecution. In 1996, under the leadership of Nelson Mandela, South Africa’s post-apartheid Constitution was signed into law. As the first constitution in the world to outlaw discrimination based on sexual orientation, our Constitution is widely regarded as the most progressive in the world. Then in 2006, South Africa became the first country in Africa and fifth in the world to legalize same-sex marriage. With national pride at an all-time high, even I got behind our national side and enthusiastically celebrated their inspirational victory at the 1995 Rugby World Cup. Some people, mostly of European descent, chose to leave South Africa. Those who remained were apprehensive but overall pretty hopeful.

Given our country’s history of discrimination and entrenched inequality, most understood the country’s need to develop and implement an effective affirmative action strategy. But plans are rarely perfect, and change is certainly always challenging. And wherever there’s one dominant political party with unrestricted power, there’s always going to be corruption. What started as a trickle soon turned into a torrent of reports of thinly disguised rampant corruption. Political corruption and instability were leading to slow economic growth and the devaluation of the South African currency. It’s naturally troubling to witness being downgraded by Standard and Poor to non-investment grade speculative or junk status. Most businesses, even a small work-from-home business like mine, could survive the changes with a little bit of self-discipline. We could usually do without those additional loans that carried a premium and that were so much harder to qualify for. But the inflation rate rose, impacting the cost of goods, services, and fuel. And to say the least, for the majority of the previously disadvantaged, who for generations hadn’t been allowed to build equity, it was not easy.

But I still got to complain about corruption, the lack of service delivery, and the growing number of beggars that seem to occupy every traffic intersection, while ordering goat cheese and rocket on Turkish toast. I lived and got to raise and educate my children in one of the best school districts. We still enjoyed the luxury of a domestic worker who never had an opportunity to get an education. The African National Congress called on parents to keep their children out of school in resistance to the 1953 Bantu Education Act. To quote the then Minister of Bantu Education Dr H. F. Verwoerd, in an address to Parliament: ‘When I have control of Native education I will reform it so that Natives will be taught from childhood to realise that equality with Europeans is not for them. People who believe in equality are not desirable teachers for the Natives. Education must train and teach people in accordance with their opportunities in life, according to the sphere in which they live.’

Hendrik Frensch Verwoerd, commonly regarded as the architect of apartheid, went on to become South Africa’s sixth Prime Minister. Verwoerd was an Afrikaner nationalist and member of the exclusively white, secret organization dedicated to advancing the interests of the Afrikaner – the Broederbond (band of brothers). Like many of the members of this organization, Verwoerd verbally supported Nazi Germany during World War II. This particular band of brothers wasn’t just an extremist right-wing minority, they controlled the apartheid government, the judiciary, and reportedly over eighty per cent of the country’s wealth. Martin’s mentor was a suspected member of this secretive society. The billionaire founder of the group where Martin was employed as a director, who also happened to be Martin’s mentor, had me questioning the courts’ previous decision and my sanity.

But what was this latest lawsuit about? Was it simply Aida having a bad day? I’d handed their letter of attachment to an attorney before throwing myself into finding an urgent solution to the crisis we faced of having to deliver our largest event without the use of the equipment which had been seized. In the past, a request to discuss Samuel’s reluctance to go to his mother for the weekend had resulted in losing Samuel for six torturous months. Likewise, informing Aida that my payment of Samuel’s maintenance might be a week late had very nearly landed me in Cape Town’s notorious Pollsmoor Maximum Security Prison for the weekend.

Even though Samuel was living with me, under the terms of our de facto I’d agreed to continue paying Aida by no later than the 7th of each month. I’m not going to deny it annoyed me that I was paying her more than I spent in total on our household budget. But I knew that I had to prioritize my payment to Aida, and I knew that couldn’t afford to allow my feelings to fester into resentment. I hadn’t previously missed a single payment and I had notified Aida I was waiting for a few clients who were late. But it wasn’t more than a few days and the courts moved miraculously fast to have me arrested on a Friday evening and held in prison for the weekend. This was a strategy employed by the family courts in Cape Town to effectively deal with deadbeat fathers who were overburdening the legal system.

Fortunately, the Sheriff was willing to read our de facto agreement and the email I’d sent Aida. Then, seeing with his own two eyes both Samuel and Jeremy at home with me, he agreed to postpone my arrest pending my appearance in court the following Monday. Over the course of the weekend, we received a few of the outstanding deposits that we’d been waiting for, which fortunately enabled me to settle the matter before having to appear in court. I didn’t have to spend a weekend in prison, but in my previous dealings with Aida, I’d lost Samuel. To avoid a summary judgement that could enable Aida and Martin to attach any other assets or any future earnings, I knew I must urgently respond.

But I was procrastinating primarily because I was afraid of losing Samuel, and neither Kathy nor I knew what to expect if Aida didn’t get whatever she was after. And also, I simply didn’t want to admit there was an element of truth to their claim. So, instead of facing up to what I was responsible for, I’d been going around in circles, choosing to focus on the times when I could have legitimately accused Aida of fraud. From before we were married, when she removed all the equipment from her previous business and hid it from her then-partner at one of their suppliers, to the financial irregularities she dumped on me from the business we once shared. From emptying my personal bank accounts while I was in treatment, to fraudulently using my account to purchase a new vehicle – for the very same business that they were now using to sue me.

I would like to be able to say that I hadn’t laid charges simply because she is the mother of two of my children, and it is probably true. However, then and now, my overriding concern was always that I couldn’t risk having Samuel removed from my care.
Essentially, I stood accused of having stolen or removed half of the equipment from our liquidated business prior to the sale of execution. As theirs was the highest bid, the equipment belonged to their new business. I had in my possession enough supplier invoices as proof of ownership for most of the equipment that had been attached, so it would have been relatively easy to contest their claim of ownership.

Except that wouldn’t have been the whole truth, and it would have meant involving a few key clients in our dispute. The vast majority of the equipment we use to design and build exhibition stands is purchased as rental stock. However, some clients prefer to purchase their equipment outright and then employ us to maintain and store their equipment till they’re ready to attend their next event. As there wasn’t enough time for an audit to determine exactly which equipment belonged to clients, I randomly selected from memory and removed about ten per cent. But I wasn’t only attempting to protect my clients’ interests, I also knew that my new business would benefit from having access to the equipment. I could arguably have defended myself, but that didn’t matter. Aida had the right to leave Samuel with me or to remove him at will, whenever she chose, and ultimately that was all that mattered.

It must have been the third or fourth message from the attorney handling the case. After my NA lunchtime meeting, I finally crossed the street to his offices conveniently located on Green Market Square. Stopping briefly at reception to check if he was in, I proceeded straight to his office. Buried under the usual pile of legal files and caught off guard by my unannounced presence, he still managed a friendly ‘Hello, so glad you finally made it.’ Out of the corner of my eye, I had noticed someone waiting at reception – one of the winners from the Big Brother reality show, who happened to have the next appointment. He followed to ask, ‘What the fuck? I’m next.’ It was obvious why he’d won. He’s a really good guy and his comment was friendly enough. Brad politely asked him to give us a few minutes. I hadn’t brought any of the documents he’d asked for and I had honestly no idea up until that moment what I was going to do or say.

‘Tell Aida and Marten they can keep the equipment and I’ll add a hundred thousand!’ came tumbling out of my mouth. A bit taken aback by my offer, he reminded me that they were only asking for twenty thousand in damages. ‘I know, but I’m offering every cent I’ve got. Tell them that it’s money I’ve kept aside in case we ever go back to court.’ Then I added, ‘Between you and me, I’m sure I’ll lose. Samuel hasn’t been back long enough.’ And I finished with ‘Let Aida know we can go back to court, or we can settle our differences once and for all if she agrees to sign over custody of Samuel to me.’

I gazed out the semi-circular bay window, while he got Aida on the line. A friend from the eighties owned a leather shop directly across the road. The side entrance windows remained plastered with a collection of the various celebrities who’d visited his shop. But Kabir had recently been going through a bit of a rough time, so I made a quick note to myself to check in on him.
A little further up Long Street stood the restaurant that Aida and I had frequented on Fridays. We met there for after-work cocktails at the very beginning of our relationship, and I wondered if this moment would finally be our end. The attorney on the phone with Aida had essentially always been her attorney. The same guy I first met on my last day of rehab, who referred us to Kathy and who handled our divorce. And the same attorney who took it upon himself to inform me about the precarious state of business I’d been handed, and who guided me through the foreclosure. But lately, Aida had been using a few different firms which I assumed were somehow connected to Martin. He couldn’t have been on the phone for more than five minutes, but perhaps it was longer than I thought. With a rather amazed look in his eyes, he let me know, ‘She’s accepted your offer.’

Thankfully, Aida had negotiated for only a little bit more and he’d already accepted on my behalf. I’d have to settle their businesses claim at a hundred and twenty thousand – twenty thousand more than the hundred I’d offered – and I’d have to pay their legal costs, estimated to be another ten thousand. Ethically, the two legal agreements simply couldn’t be linked. He could finalize the business dispute, but the custodial consent would be handled by a separate firm. On the way out, I thanked the guy from Big Brother, who unbeknown to him had helped me out on more than just this one rather crucial occasion – when first alone with Ellen and Samuel in the townhouse I’d kept the series running in the background as a form of adult company when the kids were asleep. I should have felt a measure of relief from what just happened, but I couldn’t help but wonder if Ellen was okay and if there was anything we could do to help her.

The day the papers were ready I got dressed in the best smart-casual outfit I had, one that I usually reserved for the first meeting with any new potential clients. The two separate documents needed to be signed by Aida and me at the same time. I wanted to appear more confident than I actually felt. I had been repeating the Just for Today prayer all day and I was still so obviously anxious. I’d arrived way too early for the meeting, so I tried calling my sponsor from my car. When he didn’t pick up, I called a friend from the fellowship. Andy worked in the CBD and was a regular at Green Market Square’s lunchtime meeting. He didn’t know the details, but he was aware that I was in the middle of a custody battle. He’s a good guy that’s dedicated to working the program, but he sounded like was in the middle of something, so he quickly checked to see that I wasn’t about to pick up any drugs. With that out of the way, I just managed to get in that I was waiting for a meeting with my attorney. To which he replied ‘Financial insecurity is a big one for us. But, if you’re worried about money, do the next right thing and you’ll get back double.’

Financial insecurity is a major issue in recovery, and I was about to sign away the little bit I’d managed to save since leaving Aida. But that was the least of my concerns. I wasn’t sure if Aida had perhaps changed her mind and wondered if she’d show up to sign the custodial consent agreement. Still, touching base with Andy helped calm me down and I was grateful he made time to answer my call.

She did, and we didn’t say a word to each other while we waited in a conference room for an assistant to bring through the documents. I signed the two sets of documents and when it was Aida’s turn to sign, she hesitated and turned to me and asked for my watch. It’s a fairly expensive, limited-edition Montblanc watch that I rarely wore. But it wasn’t a part of either agreement and I had been considering selling it to cover some of the costs. Contrary to Brad’s objection, I removed the watch and slid it across the table to Aida. As if to save face, she turned to Brad to tell him that she needed to keep the watch safe for Samuel, and with that, she signed all the documents in front of her.

ART AWARDS
The exhibition calendar year was all but over when I committed myself to pay Aida’s company. I’d said that the hundred thousand was to cover potential application for custody. It was one of the reasons that I was trying to save, but I actually needed the money to cover the business’s year-end costs. There are three exceptionally quiet months at the end of each season, but rent, salaries, and year-end bonuses still needed to be paid. On top of which, I still had a DUI case hanging over my head which I expected would carry a hefty fine – or I might not be around to take care of my kids. But that was my own fault. And of course, I’d have to continue paying Aida for Samuel’s maintenance until our custodial agreement could be sanctioned by the court, after which Aida would no longer be entitled to maintenance – but neither would I. By our agreement, neither Samuel nor I would be able to claim any maintenance from Aida. As agreed, upon the signing of the documents I’d transferred fifty per cent into the attorney’s trust account. However, I had no idea what we’d have left over after our year-end expenses or where the outstanding balance might possibly come from.

I met Claire at meetings, and we’d had a few interesting conversations at various coffee shops where a few of us gathered after. She was looking to change jobs and seemed fairly interested in finding out more about what it was that I did. She was truly awesome, and I liked her as a friend. She knew that I couldn’t consider taking on someone new, at least not until after the new year. Even so, she was still excited to see the exhibition stands we’d designed and built for our last event of the year. We’d walked away with all three of the top design awards, so I was more than happy to show off our handy work. I was busy wrapping up our tour of Cape Town’s new International Convention Centre and thinking about grabbing a coffee or a bite to eat when we ran into a good friend of hers. They knew each other from ladies’ nights on De Waterkant’s pink strip, and I suspected maybe there was a lot more going on between them than either of them had yet realized.

As it turned out, Claire’s friend and the colleague she was with had recently been commissioned to curate a new art exhibition. They’d booked the convention centre to showcase African art and were somewhat deflated after three rather disappointing presentations they’d just attended in one of the conference rooms. They were still looking for an exhibition company to come up with the right concept for the construction and lighting that they urgently required for the show. I’d brought along some swatches and a sample board to introduce Claire to the design process, which just happened to be exactly what they were looking for. We still had a bit of paperwork to do, but while standing in the foyer of the convention centre, we’d all but signed the contract in a matter of minutes.

We’d previously taken on some pretty challenging events, but nothing near the scale of this event. When I was still working with Aida, I’d once delivered a 500 square-metre exhibition stand to Sun City in the northwest of South Africa. Sprawled along the border of the Pilanesberg National Park, Sun City Resort is a two-hour drive from the city of Johannesburg and a two-hour flight from Cape Town. Competitors from Johannesburg, familiar with Sun City, had been reluctant to take on the deal because of its unheard of twenty-four construction deadline. With proper coordination and attention to detail, we managed to deliver with an hour to spare. But then we had a much larger workforce and now we were only a small work-from-home office of six, which now immediately included Claire. This was so much bigger, covering twelve-thousand square metres required to display six different disciplines of soul-searching artworks. A lot of the art focused on the question of identity, race, and patriotism, which all had to be individually handled with care. With hardly any sleep we successfully delivered the largest art exhibition ever held in the whole of the southern hemisphere.

We were paid a few days later, which coincidentally happened to be the same day that I was finally granted full legal custody of Samuel. On transferring the balance, the attorney couldn’t restrain himself from letting me know that he’d needed to separate Aida and Martin. They were both with him, but in separate conference rooms, in order to negotiate who was entitled to what percentage of the money I’d paid. I didn’t get it. Aida was managing a business roughly ten times the size of my operation and Martin had recently been promoted. He was now the managing director of arguably the largest retail chain in Southern Africa, with the pay-off line of Family Values. What was a lot of money to me was probably less than a month’s salary to him, and yet they were arguing? But the last thing that I wanted to be thinking about was Aida and Martin.

I wanted to celebrate with my family. We chose a cosy wood-burning pizza restaurant called Da Vinci. As I watched Jeremy and Samuel scribbling together on paper tablecloths purposely provided for drawing, I felt extraordinarily cared for. I hadn’t paid too much attention to Andy’s comment of, ‘If it’s about money . . . you’ll get back double.’ Sure, I was worried, but money hadn’t been my main concern. Yet, when I tallied all the costs, his forecast turned out to be miraculously accurate, almost to the last cent.

SURRENDER
I was in an awful amount of pain, and I couldn’t stop beating myself up. I kept blaming myself for not pausing before writing to Aida, and for not coming up with any alternative solutions. Ellen had been in my life from when she was only an eighteen-month-old baby until one week before her eighth birthday. And Samuel, who didn’t want to go to his mother at all, was three months shy of his fifth birthday when he was taken. The two years and two weeks I’d spent settling Samuel had not been enough to even warrant an investigation.

On top of this, I was now being denied all contact on the basis that they needed time to allow Samuel to adjust to his new environment. My attorney’s parting words of ‘If anything happens to Samuel, we can go back to court.’ didn’t help much. As far as I was concerned, that would be too late. In court, they’d successfully managed to paint me as the aggressor and the presiding judge must have bought it. From what Kathy told me, it takes an experienced therapist a considerable length of time to correctly diagnose an individual with Narcissistic Borderline Personality Disorder. And the less experienced, more idealistic therapists can often find themselves burned out before they discover exactly who and what they’re dealing with. But all of this would have been uncovered if this judge hadn’t denied Samuel’s right to an investigation. I believe this should be every child’s right, under the protection of the law.

Now, I wondered if they hadn’t been right about me all along. I was convinced that if anything happened to Ellen or Samuel, we wouldn’t be going back to court. They’d both be dead, and I’d be going to jail for the rest of my life. I’d decided that all my children would be okay, possibly even better off. Ellen would go to her father, Jeremy to his mother, and I was pretty sure that Aida’s parents would step in to take care of Samuel. What I was trying to determine was if it was my responsibility as a parent to do something before anything happened – to take some form of preventative action. The only thought that seemed to be holding me back was my strange belief that Aida would have wanted me to do exactly that. A kind of suicide by ex-husband. Fuck it, I thought, I have to put a lid on these crazy thoughts.

Fortunately, I had Jeremy and my new business to focus on. Jeremy, despite his age, had settled into his new school and the business was doing well enough to cover the monthly bills. At the same time, I seemed to be receiving an unusual number of invites, and I found myself socializing a lot more than before and feeling a bit guilty about it. I thought I must still mistakenly be on someone’s VIP list from when Aida had employed a PR firm. But until now, I hadn’t received any invitations since I left Aida. So, I was getting invited to the opening of new restaurants, clubs, bars, modelling agencies, swimsuit competitions, and after-parties. I even received an invitation to join a panel of judges for the National Beauty competition, held at several of our well-publicized beaches, which I found rather uncomfortable. With Jeremy being a teenager and all, he seemed to enjoy it. I didn’t understand why I seemed to be popular in the 80s or now. And I don’t believe I’m being falsely humble when I say I’ve always considered myself to be an average guy with no real accomplishments to speak of. My biggest claim to fame would be that I’m a caring person and possibly a good listener. It’s not that I’m ungrateful, but I’ve always felt detached, and I’ve never really been able to live and enjoy life as most people do. I think that I’m more of an introvert who prefers being at home, and I’m definitely happier doing school runs than receiving some form of VIP treatment.

However, having lost Ellen and Samuel and being denied any access at all, it was obviously a lot healthier for me to get out than to sit at home planning and fantasizing about torturing and killing people. Or for that matter, to watch TV – where all too often I’d find myself sobbing almost uncontrollably. Especially as I always seemed to home in on supportive characters. Like the role Bonnie Hunt played as the loving supportive wife to a correction officer, played by Tom Hanks in The Green Mile. A part of me wished I could just move on, and I was longing for a relationship. But while I seemed to be liked, I don’t think I knew how to like and accept myself. So, anyone who showed the slightest interest would be warned off with, ‘You don’t want to go there with me. I’m not relationship material.’ At best, I’d manage three dates and then disappear. The idea of starting a new relationship seemed damn near impossible. As far as I was concerned, I had way too much work that still needed to do be done on myself.

It was the start of spring and Ellen’s birthday. After she was taken, I never got to see her again. But I was allowed to drop off a gift for her. So, I’d usually take a few days to find her a special fairy to add to her collection and some extra age-appropriate fashion accessories that a few helpful sales assistants would recommend. I’d always been pretty good at arranging birthday parties and finding the right presents. With no other way of letting Ellen know that I loved her, I more than doubled my effort to find and wrap the right presents for her. Of course, I’d never hear from her. So, I never knew if she’d been given my gifts or if she knew they were from me. Only this year, while it drove me crazy, I’d decided to honour Aida’s request for time to settle Samuel. Yes, I could have gone back to court to try and force my legal right to access. However, I’d lost faith in the legal system, which in my opinion had odiously let Samuel and me down.

I was thinking that I hadn’t seen Ellen in what felt like forever as I gazed out the kitchen window wondering if the new lawn we’d recently laid would survive. We’d rented the worse house in the best area and pretty much cleaned it up. It had the advantage of having a separate granny-flat, which I’d converted into office space so there was always someone only two meters away should any of my children need me. The garden must have been quite spectacular in its day. A long time ago someone had planted an array of fruit trees that were producing avocados, plums, figs, and lemons. However, they were probably the very reason why we couldn’t get the lawn to grow. Jeremy hadn’t seen Ellen since he returned, but sadly I knew that neither of us would get to see her, let alone get to wish her a happy birthday. I was still thinking about Ellen, when Jeremy walked in carrying his cat – who of course, Samuel had named.
‘Can we talk?’ he asked.
‘Sure.’ I replied. ‘I’m about to make breakfast. What would you like to have?’
‘I can’t eat,’ he answered, as he sat down at our old oak farm table. ‘And I can’t sleep either,’ he continued.
‘Okay, what’s going on?’ I asked as I watched Figaro slink off his lap to go outside and play.
‘I’ve always been honest with you dad’ he started, then asked, ‘How much do you know about speed?’ I understood the question to be rhetorical. ‘Some of us from school, have been using a light bulb and I’ve been doing too much.’ Of course I knew about amphetamines, I’m a regular member of Narcotics Anonymous. But I hadn’t heard about this light bulb method of using. ‘Well,’ he continued, ‘I’m the one who can’t stop and I’m always the one wanting us to get more.’
I watched his hyperactive right leg bouncing uncontrollably – something I’d witnessed many times before at meetings – and wondered how the hell I missed this.

Then my mind flashed back to one of the few lectures I could still remember from my time in rehab. The statistics for high-school students don’t look great and their chances of recovery are pretty dismal. Ninety per cent of teenagers will experiment while still at school: of that, roughly twenty-two per cent will become addicted, and tragically less than five per cent of addicts ever find recovery. The figures quoted were based solely on the record of patients admitted for treatment. Then, I’d assumed that the statistics were merely intended to scare us. But now, I was truly afraid for Jeremy.

We’d previously had several discussions about the dangers of drugs. However, now wasn’t the time for one of those. What I needed to confirm was whether he wanted to stop or not. With that out of the way, we discussed the two options that I knew worked. If he wanted, he could do what I did and go to rehab for twenty-one days, or there was the ninety meetings in ninety days Narcotics Anonymous option that I’d be more than happy to walk with him. I was in no way offering to sponsor him because I didn’t believe it would be in his best interest. But rather that I’d either go with him or get him to two or more meetings a day. He wasn’t ready to commit to either option but did agree to start attending meetings with a friend who lived nearby and who’d been one of his closest friends ever since they’d attended primary school together.

I prioritize my children’s needs just like most normal parents do. However, all too often I wear it like a badge of honour. So, perhaps I should have paid more attention to the Special and Different sign that I was asked to wear during my stint in rehab. Because three days after Jeremy came to me for help, at 11 am on Friday the 13th of September 2002, I walked into a bar, ordered a double whisky with ice together with a shooter, and I didn’t stop until 7 am the next morning. On my way home, I had an accident with a traffic officer who was on his way to work. His police motorcycle was badly damaged by the accident, but fortunately he sustained only minor injuries. However, if I’d been at that intersection another second or two earlier, I could quite easily have been responsible for the death of a traffic officer.

THE DUCK POND
I made my way past the crowd of last-minute smokers gathered on the pavement to a hall at the back of a church in Woodstock, less than a block away from where I’d grown up. I found space on an old creaky church bench, put my face in my hands, and waited for the meeting to start. Fortunately, it hadn’t taken me more than a few days to find my way back to the rooms. I could have been sitting in jail, instead of a meeting of Narcotics Anonymous. I’d been incredibly lucky not to have killed that officer. But my stupidity had effectively eliminated any possibility I might have had of protecting Samuel. I was consumed by an emotion that I couldn’t identify. It could have been an overwhelming sense of shame or powerlessness – or both. I wasn’t sure. But other than to introduce myself as an addict in the introductory round, I didn’t open my mouth. I kept my face in my hands and did my best to listen.
I listened to someone share that she needed to use to forget about the consequences of her using. She realized that she had to go within or go without, but didn’t know how, until her sponsor encouraged her to finish Step Four – to write a searching and fearless moral inventory of herself.

I hadn’t seen Samuel or heard from Aida in six months. But as I switched my phone on while leaving the meeting, I received a call from Aida. She’d called to ask if I could meet her the next day at 11 am at the duck pond at Sonstraal Dam (Sun Ray Dam). It’s a stunning area on the northern outskirts of Cape Town, with splendid views out across the vineyards to the foothills of the Hottentots Holland Mountains. They’d retained all the dams that were originally used for agriculture and converted them into beautifully landscaped recreational areas. Neighbourhood homes and their gardens are all immaculately maintained, and the area boasts a few excellent schools. It should be a wonderful suburb for any children, including Ellen and Samuel, to grow up in but that hadn’t been Macy or her children’s experience of the neighbourhood.

When I was still contemplating murder, I’d searched for any reason to hate the area. Possibly to keep me away from the area, but more likely to justify my imagined reaction should anything happen to Samuel or Ellen. My head was going around in circles, combining everything I knew about the area and Namibia, where Martin was from, with my mother and my father’s story. It was a predominantly Afrikaans residential area, where the Dutch Reform Church first opened its doors in 1826. Most of the ruling members of parliament during the apartheid era were regular churchgoers and members of this particular denomination. The church was well known for its support of apartheid ideology. They used the scriptures to promote the God of Genesis as the Great Divider who’d intentionally created separate races – with whites being superior to blacks.

My father was born into an ultra-conservative Afrikaans community. In South Africa, you won’t find a more Afrikaans name than the one I have. But that didn’t matter because my father fought in the 2nd World War on the side of the Allied Forces. Whereas others from his community were imprisoned for being Nazi sympathizers.
Martin was born and raised in Namibia, which before its independence used to be known as South West Africa. The first Imperial Commissioner of German South-West Africa was Heinrich Goering, the father of Field Marshal Herman Goering, one of the most powerful figures in the Nazi Party. Shark Island in Namibia is considered by some historians to be the site of the world’s first death camp where the indigenous Herero and Nama peoples were exploited in the name of medical science and exterminated. Long before Hitler was born, Kaiser’s Germany used concentration camps in Africa to advance their theories of racial Lebensraum – the very same twisted policy at the heart of Hitler’s white supremacy ideology.

I knew that I wasn’t thinking rationally. For all I knew, Martin or his family may well have rejected these repugnant ideologies, or even taken up arms against them just like my father had. But I couldn’t stop myself from thinking that this elitist Afrikaans neighbourhood, enabled by the remnants of an apartheid justice system, had stolen and endangered my child. I also knew that I could have avoided the accident I’d caused and the predicament I now found myself in. If only I’d kept looking for my part, as my NA program suggested, and what I could have done differently. But it had been far easier for me to entertain murderous thoughts, to write off an entire neighbourhood as being racists, and to have Martin pegged as a child-abusing Nazi. Ultimately, I nearly ended up killing an innocent bystander – a law enforcement officer on his way to work.

I was in a lot of shit and didn’t know what Aida might have heard or what this meeting might be about. But it hadn’t been all bad. After the finals of the beach competition that I’d been asked to judge, Jeremy and I had headed to the Klein Karoo’s Hex Valley and the therapeutic village of McGregor. It was founded in the 1900s when plots were auctioned off in anticipation of a connecting road which was never built. However, its isolation helped preserve the 19th-century architecture, the thatch-roofed cottages, vines, apricot and olive groves, and its peaceful atmosphere. We checked into Temenos, which unbeknown to me, was better known as a spiritual retreat. As a retreat, Temenos offers healthy cuisine, sunrise walks over the mountain to the neighbouring village of Greyton, guided meditations, yoga, and creative writing seminars. All centred around a magnificent silent garden.

Before dinner, Billy introduced us to the Silent Garden. It is a garden filled with hidden sanctuaries: a statue of Mother Mary that faces the dawn surrounded by miniature red and pink roses; a rockery with a picture of a Jewish youth holding the sacred Torah; and a square walled Islamic enclosure facing Mecca, where one can reflect on the poems of Rumi and Hafiz. We passed a shrine to Lakshmi, the Hindu goddess of beauty and abundance, then a shrine to Ganesha, the divine aspect of God – which according to Billie, represents intelligence, wisdom, and the removal of obstacles. There was also the garden’s chapel that could accommodate a small wedding of forty. The Little Way chapel has a prayer, written by The Little Sisters of Jesus, buried in its foundations – they are an order of nuns who choose to live among the poorest marginalized communities.
‘The Well, one of our several meditation spaces,’ Billy continued, ‘is inspired by the temenos of the Acropolis in ancient Athens, which was a place apart to gently nurture oneself. That’s what we’d like our little Temenos in McGregor to be.’ Recognizing that Jeremy and I were clueless, he ended our tour with, ‘Don’t miss our Buddha who made his journey here riding on the back of our truck facing the traffic.’

After our garden tour, we took a walk and joined some locals and weekend visitors all crammed into a country pub to watch the national rugby team’s match. Inside was impossible, but we found some space on the wrap-around balcony. ‘Got us some drinks,’ a rather sensual Sharon said, as a way of introducing herself. Sharon must have been in her early thirties and had bought three Springbok shooters that were named after our team. A layered shot of a green crème de menthe and golden Amarula, symbolizing our colours, topped off with a layer of fresh cream. She was from Cape Town and was busy restoring one of the historic cottages for weekends away from home. I declined the shots, saying we’d only put our heads in to see what all the hype was about, and we wouldn’t be staying. I didn’t feel it necessary to tell her that we didn’t drink and even more so, to attempt to explain why I don’t follow rugby. Sharon knocked back all three Springbok shots. ‘See, it didn’t take long,’ she said with a wink and the cutest half-smile, then disappeared back inside. We ordered two cokes and while neither Jeremy nor I were supporters and we really couldn’t see the TV, we joined in with the calls to, ‘Go, Go, Go’ or ‘tackle him, jou bliksem!’ (you scoundrel).

We were about to leave when I felt Sharon pressed against me from behind. I hadn’t seen her coming, but I certainly felt her breasts brushing against me as she repositioned herself to whisper in my ear, ‘I want to fuck you – both of you – right now at my place.’ I could have been a bit gentler. She was a bit tipsy and couldn’t have known that Jeremy was my son. ‘We’re out of here.’ I said as I removed her hands from my waist. I didn’t think that Jeremy had heard her, but I apologized just in case. We left, but I should have left the moment she first came over to introduce herself. As we got into bed Jeremy asked, ‘Are we still going to the hot springs tomorrow?’

I was a late starter. As a teenager, I’d been an active member of the 1970s Youth for Christ movement. So, I only lost my virginity after I’d already completed my military service. Meredith was the first girl I had sex with, and I married her because of it. I was only twenty-one and far too insecure to be married. My first marriage ended as a direct result of one of those I-want-to-fuck-you moments. And for the rest of my life, I wondered whether or not Meredith had been the right partner for me. In therapy with Kathy, I’d been discussing these one-off sexual encounters that I always seemed to attract. They weren’t one-night stands. I’d meet a complete stranger that I was instantly aroused by, and I can only assume that she felt the same. I’m not a player and quite frankly I wouldn’t want to be. Truth be told, I’ve never known how to approach any woman, and whenever I’ve tried I have usually failed quite dismally. I struggle with the whole concept of sex – except for during the odd, heated encounters which essentially represented a rare opportunity for me to engage. So, often I’d hit my fuck-it-I-don’t-care button, which meant having sex in a lot of strange places. Anywhere other than a bedroom. At work, in clubs, restaurants and pubs. In parking lots, in cars or on the hoods of cars, and in elevators. On the beach in front of a restaurant, where abandoned I had the friends I’d been having dinner with. And once, up against the wall, in the busy entrance to an underground club. To be clear, I don’t go out all that often. At best, I’m talking about once or twice a month and then not every month. As a parent, I wasn’t particularly proud of my behaviour. But at least it kept things away from my home and away from my children.

Kathy defined my experience as wound buddy attraction. A powerful, overwhelming, often incomprehensible form of attraction, founded on shared childhood traumas. Finally, I could make sense of why I’d attracted more than my fair share of women many of whom were obviously out of my league, and quite frequently some who were in committed lesbian relationships – which confused the hell out of them and their partners. But I finally had an answer. One that I’d been testing and learning to use, including at the finals of the beach competition the night before we arrived in the village of McGregor.
It was almost 9:30. Thankfully, I was driving against the morning traffic, which was practically sitting at a standstill. I would be at the duck pond with about fifteen minutes to spare. The little branded delivery van only had seating for three. While not ideal, there was ample space in the back to load in as many friends as Jeremy or any of my children might want to include. Rather than trying to think about why I’d been asked to meet Aida and if she had heard about my accident, my thoughts returned to my recent road trip with Jeremy.

My new radar wasn’t always as finely tuned as I would have preferred it to be. With Sharon, I was still learning that when it came to mutual attractions, or what some might call chemistry, it was probably a good time for me to leave. But on other occasions I could learn more, or at least test the accuracy of wound buddies. For example, I hadn’t detected a thing on New Years’ Eve when Marie followed me to my car. If I’d known that Marie was attracted to me, I probably wouldn’t have invited the table to join me on January 2 in Langebaan. But I didn’t know until she followed me to the parking lot. I’d gone to retrieve the hoodie I’d brought in case the weather changed and I didn’t notice that Marie had chosen to follow me. But while I’d been blissfully unaware, her girlfriend certainly wasn’t. So, she got up to follow Marie. Fortunately, we were able to talk and the little that I knew about wound buddies seemed to help. I thought I’d successfully managed to diffuse the situation until they showed up two days later to watch the finals of the contest that I’d been asked to judge. In Langebaan over dinner, I discovered they’d talked it over. Marie had never been attracted to a man before and they’d agreed to let her get it out of her system. Having Jeremy with me allowed me to buy some time, but I did agree to consider their rather awkward proposal, though we never acted on it.

For the first two days of my road trip with Jeremy, I hadn’t gotten myself into trouble. I was feeling pretty good about my progress, until the third night at the hot springs. After Jeremy went to bed, I’d stayed up a bit to chat and ended up in another woman’s bungalow. I fell asleep, which I never do. I can only assume that having sex after the amount of time that Jeremy and I had spent in springs had knocked me out. But in the middle of the night, Jeremy woke up and was pretty upset when he couldn’t find me. He was fifteen years old at the time, so it shouldn’t have been a problem. Except he still struggled with abandonment issues, and he was in early recovery. We weren’t at home or in familiar surroundings, so I should have been more careful.
I arrived at the duck pond ten minutes early, parked and found a bench. A trendy couple, wearing the season’s latest sportswear, were power walking around the dam’s compacted gravel path. Looking at the surrounding manicured homes, I thought I recognized the home of two attorneys whom Valeria and I had once had dinner with. Our married hosts had tried to out-drink each other until the patio table they were dancing on collapsed under their combined weight. The new business was doing okay, but I’d sold the townhouse at the wrong time and housing prices were starting to rise. For a brief moment, I regretted leaving Aida and losing the home we had together.

Yellow-billed ducks were bobbing for food and others waddled around, occasionally stopping to preen their feathers. Two skittish Cape White-Eye birds, with their yellow throats and white framed eyes, scurried out of the way of the oncoming power-walkers. I was starting to appreciate these gentle creatures who seemed so happy. All it takes to keep a duck thrilled with life is lots of water – the muddier the better – some cabbage leaves, and a few earthworms. Aida was more than half an hour late and I was wondering if she was going to show up when she arrived with Samuel in tow. She handed Samuel back to me and said simply, ‘He’ll be better off staying with you,’ then added one instruction, ‘but I want him to remain with his new playgroup till the end of the year.’ We didn’t say anything to each other as we watched Aida turn to leave. Then I lifted Samuel, dressed in a plain white t-shirt and faded red shorts, into my arms. He only had an empty Dinosaur lunchbox with him, but I honestly didn’t care. I tried desperately to hold back my tears as we drove home in silence while I reflected on one of AA’s better-known promises –‘We will suddenly realize that God is doing for us what we could not do for ourselves.’

DE FACTO CUSTODY
I’d been down this road before with Jeremy. Only the first time I didn’t believe that our legal system had evolved enough for me to even think about being granted custody. With Jeremy, my only concern had simply been to make sure that he felt emotionally and physically supported for as long as possible. Which included finding a few new and interesting father-son activities we could experience together. Fortunately, Valeria and I shared a friendly working relationship, and it didn’t take much to accommodate her or her right to access. There was no strategy involved in getting custody of Jeremy. I was only doing what comes naturally to most parents. But I still maintain there was little or no chance of being granted custody if Valeria had simply shown up for her final appointment. However, the courts did consider that Jeremy was settled and doing well in my care. And I was granted custody on the basis that his interest was best served by not having to change environments.

Ten years later, at the start of the new millennium, I found myself in almost the same position and carrying the same concerns. Only this time, I knew Aida was going to be a formidable adversary who’d stop at nothing to defend herself against the fear of losing her parental standing.
Despite Kathy’s invaluable guidance, I simply couldn’t anticipate Aida’s next move or understand why she couldn’t just leave me alone. From my perspective, she appeared to have all that she ever wanted: an accomplished business and life partner; a new asset-strong, debt-free business; a luxurious home they were renovating, extending, and decorating; several luxury vehicles with enough big-boy toys, all parked together in their driveway; a holiday home only an hour’s drive from Cape Town in a sought-after coastal village. Materially, I wasn’t in the same league. I’d sold the townhouse to finance the new business. I no longer owned a home; I didn’t even own a car. But I was perfectly fine using the small panel van that additionally served as our delivery vehicle. I deliberately chose to work from home so that I could be near my children, and also so I was less threatening as competition to Aida. After losing Ellen, I redoubled my efforts to avoid any form of confrontation with Aida. I needed to buy time. Enough time for the family court to determine it wouldn’t be in Samuel’s best interest to change his environment.
She seemed to have it all. But perhaps there was some truth to the stories I’d heard about Martin. I considered she might honestly be unhappy. However, as much as I might have wanted to care, I simply couldn’t afford to be drawn into their relationship. I’d previously been arrested at the gates to their property. So, no matter what Aida may or may not be going through, or how much she seemed to want to provoke me, I needed to stay focused on my objective.

It was my responsibility to deliver and to collect Samuel whenever Aida wanted to see him. I had to ensure that I was never late, and it didn’t help to call to say I might be an extra five minutes – I’d only be screamed at. Yet often, I’d be ignored and kept waiting for half an hour or more. Still, I’d simply bide my time getting to know their Boerboels through the gates, who I’m sure were not meant to befriend me. The Boerboel is a large, strong-boned, mastiff-type dog from South Africa.

I could go on, but I’d rather just list some of the highlights. She fraudulently used my bank account for the purchase of a new vehicle for their business, which I only noticed after she’d already gotten away with three payments. I managed to put an end to the debit order but declined to press charges. While our divorce order clearly stipulated that we were individually responsible for Samuel’s medical bills when he was in our respective homes, I had been listed as responsible for settling his bills. She’d supply them with my correct name and ID number, but just to complicate matters she’d use a bogus address. So, the first I heard about it was after the bill had been handed over to a firm of attorneys. To save my credit record, I was left with no alternative but to settle the bill – together with the attached legal and tracing fees. While I had enjoyed a friendly relationship with Valeria, there was practically no way to communicate with Aida. Sure, I could email or text her, but it was simply ignored. I did try, however, after an unusual amount of Samuel’s clothing seemed to go missing. I texted to ask if she would kindly get her domestic staff or Ellen’s au pair to see what they could find. Perhaps Aida knows me better than I imagined – I’d just gone shopping when she walked in and went straight through to Samuel’s room, where she literately cleaned out his cupboard, including all the new clothes I’d just bought.

It was one thing taking advantage of the situation to abuse me – I understood that I was dealing with an irrational individual – but I suspect that she knew the only way she could really hurt me was through hurting my children.
The de facto custody agreement we signed essentially reversed our access rights to Samuel. Meaning that if Aida wanted to see Samuel, she had the right to have him two nights during the week as well as alternate weekends and school holidays. At first, Samuel was often included for weekends at their holiday home, but no arrangements were made to see him for any school holidays. Unless her parents or other family members were visiting, we simply wouldn’t hear from her. She never saw him during the week, and often returned him within hours on the weekends. We never knew whether Aida was going to see Samuel or not, so we couldn’t make any arrangements of our own. And trying to establish a civil working arrangement was simply not possible. I once made the mistake of emailing Aida. I politely asked if she could just let us know if her plans had changed. Well, my email was just flipped and reversed, accusing me of parental alienation. This made me question if her new attorney had read my email.
I don’t want to go on about this, but I will mention two examples. We seldom spoke to each other, which I found peculiar. But one Friday evening, after I’d specifically let Aida know that I wouldn’t be at home, she left Samuel – who was only a four-year-old toddler at the time – in the dark outside our home. I’d been asked to chair the Friday evening’s meeting of Narcotic Anonymous. Fortunately, I checked my phone as the meeting was about to start. Otherwise, my phone would have been off and I wouldn’t have got the message that Aida left. Thankfully, the meeting wasn’t too far away.
Then there was the lice incident. Samuel was dragged up the front pathway with his feet barely touching the ground and tossed inside with the same intensity that Ellen had been ripped from my arms. He’d been collected for the weekend by Aida herself, which was an unusual occurrence. They’d been to a popular Irish pub, not too far from where we lived. It’s a great place to meet friends, especially if you have kids. Outside, the pub has a mini-park and Samuel had been playing in the sandpit. He’d gotten some of the sand in his hair, which Aida mistakenly thought was lice. So she immediately brought him home, and after treating him like an infected piece of garbage, accused me of being a bad parent. In front of her son, she stated ‘I’m not having this child in my house. He’s got lice! What kind of parent are you? Don’t you check?’ Then, thankfully, she left.

From the very beginning of their relationship, some friends and mutual acquaintances had encouraged me to meet with Martin’s ex-wife, Macy. But I hadn’t done anything about it. I had Kathy advising me on how best to deal with Aida. But after the lice incident, I felt like I had to do more. Telling a four-year-old that his mother wasn’t well didn’t feel like an effective strategy, and it didn’t help to protect him. I couldn’t think of anything else other than to learn more about Martin, and what Aida might be dealing with. And more importantly, what Ellen and Samuel were possibly being subjected to. Samuel had unquestionably settled with me, but I wasn’t sure he had been with me long enough for it to make a difference in court. I had grave concerns about how Aida and Martin would react to my meeting with his ex-wife, and I felt certain Aida would somehow find out.

We arranged to meet early one morning at the News Cafe. I thought I was concerned, but Macy looked decidedly uncomfortable. She and her children were still in hiding, and I felt certain that if I hadn’t been early she may have just left. She knew about Samuel, and that Ellen was now living in Martin’s house. So, despite her fear, as a mother she felt she had to let me know what her children had been through. Neither of us wanted anything to eat. Macy had arrived before me, so I ordered the same café latte that she had and asked for an additional glass of water.
Hers was a story of escalating violence. He’d routinely conduct military-style inspections of her children’s rooms. He’d always find some reason to completely trash the rooms so they’d have to tidy all over again. ‘If I tried to intervene’ she said, ‘I’d be slammed face-first into the wall and held there, while he continued screaming at the children.’ Later, it escalated to being held and punched repeatedly in her kidneys. Her terrified children used to wet themselves while being told he could kill their mother, and no one would be the wiser. ‘Do whatever you have to,’ Macy said, ‘but get your children out of that house and as far away as possible from that man.’
She suggested I have a word with the local police station, where she’d filled several reports of domestic violence. However, as is often the case with domestic violence, she’d declined to have him prosecuted. As proof, she was willing to supply me with the contact details for some of their neighbours who she’d fled to for help. And she offered her consent to have her daughter’s therapist speak to me. She told me both of her children were still in therapy. Then she finished with the most devastating part of her ordeal with Martin. ‘If you speak to my daughter’s therapist,’ she said, ‘you will find that we now suspect Martin may have been sexually molesting my daughter, and we’re especially concerned about the night she was hospitalized with a fractured pelvis.’
Even with my background, it was a lot for me to process. All I knew was that it wasn’t the kind of information I could ignore. I needed to take action, but I wasn’t sure exactly what I could or should do. I only knew that I needed to calm down.

A few days later, after an urgent session with Kathy, I called Macy to find out if she’d be willing to talk to Aida. And it didn’t take much to get Aida to agree to meet with Macy. But it turned out to be a mistake – I may have put Macy and her kids in more danger. Surprisingly, Aida did get back to me after the meeting. But only to let me know she thought Macy didn’t possess any evidence that would corroborate her story. Perhaps at this point I should have let it go. However, I happened to believe Macy, so I simply couldn’t. Next, I attempted to reach Ellen’s biological father, who for as long I’d known Aida had always resided in the United States. In my opinion, he was a brilliant long-distant father who never failed to remember Ellen’s birthday and other special occasions. He paid for her maintenance like clockwork, and he usually flew out at least once a year to spend time with his daughter. I believed the two of us had a good relationship, or at the very least a cordial one. After several attempts and a promise to return my call, I never heard back from him. I didn’t want to involve Aida’s parents, but I was all out of options so I reluctantly passed the information onto Ellen’s grandfather, who I trusted would do his best to look out for her. While I knew that I should never underestimate the situation, I found a small measure of comfort in not being able to imagine Martin capable of physically abusing Aida.

SAMUEL SNATCHED
I may have had a plan to put up with anything that Aida might decide to throw at me, but I couldn’t expect a four-year-old toddler to understand – and Samuel was becoming increasingly reluctant to go to his mother.
It all came to a head when Aida sent Ellen’s au pair to collect Samuel and he didn’t want to go. In the back garden, he held on for dear life to the jungle gym that I’d moved from the townhouse. He clung to a ladder, then reached out for every doorway through the house as I did my best to encourage him. Once in her car, he made one final attempt to reach out to me – I didn’t see his arms and I accidentally shut the door on them. Samuel had had enough, and I’d had enough. Knowing full well how my email would be interpreted, I had to at least try to explain the incident to Aida.
I wasn’t being entirely honest when I told her I didn’t think Samuel was picking sides, or that he loved one parent more than the other. I said he was simply being a normal kid who at times preferred being at home. I was asking for her help, while at the same time letting her know that I couldn’t see myself physically forcing Samuel again. But perhaps I was out of line when I suggested she consider spending more regular quality time alone with Samuel.

I never heard back from Aida, and I was grateful I hadn’t received another letter accusing me of parental alienation. Then, a few weeks later, as if nothing had happened, I received a message that her parents would be visiting. Brilliant, I thought. He loved his grandparents, and Samuel was always excited about spending time with them so I wouldn’t have any trouble convincing him to spend the weekend at his mother’s house. I was so relieved that they were in town, I never for a moment suspected Aida might be up to something. Perhaps I should have been more aware, but even if I had been there was absolutely nothing that I could have done differently. But I didn’t suspect a thing until Samuel wasn’t dropped off by his grandparents on Sunday afternoon. Without fail, they always called to confirm I was at home. Only this Sunday, there was no call, and no response to any of my frantic calls, messages, or emails. According to our agreement, Aida had a right to drop Samuel on Monday mornings at his kindergarten. However, she’d never previously taken advantage of this option. Still, I spent Monday morning trying to reach Aida and hustling to and from his kindergarten, hoping in vain to find him safely at school. Finally, I received a response from yet another new attorney which read: ‘Our client has enrolled Samuel at a new school in the northern suburbs of Cape Town as of the 18 March 2002. Our client has spoken to Doctor Charles Malcolm who has confirmed the original arrangement by following his advice. It is further our instructions that Doctor Malcolm is more than willing to facilitate the movement of Samuel between his parents.’
I’d heard of Doctor Malcolm during my previous application for custody of Jeremy. He’d been one of the three highly regarded clinical child psychiatrists whose assessments carried a lot of weight with the family advocates’ office. I couldn’t work out when or how he’d had an opportunity to evaluate Samuel’s situation, and I hadn’t been interviewed. On enquiry, he confirmed that he hadn’t assessed Samuel, and he assured me he would never advise a parent to make any changes to a child’s routine before concluding a thorough investigation. I immediately entered an urgent application to the High Court to consider placing Samuel back in my care pending an investigation.

My application stated that Aida’s actions had shown little or no insight into Samuel’s needs. He had been removed from his school, friends, home, and his primary caregiver without any psychological preparation to emotionally cope with the sudden change. I respectfully submitted that Samuel needed to be returned, pending a proper investigation regarding interim custody, pending action to obtain custody. I added that should it be decided that Samuel be returned to Aida, it should be done with the help of professionals and not in the way Aida had acted.
Aida’s attorney counter-argued that according to our current access agreement, mathematically, Aida spent more time with Samuel than I did. This may well have been the case if Aida had kept to the agreement, but I knew I could easily prove that she hadn’t. She’d apparently had no option but to take the drastic step of removing Samuel because our home life had been unsettling, inconsistent, and inconsiderate of Samuel’s needs. When my attorney raised Aida’s current live-in partner’s abusive behaviour towards Aida as the possible cause for Samuel’s reluctance to go to her, they countered with what I’d naively written off as attention-seeking – her urgent messages and her requests to meet at clandestine restaurants that nearly had me arrested. These were now used to portray me as an abusive ex-husband, someone who apparently couldn’t let go of her. And she falsely claimed I’d threatened her on numerous occasions with ‘If I can’t have you, then no one else will.’

Aida’s original decision to separate Ellen and Samuel had been based on the idea they would both receive better individual attention. Now everything was reversed. Jeremy’s return was considered of no benefit. Moving Samuel would give him more quality parental time. And Aida claimed to be the work at home parent – which any two-second investigation would reveal as false. We hadn’t included Macy’s testimony nor her concern that her daughter may have been sexually abused by Martin because we believed it would be determined through the investigation. But that didn’t stop them from implying that Samuel might have been sexualised while in my care. And as expected, Aida concluded her affidavit with, ‘Bearing the history of drugs, violence, and abusive behaviour, I do not believe it is in my son’s interest to spend any more time with his father.’
Still, my attorney and the advocate employed to present my case were both confident that the court rarely declined an application for an investigation into the best interest of any child. And I was confident that the truth would easily be revealed through a thorough investigation. Except it was all over in what felt like less than a minute. The presiding judge had already made his decision based on our affidavits and his understanding of the law. So he immediately interrupted my advocate with his decision before our argument could be presented. It read as follows:

‘The child belongs with the mother, her choice to leave him in the care of his father is the right of a custodial parent, she has the right to now decide differently and is merely fulfilling her right and duty afforded to and expected from the custodial parent.’

In other words, there would be no investigation for Samuel. And with that decision, my sanity left the room. At that moment, I realized it was within me to commit murder and so much more.

SCREAMING
My inner self had been shattered by the few words that Andrew had uttered at the end of our Just for Today meeting. Fortunately, I’d decided to continue seeing Kathy, the clinical psychologist who Aida and I had been referred to for counselling. I kept a regular weekly appointment primarily because I often desperately needed help with trying to understand Aida’s behaviour and knowing how to best respond to her. Often it was simply a safe space to vent my frustrations. However, Kathy always managed to squeeze in some pretty useful information. And I particularly appreciated her guidance regarding my children. She helped me understand what to tell them, and when to tell it, explaining their mothers’ often inexplicable behaviour. She coached me on what vocabulary to use, and even how to structure my sentences, to best inform and protect them at the same time.

Fuck it! I’m still consciously sidestepping the subject. So, here’s what happened to me in the meeting. In the last year and a half of my marriage to Valeria I started experiencing flashbacks during the height of intimacy, and specifically whenever I was about to climax. I couldn’t place the image; I had no idea where it came from or what it meant. I clearly and accurately recall being groomed by a neighbour when I was eight years old. But this flashback was not about what transpired when I was eight. This image is from much earlier when I was still a toddler – I estimate about three or four years old. An image of a dick been forcibly and violently rammed down my throat. At first I tried to ignore it and hoped that it would just disappear. But it relentlessly pursued me and persistently reappeared whenever I was having sex. Instead of finding the courage to get honest with Valeria and potentially find help, I tried everything else. It called into question my sexual orientation as I asked myself if I was perhaps suppressing hidden desire. I wondered if it meant I was gay. But that made no sense. Firstly, I live in Cape Town, which along with Sydney, Australia, and San Francisco, is one of the gay capitals of the world. Coming out would not have been a problem – it may even have been to my advantage. But more importantly, I’m pretty sure that I’m simply just not sexually attracted to men. Ultimately, I decided that the best I could do was to avoid reaching that point of climax – which I then managed to convince myself made me a better lover.

Somehow, Andrew’s mumbled words at the end our Just for Today meeting triggered the image I’d been avoiding for more than a decade. Only on this occasion, it had attached itself to an image of my father. In therapy, and with a fair bit of my own research, I started learning about dissociative amnesia, repression, dissociative state, traumatic amnesia, psychogenic shock, or motivated forgetting. Semantics aside, to my untrained eye there seemed to be a near-universally acceptance that the mind is more than capable of subconsciously or consciously avoiding the recall of traumatic experiences. I expected that the process would take time and I was trying to keep it together. But I often caught myself screaming out loud.

So, I attempted to allow myself the space to scream as much as I wanted when I was alone in my car. In a way, it worked. I’d end up laughing at myself and wondering when I might be collected by men in white coats and taken away. Which was all kind of well and good, until I screamed while doing a school run with Samuel right next to me. I attempted to explain ‘I’m so sorry you heard me go off like that. I was hurt a long time ago. Then I couldn’t scream. I’m okay now. But sometimes it helps to scream.’
To which he responded, ‘Okay then, let’s scream together.’
We screamed competitively, audibly inhaling and getting louder and longer with each breath, until somewhat exhausted and pleased with ourselves we reached the school gates. I made a mental note to avoid doing that again.

But I wasn’t okay. I kept thinking about a comment my sister Abigail had recently made about how much I reminded her of our father. Now in my forties, I’d turned into the mirror image of my father. We share the same features, the same receding hairline, and the same unusually light-green eyes. I was trying to make sense of the impossible by piecing together bits of information. After the war, my father’s PTSD had turned into alcoholism. When I was about one or two years old, my father quit cold turkey without the use of a program. According to most addiction counsellors, sex is the most sought-after alternative to drugs and alcohol and potentially the most dangerous of umbrella addictions. If it turns into an addiction, it can potentially take any individual down an even darker path than the one they were on. Also, shortly after my father stopped drinking, by my mother’s admission they never had sex again. She simply could no longer bring herself to be intimate with him after she caught my father with her niece, who was staying with us at the time. I’d heard some pretty harrowing war stories on sex addition. But fuck it, could the man who I respected and loved so much, and who was unquestionably devoted to us, have gone down this path?

I removed all the photos of my father that had been scattered around our home, including my favourite picture of Jeremy, taken of him and his grandpa in their pyjamas snuggling together on the old corduroy couch. I packed the photos away while resisting an overwhelming urge to destroy them. Kathy, in one of our many sessions, asked me to consider why would any young child prefer wandering the streets at night compared to the relative safety and warmth of their home. And why was I outside, alone in the middle of the night? I knew what she was getting at, but I couldn’t answer her. Later, while shaving, I saw my father in myself, and involuntarily lashed out to smash the face in the mirror. Naturally, I destroyed the bathroom mirror along with the hated image of myself. Growing up, my father’s generation were always impeccably dressed and groomed, and none more so than my him. He shaved every morning without fail, polished his shoes the evening before, and even though his hair was thin my father spent a significant amount of time making sure he still looked good. But I knew that he’d never been able to grow a beard, so I decided to grow one and to shave my head instead.

DANIEL UNDERTAKES TO NOT CONTACT ELLEN
I’d live to regret discussing my divorce because Ellen must have overheard me. As Aida and I shared an attorney, I honestly believed that our divorce had been relatively uneventful. However, it’s often not the case. So, I guess I was simply trying to relate when a friend needed to discuss his tumultuous breakup. From my perspective, they seemed to be wasting an awful amount of time and money fighting over absolutely nothing important. But who was I to judge, when I hadn’t managed to let go of a few insignificant personal items that had since mysteriously disappeared.

However, it all went disastrously wrong when Ellen innocently produced my carving knife. I don’t know when Aida discovered that Ellen had found where my stuff was hidden. It had been a normal uneventful drop off after a weekend with Aida – except Ellen had brought my carving knife home with her. Before I’d had a chance to talk to Ellen, let alone think about how I should best handle the situation, Aida tore back up our driveway and went ballistic. Hysterically screaming at the two of us, she viciously grabbed Ellen by her arm, picked up the carving knife that was still lying on the table, helped herself to a wooden statue from the mantelpiece above the fireplace – which apparently shouldn’t have been sent to me – and dragged Ellen out. A terrified Ellen managed to escape before they reached the car and ran back to me. I didn’t have a chance to console Ellen, who was now sobbing uncontrollably, before she was violently torn from my arms with a final devastating, ‘You will never see Ellen again.’
I’d never felt so god damn, helpless before. All I could do was pray that Ellen would be okay and that Aida didn’t mean what she’d said. But I shouldn’t have underestimated Aida, because it only took two days for our attorney to hand me a letter, titled Access Arrangements Regarding Samuel and Ellen.

Kathy had been there for me throughout my divorce and the restart of my new life with my children. In our weekly sessions, I’d come to accept that I was dealing with a highly functional individual struggling with dual disorders. While an individual with Narcissistic Borderline Personality Disorder may well appear to be overly in love with their own image, it’s sadly quite the opposite. They struggle with feelings of self-loathing and fear. Fear of abandonment, loss of control, loss of resources and social standing, inferiority, inadequacy, and above all their fear of public exposure of their true character. At times we all share these same fears – but for people with NBPD, it’s a whole different ball game. They will devote their life energy to defending against these fears, and they’ll demand that their partners and children remain devoted to the same image of perfection. In part I could relate because of my own inexplicable feelings of inadequacy. But what I couldn’t accept was the behind-closed-doors and out-of-the-public-eye ruthless intimidation and criticism levelled at anyone who failed to meet her impossible standard of perfection.
But now, Ellen’s innocent action with my knife had essentially provoked the worst of Aida’s fears – her fear of being exposed for who and what she is. And I knew that anything could happen.
Kathy had already warned me. ‘Daniel’ she once said, ‘you’re dealing with someone stuck in a pre-verbal developmental phase. If eighteen-month-old babies were giants they’d all kill their parents. You simply cannot underestimate the lengths that the queen borderline will go to in order to defend against her fear of losing control of anything or anyone: her resources, money, material goods, and her perceived social and parental standing.’ Kathy’s practice borders the southern rail line, so she’d paused to allow for a rumbling train to pass. Then she continued to explain that border-lions, as some prefer to call them, are masters of deception. They are extraordinarily gifted at convincing others about their version of events. With the mindset of an eighteen-month-old that screams, ‘You didn’t give me what I wanted, when I wanted it, now I destroy you,’ they’ll stop at nothing. They will lie, commit crimes, use their children, friends, and family to smear, defame, and abuse you. They’ll manipulate others to do their dirty work for them, including law enforcement – as I’d already experienced.

I’d kept it together throughout our divorce and while still working with Aida. But I’d lost Ellen, and I didn’t know what to do or how to protect her. The document I’d just asked Kathy to read had been drawn up by our attorney. However, from my perspective it didn’t appear to be worth the paper it was written on. It clearly stated that it did not constitute a variation to the custody arrangement of Samuel as defined in our divorce order. If I agreed to Aida’s terms Samuel would remain in my care, which should have been cause for celebration. But I’d have to give up Ellen and any hope of seeing her again. The document clearly stated, ‘Daniel undertakes not to contact and to make no attempt to contact Ellen until professional advisers in consultation with yourselves individually, and/or together, suggest otherwise.’ It was such a double-edged clause, but perhaps there was still some hope.
I’d just paid such a devastating price for not being able to let go of a few unimportant personal items, so I knew I needed to be careful. It still bothered me that I’d have to continue paying Aida for Samuel’s maintenance. In the normal course of family law it’s generally expected that parents support their children according to their financial standing, and any audit would reveal that Aida was clearly in a much better position than I was. However, after years of living with Aida I knew better than to challenge her about anything to do with money.

It took a while, but Ellen got to see a child psychologist – but only after she’d fallen behind at school and they decided to intervene. The assessment, and particularly the closing statement, broke my heart. It said, ‘Ellen was struggling because of her many losses’ and it ‘recommended that she be allowed to continue having regular contact with Daniel.’ However, it also said the psychologist would not be drawn into any legal dispute. I can only hope that Ellen will someday forgive me and understand I didn’t have a chance of getting a court to intervene, and every chance of losing Samuel if I tried. I did, however, try pleading with Aida, hoping that sooner or later Ellen would be allowed to visit. But Aida only responded by asking me to pack up Ellen’s decorative fairy room and have it sent to them. Without being allowed to see Ellen and to assure her, I could only hope her room would remind her of just how much I loved her.

I couldn’t let go, nor do I believe that I was supposed to. For a little over two years, I wrote a letter to Ellen every day in my journal. Then early one morning, a classic song by the Beatles made it possible for me to hand her over to the care of God. ‘When I find myself in times of trouble . . . Let it be . . . And when the broken-hearted . . . Let it be . . . For though they may be parted . . . There will be an answer. Let it be, let it be . . .’
I’m not Ellen’s biological father. But frankly, I simply don’t see the difference. I know that I’ll never stop loving her and I’ll never forget the incredible bundle of joy she was. Our long walks, car surfing, playing dress-up, styling her gorgeous blond hair, experimenting with everything from classic beehive to Caribbean-maid hairstyles, and our wonderful bedtime routine, ‘May I kiss your cheeks goodnight?’ And I’ll never forget Ellen’s delightful giggle. I just hope she knows that she’ll forever be my gorgie-girl and – while it feels somewhat insufficient to say – I’ll always be there for her in any way that I can.

JEREMY RETURNS
Three months after Ellen was taken, Jeremy returned from Australia for the Christmas holidays. We’d been in regular contact but we still couldn’t wait to see him. What neither Valeria nor I knew was that Jeremy was back for good. Don’t get me wrong, I was more than overjoyed that he’d decided he wanted to stay.
Jeremy never wanted to speak about what he’d been through with Aida, but he always needed to question me whenever he’d spent time with his mother. I heard it all before, and I partially understood that Valeria needed to justify why she’d left her children behind in another country. Despite knowing what was being said about me, I still considered Valeria to be a friend – and a good one at that – based on our interactions. We’d previously discussed this very issue in one or more of our many lengthy conversations. She already knew that rightly or wrongly, kids generally are very quick to forgive. I thought we both understood that Jeremy desperately needed his mother, and he was not interested in discussing or hearing about the past. Yet somehow, she couldn’t let go. Her bullshit only served to aggravate her husband, who’d previously threatened to have me killed. This is exactly why I decided to pay for Jeremy while he was in Australia, even though I’d never asked for nor received any maintenance from Valeria when he was with me. Unfortunately, Valeria kept the truth from her husband about my contribution. So it didn’t make the difference I intended, and it didn’t prevent her husband from taking his frustrations out on Gareth and Jeremy.

Naturally, I was ecstatic that Jeremy was back. However, with South Africa’s new affirmative action policies and laws the writing was on the wall for young white males, and I didn’t think there was much of a future for Jeremy in South Africa. So as much as I had missed him, I was disappointed things hadn’t worked out better in Australia. That aside, I was once again back on trial, feeling compelled to answer Jeremy’s questions. I understood Jeremy wanted, possibly needed, to believe his mother’s version of events. However, as far as I’m concerned the evidence against her is irrefutable. Her primary piece of evidence – an email I sent her the month before she left – she views as evidence against me, but I believe it exonerates me. I don’t want to come across as arrogant, but in a way I’m glad she’s held onto it because I don’t have a copy. And I wish I did. Because while I had full legal custody of Jeremy, she still had sole custody of Gareth who she also chose to leave behind in South Africa. However, even if she had asked I wouldn’t have let Jeremy leave the country with her. In my opinion, she was just too unsettled at that time – and Jeremy was far too young.
I did ask myself just how much I was supposed to share with a fifteen-year-old. But no one’s perfect. So, I thought I’d start by admitting that during our marriage I wasn’t a perfect husband. There was still a fair bit of insecure asshole in me, which could easily be interpreted as aggressive behaviour by today’s standards. And yes, I did send Valeria that email which could easily be read as a threat. In it, I asked her to please stop getting Jeremy all worked up and excited about the wonderful land of Oz, inhabited by cuddly koala bears gorging themselves on eucalyptus leaves and big-footed kangaroos carrying adorable baby joeys snuggled in their mother’s pouches. This was all well and good if we were talking about him visiting for the holidays. Only that’s not how Jeremy saw it. He thought he was going with her, and I asked her to make that distinction clear to him. She’d already left her job, and to her credit she was seeing Jeremy almost every day. So yes, I did threaten to restrict the unlimited access she current enjoyed if she didn’t get honest with him and assist me in preparing him for her departure. However, I never followed through with the threat, and I never did restrict her access.

After Valeria left, I ensured that Jeremy was always available to take her calls. When she was able to see him, I sent him for a visit to Australia, and I was happy he was getting to see his mum again. But I was guilty of blocking Valeria during my first few months of marriage to Aida. It was a difficult period of adjustment for all concerned. On one side, I had Valeria who had started calling more frequently than usual, and on the other side I had Aida who had started to insist on being called mum. So when we moved, I took the cowardly way out by not informing Valeria of our changed phone number. It was my responsibility to keep Valeria informed of any changes and it was a shitty move. But it wasn’t an unlisted number. All Valeria needed to do was to ask a family member or a friend and they could have given it to her. At that time I considered us friends, so she could have called me – preferably on my mobile – and I would have found a way to resolve the problem without creating more chaos at home for Jeremy and me. But then again, Valeria shouldn’t have been put in a position of having to ask and I should have done a lot better.

On the upside, the mini-interrogation presented me with an opportunity to apologize for essentially abandoning Jeremy during my marriage to Aida. And since he was back, I’d have a chance to make it up to him. I started with getting him enrolled in a school – which wasn’t going to be an easy task. Many would consider our neighbourhood to be one of the best school districts in the country. Because of this, parents need to start planning their child’s schooling practically from birth. It took a bit of running around and Jeremy had to skip a grade because the school could only accommodate him for his final two years of high school. There was so much going on: I had a new business to take care of and my work with Kathy regarding my father had barely gotten off the ground when Ellen was taken. I was still pleading with Aida when Jeremy walked back into our lives. Because he was back at home, I felt certain that Ellen would have loved to see us all together again.

ASKING MUM
Kathy had explained that I was just too young and that flashbulb memories are subject to considerable decay. She also added that recent studies had found the average age for one’s first re-callable memory for women is 3.3 years, and for men it’s 3.7 years. However, in a childhood with a history of severe sexual, physical, or emotional abuse the average age for women’s first memory is 6.5 years, and for men it’s 5.7 years. Or as I understood it, the earliest memory I could possibly have would be from when I was either three and a half or five and a half. Depending on my age and the level of stress, the more pronounced my memory loss might well be. There was a strong possibility I was experiencing memory loss or dissociative amnesia because of being severely traumatized. I thought my mother should be able to enlighten me.

On my way to Mum’s house, I thought about the game she and I played and whether I was engaged in some kind of sacred contract – one in which I was a willing participant. I’d recently had a discussion with a friend who’d been examining the nature of her past and current relationships. She’d found Sacred Contracts, a book written by Caroline Myss, particularly helpful. It encouraged her to revisit the terms and conditions of the contracts she’d signed up for.
‘For example,’ she said, ‘sometimes it goes like this. We say, okay, let’s get together and set up house. I will do everything, but you don’t need to do anything. Or, I will be kind to you and you can abuse me.’ And she finished with, ‘We don’t actually say it out loud, but our respective spirits negotiate these terms.’
I thought I might want to read Caroline’s book someday. But I was good with the relationship I had with my mother. I liked being there for her, and I honestly didn’t mind listening to her repetitive stories about her childhood. Physical contact, hugging my mum, used to be damn near impossible. So in a strange way, being entrusted with her story allowed me to hold the brave, neglected little girl that she once was. If I had a contract with my mum, it was that she talked and I listened. In my mind’s eye, I’d hold her and tell how brave she was and how well she had done. If there was anything to renegotiate with my mum, I would have asked for more focus on how well things were going, on some of my small successes, and on what made me happy. But I guess that wasn’t a part of our deal, and possibly represented a breach of contract. She’d instantly lose interest until I spoke about how awful the world was or what I was struggling with, then she’d light up again.

But today was not the day to be thinking about negotiating. I needed to ask her if she knew anything about what might have happened to me as a child – and if she thought that my father had possibly been involved. Mum had come a long way since my teenage years. Now, I could cup her face, look her in the eye and gently kiss her forehead. Occasionally I’d attempt a hug. She always seemed genuinely pleased to see me. I’d follow her to the kitchen and watch her fill the kettle with just the right amount of water. ‘Electricity costs so much,’ she’d say, as she selected a used teabag – according to Mum, they were good for at least three cups. God, I love my mother. Calling mum frugal would be an understatement – she has got to be the most fastidious saver that I’ve ever met. She was pretty good with numbers and religiously saved twenty per cent of my father’s wages without exception.
She wouldn’t accept help, let alone ask for it, not even in her old age – something she had decided upon as a young girl. While struggling with arthritis, she repainted her own home, one wall at a time. I foolishly sent a crew around once only to have them chased off. ‘Daniel, you know I’ll never ask anyone for anything,’ she said, and then launched into her long-walk-home-empty-handed-from-her-aunt’s-house story. I got the same treatment when I offered to replace the old corduroy couch. The once grooved fabric had far surpassed the manufacturer’s recommended rub count. But mum was still determined to repair that rogue spring on the right side. So I sat on the left side as mum finished recalling her siblings hiding in terror and the local police station’s indifference to yet another of her mother’s regular beatings.

In a way, the nature of our relationship made it easier to initiate the subject.
I started with, ‘I’m still seeing Kathy.’
Leaning forward to pick up her cigarettes and lighter, she asked, ‘Who’s that?’
‘You know, my therapist’ I replied.
Blowing smoke towards the open door, she asked, ‘Why do you keep wasting your money?’
Even though it was more of a statement, I still answered, ‘Mostly, I’m trying to understand Aida and how best to protect our children.’
To which she responded with yet another of her pragmatic statements, disguised as a question, ‘Why don’t you just stay away from her?’ I didn’t want to debate the point because I needed to change the subject.
‘Perhaps you’re right,’ I responded, while thinking of Samuel and Ellen. ‘But that’s not what I want to ask you about. I’ve been experiencing what Kathy calls a flashback memory,’ I said while looking at my untouched cup of tea, then added ‘I think I was sexually abused.’
‘I told you not to think about that,’ she immediately replied. I waited then, to allow her to finish telling me about her brothers who had died while being treated for depression. She finished with, ‘I didn’t like Booker. He was just like my father. Terrible temper. He used to scare me. Still, it wasn’t right what happened to him.’
‘Yes, I remember you telling me to forget about it. And it kind of worked,’ I answered. ‘But I’m not talking about after we’d moved or when I was eight years old. I have a horrible image, a memory from when I was much younger. I think I was only three or four.’
‘Was it the guy from the flats?’ she asked. Then continued, ‘The one who made those movies with you children dressed up as cowboys and Indians?’ She answered herself, ‘We knew he was up to no good.’
Thrown for a loop, I wanted to ask who was we, and the if guy was suspected, why were children allowed to be with him in the first place without some form of adult supervision? Before our conversation went south, I thought I best ask about what I really needed to know.
‘I think dad might have.’ I said.
Mum, who was busily stubbing her cigarette out, looked shocked and immediately responded. ‘Daniel you’re crazy, or it’s those drugs you took with Aida. It could never have been your father. He liked women, not boys.’
She kept going. ‘When would he have had the chance? He worked every night and was only home on Tuesdays for my night off. My movie night with the girls. Remember, I came home early and caught him with my niece. Daniel, he liked girls. I threw her out. I never forgave him and after that, I never had sex with him again.’
I was trying to process what I’d just heard, while mum ran through a list of relatives or potential suspects: one of my dad’s cousins, or two husbands of girls from her Tuesday movie circle. As a family, we didn’t socialize much, except with one of my mother’s aunts whose family we regularly saw on Saturdays. Thankfully, none of them were on mum’s list. We only saw other people on special occasions.
‘They liked children.’ I heard my mother say. As I swigged some lukewarm tea, mum casually continued describing their modus operandi. ‘Uncle Brian always wore shorts. He always left his massive one hanging out. You must have seen it . . . He used sweets to get children to play with it . . . In front of his wife and daughter. Uncle Rodger was a soccer coach. Now, he liked boys . . . He’d buy boots and other bits of kit for the children whose parents couldn’t afford to. He’d have some boys over during our movie nights . . . Amy knew all about him. Uncle Gavin liked little girls . . . He was good with his hands, could fix anything. Liked to show them how to build things . . . He’s dead now but it came out, that he messed with his granddaughter . . . Andrew, his son, is still very angry with him.’

It was such a bizarre feeling listening to my mother casually recounting the grooming behaviours of men who we used to call family. I felt like one of her girlfriends listening to what was discussed at the movies. The sixties were a different era – every neighbourhood had a suspected paedophile, or that strange uncle in their family. They were considered weird, and we might have been told to stay away. But other than children being warned, very little else seemed to be done about them. While her recollection blew me away, I realized that from my mother’s perspective, this was just how men behaved.
However, she remained adamant that it couldn’t possibly have been my father.
‘Not your dad, he wouldn’t hurt anyone,’ she said and proceeded to remind me how he even quit drinking after my sister Abigail refused to hug him. ‘He never touched a drop of alcohol again because she didn’t like how he smelt.’
As I left, she reminded me about her brothers who had both died in the same treatment centre. While it had subsequently become one of Cape Town’s leading addiction facilities, to Mum it was still the same.
She said goodbye with, ‘Be careful of those therapists. They put all kinds of shit in your head.’

JEREMY LEAVES FOR AUSTRALIA
With nowhere else to go, Jeremy and I had moved in with my mother and were sharing a room. So I mostly slept on the couch while I tried to figure out how to re-build.
It was odd, the restraining order was kept in place but I still had to work with Aida on a daily basis. However, with the current political climate, it was still without question the best – perhaps the only – option available to me. In the business, I was responsible for sales and marketing, design, logistics, and production – basically every aspect of the business, apart from the books and finances which remained solely under Aida’s control. However, with my financial background, it wasn’t too difficult for me to accurately estimate how we were performing on a monthly, quarterly, or annual basis. It wasn’t all bad. The business was performing well, and my position in the company had significantly improved. As a direct result of a failed attempt to merge with a competitor, Aida had acquired two new directors, myself and one of the partners from the competitive company. On the other hand, despite knowing that we were doing well, I never knew if I’d get paid. Aida had appointed our company’s attorney to file for divorce and sometimes he simply informed me that my salary had been seconded to cover Aida’s household expenses.

It must have been unsettling for Jeremy. On top of all that he’d already been through in my marriage, I was now a recovering addict. I’d lost our home and he’d been separated from his brother and sister, as well as the close friends he’d made. Additionally, the precarious position I found myself in didn’t help. After graduating, Gareth had moved to Australia. Feeling lonely with the loss of the majority of his immediate family, Jeremy was naturally spending a lot of time on the phone with Gareth. Gareth had fallen in love with Australia and had already adopted their accent. Jeremy, who’d previously spent a summer holiday there with Valeria, hadn’t really taken to it. So, while I understood, I was devastated – and I hate to say partially relieved – when Jeremy asked if he could join his brother in Australia.

AIDA MOVES TO THE NORTHERN SUBURBS
Aida finally settled on the suit that I’d been told about, and before long she chose to move in with him. In many ways, Cape Town has a small-town mentality where everyone seems to know each other’s business. As he was on the procurement director board for one of South Africa’s largest retail chains, several of my closest friends from the fashion world knew all about him. It didn’t take long before they felt obliged to inform me about the physical abuse his previous wife and stepchildren had been through with him. And it wasn’t long before I started
hearing from some of our mutual friends, and from Aida herself, about the raging arguments they were having – one of which included him attacking Aida’s prized collection of Victoria’s Secret lingerie and cutting them to shreds. He then replaced them with some dowdy white foundation garments usually sold in packs of three.

I didn’t know what to make of what I was hearing. For one, I couldn’t imagine this guy, or anyone for that matter, being able to physically abuse Aida. There was no doubt in my mind that Aida had been born with that sporting gene. She’d excelled as an athlete, and I had first-hand knowledge of just how capable she was. Aida, with her fist full of oversized rings that she loved wearing, could hit me faster and harder than any man I knew. It was like being struck by a man wearing a set of knuckledusters with sharp edges that tore into your flesh. We were separated pending the finalization of our divorce and she was living with Martin, but legally she was still my wife. I didn’t know what I was supposed to do or how I was meant to react. Especially because I was already concerned about being dragged into their relationship more than I wanted to be.

As everyone knows, when children are involved you have no alternative other than to get along, or at least pretend to get along. But with Aida it was damn near impossible, and I certainly tried. Without fail, I responded to every message and every call, even after I’d been screamed at and told to stop harassing her – which I felt was for the benefit of Martin.
And I showed up every time she asked to meet, even though I had a restraining order hanging over my head and never knew what I might be getting myself into. At times, she’d arrive half an hour or more late. Once she arrived while I happened to be on a call, grabbed my phone, dumped it in my drink, and walked out. I had mixed feelings about these meetings. She would usually ask to meet at some obscure restaurant I didn’t even know existed, which made me feel like we were engaged in an extramarital affair. But then, it also told me maybe she really was afraid of this guy. At the very least, she didn’t want to be caught or seen with me. Aida could be a bit of a lunatic, but in a strange way she was still my lunatic and one that I was accustomed to. However, above all, she would always be the mother of two of my children. Mostly, Aida appeared to genuinely want to know if we could work on our marriage. But unfortunately, she either wasn’t ready or she wasn’t prepared to be honest with me. So she kept insisting that Martin was only a good friend who was helping her out. Perhaps I should have said no to working on our marriage, but I never did. I did have two conditions, however. One: that we continue working with the therapist her attorney had advised us to see. And two: that whether Martin was a friend or something more, she couldn’t continue living with him.

Our clandestine meetings finally came to an end after I’d been invited to Martin’s house. We’d gotten into the same old conversation only this time, very much to my surprise, she suggested that I follow her home where she’d be happy to let Martin tell me for himself. Aida got way ahead, but I wasn’t in a hurry. I’d been caught off guard and I honestly wasn’t sure if I was being played, or if I even wanted to meet this character. I should have trusted my gut. I did get to meet Martin. He only came down to ask me to leave, which I was more than happy to do. However, I couldn’t stop myself from letting him know that I had been invited. Before I could say anything more the police arrived, and I found myself briefly detained.

At the back of our offices, Aida tearfully asked me to work on our marriage one last time. However, all I could bring myself to do was offer her the same two conditions. We were amicably divorced in January 2001. I never got to go back to our designer house, but I did receive my allocated share of furnishings. Only everything I received was intentionally broken or torn in one way or another. It wasn’t a big deal, none of it was all that important to me. However, I was seriously annoyed to find that I hadn’t received a few personal items that had been stipulated in our agreement. Naturally, I’d asked for copies of our photos of the children, and I especially wanted my collection of photos of Jeremy from before we met Aida. While we remained in constant contact, I missed Jeremy terribly and it felt like I was never going to see him again, so I would have really appreciated having those memories to keep. Crucially, the court had granted me access to Samuel for eight days out of each two-week cycle. I enjoyed having Ellen and Samuel for more time than I had expected, and should anything change, my right to access was now protected by law.

TOWNHOUSE
When Jeremy confronted me, I instinctively knew that I had to get him away from Aida. But that meant leaving Ellen and Samuel behind. I remember thinking no parent should ever be asked to choose between children. Yet, somehow, history seemed to be repeating itself. Considering my precarious work situation, I thought I’d best move quickly while I still had a good credit score. Thankfully, I managed to secure a townhouse that was ten minutes from Ellen’s school and practically within walking distance to Samuel’s kindergarten. So before long, I once again found myself functioning as a single parent.

I intentionally renovated our townhouse to look and feel like the Tuscan-style home the children were accustomed to. We didn’t have space for a swimming pool, but I managed to install a Jacuzzi in the backyard that they could use all year round. In our front garden as an added extra, I built a treehouse complete with ladders and ropes. Then I extended it to link up to monkey bars, a slide, and a set of swings. Naturally, I went to town on decorating their rooms. Ellen’s room became the magical world of mythical wee folk, where fairies with delicate wings dwell. And I turned Samuel’s room into a hanger housing all kinds of aircraft, from vintage model planes that we painstakingly built together to others that he could build, fly, destroy, and scatter all by himself. Once ready, I could hardly wait to show the kids our new home.

Together, they quickly tore through the ground floor. Samuel tried out the swings, where we’d ultimately spend a lot of time singing ‘Fly me to the moon and let me play among the stars.’
They were about to abandon their clothes for the bubbling water of the spa, but I was still waiting for the jacuzzi to warm up and I wanted them to see their rooms. So I suggested, ‘Why not check out your rooms, they’re upstairs.’ I waited a moment to give them a chance to absorb the details of the creative endeavour I was especially proud of. I’m confident Ellen loved her room, but it wasn’t the first thing on her mind. With an all-consuming hug, she paid me the best compliment that I could ever have hoped for: ‘My bedroom is next to yours, Dad.’

I was in my element, making up for lost time and relishing every moment I had with them. I only wished that Jeremy could be back home with us. We marched and stomped our way to school singing the Seven Dwarves’ song ‘Hey Ho, Hey Ho, it’s off to school we go.’ Bedtime stories ended with coy giggling sessions of ‘May I kiss your forehead goodnight? May I kiss your ears goodnight? May I kiss your chin goodnight? What about your nose? Let me think . . . what have I left out? Right, may I kiss your cheeks goodnight?’ And finally, ‘May I kiss your eyes goodnight?’ Ellen would answer with a protracted, ‘YYYess.’ Before kissing each eye, I’d end with, ‘Okay then, close your eyes. It’s time to go to sleep.’

When Aida decided to move in with Martin, the children were in essence already living with me. To her credit, she decided that she wasn’t going to disrupt their schooling. But that move made it practically impossible for her to participate in school runs. I didn’t contest our divorce. Hell, I didn’t even try to find my own attorney. My lack of action may be considered foolish, and ordinarily I’d agree. But from my perspective, Aida held all the cards. In any court of law, I’d unquestionably be seen as a recovering addict who’d recently violated the conditions of a restraining order. I felt certain that if our divorce turned nasty there was a strong possibility that I’d never get to see Ellen and Samuel again. So, even though the kids were essentially in my care, I accepted that I’d have to pay Aida a rather substantial amount in maintenance. But I’d been down this road before, and all that mattered to me was I was spending way more time with Ellen and Samuel than I ever had.

BUSINESS CLOSURE
The merger we’d embarked upon had been a costly affair. But then, we hadn’t done our homework and we hadn’t called for any warranties. Still, in the process I’d acquired shares and the new director, Frank, had shown himself to be a competent and decent fellow. But there must have been a discussion that I wasn’t privy to. What I’d all along suspected might happen after our divorce finally did. I was called in to be told that my services were no longer required. I was out, and then a few months later I was back in when our attorney called me for a meeting at his office. I thought – or at least hoped – the meeting would involve some form of payout. Instead, he handed me two letters of resignation. One from Aida, much to my surprise, and the other from Frank.

A quick review of the books told me I’d been handed the keys to a technically insolvent business. And one in which all three directors were still personally, legally liable. I agreed to do my best to reduce our exposure. On that condition, we all agreed to sign away half of our holdings in favour of our staff. With that agreement in hand, I set about motivating the staff to tackle the next few back-to-back trade shows. Our staff performed brilliantly, and we picked up the lion’s share of available business. For the next quarter, we delivered award-winning exhibition stands at a fraction of our usual cost and walked away with almost every design award from the shows we targeted. Thanks to an incredible effort from the staff, in less than four months, we substantially reduced the overall debt of the business and halved the personal exposure of all three directors.

I’d signed my part of the agreement our attorney had prepared for us. But I hadn’t followed up and checked whether Frank and Aida had signed theirs. I’d incorrectly assumed that I’d be informed if there had been a problem. So, when I finally did get hold of our attorney I discovered that they’d changed their minds. They’d now decided their shares were a lot more valuable. In addition to being relieved from their guarantees, they now expected to be paid a further one million rand each. And that just happened to be the least of the problems the attorney felt morally obligated to advise on. Some historical bookkeeping irregularities had recently been brought to his attention – the kind which earn you a go-straight-to-jail card. Whether I knew and had participated or not didn’t matter, as I’d accepted the other directors’ letters of resignation. As the sole remaining director, I would be held solely responsible. The attorney ultimately advised me to shut the business down, and to get it done as quickly as possible.

I closed the old company and formed a new, similar venture. It was a scary moment at the end of the year, which coincided with the end of our trading calendar. I felt awful for dangling the prospect of ownership in a company that I’d have to close. I was only able to offer shares in a newly formed company to a selected small minority of my former staff – those who were the best to hang onto. And it strangely bothered me that Aida would be held solely responsible for the remainder of our commercial lease. Aida had called me, during the time when my services were no longer required, to request my surety for the renewal of our lease. Naturally, I declined. But I also noted that because our landlord hadn’t previously called for personal guarantees it shouldn’t be necessary. As it turned out, neither Frank nor I had signed. But even though I’d advised against it, Aida had gone ahead and added her surety to the new lease agreement.

We all had a difficult holiday period to get through. Frank found a new partner, and Aida managed to secure the liquidated stock at auction for a fraction of the cost. I never entered a bid for the stock, even when asked. I wasn’t even sure I wanted to continue. And the last thing I wanted was to provoke Aida any more than the closure of the business already had. At the time, if there was anything I could do that allowed me to spend the same amount of time I currently enjoyed with my children, and which allowed me to provide for my family at the level they were accustomed to, I would have grabbed it with both hands. I had no other options – well, at least none that I could come up with. I’d given away half the shares in the new company to the select few people I’d managed to retain. We collectively decided, where humanly possible, to avoid past clients, and we agreed to keep the business small enough I could operate it from home. Aida reopened in the northern suburbs, in an industrial park located behind Martin’s head office. And thankfully, she managed to employ the bulk of the remaining staff that I’d been unable to accommodate.

GREENMARKET SQUARE
With children and a new business to attend to, I hurriedly made my way across the historic cobbled square en route to an express lunchtime meeting of Narcotics Anonymous. Greenmarket Square, the second oldest public space in Cape Town, has served as a slave market, a vegetable market, and a parking lot. More recently, in the late 80s, it had transformed into a small bustling market filled with African souvenirs, clothing, and hand-crafted jewellery stalls. You can buy canvas artworks, ornaments, leather goods and so much more. It is located in the heart of the central business district, with restaurant tables spilling out onto the square, visitors and office workers alike are spoilt for choice with a variety of cuisines from around the globe. On any given corner, you’ll be entertained by buskers, street performers, and tribal dance troupes, as they jostle for space alongside the traders. African dance is as much a part of my life as eating and breathing. The dance uses a progression of steps and movements to keep local community life safe, friendly, and lively. Besides being a fun activity, it’s an independent language. To the rhythm of drumbeats, it narrates the troupe’s customs and reinforces the developmental stages of adulthood.

During the apartheid era, Greenmarket Square was often the focus of political protests because of its proximity to parliament and the ethnic diversity of its traders. In 1989, in what became known as the Purple Rain protest against apartheid, protesters were met by police with a water cannon vehicle containing a purple dye as they arrived at Greenmarket Square. When a brave protester attempted to redirect the canon away from the crowds, adjacent white office blocks along with early Cape Dutch architectural gems were painted purple. The Old Town House, an exquisite little art museum with its proud three-arched porch and extravagant mouldings didn’t escape the dye. And the Central Methodist Church, a Victorian Gothic creation, had its windows smashed in by the force of the jet. Before the day was over, hundreds of protesters were identified by the purple dye and arrested.

THE CENTRAL METHODIST CHURCH
A comfortable walk from the square, the Buitenkant Street Methodist Church used to serve the people of District Six until the area was declared a White Group Area in 1966. During that turbulent time, the congregations of both Methodist churches actively participated in the resistance to apartheid and particularly resisted the demolition of District Six. Despite forced removals, detention, and harassment, the congregations continued to commute from the suburbs for Sunday services. Above and beyond worship services, the congregations never lost their passion for caring. In 1976 the Stepping Stones Children’s Centre was started to cater for the children of working parents. In 1988 the two congregations amalgamated to form the Central Methodist Mission and the church on Greenmarket Square became the venue for many anti-apartheid meetings. Protest meetings were held in the church regularly and in 1990, after the unbanning of the ANC, the Metropolitan Hall hosted the organisation’s first press conference, where large crowds gathered to listen to Nelson Mandela. Today, the Buitenkant Street church venue graciously hosts the District Six Museum, which still bears the church’s Plaque of Shame mounted on the wall to remind passers-by of the injustices that took place.

It reads: ‘All who pass by remember with shame the many thousands of people who lived for generations in District Six and other parts of this city and were forced by law to leave their homes because of the colour of their skins. Father, forgive us.’
Today, the church continues its outreach to the people of the city through projects such as Ons Plek (Our Place), a shelter for female street children, the Stepping Stones Children’s Centre, and the hosting of Narcotics Anonymous lunchtime meetings. It holds a sixty-minute service to provide soup and bread for the homeless and hungry under a banner displaying the words of Nelson Mandela, ‘Let there be work, bread, water and salt for all.’

JUST FOR TODAY
I’d completed the suggested ninety meetings in ninety days and I pretty much continued attending daily meetings. The lunchtime express meetings worked for me because they conveniently didn’t interfere with my family life, and I also got so much from the meetings’ format which focused on a reading from the Just for Today book of daily reflections. I didn’t know if I was an addict or not. But I could relate to a line from the preamble, which read, ‘We could not live and enjoy life as others do.’ I think it was Abraham Lincoln who once said, ‘We’re just about as happy as we make up our minds to be.’ Well, that’s just not how my brain works. However, I was pleased to discover that often making a gratitude list helped. So, I added making a list to my daily routine – even if I only made it in my mind. I particularly enjoyed making my list while driving. My list included the usual: health, enough business, a roof over my head, my father for his devotion, my mother for breaking the cycle of violence, and especially my children. But I additionally enjoyed coming up with enough new ideas, to keep me entertained till I reached my destination. As I climbed the stairs to the Ubuntu Room at the back of the church, I signed off with, ‘Thank you for the ever-present, warm, welcoming smiles of the Methodist staff.’

I arrived halfway through the opening prayer and joined in with ‘the courage to change the things I can and the wisdom to know the difference.’ Jessica’s shoes almost always caught my attention. While I usually prefer the understated, I have a thing for interesting colours and textures, and today she was wearing a pair of elaborately embroidered Punjabi jutti shoes. As an established fashion designer, she owned two clothing boutiques that catered for individual one-off creations for special events, as well a range of off-the-peg, ready to wear designer outfits. Embroidered with real gold and silver threads and decorated with precious gems, her colourful juttis dated back to a period of Indian royalty. Today, throughout India, artisans have continued their skillful tradition. However, now the beautiful vegetable-tanned leather is more commonly embellished with ornate cotton, brass nails, cowrie shells, mirrors, bells, and ceramic beads. Distracted, I’d only caught the beginning and the tail end of the reading from Just For Today. ‘We feared that if we ever revealed ourselves as we were, we would surely be rejected.’ It ended with ‘Just for today: I have opportunities to share my inner self. I will take advantage of those opportunities and draw closer to those I love.’

I’m usually focused during meetings. However, my thoughts seemed to be all over the place, and I was struggling to pay attention. I was still thinking about Jessica, thinking she must be working on a new range inspired by the Hindi culture of rich colours and fine fabrics, when the meeting was about to wrap up. The chairperson in his turn had already called for anyone with a burning issue to use the last five minutes to share. I was in a relatively good space with nothing significant to add, so I returned to thinking about the rather large back tattoo Jessica had. So, while I heard someone sharing something along the lines of ‘secrets keep us sick,’ I was thinking about the tattoo’s unique Celtic design inspired by elements of 12th-16th century western European architecture. Pretty much like the very building we were in, the architectural style is characterized by pointed arches, rib vaults, and the stunning tracery windows that had been smashed in during the Purple Rain protest. As beautiful as her tattoo was, it seemed somewhat out of place with the person I knew. She was in a romantic relationship with my sponsor, and from what I could tell, she truly seemed to be one of the kindest, most nurturing, and generous individuals that I’d had the pleasure of meeting.

I hope that I wasn’t been judgmental. I have a Celtic eternal knot with the names of my children – Gareth, Jeremy, Ellen and Samuel – woven into lines of endless love tattooed on my shoulder. Various highland clans use the knot to identify their bloodline, while others believe the knot symbolizes the eternal bond between a mother and her child. I chose mine because had I needed an intricate design that could cover a previous tattoo, and because I found the mother/child bond particularly appealing.

The meeting was almost over when Andrew, a creative director, decided to use what must have been the final minute to get something off his chest. Andrew had been a regular member of the lunchtime group for about the same amount of time as me. He was a quiet but friendly guy who loved rockabilly music. He was sitting shoulder to shoulder with me and if he hadn’t been, I don’t think I would have heard what he needed to share.
As if mumbling to himself, he said ‘My father was an alcoholic. His best friend and drinking partner, who also happened to be his boss, generally looked after my father both at work and when they went out. And he always got him home safely. If my father hadn’t already passed out, they’d have a few more rounds, until he . . .’ He paused mid-sentence and sat silently for a moment, then finished what he was trying to get out ‘. . . as soon as my father passed out, he’d come through to my room and get stuck into me.’ Andrew didn’t say much – he didn’t have to – and I’m not sure how many others heard him. We must have ended the meeting with the serenity prayer, and I remember hugging Andrew. But I forgot where I’d parked and set off in the wrong direction. Lost, I eventually had no option other than to use a City of Cape Town municipal bin to throw up in.