Can I tell you a story?

When I was 11 years old, we went for a family picnic. We were in St. James’s Park, London, which my father used to tell us was the Queen’s back garden. It was unseasonably warm for April and tourists swarmed around us, many of whom had also watched the midday display.

They're changing guard at Buckingham Palace – Christopher Robin went down with Alice. 

We were trying to recall the words of the poem our father used to read to us at bedtime. It was a family favourite, read to us from a navy blue hardback copy of ‘When We Were Very Young’ by A.A.Milne with thick, tea-coloured pages and a withered spine. 

Alice is marrying one of the guard. "A soldier's life is terrible hard," Says Alice.

The book had a kindly, musty smell. It was even older than my father, inscribed by his father in 1929, and we would hunt out the last verse of the 'The King's Breakfast', where Dad had dropped some chocolate when he was a child.

We saw a guard in a sentry-box. "One of the sergeants looks after their socks," Says Alice. 

We had glimpsed the guards in fuzzy busbies and pillar-box jackets marching in formation and my father was about to take a stroll back towards the palace. My older sister jumped to her feet and trotted after him. She was getting too old to be holding Daddy’s hand but held it out for him to squeeze anyway. As I turned around, I saw my mother gaze after them. Tugging at the grass by my feet, I kept one eye on her, as she seemed to drag her thoughts back to the present. 

“Fathers and daughters are just magical,” she whispered. 

Magical? I snorted. They’re only going to have a look over there.

But almost thirty years on, I have not forgotten the wistful look on her face as she watched my Dad and sister disappear from view that day. Nor can I escape the loaded sentiment in those words as I grew to learn more about her, and how her life took shape as a result of a father who didn’t hold her hand. 

***

The only time I remember meeting my maternal grandfather, I was 15 years old. We were in Cape Town, South Africa, for Christmas and had joined other family members for a gathering at my uncle’s house. I noticed Grandad from afar, sitting with two of my uncles at the bottom of the garden, undisturbed. I later encountered him walking towards the house. He held up his hand and stopped me. He was shorter and more petite than I had imagined, with snow-white wavy hair parted to the side. He peered at me through glasses with a thick upper frame that reminded me of the 1950s.

“Hello,” he said, “What’s your name?”

Snapshots flashed through my mind of my father’s parents giving us chocolate Easter eggs with our names in piped icing every year. They would always give us kisses hello, except when one of us had a cold. 

I smiled and told him my name. He drew from his pocket a folded piece of paper and ballpoint pen. He also asked for my birthday. I leant a little towards him and watched immaculate lettering curl across the paper. I had never seen anyone write with such a perfect script. He looked up, interrupting my gaze, and asked about my siblings' names and birthdays too.

He wrote it all down, leaving me wondering if perhaps we would hear from him now. Maybe we would get extra Christmas and birthday presents. I later told Mum, more out of amusement than sadness that he didn’t know our names, and recounted my surprise at his writing.

“Oh, he has beautiful handwriting,” she said, quietly, which was the only good thing I ever heard her say about him.

***

Mum was born in 1944, in Johannesburg, South Africa, a time when the country was gripped by Apartheid. The racial segregation that enabled white supremacy sparked fierce criticism worldwide, but among its faithful supporters stood my grandfather. Control at all costs, financially and emotionally, governed my mother’s life as she was growing up. My grandfather closely monitored the lives of all of his children: the books they read, the clothes they wore, the length of their hair. Pocket money was rare and always had to be accounted for. Popular music was frowned upon, and Grandad had a temper so fragile that when Bonnie Guitar’s 1957 catchy tune “Mister Fire Eyes” played over the airwaves on a family drive, he smashed the radio so it was no longer audible. He was later furious that he would have to pay for a replacement.

As the oldest girl, Mum grew into the role of a surrogate mother to her four brothers and sister. She nursed bruised egos and held the hands of her younger brothers on the walk to school. I often think it was her looking after her siblings that instilled in her a desire to nurse professionally. But she would soon realise that certain educational opportunities afforded to her brothers would not be available to her. As a woman, her father expected her to find employment as a secretary, and after leaving school, she briefly worked for him in Windhoek, South West Africa, now known as Namibia. Before long, he introduced her to a chap he thought suitable for her. It may have been the only time Mum stood up to her father, but it was the one that mattered. As far as Grandad was concerned, it was his way or no way. She left Windhoek and chose her way.

On September 1, 1966, Mum qualified as a general nurse, having trained at the Groote Schuur hospital in Cape Town where she was able to live in the Nurses’ House attached to the hospital, away from her family home. It was at Groote Schuur that she pursued her fascination with the operating theatre, and at one point worked within the team of Christiaan Barnard, the celebrated heart surgeon who performed the world’s first successful human heart transplant there in 1967.

By 1972, she had left South Africa to embark on further training at Guy’s Hospital in London, England. Three years later, she went to a party thrown by one of the doctors she worked with and thanks to a mutual friend, she met an agricultural scientist with thick black-rimmed glasses befitting of his studious vocation. He made her laugh, and he remembered her phone number without having a pen to write it down. He was politically active as a student in the early sixties. Following the Sharpville Massacre in 1960, when South African police opened fire killing 69 black protesters and injuring hundreds more, his abhorrence of Apartheid led him and fellow students at Leeds University to elect Nelson Mandela, recently imprisoned as the leader of the African National Congress, as an Honorary Vice-President of their Student Union. He famously said that he never wanted anything to do with anyone from South Africa. He was my father, and the following year, he and Mum were married.

It took a few years to convince my father to visit South Africa, but towards the late 70s, my parents travelled there as a couple for the first time. Dad met my grandfather, briefly—he had not travelled to England to attend their wedding as my Gran had done —but forged fonder ties with other members of the family. Culture shocks remained, however, which were impossible to ignore. On the day they left Cape Town, the airport was bustling and my parents were thirsty. Walking through the entrance of a bar, Dad tried to look past the 'whites only' sign by the door. He was focusing on a sip of cold beer. The barman refused, pointing at my mother. “No women allowed.” 

“So you have to be white and male to be served in this bar?” 

“Yes.” 

With Mum by his side, he stormed out.

***

Patterns are often observed to repeat themselves. Mum used to tell me that she had her father’s temper, and she hated it. As a headstrong and often stubborn child, I was no stranger to hearing her raise her voice and on occasion feel the smack of her palm. Yes, she did have a temper, but that’s where his influence ended. Perhaps because of the physical space she created between her and her father, perhaps the idea of escape had been brewing since childhood. I can’t say for sure.

I can remember her finding one of my notebooks, in which my best friend and I had been jotting down gossip about another girl on our street to whom we’d taken a dislike. Mum made me read the whole book out loud, substituting my name for hers so I could see how it felt to have those things written about me.

I remember her coming into my school to listen to children read, and having to stand in for our teacher. I remember my cheeks burning as she reprimanded me in front of the class for answering back: “Hey, thula wena,” – a Zulu phrase meaning “quiet, you.”

I remember the surprise cuddly toys she would stash in my bag if I went on overnight trips away from home.

I remember giggling as she instigated a stand-off after coming to a stop in the car on a narrow road. She was annoyed that the man in the car opposite was waving at her to reverse back to a passing point, despite being nearer to one behind him. 

And I remember wanting to know why Mum had been spending so much time with the gentleman in the cottage opposite ours. He was an elderly recluse who had been the victim of a burglary that had shattered his self-confidence. Mum would sit and chat to him for hours. She would say that the most valuable gift you can give people is your time.

It was as though her father’s control had the opposite effect on her to that which he intended. From degradation came dignity. Respect and kindness mattered. 

“The very fact that she made such a success of her studies, her life and her marriage must have galled him no end,” I remember my mum's sister telling me. By leaving South Africa and her father’s control, she also gave up her physical space in the lives of her sister, her brothers and her mother. 

“It was worth it to her to be away from him," she said. "And I loved her even more for doing it.” 

***

Mum died on March 29, 2001. Lung cancer. I was 19 years old. I was old enough to have finished school and start my first year of university, but too young to lose her. 

Mum could not have known she would go too soon, but as far as having one parent is concerned, she did the groundwork. I think of times in my childhood such as returning home from school unsure of whether to admit to Dad if I'd got a disappointing mark in a test, and I hear her voice: “Don’t ever be afraid of your father," she would say, as she would continue to say in the years that followed. She pushed us towards him. She was making sure we knew that we could trust him. And she was right.

I also think of my life experience after she died. I travelled the world as a 22-year-old. I've lived abroad twice. I went back to school and changed career in my 30s. I have a master's degree. I'm surrounded by people who inspire me thanks to all those I've met along the way, and I see years of opportunity ahead. None of these are ground-breaking, but they are steeped in privilege. And while the sting of grief will pierce every one of life's turns without her, I see the greatest privilege as being that of choice. 

So I stand in awe of Mum, who faced very different choices. Her story, too, is not revolutionary but it was life-changing for her. I'm in awe of her strength; how she chose to challenge what life dealt her, and I'm in awe of what she gave me: the belief that flowing through my veins is a younger version of her, with – I hope – the courage to swim against the tide, to stand up for myself and others, and to know my worth.  

I will always remember watching Mum's face that day in St. James’s Park, as my Dad and sister disappeared from view. Had I been more observant, I might have seen similar gazes towards Dad when she saw him helping us with homework after a long day in the office. When he invented ‘The Longest Word Game’ to amuse us at meal times (I can still remember his rhyme for helping us spell 'rhododendron'). When he got my sister and me out of bed late on 9 November 1989 to watch the scenes in Germany as the Berlin Wall came down. 

“Dad always tries to get you to think for yourself, whereas I tell you how to do things," Mum wrote in a letter we found after she died. “But I think Dad’s way is best.”

Dad is the polar opposite of Mum’s father. He's someone whose outlook is concerned only with what we can do, not what we can't. Isn't that something we can all keep in mind this year?