Love in the time of winter

My son has the flu and has not been eating well since the start of winter. He has however been drinking fluids by the gallon and peeing every other minute. While I was changing his nappy yesterday, he decided to amuse himself by peeing straight into my face. His face turned red with laughter as I scrambled to avoid the well aimed stream of warm pee.

Being the smart nineteen month old that he is, he immediately went into damage control mode. He started shouting sorry from the top of his lungs and kissing me all over my damp face.

I must say, annoyed as I was, I could not help laughing and kissing him back. The boy has unconventional ways of expressing his love that for sure. I suppose I have to make peace with the fact that I am going to have a very wet winter this year.

If peeing is the language of love, then pee on my son!

And three years later....

I am reconnecting with my blog. It's been a long time and a lot has happened. To the gentlemen who asked me why I stopped blogging in 2008, thank you for the challenge. And here I was thinking no one would notice.

It's been an interesting three years. I went through life changing, life altering, life enriching and life threatening experiences and am happy to say I am now a bigger (literally) and better person. The journey has been filled with treasured experiences.
I have gone from rubbing shoulders with the whose who of the business world to sharing meals with the nobodies of this world. From five star venues to backyard meeting places, from spas to hospital wards and from parties to funerals.

I have welcomed new people into the world and said farewell to dear old ones. Said good bye to old ways and embraced new ones. Gone from being an excited graduate to a nappy-changing, nursery rhyme singing mother.

Interestingly enough, I am currently working on an exhibition to be launched in a few weeks (my last posts were about an exhibition as well). The last one went well and I am now working extra hard to make this one a success as well. I will tell you all about it as soon as I have submitted all the work due. Deadlines and more deadlines....

The great people I have met.

The past three months have been a great learning experience for me. I met a host of characters that I genuinely liked and some that I tolerated because I had to. I learnt a few things from many of these people that I am likely to remember for a long time to come. The greatest lessons I have learnt have been from the invisible ordinary people. Take for example this taxi driver at the location were I stay. He is humane and kind and one of the finest man I have seen in a long time. He observes traffic rules and I have never heard him argue with passangers. He goes out of his way to help any passanger in need. And the cleaning lady who picked up a contact number that fell out of my purse and kept it for a week while I was away. I do not know her that well but we greet everytime we meet. And the security guards who moved chairs for me without my having asked them because they thought the load was too much for me. And the sweet neighbour's three year old son who, though he was afraid of me, knocked on my door one afternoon to invite me to share his birthday cake. These are some of the truly great people who have changed my life that I will remember for a long time to come.

Exhibition opening.

The exhibition opened last week after months of preparation. Getting the finishing touches done was a nightmare; I ran to and from trying to move furniture and signage around. By noon I was ready to explode with fatigue and anger. I had been expecting someone to help me with the signage. I am not well versed with the parking lot (I do not drive) so I had no idea were to start. People started arriving at 11:30 and our first guest was a photographer. I led him down to the meeting space and left him there while I went to put up the signage. It was after noon when I finished that task. I stumbled into the exhibition room all sweaty and out of breath from the running I had been doing outside. The crowd had grown and I could see a group of students approaching from the entrance. I looked around and saw the manager enjoying drinks with his friend. I was not particularly happy to see him; he was supposed to come in early and help me with the furniture yet there he was behaving like the perfect guest. I called everyone to gather in the exhibition room for the speeches seeing as we were now behind schedule. After a brief introduction by the manager, I gave my speeech. I had prepared a speech in advance which I forgot sometime during the morning. To avoid making a fool of myself, I kept the impromptu speech short. Afterwards we all went out for snacks and drinks. I am sure everyone enjoyed themselves eating and drinking and mingling.

Relationship management.

I am happy I took the difficult decision I did two weeks ago to let one of my suppliers go. I am managing so much better now without having to worry about the supplier's trustworthiness. That episode taught me a valuable lesson about relationship management in general. Relationships with other people have their own challenges but they should not be a burden. They should be mutually beneficial to all involved. I have come to realise that a person needs two things to keep relationships working; wisdom and strength. One needs wisdom to be able to tell what is worth keeping or throwing out. If it gets to a point were you are putting in more than you are getting, then it is probably time to re-examine the relationship (with the aim of either balancing things out or terminating it). I am sure many of us have encountered that one friend, lover, workmate or relative who wanted to benefit from situations without putting in the effort. One thus has to know what they want and how much they are willing to pay for it but this has to be proportional to what they are getting in return.

The mid- way crisis: Always have a plan B.

I am sure everyone is familiar with the mid- way crisis in any project, that point were everything looks set until someone decides to let you down. That just happened to me today. One of my suppliers decided to pull out of the exhibition. His complaint was that he was not prepared to sign a BEE form as, to quote him, "he did not want any trouble with Trevor Manuel". I guess he has not been paying his taxes and prefers to keep it that way. At first I thought I was done for because he is a central figure in arranging the exhibition. I tried to convince him to change his mind but he was adamant that he wanted out of the whole thing. After much worrying and coffe drinking, I decided to grant him his wish. He has been after all the weakest link in the chain; always complaining about the pettiest of things and wasting time. I decided that it will be better for the project and everyone involved if we sacrifice him. I told the rest of the team about this development and they all agreed that we should let him go. I now have to come up with a new plan very fast. I already have one in mind; it is costly but very quick to implement and yields results within days. I suppose it is now time to put plan B into action.

Priceless moments.

The past week was not as busy as others so I decided to sort out some archive material that had been in boxes for a while. There were boxes with letters and photos by famous struggle heroes such as Nelson Mandela. As I read some of these letters, I thought to myself that these people were trully amazing. The media has made icons of such people to the extent that they end up appearing as superhumans. We hardly ever get to hear about the personal challenges they faced to become the revered people they are today. The letters I read gave human qualities to people whose names and titles have come to suggest otherwise. I read one letter by one struggle heroin, a woman who had being imprisoned for political activity within the African National Congress. She was writing her husband and asking about the children. She was worried about one child who was ill and she wished that she could hold and hug her son. Within the same letter, she gave instructions to her husband concerning the usage of money in her account. She wanted the husband to pay several people and then buy some household goods for the home. As I read that part, I could not help but marvel at what these women had to go through. They had to deal with the prison experience as well as manage their homes from behind bars. I thought to myself that I was one of the few priviledged; not many people know of the personal struggles that political heroes and heroines had to face.