"WOW"-Moments, in other words, Special Memories

I am feeling the nostalgia of days gone by today.

Farm, Dad, Coffee. When we grew up, my parents owned a farmstead, about twenty five square morgen (approximately twenty one hectare) in size, part of the farm called Boekenhoutfontein which once belonged to President Paul Kruger. We grandly referred to our little sanctuary as our "farm". On the land stood a house that my father and his helper(s) built themselves – a simple brick building with a corrugated iron roof and cement floors.

There was no electricity. In the evenings we ate outside around a camp fire, and although we did have a little gas stove, even water was boiled over the fire. (Water was supplied via a water storage tank. Nowhere else did water ever taste as sweet as on the farm. It is only very much later that I found out about the bugs floating on the surface of the water in the tank. Who cares? Maybe the dead bugs were the source of the sweetness in the water!)

Many of my "WOW"-moments were built around our farm and my father. That was my safe space, he was my safe haven.

My most sacred memories are those of very, very early in the morning. Dad always woke at dawn, even on the farm. I usually woke when I heard Dad breaking dead branches in order to get the fire started next to our room's window, under a buffalo thorn tree. Whenever I heard these little signs of the breaking of a new day, I used to wrap myself a little deeper into my sleeping bag for a last few moments of snug slumber.

A little later I would wake up again to the sound of the soft crackle of the flames of the fire. Nothing made me feel more eager to face the day than the sound of Dad pouring his first coffee of the day in his gigantic tin cup. I usually got up to join him by the fire. With a quiet "Good morning, my child" and a "Good morning, Dad", he would also pour me some coffee in a tin cup.

We used to sit quietly and listen to the signs of the world waking up around us. Sometimes he would draw my attention to the lonely cry of a fox or the twitter of a particular bird, but usually I only wordlessly sat there, bathed in the feeling of love and security in the moment of another early morning with Dad.

Oh, those halcyon days of youth, simplicity and innocence...

Above is a sketch that my mother made of my father under the buffalo thorn tree.