My father's birthday

by Diana Studer

- gardening for biodiversity

in Cape Town, South Africa

The 6th of January is Twelfth Night when we take down the ornaments. I was looking thru the photograph album my mother made for me. On my first Christmas tree I see Christmas lights – but only a single ornament of silver glass beads. I see the arm of the chair in which I sat when I first read a book!

Christmas past bauble

Turquoise glass pine cone gently dusted with snow, is the only survivor I have from childhood Christmas trees.

With my father on Camps Bay beach in 1956

In 1956 when I was one year old, my father was 50. We are at the Glen Beach end of Camps Bay beach and that must be a tram shed – once was a tram running from the city behind the mountain to our beach.

My mother loved to read. Holds-upon-happiness.

Piers Brendon - Eminent Edwardians
with reminders of my father

Once I said to mother indignantly – Father’s positively Edwardian. She looked at me, Yes; he was born in 1906 when Edward was on the throne.

Dannevirke, New Zealand

My father came from Dannevirke in New Zealand. Silver filigree is his christening mug. His school prize is a beautiful leather bound, gold-tooled book. Monty Watkins went to London during the Depression. Between the two wars he took his newly minted engineering degree from a New Zealand with no prospect of work, to seek his fortune in London where my mother, and grandmother were born. There he met my mother. Kathleen could choose, shall we go to Malaysia or South Africa? This cabin trunk travelled with him, but I imagine it came from his father in turn.

Dava Sobel - Galileo's Daughter

Mama had just read Nicholas Crane’s novel, and wanted something about longitude. I am intrigued by womenandthegarden's Sister-Maria-Celeste-Italy.

The Russian Revolution 1917
with Granma's silver tea caddy leaf

In her sixties my mother taught herself to read Russian. Her life, meant that she had a simple education, raised four daughters. But her mind still sparkled, with a love of languages. When she was a teenager in Truro, a family friend - who worked with the War Graves Commission in France - married a French woman and brought her back to visit the family. My mother was the only one who could speak French to her. Led to a few months in Achicourt near Arras, polishing her French! Terryville Connecticut cabin trunk belonged to my great-grandma. It crossed the Atlantic three times, as she went to visit Dick and Charlie near Vancouver. As my mother said – we lost Uncle George. Silver tea caddy leaf was Granma's.

In 2010 Tatyana commented - The tea leaf is perfect, we [Russians] can not live without tea. And the red flowers are also very appropriate, we love the red color.

Jeremy Paxman - The English
with Cornish pixie and Dutch doll

We sisters grew up in South Africa, but we think of ourselves as English. Not from England, but English. A Cornish pixie, mending a tiny shoe. Large ginger jar comes from my grandmother’s home. The jam-jar with a silver lid also. The little wooden Dutch doll was my mother's.

Charlotte Bacon - Lost Geography
with fish and Loch Awe

A family memoir tying back to Scotland and the sea. Years ago we were enchanted by the Scottish lochs. This is Loch Awe. The fish pictures my father won in a fishy story competition. (Altho his true fishing story was about – going fishing with his uncles – my father got a fishing hook stuck in his cheek – they cut the barbs – and pulled it out – so he once told me!)

Anne Michaels - The Winter Vault
with reading bears, a jar of seashells
and stone age tools

Rescuing a temple from the Aswan Dam. ‘A story of people and nations displaced and uprooted and the myriad means by which we all seek out a place we can call home.’ Here I learnt the word petrichor that - I can smell rain coming blessing.

Pictures by Diana Studer  
of  Elephant's Eye on False Bay 

(If you mouse over teal blue text, it turns seaweed red.
Those are my links.
To read or leave comments, either click the word Comments below,
or click this post's title)