It is Passover. I know about Passover, you're not brought up a Christian without knowing all about Passover. Well, I say that, but I am about to learn a thing or two about Passover and grains that swell, it turns out.
I made a friend at drama school and it was great to learn that she came from Johannesburg. At the time I didn't realise she lived about fifteen minutes' drive from my aunt's place. I have always had an open invitation to stay with her, but have never taken her up on it as I have family and other friends in Joburg. In the time since Kate died I have wanted to stay with her friends, spend time with them. But one of the terrible corollaries of loss for me is that although I have got access to some of Kate's mate's in a way probably impossible had she been alive, I have also found that many of those relationships were tremendously ephemeral. More ephemeral than I had wanted. Something about the desire to connect at the time of her murder to rediscover Kate, maybe to be with someone we'd heard so much about or to be with someone who was enduring something similar to our own pain.
Being a hoarder, being desperate to keep my sister, to find something, someone who would, basically, I suspect, be my sister, I had wanted to continue those relationships, but mostly they have fallen by the wayside, which in itself has caused me distress. I think this is my problem, not theirs, that they are just doing the right thing and what comes naturally, and I am misguided, needy, mistaken. Thinking about it, it all sounds rather..... well... barking. And I'm loathe to write about it really, but two months in and now confronted with Johannesburg I am feeling pretty.... peeled-back skin-wise and I have a desire to be honest. And so, I think I have been blinded by grief and fear, by a terrible knowledge that without my sister I am nothing. I always knew I was rather an insubstantial creature, but the severing and expunging of my other self, my better self, my sympathetic, loving, resilient sister, has left me over-keen to find or make life and love and understanding on the barren territory of surprise and loss and desire for the utterly gone.
Add to this the fact that some of Kate's mates are no longer in Johannesburg and my familial homes are full, I find myself with the chance to take up my friend on her open invitation.
She is full of apologies as I arrive, late into the evening for parents with a baby who is not fond of sleeping. She's sorry because it is Passover, and so there is very little food in the house, she says, food of the kind she clearly thinks is right for a guest. I do not know how to reassure her: I've come to stay for... up to a few weeks and just a bed and somewhere to wash is enormously generous. I admit, being far less knowledgeable about Passover than I'd thought, I didn't realise that there would be unusable crockery and many un-eatable swelling-grain-based foods in the house, but there is tea and there are matzos. And boiled eggs. And salad and fruit, mountains of fruit and, as I mentioned, tea. AND the warmest welcome. Actually, it looks like a pretty healthy diet, to me, this Passover diet, especially when you add the lovely people with whom I'm about to stay.
When I see her husband later, he looks me in the eye and tells me, essentially, that his home is my home and that I must simply treat this house as such, he'll have no standing on ceremony. He and I have only met twice before, both times pretty fleetingly, and as I go up to my room I do, indeed, feel at home. And I feel happy that my friend has married such a very lovely man, a man who put me at my ease and who is genuinely happy for me to drink his beer even tough he can't - it's Passover.
And yet there's an 'and yet' in the mix. Will I always live he life of this single woman, the interesting, perfectly pleasant (if you like that sort of thing), woman, with a good sense of humour, who will eat anything (anything I tell you! and love it) and be a houseguest in the homes of her friends, in their couples, maybe with their children in tow? Will I tramp around, never fixed, always looking for whatever it is that's missing?
It's Passover. And I think about the first born in my family, the oldest brother who died before he was born, and the oldest sister, who died as she was starting to live the life she'd hoped for. And I remember I can get very maudlin indeed if left to my own devices. Maybe I will always be itinerant, but if the homes I visit have matzos, or similar, and fruit and tea and boiled eggs and beer, maybe it won't be so bad.
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