“Fingers crossed”, Lwandle’s words over the gentle hiss of the iron. I didn’t immediately know that this was what she’d said.
“Huh?” as a frown crawled across my brow. The iron into resting position alongside the pillow slip, Lwandle’s arm now outstretched and her index finger diagonally across her pointing finger.
“Ah, right, fingers crossed”, a toothy grin and a laugh in my voice. I didn’t know if this gesture found expression in Lwandle’s Zulu tongue, thus my questioning “huh”.
“Yes” echoed Beloved, “fingers crossed, let’s hope that the estate agent comes back to us with something good.” Something positive from the woman whom she’d brought half an hour before to view our house. A viewing of a house which is so truly our home. A place that for Beloved, carries over four decades of living and loving, light and shade, of many roles and an array of identities. Four decades of stuff and stories – some in drawers and cupboards to be sorted, others in the deeper recesses of self and psyche. Both the former and the latter to be held up to the light, to be observed from different angles, to be assessed, to be the subject of her question: do I take this with us to our next home? Does it move with me in substance or story?
A physical possession owned by her, bestowed on her by loving hands or by hands too frail to hold the things themselves. The delicate crystal Shabbat wine glasses – glasses that tell stories of a different time, that provide a container for history and heritage – the fine threads in the glasses, a reflection of the faintest lines to long-ago-lived ancestors in Latvia.
Are these lines sufficiently ingrained in the palms of Beloved’s hands, embodied into the fibres and fascia of her being, so that they can be acknowledged, and thanked, and said a quiet goodbye to? Can their stories, rather than their substance, continue the journey?
And what of the identities that have bloomed and grown in the various rooms of this house, and equally melted away? Mother, wife, songwriter, student, musician, actor, meditation teacher, daughter, caregiver – which are to be saluted and stepped away from, albeit with some sadness of that which has, over the passing of time, silently slipped away – a self that will not be recovered or returned by time or tide?
Different for me – ‘only’ 14 years, a home to my heart, and this Parkwood path, one trod with far fewer people, and cloaked in far fewer identities. Shorter stories and lesser chapters than Beloved’s tome. And beyond its volume, a significant difference in texture of the leaving. For Beloved, my assessment, a strong sense of taking leave of, of moving away from, whereas for me, more of a lightness and a rightness, a return to the place and people of the south, to my beginnings – the lines on my crystal glasses, the sea, the sand, and the mountain, to family, so gratefully, still very much in this realm.
So, I stood up from my place at the kitchen table, and stepped towards Lwandle, my arms spread wide and both hands’ index and pointing fingers snuggly crossed. Around the ironing-board she came, arms similarly outstretched, fingers crossed. I motioned to Beloved, “we all need to do this”, and in she edged, six cross-fingered hands joined in a small, sacred circle. A brief moment of quiet, and then the booming bass of Lwandle’s plea to God to bless and bring luck to the selling of this house.
“Amen” she ended.
“Amen” we followed. The only word understood by all three of us, but the meaning of her prayer felt so clearly through the tingle of her fingertips and in the strength of her conviction.
While the story of Parkwood is yet to unfold and move through many layers of uncertainty, what is certain, is the abundance of what will accompany us in body and being as we venture forth, each of us in possession of our own crystal glasses, tangible or intangible. Also, the certainty that our path from Parkwood, if not directly blessed by God’s response, is indeed richer for the fervour and fierceness of Lwandle’s request, and that Beloved and I are all the richer for having been held in the embrace of her deep faith, and crossed fingers.
